"That's a hobby, not a profession"

I'm posting a piece by a friend and want to give a little context.

In the wonderfully insightful book, The Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen gives a truly penetrating analysis of the myth of amateurism currently promulgated by the Vapor Class. If you haven't read the book, you should.

A different author, one of the philosophical loin-bearers of the Web 2.0 Weejun Utopia, hikes up his chinos, hides the logo on his La Coste and tells us that "[i]n [our] society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I please, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic" [at p. 22 or thereabouts, depending on your edition].

And when I heard the creepy Professor Fisher describe the "rise of the amateur" at an OECD dinner in Rome right after the devastating loss that the Weejun Utopia suffered in the Grokster SCOTUS case, it suddenly dawned on me--Willard is summoning his little friends and they mean to take us in a rush. I didn't know it at the time, but that was going to be called YouTube.

Given that YouTube will probably go down in history as one of the great successes of the Vapor Class, but one of the most colossal business mistakes in commercial history, I am struck by the continued fascination of the Weejun Utopia with amateurism. Nowhere have I seen the subject given a better--let's call it "treatment"-- than in the following piece by our friend Charles Sanders, counsel for the Songwriters Guild, who separates the tech from the dirt at the latest gathering of the Vapor Class, the New Music Seminar:

"That's a hobby, not a profession." - Unidentified audience member, responding to a feel-good assertion by TuneCore's Peter Wells that getting heard is the best payoff.

That unidentified audience member was me. I am outside counsel to the Songwriters Guild of America, former counsel to NMPA and The Harry Fox Agency, Chair of the music industry’s primary social outreach program (“World Hunger Year”), and a former studio musician. I was responding specifically to the assertion by Mr. Wells that “definitions of success in music need to be adjusted for the new economy.” [Ed: This is very consistent, almost word for word, what Fred Von Lohman says about artists needing to learn to get along with less money.) He went on to illustrate this point by happily telling the audience that the CFO of TuneCore (“he wears a suit and tie every day!”) rocks his heart out in a Massachusetts dive bar on the weekends, and “sometimes that’s enough. He rocks hard.”

Is this what we have come to? The new industry visionaries now feel that music is a hobby to be pursued on the weekends. I was reminded of that old Yuppie “who says you can’t have it all” beer commercial with the stockbrokers singing karaoke. They thought they rocked hard, too, Mr. Wells. But they are stockbrokers, not songwriters and musicians, the creators that I am sworn to protect. The weekend Hendrix wannabes may be a profit center for TuneCore, but in my mind that’s not what the larger music community is primarily supposed to be fostering if we intend to stay alive and relevant.

And so during the question and answer period I asked about the platitude spouted by another of the panelists, Mark Ghuneim, that “it all starts with a song.” How, I asked, are we supposed to support the development of songwriters who supply the raw materials that the industry has always relied on, if we turn the music industry economy solely into a t-shirt and merch business in which the music is given away and the pure songwriter cannot be compensated? Shouldn’t we, while recognizing the right of self-contained bands to adapt this entrepreneurial “free goods for a higher profit margin” model as to their own careers (and God knows I feel the same way about the major labels as does every panel member), also recognize the parallel need to stick together in recognizing the value of intellectual property?

“No,” I was told by a unanimous panel. “That’s another business.” Huh? I said. Local dive bars that “let” musicians play for free is part of the new music industry economy, but songwriting and intellectual property is another business? We aren’t in this together?

“That’s right,” I was lectured by Mathieu Drouin of Crystal Math Management, who had previously spent a full half hour describing the success story of one of his bands, Metric, which claimed to have raised its own funds (“money is never the problem, there’s still plenty of that out there” he said) to support the successful global release of its last record. (He did not describe what that “success” constituted, but I will take him at his word that it involves compensation at a living wage level). The old model of having professional songwriters able to work at their craft for a living is no longer relevant in this age of bands writing all their own material, giving it away, and making money in other ways. "Protection of intellectual property is old school," was the panel’s unanimous consensus.
Aren’t the band members songwriters, too, who need the time and compensation to work on their craft? I asked. How can they do that if they have to rely on working on the road every night? “There’s money out there,” I was told dismissively. “Look at Metric.” And so I walked away from the microphone wondering whether Mr. Drouin hadn’t made some interesting points.

Then I picked up the New York Times the next morning. There on page one of the inside section was an article about the band Metric, and lo and behold, a reference to the fact that they had been bankrolled in part by the Canadian Government as a local cultural project.

Is that the business model of which Mr. Drouin is so proud? This is the model for the future of our industry, the one that does not require protection of intellectual property? Finding a national government of which one of the band members is a citizen that may be willing to underwrite your project with handouts, as part of an extension of the Canadian content rule for struggling musicians? Maybe in Canada, or France, Mr. Drouin, but in this country where the National Endowment for the Arts struggles to make due on less money every year than the old Polygram Records monthly white wine budget?

I respect the attempt made by the organizers of NMS to present the “alternative” viewpoint regarding the future of the music community. But if we are going to have intelligent and candid discussions about what new models might work and which ones will destroy our community faster than even the major labels have been able to, we need to stick to reality, not fantasy. I know there are many out there who very much want the “free goods” model to work. But Cheneyesque twisting and obfuscating of facts to fit their theory that it does work --even if it doesn’t-- is a sure prescription for disaster for all of us. We’ve seen that movie before, and it does not end well.

And so, Mr. Drouin and the rest of you, I repeat: we ARE in this together, songwriters and recording artists both. If the users and social theorists continue to succeed in splitting us apart, all really will be lost. And I’ll bet the TuneCore CFO a beer in that dive bar in Massachusetts that I’m right.

Ed: I'd bet a lot more than a beer, dude.