If you use your imagination, you can see Jenny Toomey up there giving her keynote speech. It's our fault, but we learned a lesson: just because you have press credentials, it doesn't automatically mean you have a camera pass. The guitar-toting blur at bottom right is Danielle Howle.

"All of my friends are much smarter me," Randy Newman sang in "It's Money that Matters". He didn't proceed to name them one by one; instead, he left room for every impoverished artist -- the quality artists (Grant Hart, Atom and His Package) you root for, and those who inspire cruel parodies ("Bad songwriter in a coma / I know / It's not serious") -- to hear his lines and think the song was about them. "In any fair system," quoth Randy the Raven, "they would flourish and fly, but they barely survive. They eke out a living. They barely survive."

In the spring of 2000, the Future Coalition of Music was established by a crew of six to make that argument of an unjust system to Congress, their fellow musicians, their fans, and all the world. Jenny Toomey, the group's most visible figure, is its executive director, and she set the tone of the debate with an opening speech that was, by design, all-inclusive. By adopting the strategy of Recording Artists Coalition member John McCutcheon, who said "cooperation will get you a lot farther than competing against your brothers and sisters," Toomey's opening remarks asserted that musicians, like housewives, were uniformly undervalued.

That morning of January 7th, Toomey showed everyone in Georgetown's Gaston Hall that she took the Anthony Trollope approach to artistry -- that of music as a daily 9-to-5 job -- while elevating the role of "creator" beyond the realm of the ordinary man. According to her rationale, a creator is more important because, when you create, it is presumed that you are doing something you love, as opposed to something you intrinsically need to do. Toomey connects to the message she saw behind the documentary The War Room, which she paraphrases as declaring, "Next to love, labor is the most important thing you can give. When you give labor and love together...it's even more valuable."

Hearing this, I squirmed a bit. If Toomey is to be a mother figure who adds to the wallets of financially struggling musicians, then this message is bad parenting. While combining love and labor might be the best gift to give yourself (something entirely different than what you can give the public), there are such things as loving what you are not good at, as well as loving what few others like. Even if you had the time, would you want to hear every act on MP3.Com? And should entrepreneurs who go bankrupt by bad business ventures be treated any worse than dedicated musicians who entirely ignore what the public might actually like? I am a fan of Toomey's music (particularly Antidote and the last Tsunami record), but if you asked me what keeps her from mainstream success, it's not "promotion", as she intuits, but her lyrical content (a female Ezra Pound?) and her lack of killer choruses. None of her refrains are whistling through my head as I write this sentence.

The future of musicians, plumbers, writers, computer technicians and housewives depends heavily upon one thing: being honest with themselves, and knowing the fruits of their gifts. I lack an extensive vocabulary, and I'm bad with description, so don't expect me ever making the jump to Rolling Stone. I love music, and I love to write, and I'm comfortable believing I'm good enough to write and be read for nothing. Because the Future of Music Coalition needs as many "brothers and sisters" as possible to help fight the good fight in Congress, Toomey has resolved, or proudly chosen, to speak for all who struggle to survive on music alone. This means she argues for the financial freedom of many who should be as content as I am to do some passions for nothing. What does this make her? How about an activist with a deservedly hard, uphill battle?

Speaking before a crowd of mostly fellow musicians and songwriters, Toomey riffed on this "creator" razzmatazz of hers by asserting that the market places creators within two categories: the "geniuses" and the "don't-quit-your-day-jobs". Toomey then said that "most of the musical geniuses I know never got a shot at quitting their day jobs." Such a statement effectively redefines the market's position, claiming that it should have only one category for creators: geniuses. Artists are toast in Toomey's speech, and she loves to butter them up.

The Future of Music Coalition would be worthless if it just tried to raise artists' feelings of self-worth to distastefully high levels. Happily, I think ego building is just a strategy of theirs. The FMC's primary aim is not to combat a market's devaluation with their own inflated valuation, but to inspire independent artists to come together like the Hollywood hopefuls, so that its own variation of the Not-Yet-Ready-For-Daytime-Commercial crowd can still gain a buck. Toomey deftly used the Encarta CD-ROM case to make the point that actors, by uniting, have it better than musicians.

