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In this week’s episode of the Radar Podcast, author and entrepreneur Alistair Croll, who also co-chairs our Strata + Hadoop World conference, talks with cellist, composer, and performer Zoe Keating.
Keating talks about why she chooses to retain total control over her music as opposed to signing with a label, she shares her thoughts on the changing landscape of how artists get paid, and she talks about why she’s optimistic about the future of music.
Here are a few highlights from their conversation:
The digital tracking of music isn’t necessarily fully formed yet. I think we’re actually still in the infancy of what the industry is going to be like. We’ve had a great decade of disruption that has benefited artists like me and Amanda [Palmer]. I’m not sure that she or I could have had the kinds of careers we’ve had without this thing that has been bad for some other artists. I don’t think that things are fully realized yet. It’s still the case that the majority of the money is going to people other than the content creators.
I’m the only artist on the face of the earth who’s never made a video.
It’s almost like we need music futurists to try to envision the future of what might your life be like. How might it work? How might you make money? Just think about it in a free-form way without all the emotion attached to it, because often you’ve probably experienced numerous music conferences where it devolves into name calling.
I would like to see more platforms, more forums to discuss [the future of music]. Right now, the discussions that I’ve been a part of are still very polarized. You still have the techie ones and the music ones. There’s not a lot of cross-pollenization between them. They’re still adversarial. I’m just trying to encourage a little open-mindedness and a little visionary thinking about it.
Related:
- Music Science: How Data and Digital Content Are Changing Music — new free report by Alistair Croll on where music science stands today and where it’s headed.
Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.