 Hello everybody. We are moving on to our next bit of programming here, which is our tongue twister of a title, Making Music Making Work, for working musicians. Hello. Can you still hear me? Not hearing me. Okay. Testing. And there we go. Thank you. Jennifer. So we're moving on to our next panel, our tongue twister of a title, Making Music Making Work, for working musicians. That's how it does it, yes. Most people would agree that creativity has value, but putting a number on that value isn't easy, particularly in a competitive, super saturated digital environment. But it's not all just downloads and streams. Artist compensation extends to the world of label concerns and investment in music as a whole. Today we're looking at evolving expectations for musicians, as well as some very real issues that are impacting creators across the board. To moderate our panel is Kristen Thompson, FMC's co-director of our Artist Revenue Streams project and board member. Hey, everybody, how are you? So I'm really super excited about this panel, not only because I've been working on the Artist Revenue Streams research project for the past couple of years, but also because this is such an issue for me that's so interesting. The fact that musicians are now navigating a landscape that requires them, in a sense, to consider and investigate and benefit from or not from a variety of revenue streams. And we're talking about a pretty big shift from a recent past where revenue stream was fairly predictable into sort of three big buckets. There was some that was based on your performance, some on if you were a composer, what you could make from your compositions. And if you were a recording artist, you maybe made some money selling records. Now we see with streaming and webcasting and fan-based funding and branding that there are so many more options. And I think it's really instructive for people to hear about how it's working for various artists. And that's why we're just so thrilled to have a diverse range of musicians and music advocates as part of the conversation today. So I'm going to do real quick introductions to our panelists and then we're going to get into it. So over on the left is Jennifer Mondi. Jennifer is a violinist for the National Symphony Orchestra. She's been with the NSO since 1995 and currently serves as the Orchestra Committee Chair. And she's also an AFM member. So she's a performer who doesn't compose. Then to her left is Benji Rogers. Benji is the co-founder or one of the founders and the CEO of Pledge Music. Pledge is a service that helps artists and bands design tailored fundraising campaigns to raise money for their next release. And in an earlier you know Benji's also been a musician toured around and I think provides some great perspective on some of the questions about how artists' projects are now funded. To his left is Chris Ruin. Chris is the author of a new book that's just come out called Free Loading. How Our Insatiable Appetite for Free Content Stars Creativity. And Chris is also a journalist based in Brooklyn and a writer and I could I say a dormant musician? I suppose yeah sure you can say that. Dormant. Like a volcano. To his left is Rodney Wittenberg the owner of Melody Vision and an Emmy-winning composer for film and TV. And Rodney is a composer, a videographer, studio producer, a musician himself and a teacher and an active member of the Recording Academy. And online not visible but we can hear him is Ben Wyman and Ben is the lead guitarist and a founding member of the Van Dillinger escape plan and Ben is in Orange County California recording right now and he'll be joining us to talk. Can you hear us Ben? Yes. Awesome. Here we go. So I wanted to start with Benji actually because probably the one of the beginning phases of the creative process is actually figuring out how your work is going to be funded. And how is pledge music changing the artist development strategy? Because in prior years it was get a big deal or maybe you know tour until you have enough money to put out a record. What does it look like now? In some sense is not a huge amount has changed. People still do want to go get record deals. A lot of artists if they were you know offered a giant juicy check record deal they would I think a majority of them would take it. There's no getting around that. The flip side to that is that we run campaigns that help artists basically de-risk or put into profit their albums as they're being made or even in most cases before they're being made. So on this smaller independent level you can de-risk what you were going to do anyway by not having to borrow as much money or you know do that. If you're a label you can run a campaign that would basically start while you're making the album not just when it's finished and the fans get to participate in that and they buy in early to you know go along for the ride. One of the reasons that it's so been so successful is because ultimately what artists do in the studio is quite fascinating to their fans it's just never seen and if it is seen it's shared willy-nilly on social networks which is very hard to monetize if there's no way to actually buy it at that moment. We just created a way to buy it at that moment be a part of its journey and you know one of the biggest records we did this year was essentially in profit after about six hours from one Facebook post and one tweet whereas otherwise they would have had to dig themselves out of debt for the first few months to try and get to that same phase. So it's just been I've been obsessed by elongating the way in which albums are released not just you know if you're in the studio you're doing something interesting that a fan could be watching and if there's no ability to buy that moment or experience then there's just no ability to buy it so a lot of you know I think that the changing message is that not everyone can have their record be profitable but that three four or five thousand dollars you were gonna spend or borrow or go into debt for no longer is necessary to do fans want to be a part of the conversation. Social networks have shown us that fans are just never been given a way to be able to you know and I was describing it there was a manager we work with and I said I saw your tweet your band's in the studio