Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Changing The Model

Among the usual doom and gloom one finds at music conventions these days, one music industry guy who was anything but down at last week's IAJE conference in Toronto was Ricky Schultz, former jazz exec at Warner Bros. and MCA. He's about to launch a new "label" — a term he hesitates to use — called Resonance, which is attempting to help create a new model for music distribution.

For starters, Resonance is a non-profit, so right away you know we're not talking about the old cash-grab model of record companies. Secondly, they're looking at a mix of soft and hard copy distribution, which is a nice hedge given that not everybody is willing to deal only with the fidelity loss associated with even the best-quality downloads.

Only time will tell, of course, but with all the whining I've heard since I started attending IAJE events five years ago, it's nice to hear someone — anyone — spinning some optimism.

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