In that case, the actors' union fought for its actors, who supplied voice-overs, to be paid by Microsoft. After back-and-forth twaddle on court TV, the actors' union not only won the battle; they got their actors paid at triple scale. Of course, Toomey fails to add that the actor's union has effectively killed the efforts of radio stations to broadcast on both FM and the Internet (as their contract forces radio stations to pay actors twice for commercials that appear on both mediums), and that the actors' union may have frankly won too much in their fight. For this, I commend her intelligence. She is a great activist. She also, along with Kristin Thomson and her fellow Coalition members, helped to put on a genuinely entertaining conference, which kicked off after her speech with a keynote address by House Representative Rick Boucher.

Boucher, who helped to write the Music Offline Competition Act (MOCA) with a Congressional crony or two, wants to insure that "all owners of copyright interests are fairly compensated". He believes online stores that sell CDs should not charge users for samples of music -- as CD Now always used to do -- and he wants a future bill to provide "a non-discrimination guarantee" so that any site can get licensing to distribute music. At the time I did not think of this as much, but upon hearing from the Napster president as the conference wore on, such a bill's importance cannot be underestimated. It holds the key to whether music will ever be available on "official" downloading distribution centers, and whether the public will want rapper Paris ("Bush Killa") to return from his new job as a stockbroker to write "Major Label President Killa". Boucher also supported the rights of Internet and satellite radio to have the same luxury as radio stations, and let people know which songs are coming up. Additionally, he felt that such stations deserve the luxury of streaming entire albums over the Internet, just as many FM stations recently did to honor George Harrison.

Boucher was followed by a panel, the topic of which was "The State of the Union". Later panels would sometimes lambaste it as tomfoolery, but it was easily the most entertaining hour of the conference. The daffiest members of the panel, Mark Cuban and Eben Moglen, also had far more substance behind their comments than artists and the RIAA would like to admit.

Moglen, a professor of law and legal history at Columbia Law School, is a proponent of free music. He has written articles with titles like The dotCommunist Manifesto: How Culture Became Property and What We're Going to Do About It" and he is as anarchic as that title suggests. Moglen's argument directly counters some of Toomey's opening remarks, because he does not speak solely to artists who create a physical, tangible product, such as the CD. His position includes the boy who might sing a song to his loved one in the moonlight -- with no tape recorder running. Moglen has faith that an audience will pay, in some form or another, for whatever culture it loves. He says it is up to the artist to make something the lover is willing to be wooed by, or that the public is willing to pay for. He does not ascribe to the belief that kids view music as something that "should be free", but that music is not always good enough or popular enough to be anything but free.

In this conference, the argument against free music is that the artists worked hard, so they deserve to be compensated. It's an argument that basically says, if a stranger forces himself into your house and cleans your rugs, you should pay him for his efforts. Fuck that; if the public has no interest in your services, who cares about your sweat and tears? When some kids make the decision to rock, their parents are only being kind when they hit 'em with a rock. That said, there is an argument against free entertainment.

At venues like the Hole in the Wall and Galaxy Hut, I've seen people like Mojo Nixon and Barcelona play for a buck or nothing at all, which forces fans to mingle with the disinterested, the chatty and the homeless. Ida charged only five dollars for one of their recent shows, and it was hard to even hear them play above the din of drinkers talking about their weekend plans. The reason we are charged pennies for live performances by the clubs that cater to indie bands is apparently fear. Neither club owners nor the bands seem to believe in the music enough to think there's a fan base that will show up and actually pay. Rather than believe in stories like mine -- I became a reviewer to help shrink my music-spending, became addicted to thousands more bands, and now spend ten times more than I did before I joined the Splendid staff -- it seems that bands prefer to be pampered with the same security as American opera companies.

