Joseph Fosco Music and Sound

Making Free Music Pay

Joseph Fosco — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:38:44 +0000

For all those wondering on how anyone will make money with music being free, read Kevin Kelly’s fantastic article titled “Better Than Free”. He lists eight ways, “Generatives” he calls them, to generate money based on free. Every one of these can be applied to music. Two that are particularly applicable to recorded music are Accessibility and Findability.

Industry And Student Discounts for “Fatboy” at A Red Orchid Theatre

Joseph Fosco — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:30:13 +0000

I recently completed designing the sound for “FATBOY” by John Clancy at A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago. If I do say so myself, it is an excellent, hilarious production of a great script.

We have scheduled a pay-what-you-can “Industry Night” for Monday February 4. Please bring your headshot and/or industry resume to receive this special deal.

Also, we are offering a 2 for 1 student discount for all Thursday performances.

Hope we see you there!

Ad-Supported Music - Just A New Way To Distrubute The Money

Joseph Fosco — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:53:43 +0000

With CD sales in a downward spiral, and music downloads not even close to making up the difference, there is constant speculation on the next business model for the music industry. One of these oft touted models is ad-supported music. The music will be free; you will just have to get through the ads.

It is surprising more people haven’t realized, but this model has been with us for quite awhile. Mark Ramsey puts it clearly in this article discussing Chris Anderson’s upcoming book Free. Ramsey states:

“Anderson also thinks most music will eventually be free (and I agree with him). And you know what they call an endless stream of free, ad-supported music, right? Radio.”

Clearly, ad-supported music is not a new model! However, what many hope will be new, is payment to the music industry. This is why the RIAA and foreign-owned labels are going after performance licensing fees for radio play.

In the past, radio play sold CDs, and everything was ok. Now, with sales drying up, there doesn’t appear to be any reason to give this music away. Obviously, radio station owners do not think additional licensing fees are a good idea. They are fighting this proposal.

So what do we have? Slowly dying radio stations, desperately trying to keep ad income to themselves. Record companies looking to get a piece of this same ad income to bolster their own disappearing revenue.

What we are witnessing is the evolution of both radio and the music industry. Something WILL arise that will allow ad revenue to be distributed to content creators. Then, there will be no reason for the music industry to support radio. Traditional radio will have to evolve or die. On the other hand, right now the music industry doesn’t have anything else. Forcing radio to “pay up” is at best a short term solution, at worst it will hasten declining CD sales.

Both sides might find a satisfying solution by working together. It does seem clear, though, that fighting for a larger piece of a shrinking pie will not help anyone in the long run.

The Next iPod?

Joseph Fosco — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 02:26:33 +0000

The iPod was/is a disruptive technology that has been instrumental in reshaping the music industry. Since then, however, virtually every new player has tried to be more than the iPod or better than the iPod, or even just less expensive than the iPod - virtually no new development in this arena.

However, I just became aware of Bug Labs’ device. This is a technology that moves in a totally new direction. Instead of buying what is essentially a technology appliance (like the iPod or any other mp3 player out there), you purchase hardware modules that snap together to make whatever device you can imagine.

This might not be for everyone, and it will not have the sleek appearance of an iPhone, but for those who like creating their own vision…there might not be anything cooler!

Bug Labs: http://buglabs.net/