I'd like to give you two hundred dollars where do I pay I want to give it to you right now here's my card is that the albums now till September and this was in March and I was like yeah I know but you're in the studio you're doing something this is exciting I want to come on let me go and that was when it was like oh you're right you can't pay me for this it's not possible and I'm gonna give all this all of this content away for free to everybody and create a generalized consumer experience and what I should really be focusing on is a fan experience for the people like me who want to spend more but don't have the ability to nine times out of ten until a few moments before the release comes out in the cycle of what a musician does. So help people think about how you're different from things like Kickstarter where I you know at least as I perceive it it's like we get the money to from our fans to support the project but then it kind of the Kickstarter support structure kind of ends there after you've done you know sent out all your promised deliverables so how does pledge kind of extend through the recording release phase? Sure the general crowdfunding is basically give me money in the next 30 days and I'll go do something and there's nothing wrong with that but again it's still missing the sort of point which is that I don't necessarily want to fund anyone's album I want to watch something happen so at the 30 days once the money is in is kind of when it should begin not end and so we just extended the way in which albums come out to say pledge you to be a part of our album you know the records that we're launching today are gonna come out in April or March April May of next year our most successful campaign to date actually was 11 months long and ended up in the top 10 in the UK in the midweeks because ultimately fans were taken along on the journey to make a triple album on CD vinyl and DVD like you know and this is something that would not have been commercially viable in any other way so I think really what it's about is it's just fans are often bored at a job they don't like there's not much to do and showing them pictures of what they could be a part of on showing them videos and teasers with an inability to actually do anything with other than just kind of say I'm looking at it like it comment on it shouldn't that be an ability for me to get involved that way I'm in and all you go do is let me know what's happening and when it's gonna arrive you know I'm the kind of person that if I see it I'm like okay I want to sign test pressing I want signed vinyl I want a Henry lyric sheet or a poster that's about 200 bucks let me just do it at that moment because the reality of it is is that by waiting and just doing pre-orders on iTunes or Amazon you're just giving iTunes and Amazon all of your customer data they're taking 30% for holding a file and a picture and again that's nothing wrong with that that's just how it is but you don't own that you can't then tell those same fans about your shows you can't then reach out to them when your next release is coming out they may have all your previous catalog on there but that's not gonna help you move the next part forward so I think it's just about opening up a conversation with fans it doesn't have to be you know this is me getting out of the shower this is me doing everything or this is what I'm eating but it can be here's an unreleased demo here's the mixed version here's the mastered version now it's in your hands and by the way the first 3,000 people to get involved get their name in the album credits you it's just multiple points of contact so in one sense what a crowdfunding campaign does is we've got 30 days to do something and it's over what a record release strategy is is pre-order my album buy my album have you bought my album there are three moments for you to really communicate and once those are over you're kind of like hey have you bought my album yet hey guys my albums out have you bought it and it becomes that kind of painful moment for a lot of Indian artists and me personally have felt where it's like how much more can I try and sell these guys the same thing whereas if you unfold a release process into 20 30 40 pieces of you know stuff that's happening then I've got 30 40 times to get involved if I don't want it I can just wait for it to come out and you know that's good let's hope for our sorry yeah I mean we could talk a lot about this new process of artist development and and funding but I also wanted to bring Ben into the conversation because I think it's fair to say that Dillinger skate plan makes most of its money from live performance and touring right Ben that's partly true I think that that is a good part of it but I think you know number one you have to have a good market to invest in so having good music and being a real band that has a solid foundation is number one once you have that you can really and so you know things like I think pledge is amazing you know but just being a solid band that can play in any market all of the world is really important and yeah I mean it's really hard to say I've been making money in so many different ways just based off the the career that I've built so far so you know for us it's we haven't really been that greatly affected by the downfall of physical music sales because we've always kind of functioned in a way that enabled us to just make money in any way possible so what are some other ways that the band and you make money I'm sorry I didn't get that so what are some other ways that that Dillinger makes money and you yourself what have you what else have you done or what else can you count on well the merch thing is great touring and merch is great and you know I've talked about this in the past but we've started doing a lot of limited edition merchandise which is similar to a kind of the philosophy that Benji was talking about with pledge where you know we try to connect and create real value for our fans and one of the ways we do that is by every time we put out a record we release a series of limited edition t-shirts we make a t-shirt for every single song on the record and we're able to spread that out pretty much over an entire record cycle until the next record comes out so we're constantly putting things