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By GLYN MACLEAN
Staff Writer

What an exciting time it is in the music industry.

Fortunes are being lost all over the world. Record labels are going broke and closing down. Billions of dollars of revenue is being lost to illegal downloads.

While the Neanderthal had grumpy Dinosaurs, modern musicians have equally angry bank managers and record labels.

We’re going through a tremendous period of change. Some of these changes can be measured on a scale of biblical proportion. We might compare these changes with the epic stages of human evolution; or should I say ‘devolution’. Has the music industry taken us from Homo-sapiens to Neanderthal? Is the current music industry model emulating the extinction of the Dinosaur? Is a barbarian hoard of digital pirates desecrating the holy temple of copyright and laying ruin to industry incomes? Or is a celestial force destroying the music industry by smiting it with a pillar of economic fire such as occurred at Sodom and Gomorra?

A lot of people are probably asking the question: “If so much is against us, can money still be made in the music business jungle?” And so it begs the questions: “What are the laws of the jungle?”, “How does one survive the economic holocaust?” and “How do we escape from the jaws of the cash flow deficit monster?”

THE CANNY NEANDERTHAL

If we take a step back a few thousand years in time, we find that humanity has incessantly struggled to balance the input and expenditure of energy.

The battle began on a personal level with humankind seeking to ensure that food (fuel) input was at least equivalent to our work (energy) output. As we formed groups we found it more economical to work together to catch larger beasts (Antelopes) using group hunting methods and tools, rather than to chase very small animals (chickens), a practice which expended far too much energy.

Eventually we became tired of the nomadic existence. Agricultural communities came to apply methods of multiplicity. Captured chickens were now caged and cultivated in large numbers and large areas of land mass were being dedicated for crops to feed the masses.

These principles evolved into commerce.

Money became a form of power because it very effectively bought a share of ‘energy’. Lets call that energy a kind of ‘power’. When money shifts from one party to another party, the power and authority also shifts with that money. If a business entity no longer has money, the power of that entity is considerably diminished. If we agree that this is a law of the musical industry jungle, then we might seek to examine just how money is equivalent to power in the context of industry.

More importantly we can examine if there is something else that can replace money that gives us equivalent power. Are there other forms of ‘energy’ or ‘power’ that exist as laws of the musical jungle?

I’ll come back to this in a moment.

As with the law of nature, when the bigger predator leaves the jungle, the mid sized predator now has an opportunity to dominate. As larger players leave the jungle, the mid sized player may now eat anything underneath the size of it, without fear of the repercussions of being dominated by the now absent larger player. A direct consequence of the downfall of larger beasts is therefore that slightly smaller beasts may now grow much larger. In fact everything that was smaller can now step up an evolutionary level and become a little larger, in the absence of the predator.

A consequence of this ‘law of the jungle’ is that mid sized independent music businesses have been able to step into the vacuum created by some of the departing larger entities. In many cases, if the big Dinosaur hasn’t been able to find enough energy (cash) resource to continue it’s momentum, it has turned to the slightly smaller player and formed a truce or alliance to share energy output and input resources. So we now have lots of what were previously smaller companies occupying the space of larger ones. We’re also seeing an increasing level of compromise as companies adjust to maintain the energy to survive.

But what about the rest of the players who exist at the lower end of the jungle food chain? What if we’re not a part of a ‘tribe’ or record label?

Here comes a very interesting principle; “It is not the big that eat the small, it is the fast that eat the slow.”

Small industry players or ‘tribes’ are able to be much more mobile and can move much more quickly. A large cumbersome player will have to stop a great deal of inertia and momentum in order to change direction. And so it is that smaller players who can quickly adjust to the shift in opportunity, are able to reposition themselves to a more beneficial position. If you can disconnect from a position where you are practically hemorrhaging (cash) energy quickly, then you can also recover much more quickly.

What are the other forms of ‘power’ or ‘energy’ that small players can trade on?

RELATIONSHIP RELATIONSHIP RELATIONSHIP - or - Find a Tribe!

One of the key factors I’ve learned in sales is that ‘people move products’. People consume products and people distribute products. If we put a focus on finding, keeping and growing the right kinds of relationships (finding our tribe) we are emulating a survival tactic first employed by our ancestors. It’s smart thinking. Surround ourselves with like minded individuals from whom we find a natural synergy in terms of sharing energy input and output resources. Tribes can more easily fight off scary monsters.

