Manifestos rock!
The Cluetrain Manifesto, the
social customer manifesto, the
call centre customer manifesto.
Now we find the
Music Industry Manifesto.
Music to my ears. I rarely repeat in full, but in this case...
The Manifesto
1. Music will always continue, but the parasitical 20th Century music industry is dead.
2. Music does not rely on technology or distribution. It simply requires people. It did not begin with vinyl, the CD, the electric guitar or the synthesizer.
3. If piracy is able to damage your ivory castles, you should seek to understand it and learn from it. Piracy is the most effective distribution.
4. You will never win the war on privacy, because the pirates have a belief, and you are protecting a business.
5. People will only pay for what they want to pay for. Get used to it.
6. Artists and fanatics run the show - if you are in neither camp you’re fucked.
7. DRM’s only function is to limit the spread of music and to irritate the very people you should be pleasing - your audience.
8. I’ve paid for the tape, the vinyl, the CD and the MP3 - if I ever pay again, I’ll pay for the rights to the content in whatever format is appropriate for the rest of my lifetime, not for something limited to one format.
9. Let’s face it..artists can make more money if middle-men are not involved
10. Look - we all know you’re pissed about you’re expense bill no longer being approved but please stop taking it out on the rest of us
11. The people of the world want to share what they love. If you stand in the way there is only one outcome. Rebellion
12. People embrace what they create. We all want to take part. It’s no longer your industry, its ours. Sure that hurts…
13. Just become a concert promoter. Live music will never end. Rip-off, insular and selfish business models already have. Sorry
14. People will pay for what they want to. If you create something of value to people, people will pay for it
15. People will not longer automatically pay for something that YOU think is valuable
16. Resistance is futile. However powerful your connections are, the people of the world will find a way around it
17. Every time you sue, you nail an even heavier nail in your OWN coffin. Think about it…
18. The people of the world love music as much as they always have - not less - its just they have seen behind the curtain now
19. Artists love fans and will get paid by them for products and services the fans adore. Get out the way and let it happen
20. Copyright is a byproduct of the business model for content creation and distribution. It’s not the reason for content creation
21. The case studies of artists making more money from not using your regime will never stop - only increase. Listen up
22. It makes no difference how connected you are to the government. Artists and fans out-number you and always will
23. All the time you spend wining about protecting music you could spend working out ways to help the new world mature
24. If you really wanna get rich, concentrate on facilitating fanatical advocacy. There is no ceiling of value to that
25. People can only truly be of financial benefit to you if they are free. Confined humans have no long-term monetary benefit
It is very
cluetrain - and all the better for that.
I'm fond of saying that where-ever the network touches it disrupts (that's central to my book
The Power of the Network). Music is just one of the places it has touched and is wreaking havoc.
Of course, you can remove the music industry references in The Music Industry Manifesto and insert Industry X, or any-form-of-centralised-organisation-from-education-to-government Y instead.
The same rules of disruption will apply. The same human-centric models will emerge to dominate.
Which remains the point of the Cluetrain 10 years on.
If you still haven't read it,
get a clue.
Bonus question: Who is this
masked manifesto writer? I have my suspicions, But there's no contacts or name attached. We think we should be told. If you're into hiding lights under bushels, by all means email me. But if I were you I'd be shouting it loud and proud.
I watched a young band play in a pub garden recently. As they went through their covers routine it struck me that when I had been playing in bands at that age(ish) I'd gone straight past the covers phase, direct to playing my own material.
