MUSIC THE NEXT 5 YEARS

FUTURE CAST...  LOL

OK THIS IS MY BLOG, SO I CAN TAKE CERTAIN LIBERTIES

Honestly guys things are going so fast in the music industry, to the point you can feel the wind of change rushing by. We are working hard at AMP to ride this wind and to help you catch the excitement with us. Things are changing so fast that by this time next week we may have to change our opinion again. However we are on top of some cool stuff we are putting together for you. Stay tuned! Read the article below with a Jules Verne attitude and you'll do just fine.

1 — We will soon see the emergence of many different kinds of iPhone-influenced Netbook-like devices; some will be Apple-made but most will not. These devices may be 2-3 times the size of an iPhone and will connect to the Internet in every conceivable way, i.e. 3G/4G, LTE, Wimax, Wifi etc. They will be touchscreen, zoom-interface enabled, cloud-computing, speech-controlled, location-aware, mobile-money equipped, socially hyper-networked, always-everywhere-on, HD-camera equipped and possibly project images and audio or even support basic holography.

In addition to the high-end, fully-loaded and perhaps still rather expensive versions that many of us in the so-called developed countries will gobble up, low cost and more basic editions for the developing markets will be sold in the 100s of millions (think India, China, Indonesia…). These smart gadgets will have very low energy consumption and therefore extremely long battery life, may even sport basic solar-power options, and may ultimately cost less than 30 USD, or even be ‘free’ (why bother to sell the box if you can make a lot more $ with selling services…. Nokia?).

It is these mass-market yet very smart and networked devices, together with cheap or free wireless broadband that will really revolutionize reading, newspapers, books and education; not to mention our music, TV and film consumption habits. Content commerce will be completely redefined as a consequence. As BTO told us a loooong time ago: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet”

2 — Very cheap or free wireless broadband – at fairly high speeds, i.e. at least 2MB / sec – will be available in most places, particularly in the booming new economies of Asia, India, Russia and South-America, and a bit later, in Africa. Funded by the likes of Google and by the future ‘telemedia’ conglomerates, governments, cities and states, wireless broadband will probably reach 3-4 out of 5 people on the globe within 5-8 years. User-generated & derived content (UGDC for those of you that must have an acronym  , virtual co-production, mobile editing and instant network sharing will explode by a factor of 1000, making control of distribution a very distant concept of the past. UGC or UGDC may make up to 50% of the global content consumption by 2015. Consumers will be (co)-creators, marketers, sellers and buyers, and come in a hundred variations, from totally passive to totally active. Then, indeed, filtering, culling and curation will be the key to success.

3 — Collective blanket licenses that legalize and unlock legitimate access to basic content services via any digital network will emerge, and are likely to take over as the primary way of content consumption, around the world (but in Asia, first). Just like water or electricity which is readily available when moving into a new home, the basic access to content will be bundled into access to digital networks, i.e. via ISPs, operators, telecoms, portals etc. This shift is starting with music (as already done by TDC in Denmark, and Google in China), and will be quickly followed by films, TV, books and newspapers. Access may often – but in local variations – ‘feel like free’ to the user but will in fact generate 10s of Billions of $$ via blanket licensing fees (yes… those pools of money), next-generation advertising and branding, data-mining & sharing, up-selling, re-packaging and many other new generatives. This topic will, 

I think that governments around the world will call for and / or support the implementation of collective content licenses that wil finally legalize content usage on the Internet, similar to how governments pushed for the radio and broadcasting licenses approx. 100 years ago. Whether these blanket licenses will be voluntary or compulsory remains to be seen – in any case the only alternative is to perpetuate a severely dysfunctional telemedia ecosystem that criminalizes almost all users and stifles innovation while generating virtually zero new revenues for the creators.

