This week, Boston's Berklee College of Music, in association with Harvard Business School conducted a three-day symposium at the Hynes Convention Center. Named Rethink Music, the conference joined industry heavyweights with the artists making the music, discussing the changing landscape of the music business (particulary in the exploding digital age,) and what the future model of both music creation and distribution would be.
On Tuesday's panel, musicians Amanda Palmer, Ben Folds, Damian Kulash and Neil Gaiman discussed the innovative project 8 in 8, where the quartet holed up in a recording studio to spontaneously create eight original songs in eight hours time. Athough the net result was six songs in twelve hours, the songs birthed were, in my opinion, some of the coolest new music out there. The sessions were broadcast over the Internet, and the album is now available for download at Bandcamp.com.
Other higlights of yesterday's panel included visits from the Canadian DIY outfit Metric, Bleu, and REM's Mike Mills, who offered some very poignant commentary on the risks of emerging artists freely giving their art away, without concern for copyright or mechanical royalties. Today's panel included a discussion of the "next generation music label", with input from the legendary Richard Gottehrer (producer of artists Marshall Crenshaw, Joan Armatrading, Blondie and The Gogos, and current co-founder of digital distrubution company The Orchard.) and Interscope Records A&R man Neil Jacobson.
I was fortunate enough to snag interviews with all these guys, who unselfishly gave their time to speak with me about their respective careers - the insights they offered were by turns humorous, engaging and very informative - so much so, that those interviews will be presented exclusively here in the coming days, candid and uncut. In the meantime, one can catch many of the events streaming live, via the Rethink Music website.
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