out there and we're able to really really limit our costs on things like that because we can have them up there while we're touring we can have them up there when we're not touring and we limit the amount of shirts that are made so people really want all of them so I'd say an average Dillinger fan probably spends at least $100 a year on us and when you think about that if you have things out there whether it's tickets or t-shirts or or bundles and packages $100 a year is not hard and 10-20,000 fans to reach is really not that big of an obstacle when you think about it if you're out there and you're active and that's you know that's a couple million dollars so it's really the key is really just being very frugal and not having a million people getting their hands in that pot and that's really that did that's really the question that's really the tricky part because obviously you know as a band that's active and writing music and touring you can't do everything yourselves but that's really been the balance that we've been getting better at throughout the years and seem to have a handle on pretty well yes definitely I'll come back to you in a second I wanted to ask Rodney since I've had other conversations with Rodney over the years because we both live in Philadelphia and we're part of the recording Academy board together I know you wear a lot of musical hats and what Ben was just saying rings true I mean he has they have a lot of stuff going on he himself has even more going on producing records and all that stuff tell me why you wear so many musical hats because it's the model that I found to be able to make a living it's if there's not enough composing gigs I know that I can all get a producing gig if in for example right now I have too many gigs but it's good and I'm working through all the things I have to do because who knows in January maybe there won't be any gigs you know so that's one of the reasons why I wear a lot of hats the other reason is because I love it I mean I love I wanted I made the decision when I was when I stopped playing in a band when I was about 25 or 26 that I wanted to continue having a creative life and I wanted what I wanted to be able to wake up every morning and do something that was immensely creative that related to music in some way and that would make some money for me so what I find most interesting about some of your work is the composing for film and TV work because we oftentimes think about music and money and stuff like that as being dependent on sound recordings and playing shows and merchandise you know those are three big things that people can sort of relate to when they're thinking about how musicians make money but when you're composing for film and TV different story right and so how has how has that I don't want it's going to take too long to describe how it typically typically operates but how has it changed over the past ten years one of the things I was thinking of when I was sitting out there I was thinking of about when I started doing this about 20 years ago I went on informational interviews and I went and met with a number of other composers and one of them said to me and I'll never forget this he goes I said well you know I'm young I'd love to do some work for you do you have any extra work I'd love to do it he looked at me goes no I don't have any extra work I take all the work that comes in and actually I hope you fail and I was like oh okay he's since I see him all the time I've hooked him up with some gigs actually and yet he always gives me a little look or something but but I'm thinking about the fact that there's so much competition there's so much music and it's so devalued one of the things that is going on now in how media acquires music is crowdsourcing and I think that's fine because it gives everybody an opportunity but the problem is it devalues the the work I mean something that I would have gotten paid let's say $2,000 ten years ago there's someone now who'll do it for fifty bucks or a hundred bucks or if a company knows that they can license a piece of music for a hundred dollars why would they hire me to compose it it's actually easier for them to just download it from some website and pay the fifty or a hundred bucks for it and stick it in their media then it is to have the relationship with the composer and figure out what that music is going to be now it's debatable what music works better but if they're only thinking of it you did as something that's there to do a job and not to more than that if it's just a utility what difference they make for them and how how much you know if they can save money and get it for cheap that they're fine doing that and that's a challenge the other thing is there's just so much competition there when you think about it I said I think because I also teach at a couple universities every year just in the city of Philadelphia there are thousands of musicians that graduate and there's no place for them to go to get a job there's nobody hiring hey we need musicians here they all are basically small businesses each and every one of them has to go out and find something some way of making a living whether it's busking or writing music for something or trying playing music or but there's only so many jobs out there so it's it's it's it there's a continued devaluation of the value of of what the consumer or what someone who's producing media will pay for someone to create or license music and I think the one of the things that's been most depressing to me this year and I will pick on someone but there's a new movie that Rob Burnett who is with war wide pants put out and he was I mean it was really depressing to me but he was very excited about it was on all these different talk shows Morning Joe into the day show Tugma how he got the entire soundtrack for free the entire soundtrack to his film he didn't pay a penny for and he was saying this is the future model for making movies you can all get your music for free because they use Red Bull Live or something like that and they got all these bands to say they put their music in the film and they ended up with 20 something like 22 songs in there and I you know it's fine you know but what does that say to the next person who comes along who's making a film or TV show oh yeah