Horizons Management

19th June 2009

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The Ever Evolving Industry

Mike has had a pretty crazy week and is looking at an even crazier weekend, so I’m taking the helm and writing this week’s Industry Digest for him. I want to do something a little different this week.

The music industry is constantly changing and evolving. With advances in technology, people will always find more ways to get music, some ways illegally. According to the Music Think Tank: Everyone Ruining the Industry blog:

A federal jury found Jammie Thomas-Rasset guilty of illegal file-sharing and fined the 32-year-old mother of four $1.92 million, the AP reports. She was found to have violated the copyrights on 24 songs and each carried an $80,000 penalty. This was the second trial of Thomas-Rasset, after an error in jury instructions in 2007 prompted a retrial. Of more than 30,000 similar cases, most settled out of court for about $3,500; Thomas-Rasset’s is the first such case to go to trial.

We’ve all done it, download songs illegally. It started with Napster. Then programs such as Kazaa, Morpheus and Limewire came on the scene. As an independent artist management company, we’ve always embraced new technology and file sharing, but on the other hand we need people to support us. If we gave away all our music, we’d have to get day jobs. True, we’re offering Taylor Carson’s full catalogue for free at http://friendsandfamily.taylorcarson.com, but sites like this and services like NoiseTrade give us the option to benefit from file sharing. We can’t put a price on gaining more fans and growing our fan base. The thing about NoiseTrade and the Friends and Family site is that you can get the music for free, but you have to tell people about it. With NoiseTrade, you have to tell 5 people to get the music for free and with the FAF site, there is no link to it anywhere, so to get the music, someone has to tell you about the site and then, hopefully, in turn, you’ll tell somebody else, and the chain continues.

In recent years, music has gone from being a service to a business. Back in the “olden days:” music was something to entertain people, now it is about making money. An artists makes music to make a living. Here at Horizons Management, we’re trying to find that middle ground, where the artist can have a career and make money, but we also want to bring music back to a service that entertains people. Music brings people of all races, ages, and ethnicities together. It has the power to bring smiles out on even the rainiest of days. There must be an agreement between the artist and the audience that says, the artist is there to entertain, but the audience must also support that artist so he can continue to do what he does. Music is something this world can’t survive without, so we must find a way to support artists so that they can keep making the soundtrack to our lives.

The link to the new story: http://www.prefixmag.com/news/illegal-file-sharing-leads-to-192-million-fine/29813/

-Joe