CONTRA & BARTER

Contra and barter are as old as the homo-sapiens. One person traded a chicken (which took several hours to catch) with an antelope horn dagger that was also hard to catch, but that represented a small part of the value of a whole antelope. It was a good trade and no money changed hands.

You might have skills as a graphic artist or web designer. You may need an audio engineer. If you agree a value on your skills and swap, trade, barter or contra those skills then you have traded energy without using money.

Your skills are in fact a form of energy or power if you can ‘convert’ them.

This extends into media who are looking for quality entertainment content. You might provide a live performance on Tv for free, covering your own transit and production costs. In return the media organization provides promotion to a large audience and therefore gives you valuable advertising.

THE REAL VALUE OF A CHOOK

Lets go back to observe the Neanderthal and the trade of the chicken for a moment.

Say I traded my antelope horn dagger for your chicken. If I keep that chicken and let it produce eggs, I can grow more chickens. I made on the deal. If you use that antelope horn dagger to make a fur coat (so you could hunt during all seasons) then you’d also be a winner on that deal. We have a win win scenario.

What matters here is what we do with the resources. Ideally this involves looking past the face value of the immediate opportunity. If you eat the chicken, then you can’t produce more chickens. You have to be patient and wait for an egg; eat one egg to sustain yourself and then let the other become a new chicken. Take some money you make and reinvest it.

From every opportunity, comes another opportunity to make an opportunity.

IF WE ALWAYS DO WHAT WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE,
WE WILL ALWAYS GET WHAT WE HAVE ALWAYS GOT

This all sounds ridiculous! What do chickens and antelope horn daggers have to do with the music business?

It’s about managing our relationships and the opportunities that these present; in the context of sustainability and the maximum productivity and in such a manner that it adds value to all of the stakeholders. It’s very simple to be cognizant of this in the analogy of our ancestors, but it’s harder to apply the practical sensibility of these principles to the business of music.

So I’ll give you an example of how we are doing this in a modern context.

VISIONARY THINKING

Lets push a magical button and travel into the utopian future for a moment.

Fossil fuels are dead and someone has invented a limitless supply of energy. There is no longer a need to struggle for a share of energy resources like the Neanderthal or 21st Century homo-sapiens. Under such circumstances, humanity might potentially operate very differently. We could have the potential to become “other people orientated.”

However, this involves thinking outside of the current circumstances.

And so with that future viewpoint embedded in our minds, we hold the potential start to look for opportunities to add value to those around us. (In this analogy we have limitless energy so there is no need to hold back or conserve it).

In this example lets call you the ‘visionary’.

Arriving in the year 2009, the visionary finds for example, that charities are a casualty of financial cutbacks. Charities struggle to remain in existence due to a reduction in government and corporate income which is no longer being allocated. However the charity has a sizable member base who are sympathetic to the charity. This member base consumes products and services in the natural course of their 21st Century human existence.

In the context of this story, the visionary might have come from a utopian future, but would have to operate in the contemporary context, applying visionary futuristic thinking to modern circumstances in which there is clearly, still a struggle for resources.

Say that visionary is you, the musician.

Contemplate for a moment that your live performance has dual purpose and value.

One value is that your music provides entertainment that the member base of the charity might normally buy. The other is that your music has the power to inspire people to ‘own’ the message of the charity; and to share that message through the emotional pull of your music with other members. Therefore expanding the charity.

If you, the visionary were to partner with the charity, taking only a proportion of the fair resources that you need to sustain your 2009 energy, then the charity itself could become the recipient of a significant proportion of the income with which to fund it’s 2009 operation.

This takes us right back to the beginning; to relationship and to finding the value we each has to trade and which can also add sustainable value to each other.

I’ll leave it to you to contemplate the rich assets which you have within your own skills and humanity. I would suggest that there is much that you personally have to offer and that people would like to receive.

As it was with the Neanderthal, it is with 21st Century homo-sapiens; the key to evolving our circumstances is found in ‘tribal like’ communities, harmonies and relationships. If we find, keep and grow our relationships, we stand a much improved opportunity to grow our mutual prosperity.