How can artists earn a living in today’s changing music landscape? What’s the future of mobile music? Does the future of music licensing portend a new world order or a system collapse? These are among the many questions to be addressed during the 2011 Future of Music Policy Summit at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Oct.3-4.

FMC logo

Intended for musicians, songwriters, composers, artist advocates, managers, label and other music industry people, entertainment lawyers, policymakers and social media mavens, the Summit will explore a range of issues at the intersection of music, technology, policy and law. The Future of Music Coalition was established in 2000, in part to provide a forum for discussion of these issues. The national nonprofit education, research and advocacy organization has hosted annual policy summits, policy days and other programs in the nation’s capital and elsewhere around the U.S.

Included in the two-day Policy Summit will be four focused conversations on different aspects of money from music – including evolving artist-fan relationships, the business of behind-the-scenes working musicians, and how business models work in niche genres. Successful creative communities and music scenes across the country will be explored, as will innovative digital music services. Summit attendees also will have plenty of opportunities to network, as well as a chance to get some one-on-one advice from participating panelists and presenters. Panelists include singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Erin McKeown, SOCAN CEO Eric Baptiste, the chief product officer for Rhapsody, a product manager from YouTube, several academics, technologists and music journalists, among others. A welcome dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant in nearby Arlington, Virginia precedes the Summit.

Registration is $199. Visit www.futureofmusic.org/summit2011/ for more information.

Coalition Conducts Online Survey on How Artists Make Money from Music

As part of an ambitious, multi-method research effort to assess how musicians and composers are currently generating income from their recordings, compositions, performances and other avenues and whether/how this has changed over the past 10 years, Future of Music Coalition also is set to launch a detailed online survey for musicians and composers on Sept. 6. The organization is eager to have as many U.S.-based professional musicians and composers participate in the survey that extends through Oct. 28.

“There have been radical transformations in how music is created and distributed over the past decade,” says Kristen Thompson, co director of the coalition’s Artist Revenue Streams project and author of a widely distributed article in 2009 for the organization entitled “The 29 Streams” that documented the many ways musicians and composers can now earn money. “By participating in this survey, musicians are taking part in something much bigger than simply providing data; they are helping us take a critical first step in understanding the complex nature of being a musician or composer in the digital age,” she adds. More information about the Artist Revenue Streams project may be found online at www.futureofmusic.org/ars.