Welcome

Hey there. Thanks for stoppin’ by.

Over the past year or so I’ve attended several conferences, read a few books, and in general accumulated a miniscule amount of knowledge barely sufficient enough to engage in educated, intelligent discussion of the music industry.

However, through that time I’ve begun to understand what’s really out there for literature and knowledge of the music industry. Unknown to most (or at least I suspect, from the conversations I’ve engaged in) there’s a pretty expansive history of the industry out there on paper. And if you take a little time to digest some of this material and understand where the music business has grown up from, you’ll be surprised to realize you grasp the current issues in the music business much better. It doesn’t take a lot of work, just a little time and patience.

This blog is for all the people who don’t realize this. It’s also for all the people I overhear at conferences talking passionately about networking, DRM, or the collapse of the music industry. But really, it’s for the people like me, who have started to realize just how little they know about the industry, and think that’s kind of a problem they’d like to start working on fixing.

Yes, I’ll be documenting my own journey into the discovery of the music business, with specific attention to the historical side (if you don’t understand where you came from, how will you understand where you’re going?). But I’d really like this blog to a discussion between you and me. Send me your thoughts. Tell me when you think I’m full of shit and need to do more research. And if you’d like to contribute, by all means, please shoot me an email.

Thanks for reading all this. I look forward to hearing from you in the coming months.

- RC Lations
rclations(at)mac.com