AMBC Part 3: “Things Are Fucked.”

As the AustralAsian Music Business Conference winds down to a close, A.H. CAYLEY finds herself surrounded by desperate last-chance self-promoters and cons. It's fucked – but is the industry itself?

Part Three: Saturday, August 22

I enter the conference room on the final day of the AMBC as an American man I've not seen before utters the words, “I'd like to begin with a prayer.”
“Oh, Jesus,” I think, as I find a seat.
No, not Jesus. Anti-Jesus.
“Oh, anti-Jesus,” I think, as I find a seat.

And so, he begins: “Ridin' down the highway/Goin' to a show...”

Oh. I immediately withdraw my internal comment, while Brent Grulke, the creative director of South by Southwest, proceeds to quote AC/DC's ‘It's A long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)’ in its entirety.

“With that,” he says, “I'd like to acknowledge everyone for coming out so early this morning. One of the reasons I got into the music business is because I believed that rock'n'roll would afford me the opportunity to sleep in.”

Grulke speaks calmly and knowledgeably. He seems perfectly at ease before this audience, and seems to speak the absolute, no-bullshit truth. He has no tricks up his sleeve; no special marketing strategy to outline. His keynote address gives great advice on getting ahead in the industry, and in particular how to go about touring the US. He sees a live act as the most important consideration for an artist, not Twitter or Facebook. He encourages perseverance, but won't deny the role of luck. He seems to genuinely be in this business for the music. He is not what I expected.

“For the last [few] days I've heard lots of people giving advice on how to succeed, in varying degrees of information and lots of contradiction,” he says. “The one thing that doesn't get acknowledged is luck, and I think that's important for your perspective. Because, if you succeed, and act like an asshole, believing that what you've done is a little bit smarter and a little bit better, you haven't acknowledged that fate has had a big role in that. The planets aligned. Luck.”

He explains that SXSW survived due to lucky circumstances – the town planning of Austin, Texas; the time of year; the costs, etc. “Any other belief is hubris. The fact that you have to be lucky is important to keep in the back of your mind, and even more importantly, you should let that inform what you believe success to be. Success ... is the ability to continue pursuing one's art on one's own terms.”

That epitomises Grulke's address. Though the rest of his presentation explains touring the US (which I won't go into it as it's all fairly straightforward, and information that can be found elsewhere), he continually and emphatically argues that it should be done for the love of the music, on one's own terms, following one's own beliefs. I am so glad the other attendees can have such an important point highlighted. It's a tough world out there, after all.

The first panel for the last day is a discussion of live music, “Capturing Audiences and Monetising Them For Life”. It features Soundwave Festival promoter AJ Maddah; Dorry Kartabani, the owner of Big Tree Artists Agency and former senior agent at the Harbour Agency; Jaddan Comerford, half-owner of the Staple Group, which includes Boomtown Records; Marc Sousley, promoter and booker with C3 Presents, which produces Lollapalooza and apparently more than 800 shows in the US; and Grulke again.

The basics are mentioned: band etiquette, hard work, respect, getting the fans to take ownership of the band and thus promote them for free, following the scenes, making a good impression, being well-represented, etc. It's when the conversation shifts to the issue of money, however, that I can't help but gasp at the frankness of discussion. “Make the agent the superstar,” says Kartabani, an agent, without even a hint of irony. “Show the agent how you'll make money. I'm in the music business and I'm in the business to make money.”

He continues: “An artist's success is not measured by how good they are, what they sound like, where they played. It's how much money they've made.” I know that on the whole it's true, but I always saw it as being a don't-mention-the-war kind of thing, or an un-PC comment that everyone thinks but you just don't say in public. Unlike the very first panelists on the very first day, this guy doesn't seem to give a toss whether we think he's just in it for the money, because it seems he might be. I shouldn't be shocked – I had expected everyone here to be like this – but I am. My willfully naive idealism can be such a heavy cross to bear. Still, I have to give him credit for having the bollocks to say it. Imagine how big they must be.

The last ever keynote speaker is Jeff Price, founder and CEO of TuneCore and president/GM/co-founder of spinART records. If Grulke seemed comfortable onstage, Price seems at home. In his half hour he seems to fit two hours worth of words, all in long sentences. He rarely pauses. I'm not the only attendee (of any gender) with crossed legs. No-one can look away from Jeff Price. It's a shame that something so quick will fill so many pages of writing, as I'm tempted to just quote him in full. He discusses the change between the old (restrictive) and current (open) model of music distribution - a change he helped create. I know this only because I read it – at no point does he big-note himself. He describes it as the “democratisation” of the industry.

“The impact of technology and what it has done for the music industry is astounding. So for the past 100 years if you were Madonna or The Beatles or Led Zeppelin or AC/DC or You Am I or name your band, you only had one choice, one path to having a career in the music industry, and that was getting signed to a record label, and the reason for that really had to do with one aspect: the one thing you could never do on your own was distribute your physical product.”

This, he explains, was the work of a distributor.

“This is why the advances that have occurred because of technology are so astounding. Because the music business industry is about distribution. Or at least, it has been, until recently. You now have unlimited shelf space. Everything can be in stock at no detriment to anything else. You also have an unlimited inventory for no upfront cost that reproduces itself on demand as a perfect digital copy with no limit as to how many units are being bought. It's always in stock, it's always available; it never runs out and there's no upfront costs.

“[You can] become a distributor without having to invest $100m into a physical infrastructure, and you have the same distribution power as Sony, Warner or EMI, and that's why things are fucked right now. Now some punk-ass kid like me can start up a company four years ago and become the largest distributor of music in the world, simply by having agreements with the digital stores.”

