FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

by Dave Tough

People Who Need People

I got pretty depressed by the projected "death of the music industry", as predicted by the NY Times in August and by cases such as Joel Tennenbaum's. However, this semester all I had to do is simply listen to my student’s amazing songwriting and recording projects and see their interactions in team environments to have some "faith" again.

I love to see songwriting majors teaching the audio engineering majors and vice versa in my production classes. Perhaps the classic music industry “division of labor” framework is a dated Nashville model. With the new music business ecomony and the DIY artist mentality it often seems one person is trying to be everything--the artist, the manager, the producer, the engineer, etc.

What about teaching our students to help one another out? I am starting to do this with a role play exercise where the songwriter becomes the client and the audio engineer has to figure out how to best achieve the client's goals. This teaches the audio engineers that there’s actually huge need for people who can help songwriters record a great demo. The next step is to ask the engineers, "how could they harness that need online for profit?"

Conversely, how can these songwriting majors help people looking for a song for a special occasion or for charity such as the Songs of Love foundation? Maybe songwriting majors should figure out the core needs of their customers…why do people need songs in their life? Why do people buy certain types of songs or need to listen to a song over and over again?

Financial guru Dave Ramsey says a dollar is a certificate of appreciation given to you by a pleased customer. Belmont University states a career is where your talents meet the world’s needs. Our students need to be taught how to find these underserved markets.

When our students are able to build successful teams that polish, market and exploit the work of songwriters and turn it into cash, they will have created a job without the help of corporate America….but wait, hold on, that sounds like a record label ;-)

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