Million Download Campaign: Open Source Music

I got up this morning and spent some time writing about the idea of “Open Source Culture” which I’m going to be presenting at a few different talks over the course of the next few weeks.  Then I show up at the studio and lo-and-behold one of the informants for today’s episode of The Stream is referencing open source software in an argument against biopiracy and the application of proprietary patents to food crops.

I had already decided I wanted to blog today about the open source principles underpinning the Million Download Campaign, but this pretty much sealed it.  Here then is an excerpt from a larger upcoming piece on Open Source Culture:

“…The power of open source software is it enables developers to collaboratively accomplish, not only something that they could not possibly do individually, but in some cases, things that couldn’t be accomplished even by the most successful software businesses.  As I worked on my music business using open source tools I couldn’t help but wonder how open source principles might apply to music.

What I would discover in my time in grad school, is that open source principles were already at work in the music business, just not in the “mainstream” aspect of it.  And the interesting thing was it wasn’t so much in the development process that you saw these principles at play, but rather in the distribution and promotion processes, where one would find alternate models for dissemination of music outside the traditional fee-for-service model.  The traditional barriers to entry in the world of music have been the high costs of Production, Distribution & Promotion.  The advance of technology has radically reduced the first two, but arguably raised the latter as the glut of music available to us has grown into an unmanageable wall of potential sound.  The challenge for musicians today is not how to record or distribute their music, but rather how to make sure someone eventually hears it.

It’s in that area of promotion that I began to see the applicability of the open source model.  What if rather than hiring a PR company or a radio promoter or other business, a company would rather “open source” the idea of promotion?”

I don’t know that Open Source music will necessarily supplant the music industry as it currently exists.  Rather, I think these concepts will ultimately expand and help to redefine what we think the music industry “is.”  After giving away a million downloads, we’ll be in a pretty good position to add some unique perspective to that conversation.  Ultimately this is the beginning of something potentially much much bigger.  Let’s make some open source waves together…DOWNLOAD & SHARE!

Derrick N. Ashong
DNA 

Wanna Be Down? Download. AFropolitan, the album. Use your voice to change the world of music and use music to change the world. Join the Million Download Campaign and make history. www.derrickashong.com