4 — Fuel-cells and other next-generation mobile energy sources are a certainty. A serious increase in mobile device power (and therefore, its use) will be achieved by employing next-generation technologies such as fuel cells that could provide for up to 500x the usage time that we have today. This is likely to become a reality in 3-5 years and will revolutionize how we use – and how much we rely on – our mobile devices, especially in countries where there the fixed-line power infrastructure is much less developed or non-existent.

5 — Completely targeted and personalized advertising, delivered largely on totally customized mobile computing & communication devices, will turn the the $ 1 Trillion USD advertising and marketing services economy upside down. Behavioral targeting and user-controlled advertising will, of course, become an even hotter potato and a much discussed challenge, but the good old deal of ‘I give you attention & personal data and you give me value e.g. content’ will be even more pronounced on the Net. In fact, advertising as we knew it is already more or less outmoded and will, during the next 2-3 years, be completely reinvented. Privacy and Trust are the #1 issues here.

The implication is that if your data (within your specific sets of permissions and opt-ins) is used to bring you perfectly synchronized advertising, than advertising really becomes more like content, too. Watch this play out in the mobile advertising space, starting this year, and quite possible boost the global value of advertising-content by more than 100% by 2015. Google will be the main driver here, plus Facebook, Nokia and yes… Twitter (soon to be = Google).

6 — We will witness the more or less complete decline of most forms of physical mediawithin 7-10 years. The very definition – and thus the core economic business models – of newspapers, magazines, CDs, DVDs and books will be completely re-written, and new forms of content packaging will rapidly emerge. We can already see a preview of how this may work in the current mobile applications boom: content as part of software packages; paying for the packaging, the curation, the bundling, the personalization – not just for the zeros and ones that are ‘the copy’. This trend is important not just because it will reflect the users’ (or better… followers’) new consumption habits but also because because of the increasing need to save energy and material costs – and moving from content products to content services will certainly go a long way in this regard. The total decline of printing in people’s homes, and for personal use, will commence, as well.

7 — Paying for privacy will become a distinct option. Today we pay to go online and connect; in the future we may end up paying for the luxury to go offline, disconnect, enjoy the quiet, and give our brain some rest. Maybe if we don’t want to share our click-trails and usage data, we will be able to make cash payments instead – and the more you pay, the more private you can be..?

8 — Travel 2.0: alternatives to ‘actually going there’ will explode: immersive, 3D video, virtual rooms, holography. This is a key development that will nurture new forms of entrepreneurship, education and group work.

AMP -- ASSOCIATION OF MUSIC PROFESSIONALS STATE OF YOUR UNION

STATE OF YOUR UNION

This blog is not going to be about the digital market place, where it's going, or how to get better at your craft. We are going to be asking some tough questions you need to sincerely and honestly answer.  I have spent the last several years compiling information on where the music industry is going by meeting with artists, developing artists, and working with up and coming stars.  There is a commonality between them all, in their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. I hope to cover that commonality that I learned while standing outside of venues, in the studio, in phone conversations, talking with agents, A&R, managers, publicists, friends, family and the artists themselves. While this will not be an exhaustive outlay, it should give you some clarity on if you're in or out.

The one thing I am sure of is this is the best time ever for the independent artist/ entrepreneur. The internet has opened up a whole new world of possibilities, and they're yours for the taking. Another thing I have learned is, if you're not willing to do the work, you're in the wrong business, and you should stop wasting your time and go back to your day job. However if you are willing to put in the hours upon hours of hard work, the rewards are limitless. 

BALANCING  ACT

Nearly all of the up and coming artists I talk with have day jobs, and some have families. First it is important that you get your priorities in check. Ask yourself, what is my definition of success? If you do not put God and family first, you may still make it to the top. However along the way you will make those around you miserable, families will breakup, children will be divided between parents, life will be miserable. and when you get to the proverbial top you will be alone, empty and ridden with guilt. So, balancing your career is not an act. It must be the very fiber you're made of.

ARE THERE CHALLENGES?

