Brian says:

What does the digital age mean to the music industry? What does it mean, to music itself? Industry itself? A frank discussion about intellectual property, copyright, creative commons, drm, lawsuits, free software, p2p and all things that go bump in the night.

Jason says:

I'm no musician... (mashup artist yes), or lawyer (pirate, maybe), but its clear the industry is changing in some weird and wonderful ways. I see it struggling to hang on to the conventional ideas of 'ownership' that their empire has been built on,

Artist > Industry > Government propaganda > Audience

even as the technology leapfrogs these conventions at every turn.

Meanwhile, artists themselves are beginning to take control of their own promotion and distribution via the Internet.

Artist > Audience

I'm not saying that the music industry is going anywhere at all (anytime soon), but I think young new acts particularly have so much more control over how their work is presented, and WANT that control. New models/sevices for them to make make money doing it are appearing all the time. Could there come a time when a big 'record deal' is not needed to make it in the music business... or is that time already here? i can never tell.

Many new services to discuss here, but i blogged a few here.

Jean says:

What's at stake is more than just an industry. Ideas about what constitutes a "musician" are up for grabs. We don't listen to music the same way, we don't share music the same way, and we don't create it the same way anymore. And it is precisely at these moments of technological redeterminations/negotiations that we have a better chance of answering the big philosophical questions like "just what is music, anyway?". There's also a related question about how changes in music and technology can connect with broader social movements (themselves being transformed along with technology). Looking forward to this session. Here's my blog: Clicknoise.

...an addendum/suggestion - how are blogs implicated in our understanding of music and the music industry, and in what ways do bloggers help redraw the contours of these? -Jean.