After over 25 years as a member of the indie record label association and over those 25 years I was on the board for twelve years, this week I left. I have since left the publishing association, the manager association, and some other networks. Why? They are too amateurish.

At the last meeting on the record association, they actually just discussed if it was right to have non-indie distributors as an indie company. I guess just to make it harder to be independent you can have that discussion. At the same time, the business shows more and more that owning a master won’t really make you that much money. The value of master’s will probably just dive hard the next year when AI has become as good as it has. That probably would have been a good discussion at this meeting, still, it’s mainly old white dudes who still give out nice rock music and remember the good old days. I guess discussing the future was not interesting enough.

I guess the future of the music industry will be divided between marketing and networking. Back in time, a master was worth something, you had to invest to get it done. Today you can do it totally for free and with a press of a button. On the publishing side, well AI-produced material can’t be copyrighted for the moment. And how we are going to know what is AI produced I really don’t know.

Instead, the big problem for artists is to get through the noise. Now you are not only up against other artists that over the years were mainly locals now it’s international. Now you are up against anybody who can do a song with AI. There will be such a noise that it will be hard to find anything. In the end, music will be removed to be like a soundtrack to our daily life. For example, hey Siri creates a kitchen song for me when I cook my dinner.

The level in many of the associations I have been into has now become gathering points for people who have lost their careers and now should be giving out music again or it is the artist giving out themselves. In the end, the discussions become so basic that I have no desire to be in the group. Most of the problems they bring up I have a solution for but of course, they don’t want that they still what the famous helicopter coming by and just lifting them up and becoming as famous as Taylor Swift.

No, I need an association where I can get inspired. Having conversations with people in the forefront. People with ideas and new projects that are going somewhere. Sitting and discussing if digital distribution is indie or not is irrelevant. The new industry is just dawning and staying in the old alignment can be really dangerous. When we are doing the old stuff, a whole new generation is just out there creating tomorrow’s stars. No, I don’t think music will die. It will be consumed, experienced, and marked in a totally different way. I want to be hanging with the people that will be part of that new world.