Brass in Pocket: Accessing More Musician Income
At SXSW 2011, the Future of Music Coalition presented its multi-method research project, Artist Revenue Streams. For the past year, the project has collected data from thousands of US-based musicians and composers to better understand what percentage of musicians' income comes from each revenue source (royalties, gigs, merchandise, or about 40 other possible sources). Learn about the research findings to date, and how working musicians can better access the income streams available to them.
Presenters
Kristin Thomson is a community organizer, social policy researcher, entrepreneur and musician. From 1989 to 1992, Kristin was an action organizer for the National Organization for Women. She left NOW to co-run Simple Machines, an independent record label, which released over seventy records and CDs in eight years. She also played guitar in the band Tsunami, which released four albums from 1991-1997 and toured extensively. In 2001, Kristin graduated with a Masters in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the University of Delaware. She has been with the Future of Music Coalition since 2001 and has overseen project management, research and event programming, including Future of Music Policy Summits from 2002-2007. She lives near Philadelphia with her husband Bryan Dilworth, a concert promoter, and their son, where she also plays guitar in the lady-powered band, Ken.
Jean Cook is a musician, producer and Director of Programs for Future of Music Coalition. She currently records and tours with Ida/Elizabeth Mitchell, Jon Langford, and Beauty Pill. For FMC, she covers a wide range of issues including jazz and classical music metadata, jazz radio playlist composition and (and how to improve data collection), and understanding how copyright impacts indigenous artists in places like Ethiopia, Tajikistan and Australia. She is the co-director of the Artist Revenue Streams project.
Ian Rogers, CEO
Ian has been helping artists make the most of the web since 1993. Until April, 2008 he was VP and General Manager of Yahoo! Music and Yahoo! Video. Previously he was President & CTO of Mediacode (sold to Yahoo!), Pres. of New Media at Grand Royal, Webmaster at Nullsoft (sold to AOL) and CTO at rVision. He dropped out of a Computer Science PhD program in 1995 to assist Beastie Boys on tour. He holds a BA in Computer Science from Indiana University.
Sean Glover likes to say he has been a part of the industry for almost 40 years – a music-lover and consumer for 30, and for the past 9 years, at the forefront of the digital music revolution as Director of Royalty Administration for SoundExchange. Born and raised in Chicago, Sean migrated to another music hotspot to attend Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Before coming to SoundExchange to advocate for the rights of artists and owners to receive royalties, Sean worked as a tax consultant for a major financial service firm, and as a financial analyst promoting cancer research at Georgetown University.
Dave Kusek is Vice President of Berklee College of Music and the Co-Author of The Future of Music, the best selling music business book. He is a digital music executive and is responsible for helping to create the market for digital music. He founded the first music software company, Passport Designs, which made it possible for musicians to record and produce their music at home with its award-winning software.
Kusek is a co-developer of the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) industry standard that opened up electronic music to millions of people. His efforts, along with others, set the stage for the multi-billion dollar digital music market that exists today.
Kusek currently leads the team at Berkleemusic.com where he has created the world's largest online music school teaching over 15,000 students a year globally. Kusek also runs a successful consulting business Digital Cowboys.
Dave Kusek has written for or been featured in Forbes, Billboard, The New York Times, Wired, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Associated Press, MTV, CNBC, and the Financial Times, and is a frequent speaker at Midem, MacWorld, Comdex, NAMM, AES, IEBA, NBC-TV, the Nightly Business Report, NPR, and the BBC.
Thursday, March 15