Whereas opera flourishes in Europe and does not need government support, we have to pay these spineless American repertories our tax dollars, and endure their snobbery. I liked Eben Moglen because I agree with his position: good art will always have an audience. If American opera companies did not overspend on costumes, and lowered ticket scales and dress codes, lots of kids would come. Rather than take that minimal gamble, they beat the rock musicians to Congress with the claim that their art was so super-duperly precious, and have since managed to turn the popular entertainments of Mozart into frolics for the snooty.

Like Moglen, Mark Cuban is something of a ham for attention, but he earns his overflowing confidence in his ideas by being amusing, smart and a realistic capitalist. After Cary Sherman said the best thing in 2001 was subscription models, Mark Cuban needled him enough to prompt an inquiry: "So you're saying the current business models aren't going to work?" Cuban addressed himself to artists when he said "The people who developed your original businesses" are who you're mad at, not companies like Napster. While Napster faulted by ignoring copyright laws, and by failing to protect users from viruses and poor-quality audio recordings, it was at least a simple medium to navigate, with an interface easy to sell product through. Instead of allowing the company to evolve into that, record companies intervened, shut Napster down, then presented new models that won't work because they're too complicated and asinine. Cuban's own dealings with the RIAA have been negative enough to have him feel they're "not about profitability (for the artist) but control". Moglen is equally skeptical every time the RIAA flexes its muscles, and believes Sherman "is concerned...all his clients might go elsewhere."

Jonathan Potter, executive director of DIMA, also comes across as a very rational, intelligent speaker on the business side of music. He agrees with Cuban that there are "decades-old relationships (between record labels and entrepreneurs) in the way of artists getting paid," and that the best thing that could happen to artists might be a severance of ties with past business practices. As things now stand, Potter feels that "The Internet has the threat of becoming like radio," which plays the same song over and over. Just as oldies stations all seem to play from the same double-disc K-Tel compilation, the music business poses the threat of turning the Internet into homogenous shit.

Phil Goldstein and a favorite of mine, Jonatha Brooke, were the two artists on the panel, and they were there mostly so that Cuban could say they got everything totally wrong. Goldstein did make an amusing counter jab to one of Moglen's arguments (that fans would support artists through other means, like merchandise), though, by saying, "Who wants to buy a Goldstein t-shirt?"

The theme for the second panel was Taking Care of Business, and its panelists were an impressive bunch. Critic Dave Marsh was moderator, and the panel featured a member of Sweet Honey in the Rock, Bernice Johnson Reagon, as well as her daughter Toshi. Where the previous panel was lively, informative and exciting, this one featured idealistic socialist-tinged rhetoric from Bernice ("Any kind of culture that's driven by capital" is evil), and a kiss-artist-in-the-booty mentality from Marsh. Like the idiots who run the Academy Awards, he cut off people like David Sanjek (BMI archivist and author of such things as "From The Microphone to the Microchip: Consuming Popular Music") when they were about to say something substantial, then gave extra time to musicians who seemed unaware of what the topic was about. If this sounds like artists were getting on my nerves, good. Until Amy Ray took a panel toward the conference's closing point, musicians mostly just seemed opposed to day jobs. When a songwriter quits his day job, does that mean he writes for nine more hours of songs per day? Judging by some of today's best (Bobby Wratten and Elizabeth Elmore, each of whom write only the two or three weeks of the year when inspiration strikes them), it's not as if a day job can truly be called an impediment to artistic creation. It's an impediment to touring, sure, but so is the fact indie bands routinely travel 300 miles to play a show for nothing. Likewise, isn't it true that when you look at monetarily successful artists, both before and after their rise to financial independence, lots of cash and free time seem a detriment to good work, not an advantage?

