Yesterday at lunch Michael McCarty told me there was a different vibe at Canadian Music Week this year, it was no longer about beating up the major labels, lamenting the sad state of affairs in the music business, but picking up the new tools and TAKING ACTION!

CDs are in free-fall.  This week sales were off 22.8% from last year’s numbers.  That’s front page news in my book.  But somehow, it’s not on the very first page of the "New York Times" or the "Wall Street Journal", the newspapers of record.  And if it were, Warner and EMI stocks would tank.  For Wall Street, which does not read the "Billboard Bulletin", seems out of the loop.

Recorded music sales are now a joke.  If you’re an act, unless you make Top Forty music that would benefit from TV exposure and terrestrial radio play, in other words unless you make mainstream pop or hip-hop music, WHY BOTHER WITH A MAJOR LABEL?  They’re not interested in artist development.  Hell, EMI won’t EXIST by time you put out your SECOND album, never mind your third or fourth.  You want to get caught in that vortex?  Where contractual hassles, being tied-up in merger/downsizing/bankruptcy, will kill your career?

All this talk about Apple’s dominance with iTunes, DRM, per track prices…IRRELEVANT!  Every band is now a cottage industry, charging at a different point in the food chain.  In other words, the music is the loss leader, the taste, that gets people in the door.

Oh, it didn’t HAVE to be this way.  If only the majors had legalized P2P, had been willing to stop fighting to preserve their distribution monopoly.  I mean what difference does it make if you own the CD sphere if the CD sphere is CRUMBLING?

And who is watching those TV programs, and who is listening to Top Forty terrestrial radio?  Not the hard core music buyer, keeping this business alive.  But the casual fan, who needs the single AT MOST!

Credible acts, ALBUM ACTS, are coming back.  Oh, they won’t be selling albums, but a continuous stream of songs, which people will want, because they BELIEVE IN THE ACT!

Your image is everything.  You must play to the audience, not the machine.  You must micromanage the relationship.

They used to say all publicity was good publicity.  Well just ask Britney if that’s still true.  You’ve got to MANAGE publicity, you’ve got to worry about being OVEREXPOSED, you’ve got to make sure your fans trust you.  Stars are Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, two-dimensional icons with no content to believe in.  Musicians are no longer stars, but minstrels who the audience DEPENDS ON!  The band is down in the pit WITH the fan.  That’s why the audience loves the act, because they’re REAL!

No posturing involved.  Music that doesn’t just slide off your sexy back.  Playing for the long term, not just doing what’s expedient.  THESE are the code words of the new act/entrepreneurs.  Word of mouth trumps hype.  It’s not about the system, each band IS ITS OWN system!

Don’t swing for the fences.  We live in a niche world.  Don’t carpet bomb, hitting those not interested, rather just appeal to the core.  And the core will support you, buy your CD even if they’ve stolen the tracks, as a badge of HONOR!

Don’t make your songs for the radio.  Ignore "American Idol".  Concentrate on building your base, person to person, not programmer to gatekeeper.  The gatekeepers are IRRELEVANT!  The gate is the quality of your music and your ability to find friends who will spread the word for you, because they love you and your music, not because you pay them, but because they WANT to be involved, because they BELIEVE!