music budget zero we'll get all that stuff for free you know and that's thank you Rodney I wanted to move to Chris because I know he's written a book that pretty much touches on the value of music in the consumer aspect of it and so tell us how you got to writing freeloading and you know what your perspective is and take on this is it was a really bad idea but I'm gonna be judgment now anyway so I just I wanted to add a new perspective to the debate as I saw it and I'm 31 I was a freshman in college in the year 2000 and when Napster was at its peak I pirated tons of music my friends all pirated tons of music actually part of the book is I think freeloading is a better word for piracy or for file sharing but I'm not gonna stuff anything down people's throats but anyway Emily White's piece actually really identified with because that was really my experience when I was that age and when I my wife works with kids in college in high school and I was having conversation with one of them recently and same deal you know I was telling him what the book was about and he's like oh yeah we I know I never pay for music none of my friends ever pay for music you know it's just it's not even a it's not even a debate you know it's not really much of an issue but anyway I'll spare you some of the details but over time I was a music journalist over from the New York Press and I did some writing for Tiny Mix tapes as well I grew pretty disturbed with what I was seeing and I guess the big change in my perspective was when I live in Brooklyn and there are a lot of bands that I was kind of getting to know who were getting lots of press and you know two years before when I was in college I would have thought hey these are these guys are making it these are like this is pretty impressive this is the if you're a musician this is the goal and at the time I was in the service industry I was working as a barista and I realized I like went to their apartments and I realized that actually I seem to be making about the same amount of money as they were and I was working like 25 hours a week at a coffee shop so that was a big wake-up call and it wasn't to say that any artist deserves a certain amount of money but rather what is the argument for not giving these working musicians just a reasonable level of respect and acknowledge their rights because I think this was presented in the context of Metallica in terms of a rich versus poor argument and that just completely broke down for me so I reevaluated things and started writing about it and tried to put consumers and who I viewed as my peers on the spot for the practice of piracy and I got not a not so surprising reaction which was a lot of anger and vitriol tossed my way and I was trying to confront people so you know it was expected but the surprising thing is that I got a lot of positive reaction and probably about 80% of the reaction where it came in the form of thank yous and and also a lot of conflicted emotion I got the sense that there was this huge middle ground out there that just wasn't being addressed and wasn't finding a voice in the debate and then you know as I went on researching the book I talked to lots of different musicians and people in the independent music scene I just came to realize how much dysfunction has has been embedded into this debate since 2000 and and that's what the books about but in terms of this you know particular panel I would just make the comment that you know revenues are important but I think the core of this issue comes down to rights and consent and whether or not we can check ourselves and understand that there's something important about respecting the rights of artists and I think until we kind of figure out a way to talk about that we're sort of wasting our time and at the same time we're selling ourselves short as a creative culture and obviously that means less potential for artists making money which is the subject of this panel but I think it also makes it less likely that services like Pandora or Spotify or any legitimate digital service is going to make money because what is this legitimate market doing but seeping demand from what would be going into the legitimate market so but you know I think basically in general we need to look for how can we achieve basic fairness from the marketplace how can we respect the rights of creators but at the same time how can we respect the rights of the public and I think both of those have to be involved in the equation going forward. That's great thank you. So speaking of a different sort of way that artists are compensated and culture is you know culture is involved with music is what Jennifer does as a salaried player with the National Symphony Orchestra and so you know I know we could spend an entire day talking about the current challenges orchestras with a lot of turmoil right recently with contract disputes but I do hope we can talk a bit about how the NSO is changing from the player's perspective whether you're playing where you're traveling more whether you have more obligations to the work or how it maybe the NSO is diversified its own revenue streams and whether you as a player see any benefit to that. Well that's kind of a multi-faceted question. Yeah there's a lot there. It used to be way back in the old days when this was when playing in an orchestra for a salary was a brand new experience it grew from being you rehearse at night and you do what you can you have one or two rehearsal or concerts that week or that month that was the beginning of a professional orchestra to where we have a different program every week we play for the most part in the same place all the time we have our locker rooms we have everything all you know this is where we live and we try and minimize how much time we're on the road partially because to drag a hundred and forty people across the world is incredibly expensive so it's not like just bringing a band and playing a gig and moving on it's just a logistical nightmare with a whole commercial flight full of people however you know kind of the last 10 years I think we'll look back on as the new good old days where where we could do that and we did go on tours but the musicians forcibly limited the amount of time we could go on tour because it's just exhausting we don't