Friday, December 28, 2007

A Former Talking Head Talks and Talks

David Byrne has a must read, lengthy piece in Wired for all interested in the music business. Here is the link. The article builds on Byrne's considerable experience in all angles of the business, along with good data and embedded links to interviews about a variety of subjects and groups. Byrne is not a bomb-thrower or an ideologue: he is someone who loves music and has spent his whole adult career forging innovative songs and ways of bringing innovative music to the public. The article is just as innovative, as it explores the traditional roles of labels, and how the business is evolving.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What an interesting and well-written article. The one minor exception I take to Byrnes' comments is with his portrayal of the history of the recording industry.

I don't think there's even been one standard model in the recording industry that could not be deviated from. Indeed, as early as the '40s, the likes of Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie were composing songs and holding on to, or assigning to a third non-label entity, the copyrights in their compositions as a means to facilitate their income. Dizzy even had his own record label for a while. Though, I would have to agree that digital distribution, advances in recording, and the net certainly have made the "do it yourself" model more feasible to a broader swath of artists.