One standout from the Taking Care of Business panel was Johnny Temple, who at least knew the topic he was to address. The owner of Akashic Books, Temple's Brooklyn-based company is trying to be the East Coast's version of San Francisco's City Lights, and they're starting off quite well. Speaking about music business models, he favored the methods used by Dischord and Touch and Go, in which the label and artist splits the profits rather evenly. He also acknowledges that, typically, the "profits will never show", which ends up making it a better business model than giving someone ten thousand dollars up front. Temple also discussed the advances that major labels provide, before lamenting how most musicians aren't provided health insurance. Well, if the advance was big enough, couldn't artists put some of that money toward health insurance? I hate that insurance companies overcharge most artists, due to the rampant drug abuse from the past, but are there many things worse than an "underpaid" artist passing on a conference's free lunch to go out to eat? Perhaps musicians are poor for more reasons than bad contracts.

The second keynote speaker was California senator Kevin Murray, who declared, "While music is an art form, it is also a business." Whereas Boucher was ripe with many ideas, Murray seemed an activist more along the lines of Toomey. He called for artists to use organizations like the Future of Music Coalition to "communicate the changes they need" in present law to Congress. He also declared this their "responsibility". To break from the chains of a past that has treated musicians like "indentured servants", they "must take care of themselves" and unite! With no deference to his message, he revealed no content therein.

Following lunch was a panel themed To Legislate or Not to Legislate. It had a dubious member in Debra Rose, counsel for the House Subcommittee on Courts, Internet and Intellectual Property. Before a largely anti-Napster crowd, she stated that only 13-year old kids seemed to care about Napster's demise, and got pretty snippy at FMC lawyer Walter McDonough when he said the "DNCA bill does not make much sense". McDonough, my favorite speaker from the Future of Music Coalition, used this time as a forum to speak for artists with out-of-print titles. He feels, "if something goes out of print", the artist should be given "the opportunity to license it", so that it doesn't end up getting sold only on EBay at outrageous prices. I hope he wins on this argument.

While Ann Chatiovitz, Director of Sound Recordings at AFTRA, believed that compulsory licenses tend to devalue the value of the copyright", McDonough argued that the lack of compulsories would make it terribly hard for upcoming acts to afford to "have cover songs, etc". Manus Cooney, Vice President of Corporate Policy and Development at Napster, added his few cents by claiming that the "pie would grow" for artists with the emergence of online music channels and databases, and that musicians will reap the same benefits that screenwriters now get in this world of a zillion TV channels.

For the third keynote address, Konrad Hilbers, the CEO of Napster, was given the opportunity to speak on Napster's future. Hilbers, who has transformed the company into an bona fide "company", wants Napster to provide users with immediate access to content, while providing artists with immediate monetary awards. Where consumers have the passion, it is indeed artists with the content, and Napster appears to have opened its wallet wide enough to prove that they recognize that.

Hilbers joined an early aside by Mark Cuban (who cited Billboard statistics) in contesting that the prior incarnation of Napster did not hurt the music business in any substantial way. In fact, he claims that Napster users bought nine CDs every six months, which is more than three times the amount of the normal American citizen. While the nine CDs is undoubtedly less than what such users previously bought (for example, as a music addict who didn't use Napster, I buy over nine a month) before Napster, it's still a good stat for him to spout. Hilbers believes Napster, which was not exactly a "business" in the past, will reach economic viability if it can "reach agreements with major labels" regarding licenses. Without such licenses, access to indie acts will be more limited too, as it's mainstream acts that can bring the majority of profit to a company like Napster, and allow it to grow.

Hilbers concluded by supporting the government in its right to define "the limits of copyright and consumer rights", and I have to imagine that he hopes the government can pass a bill where "a non-discrimination guarantee" forces major labels to deal with the Napsters out there, even when their product does battle against the major label's own alternative models. While Hilbers was hopeful that the licenses would come, he left the audience with the impression that the major labels are playing hardball right now. The labels would love to keep Napster forevermore as the anti-artist corporation that screwed artists out of money, rather than let Napster and other like-minded companies prove themselves to be a friend that's both good for the expansion of the music business, and for musicians' pockets.