You bet! I had the distinct pleasure of performing with Christian recording artist Luke James the other night.  We hung out a little while with a group of artists after the show. The conversation was no different than the ones I heard hundreds of times before. One comment I heard was, "I need help".  While the artist who made this statement was a consummate professional, and if he perseveres he will make it someday, this is a reality check for us all. We all need help, and can't make it on our own. Your family and friends can only help you so far. You must employ your fan base in this venture as well. This is a must. You can overcome all of the challenges of this business and have them become an asset with the help of those around you. First you must learn how to do that. One of our goals at AMP is to help you learn to use your resources.

REALITY CHECK

Here are some questions you need to ask yourself in order to determine if you truthfully have what it takes and that you're not just running off the fumes of ego and denial. This is where the rubber meets the road. Do not take this lightly!!!!!!!

1. Am I self motivated

2. Am I willing to sacrifice

3. Can I take rejection

4. At the beginning am I willing to work long hours with no pay

5. Do I believe in myself

6. Do I have the patience

7. Can I not put a time limit on my career

8. Can I ask for help

Our goal at AMP is to help guide you through this maze. While this blog may seem tough. I meant it to be. THE MUSIC WORLD IS TOUGH. However it can be a lot of fun and highly rewarding in many ways. Let us help you succeed!

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FAN RECORD LABEL?

FANS MATTER

 Remember this. If you're striving to be a recording artist, your number one concern should be your fans. You must honor and serve your fans. They can make you or break you, sustain you or drain you. If you're shooting for a record deal, you might want to try the lottery first. If you get a record deal, in the long run you might want to give it back. Here's an article I found I hope you will glean some ideas from. This is our thinking at AMP. Come join us as we create the new FAN LABEL!

Young musicians attract fan funding to avoid reliance on record industry

Liverpool acts Miss Stylie and Esco Williams among those using new, democratic ways to finance their careers

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• Comments (12)

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• • Alexandra Topping
  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 29 April 2012 10.17 EDT
  • Article history

Jade Jackson, aka Miss Stylie, who is using crowd funding to support her music career. Photograph: Colin Mcpherson for the Guardian

Jade Jackson, aka Miss Stylie, got her first set of turntables when she was 12. By 17, she was standing outside a club in Liverpool in the rain refusing to go home until they let her MC. "I think they realised I wasn't going home, so they let me in in the end," she said. "I tore that place up."

But the artist – who flits between grime, hip-hop and house – is still far from a record deal. Taking inspiration from the tattoo on her neck, which declares "Have No Fear", she has decided to take matters into her own hands and joinjoined a growing wave of artists relying on fans rather than industry executives to get their music heard.

With a performance on Friday night at the Getintothis awards in Liverpool – the scouse answer to the Mercury Music prize – Jackson launched an appeal to her fans through PledgeMusic, a website that lets fans "pledge" money towards an album before it is made, paying for its production.

"People think it's easy to put out an album but it ain't like that no more," said the 22-year-old from Toxteth, who gave up a possible career in football as a striker for Liverpool FC's women's team to concentrate on music. "This industry can be cruel, it can run you over. These days you have to create your own platform before anyone will even look at you."

With CD sales in decline and record deals thin on the ground, artists are increasingly looking for new ways to fund their careers, including direct-to-fan funding sites such as PledgeMusic, Sellaband – used by Public Enemy – and Kickstarter.

Bands such as the Libertines have used Pledge recently, with the site launching two campaigns daily, compared with two a week when the company was set up in 2009.

Managing director Malcolm Dunbar said: "CD sales are falling and it's difficult to even find somewhere to buy a CD, so creating your own buzz is much more necessary than it was."

If anyone is going to save the music industry, it is fans: "Selling direct to fans will be an integral part of the industry. Fans are an artist's lifeblood so it is increasingly necessary to engage with them and give real value for money."

Getting fans to invest directly in artists is part of a new grassroots movement in music, according to Peter Guy, a Liverpool music writer and creator of the Getintothis blog. Friday night's event was the inaugural GIT award to celebrate the diversity and talent of the city's music scene, put together with no external funding and little sponsorship.

