Q&A: Andrew Dubber

About Related Links New Music Strategies fresh approach for online music business New Music Ideas  reviews websites of help to music business and musicians.  New Radio Strategies  discusses radio in the digital age.  The New Music Biz  investigates the music industries around the world. 100 Questions An e-book in the making, answering the 100 Questions that Andrew is asked about music online.

CA: The music industry has gone through format shifts before, as well as shifts in how music is consumed (i.e. sheet music to recorded music), and emerged intact but changed. Is the current upheaval likely to follow the same pattern, or is their something fundamentally different about the digital revolution?

This is not a format shift. It's not like when we went from records to CDs. This is more like when we went from printed sheet music to recorded music. It's a change in the whole media environment as it relates to music. Recorded music will still (obviously) exist - but it may not end up being the main way in which we engage with music economically.

CA: Tells us about your 100 Questions project. What are you trying to accomplish with that?

I do a lot of presentations, and I get asked a lot of questions. It occurs to me that a lot of them come up fairly regularly, and I thought I'd distribute my answers a bit more widely. I also thought it would make a good and useful e-book, so that's what I'm working towards.

CA: In the past, the industry has resorted to collective (and compulsory) licensing to resolve tensions between music users and creators. Could the same approach work for digital platforms?

Possibly. However, the problem is not the licensing, but the fact that copyright laws are fundamentally broken and should be thrown out in their entirety so we can rewrite them from scratch.

CA: Is the Amazon/Grand Theft Auto 4 partnership a sign that gaming might be the bellwether for digital music distribution, or is the deal just a small part of the GTA4 phenomenon?

GTA4 is a real phenomenon, of course. Roy Haynes DJing on the jazz radio station in-game is a genius idea. But what's most notable here is that this is not typical of something, or an archetype for anything - just further evidence that the terrain is getting progressively more complex by the day.

CA: Can you foresee one event, or perhaps a technological breakthrough, that will have a big affect on the 'online music business?'

No. And nor can anyone else, no matter what they try and tell you. If someone ever says 'In the future, we will all...' - shut them up immediately. Either THEY are stupid, or they're trying to sell you something because they think YOU are. We don't know what's going to happen next. The only things we can say with any certainty is that we won't ALL do anything (people always do diverse and interesting things) - and if we try and guess the future, we will definitely be wrong.

I don't make predictions. What I do is try and understand and describe the present and then try and explain ways in which artists and independent music businesses can make the most of the current situation. Nothing more.

It might make me sound a bit over-analytical and too conservative - but I think that telling people these grandiose visions of the future and expecting them to bank their livelihood on it is worse than irresponsible. People have a hard enough time recognising what's around them. We don't have to invent extra stuff to have to explain. It's about being strategic with contemporary tools.

Fortunately, contemporary technologies are very futuristic...