Following Hilbers, there was a panel on Competitive Licenses. It was filled with more technical jargon than the rest, but also helped to enforce some of the earlier statements made by panels that conference attendees may have overlooked. Ron Gertz, the president of Music Reports, believed the most cogent statement of the morning came from Marybeth Peters, the registrar of the US Copyright Office -- someone I had overlooked in the first panel. She had said that "compulsory and statutory licenses come when markets don't function" -- and that, according to Gertz, is what validates them; "What," he asked the audience, "can be more dysfunctional that our market right now?"

David Carson, who was the US Copyright Office's representative on this panel, admitted that no one should "expect the legal framework to be (immediately) ready to deal with new technologies" -- and that, in terms of content, was about all I got from the panel. However, John Simson, director of artist and label relations at Sound Exchange, made a good commercial for that company. Where ASCAP pays just its members, Sound Exchange pays everyone. Major artists are paid directly, but for indie acts, it's the indie label that gets direct payment (due to a contract made by the two parties). For me, the only other notable moment in this panel was its introduction of Dave Allen, Gang of Four member, as being among the audience. Every time he rose to ask a question or raise a comment before the panels, he would preface it by saying, "I'm Dave Allen, and some of you may remember me from Gang of Four". Okeydoke.

One artist I will definitely remember from this event was Danielle Howle, who performed two songs ("From the Tops of Trees", "Tie Up the Moon") from her KRS album Catalog before the next panel took the stage. Her sense of humor ("I've changed my name to danielle.howle.com. Do you think it will work?") and very Southern mannerisms ("It's nice to sing before all you smart peoples") is absolutely charming, and she can really sing. Since it's important to acknowledge all the good things that Toomey's activist spirit has done, let me add that I never heard of Howle before a Jenny Toomey interview from years past had praised her to the skies.

One of the most anticipated panels came next, at sundown. It is fitting that Roadblocks to Copying came at the same time I was having trouble copying my thoughts down to a page my eyes could barely see -- but it was a shame that I did not need to copy many thoughts down. Robin Gross, an intellectual property lawyer whose blonde hair and leather suit made her look like Ute Lemper or Brigitte Nielson, highlighted the differences between copyright law and copyright protection schemes. Where copyright gave authors the right to distribution, etc, copyright protection schemes denied fair use for the consumer. This, then, is the major legal stumbling block for companies that want the hills to be alive with the sound of Macrovision. In the Audiohome Recording Act, "all CDs cannot be encoded to prohibit the first generation copy", and, if it were up to Gross, the 100th generational copy will sound pristine, as well. Since encoding has a hard time being fully successful without costing companies lots of money, those who like to make compilations for friends should be able to continue this practice for quite some time.

The final panel was quite lively and focused on major labels. Don Henley, who has fought for major label artists' rights on Capitol Hill, was criticized by the hipsters, and the Henley supporters grew livid. Overall, the life of major labels did not seem too rosy. Toomey, the following day, phrased it whereby the majors were "Hitler on the Titanic, and we (artists) are the peanut butter."

When I got home that night of the 7th, my parents called me and asked how the day went. The best way to describe it is not through criticism, or by recounting all of the statements that irked me, but by revealing the fact that I started talking a hundred words per minute. Where I routinely judge my day job conferences solely on the donuts and coffee I am provided, this conference actually got me excited. I'm still a 76ers fan, but Cuban has made the Mavericks my second favorite NBA team, while memories of Howle's voice were about the only thing to keep my mind from racing all night and giving my cats their own statutory licenses.

The next day, it seemed that everyone woke up late -- which probably happens with every conference that's dominated by musicians -- and I sprinted from the Key Bridge to Georgetown's Gaston Hall, only to discover that I had just missed the "Welcome" message from a sponsor.

My note taking began with a nice keynote speech from House Representative John Conyers. A likeable fellow, he joined the FMC in the belief that musicians were workers in the same sense that cashiers or lawyers are. He raised the point, "You didn't get in this business just to suffer, did you?" This goes with his belief that practical economic decisions factor into a musician's decision to devote himself to music; only by seeing other musicians make money for their time and effort did a young artist believe he could do likewise.

