I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to attend this year’s New Music Seminar and some of the key offerings of the seminar throughout the conference were these 18-minute “Intensives,” hosted by different industry figures, aiming to give poignant and memorable advice or opinions on a variety of topics.
Moses Avalon is a 30+ year veteran of the music industry who is currently regarded as “one of the top music business experts in the country.” Yesterday, he hosted an intensive titled, “Google Bubble,” which concentrated on lesser known facts surrounding the company’s relationship with users and related issues surrounding the “freemium model.” Avalon has experience that spans from recording and engineering to artist advocacy and authoring books on the business.
After the intensive, Mr. Avalon was kind enough to talk with me, and we discussed the presentation, his two featured books at the seminar, and his feelings on some general trends of the industry. The Q&A is transcribed below:
SoundCtrl – So your intensive on the Google Bubble seemed to me, to be a very realist based, possibly cynical point of view. For example, you had stated, ”If I had a Google phone, I’d…throw it in the garbage as quickly as possible. Do you want them tracking your every move?” How long have you felt this way about Google — particularly about how it affects musicians and the industry?
Moses Avalon – So this is to answer your first question. You just asked me if it was cynical. Someone once said, that cynicism is just reality with the volume turned up. No, I don’t think my point of view is cynical. Actually I think it’s the opposite. I think it’s optimistic. We are going to start seeing these large ISP’s competing to start paying for content and they’re going to need to go through some kind of regulation, which is going to protect our privacy. Will that put a damper on some aspects of the ‘Wild West,’ free association of the internet? Yes, it will but it’s a tradeoff every industry has to go through. Television went through this, music, radio…everyone goes through this.
[With regard to how long,] I always kind of had my eye on this subject but it really hit reality, when I recently bought a Galaxy Tab because I needed a smaller tablet…and when I typed in my email address, within less than half a second, it had populated my entire phonebook with names and email addresses of people I emailed years ago. And I thought it was kind of scary how quickly they could associate all the data from one account to the next -within seconds. So it was a little freaky. It knew a little too much about me too quickly and that’s when I started investigating exactly how all this works, that’s when I learned about the Department of Justice, what’s going on with them…I just consider it being a good consumer. You want to know about the products.
SC - Knowing the world is so deeply rooted in being interconnected with social media, do you feel users and music fans will be, as Russ Crupnick from NPD Group put it, “passive” or apathetic toward the kinds of Google invasiveness issues you mentioned?
MA – I think people are apathetic now. Now they’re like, “Ehhh, you know, whatever!” I think it will change. I think people, like…in the 1950s, people smoked and were apathetic to the harm that cigarettes cause but now we’re all very educated about cigarettes. If you’re gonna smoke, you know you’re taking a risk. Social media and the “freemium model…” has held risks to our economy and we’re only at the very, very beginning of understanding. Just like in the 60s we just started to understand that, “You smoke a lot, you get cancer…” So no, I think we’re apathetic now and we’ll become less and less apathetic as time goes on. There’s [also] always going to be people who like stealing music because it’s fun, not because they can’t afford it and there’s always going to be people who enjoy interacting, you know, with giving up their personal information because they’re getting free stuff for it. I’m glad that market exists but I would like as a consumer, I’d like to see some choice. I would like to be able to buy an Android tablet and not have to give Google my personal information. I’d like to be able to use some of those great apps but not have to link them to my Facebook account.
SC – Tell me a bit about your books, “100 Answers to 50 Questions on the Music Business” and “Confessions of a Record Producer” that are featured by the Seminar. Does their content touch upon any of the things you spoke about today?
MA – Okay, well, first of all, I’m not here to promote books. [The New Music Seminar] asked me to have books in the book store…My books are required reading in over 50 schools and have been around for quite a while, but my books have nothing whatsoever to do with what I spoke about today. It’s an entirely new area for me. [The music industry is] a power, and granted, we’re not a big community, not compared to some other ones, but we’re a community that’s probably a million people strong in this country. We need to use those numbers to express our opinions about what some of these companies are doing with our work. That’s my real message. You know, music in the 60s stopped a war. We’ve become really lazy with our voice. We need to use our voice to first protect our own rights and unify, and then to educate other people about the dangers -not evils- but the dangers of the freemium model.
SC – What would be one old school way you would want to go back to if you could?
MA – I don’t want to go back to anything. I like everything moving forward. I don’t have a problem with any of the new technology. I don’t think the internet is bad but an artist or a record label should be able to give away their music by choice, not by force. What these companies that impose a freemium model want [is that] they want you to have no choice, but they know you do. So the next step in their game is to make you feel like selling it is hopeless. All of their propaganda and PR is based on making you feel like, if you’re selling your music, you’re an idiot. Just give it away and make money on something else. That’s not going to work. I have clients who give away music and I have clients who sell their music and I can tell you who lives in a bigger house. It’s the [artists] who sell their music who live in a bigger house, drive a better car, and send their kids to better schools.
SC – Lastly, is there one technology tool, app or otherwise, that you DO embrace, despite a lot of technology’s user shortcomings?
MA – I love Twitter. I’m a big Twitter fan. I think it’s a great way to reach a ton of people. Um, there’s [also] a company I like, called DeliRadio, and they have a new way of selling music that I think is actually quite revolutionary.
___________________________________________________________________
In addition to being a major Twitter supporter, Moses Avalon also has an app version of his widely used “Moses Avalon Royalty Calculator,” which is sold in the iTunes Store under the name “MyRecord Deal.” As explained in the store description, the app “will determine, with reasonable accuracy, if a record company is reporting all earnings and royalties.”
If you would like to keep up with Moses Avalon and hear his other thoughts on the music industry and more, you can follow him @MosesAvalon, connect with him on Facebook or sign up for his newsletter.
Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1
Comments are closed.