"That DIY spirit has just become the norm," Guy said. "Artists and people in the music game don't have to rely on that old record label infrastructure; people are just coming together, working collaboratively and doing it for themselves."

Esco Williams – a Liverpudlian answer to Marvin Gaye whose recent DIY efforts saw him making a video on the roof of a multistorey car park – has just hit his target of £5,000 to fund his first album after an appeal to"you, yer mates, yer ma".

He says crowd funding – creating a buzz at his live gigs, on Twitter and Facebook – has given him the confidence to follow his own path. With record labels now insisting on 360 degree deals that take a cut of everything from an artist's T-shirt sales to live shows, fan-funding means any money made goes back to the artist.

"We're doing everything in-house; whatever we do and whatever we make is for us, we don't have to sell out. With a big label, you are not a priority unless you are Beyoncé," Williams said.

With some major record labels increasingly relying on televised talent shows to find artists – the prize for BBC1's The Voice is a recording contract with Universal – emerging acts are having to find new routes to stardom, according to Jon Webster, chief executive of the Music Managers Forum.

"Above my desk is a sign which says: 'There are no rules any more'," he said. There is still some reticence in the industry about using fan-funded sites, particularly around more innovative methods of raising money, such as selling experiences such as having dinner or going bowling with the artist.

Webster said: "Not everyone is comfortable with it. Some younger, perhaps more transient pop acts might embrace new revenue streams that older more established artists might not, for example."

Miss Stylie's manager, Andy Ng, said: "In this day and age, fans are the taste-makers. In the past, you signed with a label because they had distribution, radio pluggers, press teams, but that whole system is breaking down now. It's a democracy, not a dictatorship any more."

Getting her album made thanks to her fans is the first step, Miss Stylie says, on a path to world domination. "I'm going to be coming into a big game with my defences ready," she said. "But I knew when I was waiting outside that club: I'm going to get there somehow."