Then came The New Pipeline, a decent panel led by Derek Sivers, President of the online distribution company CD Baby, and Phil Leigh. Pam Horovitz, speaking for retailers, noted that (American) stores still "sold something like eleven billion dollars worth of CDs last year". She also made an obvious point, but one which needed stating -- that "retailers aren't this monolithic entity". Since their aim is to have in stock the music that owners think their clients will want, a store like Austin's Waterloo might be devoted to Texas musicians, while others (like Arlington's Now Music and Fashion) might show total attraction to indie product. Translate this to the Internet world, and it is just as fair for Amazon.Com to sell no Australian indie pop as it is for the fabulous MicroIndie Mailorder to make that its specialty.

Blue Oyster Cult's Sandy Pearlman, who spouted exaggerations and Orwellianisms (the "preponderance of mass distribution is going to go virtual"), was at least endearing as a person who hated public speaking, but his opinions were off, and littered with the same over-the-top rhetoric as John Barth's (self-rebuked) essays on the death of the novel. With feet more firmly planted in reality, Phil Leigh served as proponent for compulsory licensing. He finds it "the best way to get people addicted to music", and noted that "70 percent of college students who were getting Napster were willing to pay fifteen dollars a month". They may never get a chance, though, because "licensing authorities have not negotiated licenses" to AudioGalaxy, Napster, and their ilk.

Derek Sivers, a man with a terrible haircut, is (as already noted) behind the CD Baby online company, which sounds like a wonderful place for aspiring indie artists to sell their material. Last year, more one million dollars was given back to the artists who put their music on CDBaby, something which garnered huge clapping and cheers from the audience. Sivers mentioned, "When Napster was at its peak, one of twenty sales were from listeners" who heard the music first on Napster. This includes a number of bands who are simply thrilled that some non-mom out there would buy their work and give it a chance. Oh, lest I forget, Dave Allen asked the panel a question. Perhaps you have heard of him (his Gang of Four's Entertainment album is phenomenally good).

For the Global Exchange panel, what was most informative was the way in which all of them -- Dagfinn Bach, Dick Huey, and the Sundays' very astute bassist, Paul Bradley -- showed how panelists before them were very American- and Euro-centric. They were tired of hearing statistics that ignored the fact that there is other music besides English-speaking music. Granted, American acts rule the marketplace, but that's because, as Peter Jenner puts it, America has inflicted the "WTO (World Trade Organization) upon the world". In another audience-pleasing comment, Jenner said "the dominance of American music around the world" is because America just dumped it on everyone.

Peter Jenner, who represented the Association of United Recording Artists, was the first to mention there was a "tremendous problem with regards to broadcasting public performance...Radio is selling ears to advertisers, and these advertisers are coming to them for music." It's ridiculous, given music's ability to sell product by keeping listeners tuned in, that "the total payment for all music in the UK" is 150 million dollars less than what British radio pays to broadcast soccer (400 million). Jenner says the "record companies are appallingly inefficient in getting their fair share", but is optimistic that there is money to be made from online streaming. "The idea of thinking about digital domain in terms of performance is much more important than thinking about it in terms of downloads..."

In the UK, the closest approximation to Sound Exchange (which makes direct payments to both major label artists and indie record labels) is PPL (the UK broadcast royalties collection society). Unless American artists have a piece in the pie of their broadcast performance profits, "what happens at the moment is 100 percent gets paid to the American record company." The only exceptions come when an American artist has recorded for a European company. Because of this, Jenner said, it's important for artists (like Stephen Malkmus, or the Moonshine stable) who might get on the radio "to raise the issue, and they need to make sure their lawyer is onto the issue, and they don't just sign away their (performance rights). In principle, it's an important income stream, but in practice at the moment, it's not significant, except for if you have a big hit, a big radio hit, or a big dance hit. So clubs pay, radio pays, and all these things are going to get stronger. I think the income from performance income, from PPL in the UK, will quintuple in the next five to ten years. I think, in the end, an awful lot of the Internet business will be done with performance broadcasts like streaming, and high-end streaming ... If you as Americans are not aware of the value and importance of performance income," then artists and the American music industry will have missed out.