want to do it we didn't think our management's needed to do that to make us profitable now we see a lot more outside venues I've played in a lot more high school theaters than I'd really like to just because it's not conducive really to what we do but we do the best we can there's a lot more outreach concerts there's a lot more we run out to one town in the middle of Pennsylvania where they're willing to pay our fee for some fundraiser gala that they have to have us there and play what we they tell us to so those things are creeping back in it it kind of got to an apex where we were mostly where we wanted to be all the time and now things are going back to where we're kind of farming ourselves out and I would like to say that we have a lot more products to put out there but the orchestra again the orchestra is very expensive and to have a hundred people get paid to make a recording just doesn't happen very much anymore there lots of ways that they've made it much more streamlined mostly it tends to be live recordings of concerts now which is a totally different rate than setting us up for four hours with all these mics and all this stuff and everyone has to be silent for another 20 seconds after the final court ends and have a traditional recording session that doesn't happen very often except for movies and film that type of thing but even even the cheaper options that they have are not they feel are not marketable which I think is a huge shame because I think they don't give us enough credit there's only to have a hundred people on stage doing the same thing at the same time is an incredibly powerful and effective medium and there's nothing like it so why anybody thinks that that can be duplicated in any other way I don't know and I really wish that our managers would have a lot more confidence in in our value but I continue to pester them on a daily basis about having that confidence trust me they're not real happy about that do you miss any well that covers a lot of it and I just to sort of probe a bit does that NSO do things like I don't know sell t-shirts or sell recordings in a in a gift shop afterwards anything I just had two gift shops in the Kennedy Center I have never found an NSO t-shirt in any of them again I'm in people's faces about this all the time maybe if I stopped they'd put a t-shirt in actually when we go into or we have this residency will be used to have this residency program where we go to a different state every year Montana Louisiana that type of thing and the people that were supporting us in that state would give us tote bags that said the National Symphony on it but us giving them not so much we do have merchant and again in in the Kennedy Center two gift shops there is not one NSO recording I was just looking there with my son to bring a present to a friend there's no recordings really come on so what can I say wow we I think we should have that stuff all right well I wanted to ask Ben about merchandise could you touch on a little bit with your exclusive t-shirts but something else that I remember you telling me when we had a conversation earlier is how diligent you are with inventory and also just also how you deal with keeping tour coming tour expenses under check because yeah sure gross tour numbers can sometimes be enormous you know really big but unless the band and the artist is actually controlling costs it doesn't matter right so can you tell us a bit about how you run your touring band yeah well we've been lucky enough to survive this long where we've been able to make every mistake possible and learn from it and and a lot of that is luck and a lot of that is is just at this age I really can't go back and get it in the other job so you got to make it work and that's a big part of it just making it work I always say you got to play jazz with your career you can't make an exact you can't have an exact idea of how you want things to go or how you're gonna do things or how you're gonna make every dollar or where you're gonna go exactly with your career you just got to keep going and ask things come at you you've got to jam with it and just like make it work and so one of the things that we realized very early on is that sometimes eliminating the clutter of management and lawyers and all that stuff can actually save you money because the reality is is that people want their products out there if it's a bus if it's lights if it's sitting in a warehouse they'd rather get something than nothing for it and then we know and when they know it's not a check from a major label or somebody like that coming through they're gonna work with you so we've been very frugal throughout the years and just trying to not really limit our our stage show or anything like that but still present a professional scenario and and so yeah it's just been a matter of really just doing that looking taking the time caring about your your final product and then going for it as opposed to just saying ah we can't do that that's too expensive or that's for bigger bands you'd be surprised when you get you'd be surprised what you get when you ask cool so Benji how do people how do bands that have gone through the pledge system leverage their their pledge activity to do shows merchandise whatever well one of things I was gonna say is it's interesting because in a digital age where people are streaming more and and torrenting or hard drive swapping whatever is 82% of pledgers by something physical and on the 18% by something digital only they I've seen people by by records that don't have record players they want like a a sign that they were part of it more than they want the actual music itself and the really funny thing is is that sometimes only 50% of people will download the actual album that they've bought though they'd rather have something that was they were there as it was happening the other thing that we do is is that we start off with a set number of exclusive items on there so we'll start with digital digital plus CD signed CD t-shirt bundle poster and then as it moves along if it reaches a certain threshold we'll add vinyl then we'll add sign vinyl then we'll add test pressings then we'll add artwork so the entire thing is dynamic and it changes as you want it the reason being there is simply because if you know