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SUNDAY MORNING CHRISTIAN RECORDING ARTIST TESTIMONIES

Khul Rhema's Testimony

Khul Rhema's Testimony When I set out for LA back in 1995, I had one thing on my mind—to make it big! I was an aspiring music producer and I truly believed that if I put myself in a position to be heard by any music exec that I would be this huge overnight success. And I was right . . . almost. The record label was one that was run by a notorious gang leader in the Crips organization—which at that time was cool by me.  However, the problem came in when I began to read the contract. So I left the label that supplied me with my only source of income and there I was, thousands of miles away from my native Georgia—with no money. Thank God, I landed a job at a local carwash—this supplied me with enough money to rent a room at a lodge. The lodge mostly housed drug addicts, prostitutes, homeless people who managed to raise enough money from begging to pay hotel fare, visibly diseased men and women, and a female gang member named Angie. Angie was a drug trafficker for a supplier in LA. She and I became fast friends. In fact, we became so close that she offered to supply me with drugs—free of charge—and introduce me to her fellow gang members who sold drugs in the local area. I accepted and began a life of “trappin’” with the Crips. The money was very good and things were going great until I had an encounter with a particular customer. She was an addict who had no money left to buy drugs, so she offered me a bike. Everybody else in the trap had a bike, so I thought it was a pretty good bargain. We made the transaction. Two days later, she came back with a small kid who was crying real bad. The kid was her son whose bike she had sold to me for drugs. She confessed to me that she sold me his bike and begged me to forgive her and return the bike to him. My fellow pushers laughed and said I would be stupid to give it back.  I guess I really didn’t have what it takes to be a successful drug dealer—I couldn’t do that to the kid. That experience changed my whole perspective on selling drugs. I realized that I was contributing to the demise of hundreds and ultimately thousands of lives if I continued. I didn’t. On my way back to the lodge that day, I destroyed the rest of my stash (worth hundreds). I was certain I could find a fast food gig or something to tie me over. But I couldn’t. I was eventually evicted from the lodge and found myself taking refuge in a Greyhound bus station. I called family in search of financial assistance. No one seemed to have money they could send. One was an uncle who was a preacher. He told me that God was a “burden removing, yoke destroying” God. These words resonated in me—mainly because I didn’t know what was meant by God being a ‘yoke destroying’ God. My only reference at the time was to egg yokes! So I asked my uncle, who explained to me that the Scripture was referring to the wooden clamp that was used to control beasts of burden, such as horses, mules and oxen, used to plow fields in the old days. When my uncle gave me that visual—I felt the connection. I felt that I was like those beasts of burden, working to move forward but throughout my life there was always a weight that seemed to prevail at weighing me down. I desired this power of God my uncle was telling me about. I attended a local church where the “preaching” was more like “teaching.” This was wonderfully new to me—as I’m from South Georgia where all the preachers were crooners and wailers, more or less.  One significant Sunday was when the pastor taught on how to pray. He explained the components of effective prayer—coming into His presence with thanksgiving and praise, praying in the name of Jesus Christ, interceding and making my petitions known according to the Word and His promises, believing and receiving answered prayer in advance—in Jesus’ name, Amen. I put the lesson to work after I discovered that my family was not able to assist me at that time. I was hungry and homeless. After leaving a payphone conversation with my mom, I broke down to my knees with tears rushing down my face and I cried out in the middle of the sidewalk in front of a sea of pedestrians and passer-bys. I cried out to God, “ Father!! Hallelujah! I give you all the praise—You are worthy of my praise. In the name of Jesus, I come into Your presence. I thank You for life, for Your mercy and grace. I need Your mercy Father! I was told that You are a yoke destroying, burden removing God. And I’ve got many burdens and many yokes. If You will remove them from my life, I will serve You for the rest of my life! I thank You right now, in advance, because I pray according to Your will for my life and I know it will come to pass. Thank You in Jesus name . . . AMEN!” Immediately, when I said “Amen,” I felt a very present “presence.” It was wonderful—serene, peaceful, comforting—it felt great! I began praising God emphatically. I went back to sit in front of the lodge I was evicted from. Not more than an hour later, a guy that I met at the church came by, rolled down the passenger window of his car and shouted to me, “Hey—you looking for a job?” Praise God! for He is Faithful. From that day forward I became a servant and son of the Most High God. Though life hasn’t always been easy since, I go forward knowing that He is with me and that He’ll never leave nor forsake me. He loves me and forgives me when I err. CLICK ON JOIN AND BE COME A PART OF THE AMP TEAM

Satire day jokes for you music folks

.	JOKES FOR THE FOLKS Q: Did you hear about the bass player who locked his keys in the car? A: It took him an hour to get the drummer out!
	A drummer walks into a library and says: "Hi I'll have a burger,fries, and a large coke." The librarian responds: Sshhhh....do you know where you are? This is a library!" The drummer, sheepishly, and in a whisper says: "Sorry....I'll have a burger, fries and a large coke."
	Q: What's the last thing a drummer says in a band? A: Hey guys, let's do one of my songs.  Q: How many guitar players does it take to cover a Stevie Ray Vaughn tune? A: Evidently all of them.  Q: How do you get a guitar player off of your front porch? A:Pay for the pizza.  "Mommy! Mommy! When I grow up I want to be a guitar player!" "Now Johnny, you can't do both!" Q: What do you call a guitarist who breaks up with his girlfriend? A: Homeless ..  Q: Why was the piano invented?  A: So the musician would have a place to put his beer.  Q: What's another definition of perfect pitch? A: When you throw the banjo in a dumpster and it lands on an accordian!  Q: What's the difference between a banjo and a lawnmower? A: You can tune a lawnmower!  Q: What is the least used sentence in the english language? A: "Hey, is that the banjo players porsche?"  Listener: Can you read music? Banjo player: not enough to hurt my playing.  Q: What is worse than a banjo? A: Banjos.  Click on join and be a part of the AMP TEAM