"Already, you can see them (major labels) struggling. These incredibly complicated plans (of theirs) where you get 100 tracks for a month, and then it deletes from your hard drive -- this is just mindless rubbish! The total value of the worldwide legal CD market is 35 billion dollars a year, or thereabouts (as reported by International RIAA, etc). If you had 350 million paying a hundred dollars each for all the music -- everything -- you would get the same 35 billion dollars."

Continues Jenner, "I think a subscription basis is going to be very important, and I think it's going to be incremental. I think a lot of that is going to be performance. Something which plays that to me, and then I can select it, and get some more (like, "Oh, I like that one, I like that Jim White"), and then I think, 'Oh, I really like Jim White. I might go buy that record.' That sort of patent of consumption of music is going to develop, and a lot of that depends on performance...There now will be a continuum between just browsing and buying. And the distinction between a 'mechanical royalty' (whereby the company putting out the record is required to pay the songwriter a royalty for each record manufactured) and a 'performance royalty' (whereby an artist is paid whenever his/her composition is performed publicly) becomes very hard to draw. Impossible."

"On one end, terrestrial radio, it's pure performance; the other end, going into a record shop, it's pure 'mechanical'. But in fact, anything else between is a mixture," and that's why public performance rights become so monetarily important for artists to maintain control of... "So just watch it with your contracts," Jenner instructs, "and think about and ask your lawyer about it, and get him to find out."

Peter Jenner, who also happens to have managed some of my favorite artists from every period of my life (Pink Floyd, Billy Bragg, Eddie Reader), was probably the most illuminating person I heard during the conference, and one who I think has a keen ear for what music fans want -- and what artists should pursue. As a manager, he sees the Internet mostly in promotional terms, as a "way of getting to people". He also believes it to be "the place the music fans go", and thinks it's "going to destroy mass radio" in "the same way that FM destroyed Top 40 Radio in the sixties". I thanked him for skipping much of his lunch break to elaborate on his thoughts, and for re-injecting a spirit within the conference to actually learn new things.

However, nothing much new or interesting was raised in the panel devoted to Copyright Bargain. There were arguments over whether copyright law was created for monetary purposes or for the profligation of art and creativity, and it seems people decided it was there for monetary reasons. Otherwise, arguing about licensing issues would be difficult.

Whereas A More Perfect Union, simply said, "There's power in a union" (and yes, just listening to Billy Bragg would have been preferable), the former was very worthwhile. It was dedicated to New Models, and contained the most musically star-studded panel. Aside from Jenny Toomey, who served as moderator, there was Ian Mackaye, Amy Ray, and David Fagin (a non-stop teller of bad jokes, and singer for the Rosenbergs). There was also the return of CD Baby's Derek Sivers, and this big guy who ran the Pearl Jam fan club, as well as Vivek Tiwary, a straight-up, tell-it-like-it-is guy who's CEO of Star Polish, an Internet company that helps people learn the ins and outs of the business.

If you're looking for a label, or a way to break into the business, I strongly endorse Sivers' CD Baby service, and Tiwary's Star Polish. Besides using the latter for Toomeyesque good deeds, so that groups make smart business decisions, Tiwary is "opening a small management company, and providing some marketing consultation services." The crowd's reverence for Ian MacKaye swallowed up many of the good things Tiwary said, but he was the only one who used the panel to address struggling songwriters, saying, "Have realistic goals and expectations. If you have a certain niche, how big is that niche?" Along with a more basic but harder-to-answer question, "Are you any good?", he thinks it's important for people to realize that a genre like instrumental emo will not make you a millionaire. Thinking otherwise will only make you feel bitter whenever you turn on the radio and don't hear your own group following Pink.

