Journal: News & Comment

Live notes: Dave Dederer of Pyramid and PotUSA

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Dave Dederer works at Pyramid Communications, which is a PR agency for non-profits and plays with the Presidents of the United States of America. And he's got his guitar.

• "I'm such a huge rock star I have to carry my own mic stand."
• You are a contentious and feisty bunch.
• Communications divide between you people and artists' business model.
• Instead of win-win, we're all acting like junkies. There's no clear legitimate way to do it.
• You have an artist manager who takes 15-20%, business manager 5% or hourly, lawyer 5% or hourly, independent publicist $3000+/month, marketing $3000+/month.
• Revenue: touring (corporate gigs, fairs and festivals), master recordings (sell records, licensed, downloaded), publishing (if you write your own, mechanicals, sync, folio), performance royalties, merchandise (anything that's not the music).
• So, what's your business model?
• Ted Rheingold, dogster.com, catster.com—bring the love with advertisers and everyone.
• The PotUSA now own the rights to their first album, after licensing it to Sony.
• "How to we move our store to the web?" is what music people are asking. It's the wrong question.
• Had lunch with Chris, and realized, "I'm not in the music business anymore. I'm in an online business."
• What will help music people get it?
• The extending and growing skinny tails argument is one way to look at it.
• IODA: the problem is explaining how it works.
• Is it a matter of finding a way for fans and artists to get closer together, like EventfulDemand?
• What's the endgame? Everyone using iTunes would be great for Dave, but what do people here think?
• There is a huge bunch of money for someone
• Online music is at about 0.5% of its potential.
• But there are a lot of people who are just in it to get laid.
• The record label is incubating a whole bunch of businesses (musicians) and gambling on each of them, to varying degrees.
• How come Osama can use the web as his promotional vehicle, but a blogger can't link to a song?
• Subset was a band with PotUSA and Sir Mix-a-Lot.
• Where Dave wants to see it go is to have old material available, or current material that can be remixed with tracks available.
• All record labels have the same business model, but some are better capitalized than others.

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