Other Charlie Smooth
Music 2.0

Aug. 2011

Doing some research on music industry for my social and media sciences study, I got confrontated with the subjects the most of you have heard time and time again:
The music industry is in a deep crisis, the physical sales are rapidly going down, the record shops are disappearing, the digital sales are expanding but they are still only one third of all the sales and can’t cmpensate the decline in the physical sales. On the one hand there are more artists on the other hand there are less record sales, so the cake is getting smaller and there are more people to feed.

The artists’ earnings from records are becoming less and so they have to compensate with more live shows. The artists blame the music industry and its incompetent, rigid, conservative and restrictive management strategy and their inability to adapt to the new conditions. The music industry blames the internet and the illegal downloads which is a very comfortable excuse but it doesn’t bring any fruitfull solutions.
The internet is there it won’t disappear and people will continue sharing music.Instead of boxing with our own shadow we can think of creative ways how to make things better for everyone. The truth is that things are changing and social structures like the music industry are to adapt to the new world.

One step in that direction could bet the model developed by Gerd Leonhard called Music 2.0, which sees the future music industry as an open, transparent and uncontrolled ecosystem with less restrictions on the music use and more engagement of the user in distributing and advertising music products.
The basic idea of Gerd Leonhard is to create an industry that offers music the way theuser wants to buy it not the way theseller wants to sell it. If the users want to share music let them share and let them create sharing networks. Leonhard proposes putting the tollbooth into the networks, offering them a license and enabling a flatrate thatlegalizes the universal, ubiquitous use of music, the way when you pay your water supply you can do anything you want with water. This idea makes the copyright the way we know it obsolete.

Inspired from the book Music 2.0 I decided to record a mix with Disco and House edits which I downloaded for free from a wonderful Online Audio-Plattform called Soundcloud. According to the law I came legally in the posession of these tracks. According to the law the people who have done this edits are criminals because of the unauthorised use of copyrighted material and intelectual property. I don’t think those guys are criminals, I think they are artists who have done something beautiful. I guess I am not the only one since the number of the edits done constantly grows and there are even many Groups in Soundcloud like soundcloud.com/groups/deep-disco for example devoted to such edits.

In that sense let innovation work!

sincerely Yours Charlie Smooth

P.S.
If you want to find more about Gerd Leonhards ideas on the future of music industry visit
mediafuturist.com/blog.html
gleonhard.com

Thanks to Maria Herrero for the inspiring conversation at The Garden Festival in Croatia.

And here is the playlist:
1.Curtis Mayfield - Trippin Out (FOC Edits)
2.The Love Unlimited Orchestra - What a groove(Brevils Unbreakable Edit)
3.Duff Disco - Just In
4.Bidu Orchestra/The Noodleman - GYBAWS (The Noodleman Sweatshop Edit)
5.Superbreak - Watcha Gonna Do (Brevil's Unbreakable Edit)
6.Al Green - That's The Way It Is -Dave Allison Edit
7.Cameo - Throw It Down (Domes edit)
8.Lil' Louis & The World - Club Lonely (Shield Re Edit)
9.DJ Stylus - Houseline (Black Ivory Edit)
10.The Noodleman/Silver Convention - Fly Robin Fly (The Noodleman Lost Temple Dub)
11.SUPERBREAK - Lets Go All The Way (Superbreak Edit)
12.Ted Taylor - Ghetto Disco (Crime City Edit)