how much you have to manufacture six months before you have to manufacture it you can source it different places you can get the best deals and the other thing is is that a lot of times we work with labels now where they'll say you guys take care of the record and whatever you make will match in marketing funds they want because the labels want to de-risk their business as well so ultimately if you can come to the table saying right we've we need to make we were gonna make 500 vinyl we're actually gonna make a thousand because we sold enough to make that margin having that data before you you're going to manufacture is really your strongest bargaining position because when you're on the road you know exactly what you've got and the other thing is a lot of times you'll your fans will have missed something from a previous show or tour that they want and if you've got excess stock lying around or if you're labeled it dropped you you know it was kind of to give you lots of stuff back you can add that stuff for the kind of the value that it has still so you know I've got 14 extra large men's shirts from the tour 10 years ago well they might be forcing people to want that along with the new science CD you know so it's about being smart about how you do those things I think it's absolutely right that a lot of times we've done campaigns with major labels whereby the the manager says I want to run a pledge campaign we're gonna pre-sell all of your albums but we want to use the money we raise to fund our tour you spend money on marketing we'll keep our touring expenses because ultimately what it is is the average pleasure wants to spend between 50 and 64 dollars and they want to do that today they don't want to do it when it's out they want it today and to not have that in the barrel ready to go just feels like it's being left on the table and also to sell that same pleasure or that same fan a 999 experience or a 799 experience when they're willing to pay 50 or 60 is again just leaving money on the table so it's about it's about for knowledge of what's coming right good right so I want to ask two more questions and then we're going to go to the audience and Jean will help us out with that but I want to ask Rodney about something which is since the film and TV composition world it kind of has two payment components there's the money that you get paid for the work but then there's the money on the back end the performance money and the money that stream that comes through like maybe on an iTunes compilation of a soundtrack so have you seen that money is it could it be could it be better done let's say tricky question for most of the films I worked on have been independent films so there haven't been the soundtracks that have been released I put out myself because I got to the point where I can negotiate the keep ownership of the copyright the challenges since I don't perform and I'm not out there playing it's hard for me to really sell them and particularly on on independent movies where they're also trying to you know while movie may be on Netflix who I mean I don't know how many people are watching it or how many people actually say I saw this movie I really want the score you know it's hard to it's hard to say so I don't see it that way I do see good royalties from things airing on TV and you know films that are that you know that I did maybe ten years ago that are still I see lying around somewhere and I get a check for mass cap so that's cool but the other stuff really doesn't have this the impact also it's hard to negotiate a deal with the work projects I've worked on that are released by major companies hard to negotiate deal what I'm gonna get paid as the composer for when they reissue something because usually it's a it's a work for hire so that revenue stream doesn't affect me right Chris we talked a bit about the valuation of music and consumers perspective on it I wondered if you think musicians need to play a role in educating their own fans about how it works and how the value of music yeah I think I read this on copyright but this this line that before there can be a right there must first be a wrong and I think musicians who I mean musicians are all over the place on this issue it's not like there's one opinion just like just like fans you know everybody has a different idea about what the problem is if there's a problem and then what to do about it but I think I would just say that I hope that we can create increasingly an environment where musicians who do have grievances and do feel as though they're being exploited and not being offered a basic level of fairness from the marketplace or from their fans feel relatively free and comfortable and just telling people what they think because you know I think one of the most destructive elements of the past decade plus of this conversation is just the lack of artist input and I think part of that was genuine confusion and not wanting to be on the wrong side of history in one way or another but I think the rubber is kind of meeting the road and so anyway yeah but I think definitely artists need to communicate how they feel about it to their fans but I think the media and labels I think everybody really has a role to play right sure great so let's see if there's any questions out there anybody all right well I have a couple more for you um was it so all encompassing we've solved all of it but that brings me up to two of my two questions because I told everybody beforehand that I wanted to offer them an opportunity to think about two sort of big things one is and they can pick or they can answer both one of them is what is the revenue stream that has developed over the past ten years or even from before that has most surprised you as an artist maybe something you didn't expect or something that has grown beyond what you ever expected and the second one is if you could wave a magic wand and fix anything related to artist compensation or how it works for you in your in your field or genre what would you fix so that has to be magic one but has to be wizardish because we know it would be impossible or I mean very difficult to do in reality so um so let's start with Ben so um Ben what's the revenue stream that's most surprised you that's a really hard question because like I