David Lowery tries to talk sense to the Internet.

Without a way for artists to make money, soon we may be bereft of a musical middle class, that is, musicians who don't have day jobs but spend their time perfecting their craft, recording it, and then sharing it with the rest of us. For a few generations, being creative and working hard at this has afforded a significant number of musicians a lower-middle to middle class lifestyle. Sadly, the suppression of income, or elimination, for recorded works has all but eradicated this as a legitimate goal and threatens to take with it the benefits of professionally recorded music with it. For the last few weeks, David Lowery (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker) has decided to tackle the complex issues at play here for working musicians. If you are a musician, work with them, love one, or just love music, David's writing clear and level-headed analysis of the current landscape. You may end up disagreeing with all or part of it, but I doubt you'll regret your time spent reading it.

A good place to start: Meet The New Boss, Worse Than The Old Boss? taken from his talk at the SF Music Tech Summit.

I was like all of you.  I believed in the promise of the Internet to liberate, empower and even enrich artists.  I still do but I’m less sure of it than I once was.  I come here because I want to start a dialogue.  I feel that what we artists were promised has not really panned out.  Yes in many ways we have more freedom.  Artistically this is certainly true.  But the music business never transformed into the vibrant marketplace where small stakeholders could compete with multinational conglomerates on an even playing field.

In the last few years it’s become apparent the music business, which was once dominated by six large and powerful music conglomerates, MTV, Clear Channel and a handful of other companies, is now dominated by a smaller set of larger even more powerful tech conglomerates.  And their hold on the business seems to be getting stronger.

I encourage you to grab a cup of tea, get comfy, and keep reading (on your lunch hour, of course.)

Thank you, David, for taking the time to get this all in one place at one time!