He's talking about TuneCore, a site set up to give artists a simple place for selling their music. Through TuneCore, an artist can chose to have his or her music sold on pretty much every major online music store for a single upfront price, and keep all the earnings in one place, until he or she decides to withdraw that to a PayPal account. Many acts on TuneCore have sold millions, proof, says Price, that the “doom and gloom” of the industry's future is exaggerated. “People are selling music, and anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit.”

“From this cross-section, I don't see a united industry, ready to march into the future, but I do at least see some mavericks who are being heard, and that is something.”

The second panel explores streaming media, radio and broadcasting. It features: Jeremy McVean of Austero; Anto Skeane, a musician and music video director; Keith Welsh (AMPAL, Music Network, Icehouse); and Shaun James (XYZ Networks). Frankly, it's dull. The wrinkles on the neck of the man in front of me form a perfect zig-zag, and if I squint, it looks as though the flowers onstage are sprouting from his ear. The man sitting next to me peruses Google Reader pieces on his whyPhone entitled “The Daily WTF” and “Photoshop Disasters.” Everyone is winding down after three long days. I suppose it could be the fever, but I can barely remember a word that's said, even as I copy them down. Looking around, I can tell I'm not the only one.

With the AMBC in its final throes, those around me take their last chance before the next panel to mingle and sell.

“I'd love to encourage you to become a member and then you'll be open to all these opportunities,” says a middle-aged woman diagonally in front of me to a group of teens about something or other.
“Like what?”
“Well, all these great opportunities. Exclusive briefs … no-one earns any money from this, I'm a volunteer.”
“So where does the money go?”
“Your membership fee goes...”
Her voice lowers and I can no longer hear her. The next thing I hear her say is, “So, where's your suckometer? You've just gotta not suck”, before a bespectacled woman who's not even looked at me in all three days pulls me from my prying reverie as she thrusts a card at me “in case we don't get to chat later, darling”. We won't, darling. A bare-chested band of teen boys (aged nine to 15, I'm told) pout up at me from my palm, looking airbrushed and made up and thoroughly pimped. She waits for me to say something. I could have kissed Phil Tripp for announcing the final panel at that moment.

This panel sees two attendees as speakers – Saba Saliba, a Sydney electro artist and Matt Davidson, a Melburnian singer/songwriter otherwise known as Mildsparrow. Both of them responded to a survey of music users that took place leading up to the conference to try to gauge, among other things, illegal download figures and opinions towards it. Joining them is Nick Love from MySpace (again) and Marianna Annas, GM of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, to discuss online music consumption. It soon becomes a discussion of little more than illegal downloads. Both artists agree that they love physical products, and mostly download what they can't find elsewhere. And no, they don't really care, which seems to be a generational thing. Davidson offers the brilliant term “indigital” in that he is indigenous to the digital landscape.

Very quickly, the whole thing descends into a what feels like a stand-off between the whole room and Annas. Working for MIPI, she helps prosecute illegal downloaders, and on this issue, she seems to see no greys in among her blacks and whites. “MySpace and Facebook have created a narcissistic consumer. It's my space. It's my Facebook. They feel entitled to this music.”

It’s when an audience member mentions RiP: A Remix Manifesto, a documentary about copyright and remix culture featuring Greg Michael Gillis (aka Girl Talk), that she really gets her back up. “It’s propaganda. [Girl Talk] is a fundamental fraud. There was no mention in the credits of his sampling. He has stolen Radiohead's marketing idea. He has no problem with making money off other people.” It gets icier. When another audience member asks what happens to the fines ordered from those caught illegally downloading music, she is reticent to reply, but does say that the money is given to the appropriate record label. And then what?

“ARIA and MIPI's responsibility stops there. It's then up to what deals the label has with the artist.” This time it’s Tripp who pipes up: “Do you know of one instance anywhere where an artist got back even one dollar?”

She stiffens. “I wouldn't have access to that information.” It would seem anti-downloading laws have nothing to do with the artist, or intellectual property. It's about protecting and maintaining the control of the labels. I can never be arsed downloading, but I suddenly feel compelled to steal millions.

Day three is now over, and so is this conference. There shall never be another AMBC. Frankly, I feel a little melancholic. I was just starting to get into it. In the space of three days, I've gone from a total cynic to someone quite enjoying the event. Sure, I may not agree with what all the speakers are saying, but the fact that there's a forum for it to be said is quite something. I would still prefer that what was said could have been further questioned as a means of entertaining and promoting intellectual discussion about the industry, but there's nothing that can be done about that now.

This conference has been very well-run. Tripp comments that they have not received a single complaint or refund request, and I believe him. I also believe that for all his reputation, and though I personally doubt the outcome for attendees to be worthwhile, he is certainly genuine in his motives. This is not merely a money-making wankfest, though money is certainly made, and while I still find the price tag(s) too high, I wouldn't be able to suggest how to lower the costs and still keep up the high standards I witnessed. I certainly still have the same qualms with the whole thing that I’ve had throughout, but these are ideological concerns that I will never be able to shake, so I shall just leave them be.

I do hope, too, that I shall see some of my fellow attendees' names in lights one day, but I'd be lying if I said I thought it likely for more than the luckiest few, if any. As with my feelings on the AMBC, however, I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

And now, to rest. I make my way through chanting crowds milling around for the Bledisloe Cup and get on my train to ponder what was. No, from this cross-section, I don't see a united industry, ready to march into the future, but I do at least see some mavericks who are being heard, and that is something.

Things aren't all that fucked.