said we've been doing this I mean for 20 years I've been making music making music and and making money in the same exact way I just you know I went from jumping into a car into an RV into a van into it into a bus that's about the only difference and so for me it hasn't changed that much the one thing that I have found interesting is that I've personally been able to make additional revenue from just the credibility of my band and that was a surprise to me just staying strong and focused and just never really varying from a from our vision has created an opportunity for me to make music individually whether it be I just recently did a soundtrack because the director was a fan of the band and I you know produced some things with some other artists I just worked with that artist Kimbra who was on that goatee track that's really popular just based on the fact that she grew up listening to to Dillinger so that's been a big surprise for you the fact that that just the band's name has brought me additional work that I never expected to get sure and do you want to play wizard and fix something sorry what do you want to wave a magic wand and fix anything oh don't want to make what I would like to see is that more technology companies spending more time on making stealing intellectual property harder and buying intellectual property easier as opposed to just creating platforms for people to just kind of complain and and try and get free music and you know that there's a lot of you know I find these social networks is just kind of like a platform that promotes the idea that intellectual property should be free as opposed to trying to help the problem really so I would like to see more of that personally thank you how about you Jennifer what would you like well what revenue streams is surprised you anything well is there anything that you do like I could also amend it a bit because I know you guys there's more that you and your peers do besides just playing shows and rehearsing well the the whole point of having a contract to be a symphony orchestra members that that that is my primary job that is what I'm responsible for on a daily hourly basis and if I choose to do nothing else that that is my focus which really is the best way to be an orchestra musician to be focused that however teaching and doing that type of thing playing chamber music helps me on a personal level which makes me a more interesting person which makes me a better orchestra player so there are people that take advantage of those opportunities more or less depending on how much energy and time they have how many how few kids they have the case maybe and that's it's the way that symphony orchestras kind of subsidize the entire classical music world is the you know you have professors that would never be able to be professors for what they're getting paid from that university for their amount of work but because it's their second job then the kids have acts or pupils have access to that level of professor that they never would otherwise same with chamber music I mean you get paid nothing for chamber music for the most part but we get the opportunity to do it for a public which is great not just in our living room so that none of those things surprise me I guess the one thing that actually surprises me in our revenue stream is so hard to determine because it's mostly very large scale donors that they give us a lot of money is we started this project a few years ago where we have our major major donors come and sit on stage in the middle of a rehearsal and just experience what that's like because I don't own a stereo system because I sit on the best one ever created why would I need it and just their enthusiasm about being there I would have thought they just stick your plugs in and wait for it to be over and so they can get to the bar but their enthusiasm coming out of those performances is is staggering and very humbling and I'm assuming has led to very good donations because we continue to do it right right so before we get to the wizard question looks like we have one from the audience yeah hi I'm Chris I co-founded an organization here called listen local first we work with local businesses around town to sort of create opportunities and alternate avenues of local exploration for local musicians so one thing that I'm not here I guess I heard it a couple panels back but maybe the artists on this panel can can talk about is really well actually let me start with a panel I heard last year where they talked about you know it was like sort of fair trade venues I remember and sort of creating a standard among local businesses local local venues to pay artists you know they a fair trade venue paid an artist certain amount or sort of establishing like if you're gonna use artists in your local community you're gonna pay a set amount if you're gonna pay artists for a show you're gonna pay a certain amount if a business is gonna use a track sort of you you set a standard that's sort of it's kind of to a small extent what we've been doing here but really that takes me to the building the relationships with local businesses and really finding revenue streams through either streaming through local businesses advertising for local businesses doing events sort of building up the events in your sort of in your individual communities to sort of build the support to bring you to the next level I want to know what you guys thought about that thank you anybody want to talk about the connections with local we are one of the things that we do is I just go back from Nova Scotia Canada and I was speaking with you know tons of musicians up there they very much engage their local communities and local communities completely support them and one of the things that we do when we write campaigns for them and work with them is we say you should if you're going to South by Southwest and you're gonna make something for them and your fans are gonna help you get there bring them something back return it to where it is locally so one of my favorites is is pledge should be part of our trip to South by Southwest we'll take you along on the journey and we'll bring you back a recording live from you know the church or will in every day while we're on tour will record something on the tour bus for you