Steve Jobs & Me

I'm the same age as Steve Jobs. Well, in the interest of full disclosure, he is, actually, one year younger than me.

And we've been living in a sort of parallel universe. We're both entrepreneurs who have been driven to significantly change the music industry.

He is, of course, the CEO and founder of Apple and I am the not-quite-as-well-known CEO and founder of Calabash Music (which is kind of like itunes but really not).

Steve has built a hugely successful computer company (well, now an electronics company). But I want to talk about music -- which is what Steve and I have in common.

Steve moved into the music world by successfully grabbing an 85% share of the market in selling music downloads through itunes and the ipod. But, Apple is really not a music company. And for all the changes that have come to the music industry from the Internet and digital technology (and Steve Jobs making his deals with all the major labels) this so-called 'change' has been business-as-usual for the musicians. Almost all the money spent on itunes still goes to the labels or to Steve Jobs and his shareholders...

For the musicians nothing has changed. itunes is just a giant, long tail aggregator in which the individual artist gets lost in a huge jungle.

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In my parallel universe, I've been exploring pathways with Calabash that move away from the old models of the music industry. Away from models that for most musicians either leaves them out or leaves them broke or both. 

The first point of departure is to get off the 'American Idol', hit-driven, mentality. Getting a hit is like winning the lottery -- it's theoretically possible but the odds are against it. And it's just not a realistic goal for all but a handful of musicians.

The average musician doesn't need 20,000 friends on Myspace -- who are mostly there to check each other out. Instead they need to build a relationship with a much smaller core group of fans who will support them in everything they do. Kevin Kelly, who's from Wired magazine, put it exactly right when he recently wrote a piece called  '1,000 True Fans'.

His idea is that If you define your core fan as someone who is willing to give up a day's wage (say - $100) over a year, then if you build a community of 1,000 core fans, you'll earn $100,000 each year from this group. And start making a decent living as an artist!!

So, the question that I've been asking is: what would happen if you created a place online for artists to gather their core fans and then added micro-financing -- a simple to use platform that would let artists raise money for their next recordings directly from their fans?

All of a sudden you're letting music fans -- people like you -- become co-producers of new works of art. You get to interact directly with your favorite musicians within a social network -- and you can offer micro-funding in return for advance copies of new recordings that are currently in production.

Instead of getting new music through the old-school distribution/retail channels (who, by-the-way, take all your money) -- your support, and your money, goes directly to the artists. In the Calabash model when you micro-fund an artist's new recording, they retain ownership and control of the music and they get all of your money. (minus a small 3% transaction fee taken by paypal). Once the new recording is released, the artists earn 70% of their download sales when it is sold at CalabashMusic.com. This is not business as usual!!

There's an artist here in Boston, whose name is Mieka Pauley, who raised money for her latest recording this way. She set up several categories of sponsorship on her web site. If you gave Mieka $10 -- you got a download copy of her new album. If you gave Mieka $25 --  you got the album plus tickets to her next show. Give her $1,000 and she'd come play in your living room. Mieka raised $16,000 from 300 fans doing this. And 7 people gave her $1,000 each!! This entirely covered the cost of her new recording.

And in the micro-financing model -- you don't have to stop with your dollars. This is about building community between you and the artists and you and all the other music heads like you.

Steve Jobs and itunes is selling something like 5 million songs a day -- if somehow you (and the itunes crowd) got off of itunes for just one day -- and decided to microfund new recordings by some of the most talented, gifted and rare artists on the planet -- you would fund and co-produce (and get your own copy of ) their next recording -- and in one day, you would entirely change (dare I say revolutionize) the music industry.

And it really is about you and the artists. This is not my revolution. It's certainly not Steve Jobs revolution. He's thinking about the next iphone. He's not thinking about the next creative music group coming out of places like Buenos Aires or Berlin or here in Boston. It's just not on his mind.

But you! If you're a true music head (a.k.a. true fan) -- then this is what you care about! As a group, you can get behind the most creative musicians in the world, you can co-produce their next work and you can build a creative relationship with them throughout their entire careers.

Now all this stuff is brand new. We're calling Calabash's approach to micro-financing music: Tune Your World. And if you show up at TuneYourWorld.com, it's so new, you can still be one of the first members.

• You can entirely change the life of a great musician
• You can co-produce their new recordings
• You can start going to live shows that now are going to be part of your community -- where you know the artists and many of the fans
• And what else can you do? Come on -- you tell me...

This is about totally changing the music world as we know it! and to quote a newly famous politician -- "This is change you can believe in"!

www.tuneyoureworld.com

-- Brad Powell (brad at CalabashMusic dot com)

Comments

[esDiferente]

I am up for joining your music revolution, and I am setting up a very interesting project from Spain. We are already building communities for live gigs www.nvivo.es and we will be opening soon in Germany and UK.

It would be great if you can contact me and discuss possible ways forward :)

Pd: I love north african music and flamenco