Amy Ray, the artist I came to adore from this panel, is that gal from Indigo Girls and the owner of Daemon Records. Prior to this, my only written comments about Ray were hatred for her song on Mr. Lady's otherwise excellent Calling All Kings and Queens compilation. What appealed to me about her business practices was that she demanded her artists to work. "With Daemon Records, I pay for them to be recorded, to be promoted," and they do the rest. "You wanna be a musician and play your art? You need to work for it." Ray has no tolerance for the "disgruntled rock star" set, and demands that all of her artists tour for a certain amount of time each year. Ray doesn't do this to ensure she gets paid back -- it's fair to call Daemon a vanity label existing solely to promote Ray's own tastes and beliefs -- but because she knows the type of backbone that anybody needs in order to succeed. Very few lazy people ever get to achieve their dreams, and who wants to bet that the majority of the 130,000 ASCAP members aren't trying to succeed without sweat? If it were up to me, most of those 130,000 songwriters would get a second day job -- what else can we do to make certain that bad songwriters won't one day occupy a whole state ("We are the state, we are the future")?

Finally, there was Ian Mackaye, who wondered why he was on a panel devoted to New Models. His Dischord Records will always be an anomaly in the world of music, as it does not believe in contracts, nor in copyrights. It is anti-paperwork. Artists and the label basically split the profits, and should an artist ever complain about treatment, they'd rather give in to his demands than yield to lawyers. No one has ever complained, because Mackaye is so genuine and well-meaning. Dischord exists so that its artists "have the opportunity to document something that was important to their lives". If it sells, so be it, but that never has been Mackaye's driving force. If his politics and business practices did not have the luck of receiving media coverage and turning Mackaye into an indie poster boy, Dischord would probably have gone bust long ago. Thus, even if he's your hero, I can't imagine Mackaye's model to be the right one to imitate. Instead, take the hard-work approach of Amy Ray, or else consult with Vivek Tiwary and his staff.

The Future of Music Coalition is devoted to bringing together people who are interested in making musicians' lives better. Although their attitudes and opinions sometimes annoy me, I must commend them for holding this conference. The diversity of speakers made it very memorable, and routinely thought-provoking, while the seats were quite comfortable (a legitimate issue when you're sitting for two days!). As far as parting thoughts...I would love for my favorite artists to strike it rich. However, it really doesn't bother me if musicians must still endure their day jobs -- if they hate day jobs so much, and think they know what it takes to sell out, then just sell out! Do it to quit your job and quit whining -- because I do not think lack of time is the major obstacle to the next great song. Nor do I think that major labels will continue to keep their product from being shared among better-designed Internet business models. Having seen guys like the Napster president up close, I think he can get along with an entrepreneur-friendly Congress, and give Congress that extra-needed push to knock major labels on their bullying backs. In fact, I'm sure of it. As for licensing, and copyright issues, I've tried to shape Peter Jenner into some sort of prognosticator -- and I think his prediction about performance royalties will happen. Artists should make certain that they get a piece of that pie. I also think Fairground Attraction's Eddi Reader, one of Jenner's newest clients, will finally have a solo hit in 2002. She's deserved it for a long time.

Assuming the Future of Music Coalition makes this an annual conference for the next few years, I am hoping they might delve into issues beyond musicians' worries over the next paycheck, and address long-term concerns that practices like CD duplication will inflict upon users. Though I am opposed to most preventative measures put on the table so far (as I love making mix tapes for friends), across-the-board Titanic-sized burnt-CD collections is my lingering worry. As a person who's made music his sole hobby in life, and thereby been able to purchase a few thousand records, I have watched my tastes go through periods of regression, where the only thing I can stand on certain days is immediately digestible bubblegum music. This is not good, and I blame it mostly on the fact that my music collection is large. Why spend ten hours trying to appreciate the piercing sounds of Wolf Eyes when the Edison Lighthouses are staring right at you? Fans are now amassing huge music collections via file-sharing services and used CD stores, and while they might still buy their full retail product, they won't avoid the horror of owning too much music. Some songs, or compositions, literally require time to appreciate them, and I fear there will soon be a whole world of impatient snots like myself who will listen to ten seconds of a CD and want to move on, before they even get to the hook.

No, this is not the hook.

Article and photos by Theodore Defosse.