and bring it back because the majority of things that happen is is most local bands want to leave their local community to go make more money than they can sustain there so we've basically we write those into a lot of what we do simply because that's that's the nature of what will your homegrown fan base is the one that will expand and expand and expand if you allow them the means to do so yeah Chris what about Brooklyn I mean obviously a hotbed of music right now do you see Brooklyn bands supporting each other I think on connecting with the yeah I think so I mean I I was actually the question made me think about Todd Patrick who is actually one of the people I interviewed in the book and he talks about this very specifically about I mean sort of the argument that I'm making about this general spirit of fairness and ethics I think he is a I mean he's doing that in in the live realm and that's that's his focus and and he's been very influential in you know trying to create spaces where as he talks about in the book the the fans pay less the artist gets paid more and the venue is still able to make a profit and I just think that's an interesting way to think about going forward especially with you know that there's like that flip side of how successful live has been live revenues which is that all of the a lot of these venues you know are owned by the same companies and that doesn't give the musicians a whole lot of influence so I'm gonna go back to my oh hello my name is Graham and I'm actually involved with the Fairtrade concept that was just brought up and I have a question for you actually Kristen me okay with the the research in the revenue streams I'm wondering if it got broken down for the live performance to local and essentially foreign markets no we asked people a number of questions about live performance and we actually asked them separate from being a salaried player so making that point that distinction clear but when we asked them about live performance we mostly asked the very top level stuff like how many shows do you play a year is that number increasing or decreasing what percentage of that is your revenue and we also asked about the cost side you know what's costing more now gas airlines travel crew all that stuff but not about where they're playing that we didn't ask that no okay thanks okay back to my two questions so I'm gonna ask Benji about the revenue stream that's most surprised you and if you could wave a magic wand what you would the revenue scene is most surprised me is I think house concerts and vinyl we see those just fly and as I said you know 82 when I when I asked our dev team to run the stats on the physical versus digital only sales it was stunning I mean 82 percent is just bucking every trend possible I think it's because true fans want to have that moment so that's the one that surprised me if I could make wave a magic wand I have a very very specific thing that I want to make happen and I want every streaming service everyone every service that streams music to allow pre-orders to exist on their platforms so that streaming services can help artists make their future recordings not just monetize the past because ultimately at the moment every streaming service is playing something that happened already so if you're a band and you're making your new album you can't send anyone to Pandora you can't send anyone to Spotify and you can't send anyone there because there's no backward way for that fan to say you know that until your band name in they'll say you know I'll just use the example we have been folds 5 and you'll see everything he's done but not what he's doing there's no link to the future and so if the streaming services allow platforms like ours and others to say there's a new album being made at this very moment you can be a part of it then the artist wants to push more music more more fans to those streaming services because they are helping in actual discovery that can lead to the future of making music not just the past that's great okay we I just heard that senator Wyden is here but I want to give you each a chance to answer one of the questions so either wave a magic wand or just make I think I know you want to wave a magic I'll quickly wave the magic I yeah I'll quickly wave the wand yeah I'll just say that I I I wish we could reform maximum copyright terms to 50 years because I think that's right and in order and there's historical precedent for that but I'd also say that it's equally important to be actually enforcing those rights for those works that are under term and see you know looking anywhere you can for solutions and you should ask Chris about his awesome event with David Bern soon yeah New York Public Library December 5th nice kind of crazy Rodney last word my friend last word what I would wave my magic wand and do is I wish there was a way to educate the general public about how actually how much work it takes to make a recording and write a song and do bring it to completion so that there was some sense of value that it could be valued again I think I mean all the laws and everything are great but there's this you know when I talk to my students who are young there's a sense that it's not worth much and it kills me because recording or someone writing music it takes years of their life to learn how to do this skill or craft study to learn how to play the instrument I think an artist of historically done at the service you know they say how long take to write that song a couple minutes you know it really took their whole life but they'll just say in an interview a couple minutes it sounds cooler that way but it really gives the audience the wrong impression about what it really takes to make something of quality make something of good and that's actually my you said surprise but actually that's my frustration because I started offering to the general public hey have a songwriter or compose a right original song for your birthday or your celebration people it's such a hard concept for people to get their wrap their head around yeah there are people that do it but it's all the time on a yeah yeah well this has been fantastic and I wish we could keep caring keep keep the conversation going but help me thank the panelists for being part of today's conversation yes