Q&A
The song doesn't remain the same
For singer-songwriter David Usher, the internet is still the Wild West for music.
Last Updated: Friday, May 23, 2008 | 11:08 AM ET
By Peter Nowak CBC News
For musicians, it is the best of times and it is the worst of times. On the one hand, the internet has made a significant dent in the coffers of the music business by giving users the ability to access virtually any music they want for free. On the other hand, the internet has also enabled artists to reach larger audiences than they ever could have dreamed possible under the old system.
Music and the internet — particularly its community-building aspects — were a major theme at the Mesh social media conference in Toronto on May 21 to 22, 2008. Juno-award-winning songwriter David Usher, former singer of the band Moist, was on hand as a panellist for a discussion on music and the web, and he discussed the topic with CBCNews.ca. Here are some excerpts from the interview:
David Usher holds the Best Pop Video award after winning it at the MuchMusic Video Awards in Toronto on Sunday June 16, 2002. (Frank Gunn/CP) CBCNews.ca: Most people know you as a singer-songwriter but you're also a "social media consultant" through your company CloudiD. What does that entail?
Usher: I grew up in the traditional world of the music business. Being a songwriter and creative person and now being completely engulfed in social media, I sort of bridge the gap between several different worlds. What I've essentially been doing is really talking about the new context of the web and how it relates to creativity, social media and those relationships, and building community.
CBCNews.ca: So would somebody like EMI bring you in to advise on how to use the internet?
Usher: Not necessarily how to use the internet but there are a lot of buzzwords out there, like blogging, conversation economy, permission marketing - all kinds of different contexts that exist in the social media world. It's about bringing some sort of context to it all so you can actually get a strategy together where artists can build a community and figure out how to control their own lives online. In many ways, it's about changing not only companies' minds, it's about what it means to be open online and to be open to your fans and also artists' ideas of what it means to be an artist. The concept of being an artist is changing.
CBCNews.ca: It goes without saying that the internet has changed music. Has it changed for the better or for the worse?
Usher: I'm really happy with the way things are going because for myself as an artist, when I first got into social media and the idea of blogging and microblogging and actually releasing things online, [it was great]. Like [releasing] the first impression of a song before you had a chance to go through all the processes you normally would, and seeing the reaction from fans and people to those first moments of a song. You start to realize there are many parts of your process that people find interesting and valuable. It's not just that final piece of plastic that means something to people. There are a lot of parts of the process that have value. The ability to let that out online really changes the way you see your creativity and the way you create. I love the [online] world because it makes me more creative because I get to create all the time and let things out all the time. I really feel the more things you create, the more creative you become.
CBCNews.ca: That's like a parallel with the "old days" of music where you'd discover a demo tape of your favourite song, right?
Usher: I like to use this example where I wrote a song called And So We Run and the day I wrote it, I wrote a verse chorus, maybe about most of the song but it wasn't fully completed. I played it directly into the camera on my computer and immediately uploaded it. Within four or five hours, I had a 150 reactions to the song, people commenting and talking about things they liked, things they didn't like. The next day, I went and rehearsed it with the band and the next night we had a show and we played the song, and the first three or four rows were singing the song back to me two days after I'd sort of written it. It's that immediate reaction that really changes the way that process works.
CBCNews.ca: Bands like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead are using the internet to distribute their music and make money, but they're established acts. How does a new band make it today? Is it harder for a new band now?
Usher: It is really difficult, for sure. I don't really equate what Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead are doing to having anything to do with the new model. I think it's really interesting what they're doing and I love the fact that they're experimenting with the space, but both those bands made it in the traditional world and are trying things online that are fantastic. But for them it's not really a risk: they have their hard-core fan base that will sell out a show anyway. They can pretty much do what the hell they want to do and they'll be OK.
For new bands, it's much more difficult because new bands have to figure out a way in which they can build a community now because the reality is the labels that used to give deals don't really exist anymore. That's not to say the traditional model doesn't exist because people do still buy CDs and there still is mass media and advertising but the game has really changed. The way the business works has completely changed so the way the artist works has to change as well. It used to be that you'd get your great songs together and your great live show together, then you'd try to get a deal. Now you have to have great songs, live show and then a great presence online so if something amazing happens to you, people can find you.
CBCNews.ca: Does it force bands to have more marketing savvy?
Usher: When Moist first started in the 1990s, we were relentless, like a lot of bands these days - they are relentless. They have to go out and do things and make your own breaks. The tools are different. Digital natives growing up these days understand all these tools. For myself, I've had to go through this massive learning curve to learn about all the tools in social media or as many as you can because they're changing constantly. But my daughter, if she starts a band when she's 17, it's going to be nothing to her. She'll have grown up with it.
CBCNews.ca: How can new bands use the internet, other than putting up a website and possibly distributing their music there?
Usher: A simple strategy is that you need to use your own URL to distribute your content but then spread it out throughout the rest of the web as much as you can through RSS. What you're trying to do is simplify the way in which you let things out on the web to your fans, and really open yourself up and let things out, then let it disseminate and get it everywhere. You want to be everywhere you can be online so people can discover you. At the same time, you're not trying to control your information or your music and letting it out in as many places as possible. You need to find some sort of system that works for you. I use a [hypertext preprocessor] platform, so I'm using a blog-based platform because I think the front page is everything these days and letting everything out online that way. Most of it is routed through RSS to all the other social networks on the web that I use.
CBCNews.ca: Under the old model, if you somehow came into possession of a song, that usually meant you had somehow paid for it. Is that model now completely obsolete? Is there no money to be made from selling music, or is that now to be made from playing shows or selling merchandise?
Usher: The DRM [Digital Rights Management] debate is over. The internet moves quickly so who knows how things are going to look in six months, but I think that conversation is done. Napster just came out with unprotected files. The record business is still selling CDs but slowly we're seeing the erosion of that to digital but a lot of digital natives see music as being essentially free. Not everybody, because some people want to compensate the artists so they still buy the CDs. Of course, as an artist, I support that but it's really hard to fight the current, and really online I don't even try, honestly. There are going to be other ways - at this conference as well, I'm seeing a lot interesting things and demos and people are really working at ways of adding value through software and different integrations. It's hard to know how it's going to develop.
CBCNews.ca: It's still pretty much a Wild West where people are experimenting with how to get compensation online, isn't it?
Usher: It absolutely is the Wild West and that's what so fun about it for me because the technology is changing it as you're using it.
