First I’d like to thank Becky Claw­son for invit­ing me to speak on the Music 2.0 pan­el this past Sat­ur­day. I hope it was as eye-open­ing an expe­ri­ence for my fel­low pan­elists as it was for me. See, I find many “Web 2.0” appli­ca­tions an inte­gral part of my dai­ly life, but I under­stand that this isn’t the case for most peo­ple. For me, the biggest prob­lem with how we talk about the Inter­net is how it’s treat­ed as some­thing every­one feels com­fort­able using. I think yes­ter­day’s pan­el showed us how it isn’t, and served as a refresh­ing reminder for why peo­ple in and around the music indus­try need to keep think­ing crit­i­cal­ly about how the Inter­net might best serve artists and indus­try pro­fes­sion­als alike.

I’d hoped to offer a healthy dose of skep­ti­cism yes­ter­day. I want­ed to talk about how for many web­sites, music is more of a lia­bil­i­ty than an asset. I want­ed to spar with fel­low pan­elist and friend Mark Schon­eveld. I want­ed to talk about pira­cy. I want­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk about Face­book and why it’s inter­est­ing to me that it makes no direct music play, or how count­less “Music 2.0” start-ups are exploit­ing music con­tent with­out any inter­est — much less abil­i­ty — to con­vert that excite­ment into rev­enue streams for the artists whose work sup­ports them. Unfor­tu­nate­ly this oppor­tu­ni­ty did­n’t present itself, and instead we pan­elists found our­selves try­ing to offer advice to an audi­ence eager to use the Inter­net to pro­mote them­selves and their work.

I feel that I was­n’t able to suf­fi­cient­ly express my qualms with “Music 2.0,” some­thing that was brought to my atten­tion by tweet­ed com­ments from anoth­er pan­elist, Maria Scia­r­ri­no. Ear­ly in the pan­el I stressed that artists should­n’t con­cen­trate on a web strat­e­gy at the expense of doing the things they’ve always done to pro­mote them­selves; that the Inter­net isn’t so much of a rad­i­cal break with his­to­ry as pun­dits and entre­pre­neurs might like you to believe; that peo­ple still learn about music in much the same way as they always have and the Inter­net is just an exten­sion of that. Do indie artists need to take the Inter­net seri­ous­ly? Sure, but it should’t replace tra­di­tion­al modes of promotion.

With that in mind, I’ve been read­ing Idol­a­tor’s Web 2.no posts very close­ly and tak­ing them to heart. Those posts high­light some of the more ill-con­ceived pro­mo­tion­al ideas in the music indus­try. They make you won­der. In the ten years since Nap­ster rev­o­lu­tion­ized the way we think about music as a prod­uct, we have yet to see a strat­e­gy that can con­vince peo­ple that record­ed music is some­thing worth buy­ing. Where’s that mon­ey going? It’s going to the peo­ple who cre­ate sites like Hype Machine, Last.fm, Stereogum.com, and oth­ers like them. The volatil­i­ty sur­round­ing the music indus­try must be very attrac­tive to entre­pre­neurs, the sort of thinkers who see risk and antic­i­pate reward. But where is it?

My real advice for any­one inter­est­ed in being a com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful musi­cian to the extent that’s pos­si­ble in 2008? Don’t wor­ry about sign­ing a deal and spend that mon­ey on a great pub­li­cist who is savvy about the web. Then make them promise to nev­er ever stream your album for free; it’s like wav­ing a red cape in front of folks who’re bored and look­ing for some­thing that leaked. (I’m look­ing direct­ly at Pitch­fork pari­ahs the Black Kids.)