Week 12

This is a summary of my thoughts on Week 12's readings from Music is Your Business and on Music Markup Language.

There are four fronts of the music industry that lead to success of an artist. The first front is Artist and Product Development. This involves establishing who you are as an artist and what your image is. The product development has to do with selling music, such as an artist's website or live show sales. The second front is promotion, which means getting airplay. The third front is publicity which entails making press packs and doing research into opportunities. The fourth front is performance, which involves finding venues and touring. The authors argue that the four fronts are interrelated and can be enhanced by the Internet.

Next, the authors discuss how much the industry has changed in thirty or forty years. There are more new music releases than ever, the CD sales industry is confusing and quite possibly floundering, and the advent of the internet has made it easier than ever to distribute music, but very difficult to get noticed. The authors argue that it is easier to get on the radio now with Internet radio and stations becoming increasingly supportive of independent artists. Clear Channel's dominance of the music industry has affected both radio play and live performances, reducing the number of opportunities available to independent artists. Establishing one's career by one's self remains the way to get signed by a label. This makes sense to me, if a label representative sees that an artist is already successful, signing them would be a small risk and that artist could in theory only get bigger.

Music Markup Language

MML is a music language that helps turn MIDI into a more human-friendly language. Much like HTML, if used properly, MML can be translated into text, sheet music, and a bevy of other formats. It seems that this would help preserve music that is not traditionally notated, and I can't do anything but praise their efforts for doing so.