Head In The Clouds

“Brian Eno has famously said that the recording industry has the same problems that the whale blubber industry had when gaslights were invented – and I agree with him. It’s hard not to feel morose about the recording industry, but it was theirs to lose and they lost it.”

So says Dave Allen, an original member of influential Leeds post-punk act Gang Of Four and, as producer of numerous albums and founder of World Domination Recordings, a well-seasoned veteran of the music industry. On September 14th, he will be the keynote speaker at Cloudbusting: Dispelling The Myth Of The Cloud – a one-day web conference at the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT).
Having more or less hung up his bass guitar, Allen is now an influential technology expert. He’s Director of Interactive Strategy at Portland-based branding company North, Inc, a lecturer in Digital Brand Strategy at the University of Oregon, and a respected music blogger (www.pampelmoose.com).
“At North, Inc, I’m in charge of the online digital brand strategy for our clients, advising companies like Subaru whether they should consider responsive web design for mobile versus building Apps. I also advise them on user experience on mobile devices, and also the context of mobility.”
While the advent of the Internet has totally changed the business model for musicians and record companies alike, Allen sees the new online technologies as something to be wholeheartedly embraced.
“Just look at the tools that are now available to musicians,” he enthuses.
“YouTube is currently the number one method of listening to music by young people. You have blogging platforms such as Wordpress and Tumblr, digital music aggregation services like CD Baby, or BandCamp, that let artists post their music files, videos and images and allows for direct-to-fan sales. Facebook and Twitter are two very different platforms, but valuable in their own ways. We owe a big thank you Tim Berners-Lee for bringing the world the user interface we call the web browser.”
Having said that, he recognises that the Internet has caused havoc within the music industry.
“Something like Napster was a prime example of the zero-barrier-to-entry model that is the web,” he says. “The Internet has been the greatest disruptor of culture, society and business in a long time, and Napster was a prime example of that disruption. The problem, though, was the way the music business reacted to its power, and to how people wanted to get music — by suing their own customers. I’m not sure we’ll see the industry ever recover from that debacle. The recorded music business still suffers from what I describe as the ‘Curse of Knowledge’, where a company holds its ground in the face of a shift in the social construct -– see also AOL/Time Warner, Kodak, travel agencies, etc, etc...”
Allen shows little sympathy for those musical artists who feel ripped-off because of illegal downloading. “Why are we still debating ‘illegal downloading’ in 2012?” he asks. “When I research the data of bit torrent downloads of songs by bands claiming that ‘everyone is stealing our music’, I find that actually, more likely, no-one can be bothered to download their music. They can’t be bothered to even ‘steal’ it. They don’t care!
“In a mobile world, the downloading of a MP3 file is more difficult. Seriously, the social construct has shifted — young people don’t want to own music, they want convenient access to it in mobile. Hence the success of Spotify in terms of users — a company with major label contracts that, by the way, is shafting artists in terms of the money they’re not making.
“The real question should be: how can musicians create a new market where they are involved in the financial transaction that takes place when someone accesses their music? As long as we keep talking about ‘stealing’ or ‘piracy’, there will be no action taken to properly compensate artists when a transaction occurs.”

For more information on Cloudbusting and free registration see facebook.com/CloudBusting2012