Dave Kusek is a teacher, consultant, entrepreneur, digital music pioneer, author, speaker, mentor and Senior Partner at Digital Cowboys and New Artist Model. Dave was Vice President at Berklee College of Music in Boston for 14 years, where he created Berkleemusic.com, a hugely successful online enterprise for Berklee. Berkleemusic has since become the world’s largest music school reaching over 20,000 students in 170 countries.
Prior to that, Kusek helped develop the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), was co-inventor of the first electronic drums called “Synare”, and founded the first music software company in 1980, Passport Designs, which made it possible for musicians to record and produce their music at home with its award- winning software. His efforts, along with others, set the stage for the multi-billion dollar digital music market that exists today.
In 2005 he co-authored the best selling music business book “The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution” which predicted much of what has happened in digital music, including the iPhone, Apple’s SIRI, Spotify, streaming music and the decline of the recorded music industry.
Kusek was a faculty member at Berklee College of Music where he taught music business and a founding faculty member at Berklee Online where he taught The Future of Music and the Music Business.
Kusek has written for or been featured in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Billboard, Wired, Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post, Associated Press, Boston Business Journal, MTV, CNBC, SF Chronicle, Forbes, NBC-TV, Nightly Business Report, NPR, Financial Times, and the Guardian. Kusek has been a speaker at Midem, Music Hack Day, Digital Music Forum, NAMM, AES, IEBA, MacWorld, Comdex, SXSW, ADISQ, Digital Hollywood and a featured guest on radio and television stations around the world.
This guy is always so over the top, but he delivers the message. “What happens when the labels stop paying an advance? You know that’s gonna happen. With such limited revenue from recorded music, no one’s going to pay you a fortune to make it. There’s no incentive. Live Nation might pay you a fortune […]
By Dave Kusek I actually think the possibilities of making a living in art today are as good, or perhaps better, than ever before primarily because of the communication tools that we have online and the ability to develop relationships with the audience. I think the juice is in the do-it-yourself area of a sole-proprietor […]
Here is a rather lengthy presentation on Trent Reznor and NIN and how they represent the future of music from TechDirt’s Mike Masnick. This case study outlines the experiments and business models being explored by this forward thinking artist. http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4244922&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1 Leadership Music Digital Summit 2009 – Mike Masnick keynote address, 3/25/09 from Leadership Music Digital […]
Online journal, New Music Box just published a collections of essays on the future of music. Here are some excerpts: Recording. Performance. Distribution. Copyright. Publishing. When the most basic terms of your field are in flux, it can be hard to see to next month, let alone into the next year, or to prepare for […]
Props to Dave Allen founder of Gang of Four for these suggestions below. Well considered (and annotated). I recommend that you do what he says. “Humans are subconsciously moved by the emotion of music, it provides a link to their ancestry and to their tribes, it stirs not only positive but sometimes negative feelings linked […]
From Eliot Van Buskirk and Wired: To hear some tell it, file sharing gutted the music industry by encouraging people to gorge themselves on free, illegal content. Indeed, unless Friday’s landmark verdict against The Pirate Bay is overturned, four Swedes will spend a year in jail and owe millions of dollars to entertainment companies for […]
Trent Reznor gave this interview to Digg recently. “I can give you free music, and in my opinion, it may contribute to more people showing up to a show,” he says. “It’s not up to me to give you free music, it’s free anyway, you know for anybody that wants to admit it. Pretty much […]
There is nothing new except what has been forgotten. Things have a way of cycling around, and if they are effective, becoming novel again when more recent methods of making progress fade away. Fan financing is picking up steam as a way of raising money to support artists in the face of falling label support. […]
By Gillian Shaw, Vancouver Sun “Music CD sales have dropped by half from their peak a decade ago, but unlike the decline of vinyl records and 8-track tapes, the current shift is bringing with it a wholesale transformation in the delivery and distribution of music. The format change started with MP3 files, but digital music […]
I ran into Jim Griffin this weekend and as usual, he got me thinking about music and it’s future. We talked a little bit about Chorus, the new controversial Warner Music backed company trying to create a music utility service for colleges. I’ll tell you the guy is like a bolt of lightning and his […]
Terry McBride gave a lecture at Berklee College of Music earlier this month. Here is a synopsis from Ariel Publicity. A song is an emotion They stopped releasing music they thought would sell and began releasing music they loved and felt emotionally connected to. The old school music business views a song as a copyright. […]
My co-author and friend Gerd Leonhard was recently interviewed by Carter Smith of Rollo & Grady. Here is the interview: R&G: How did you become interested in writing about the future of music? Gerd: I was involved in various online ventures during the Internet years, in the late 90s. I was trying to reinvent the […]
I was recently interviewed by Carter Smith of Rollo & Grady on The Future of Music. R&G: What was the reason behind writing “The Future of Music?” Dave: Gerd [Leonhard; co-author] and I became friends at Berklee. He did a few projects with the music business department, which is how we got to know each […]
“In a digital world there’s no up-front cost to have infinite inventory that replicates itself on demand as a perfect digital copy and it only does that after it’s been authorized to do so, which is usually with a purchase. It has really been a shift from having infrastructure and access to distribution to just […]
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My friend Terry McBride was recently interviewed by Carter Smith of Rollo & Grady. Talk about the Future of Music, Nettwerk is doing it now. Here is the interview: R&G: What made you decide to focus your business on digital products versus physical ones in 2002? Terry: It was an intuitive thing for me. Obviously, […]
From SPIN.COM MC Lars, a self-proclaimed “post-punk laptop rapper,” may be best-known for his fast-talking rhymes about Hot Topic stores and hipster girls, but the Bay Area musician is notably literary, and therefore a fitting participant in our ongoing series of musicians talking about their favorite books. Not only has MC Lars penned songs about […]
From TED 2009 While not exactly on-topic, I think you will enjoy this insight into the creative process from Liz Gilbert – author of Eat Pray Love. She riffs on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all […]
My friend Bruce Burch teaches at UGA and recently had musician Corey Smith in to guest lecture. I have written about Corey before. Here are three clips from the class where Corey talks about his life, his music, his career choices, the influence of The Future of Music book on his business and more. Enjoy. […]
Here is a very interesting study of how Netflix took on the better financed and entrenched players of the day, and took over. This is a true digital revolution and a cash machine to boot. There is a lot to be learned here from studying this model. I invite your comments below. Netflix is a […]
(Friday Feb 6th, 2009) the digital distributor to college campuses Rukus shuttered its doors with this notice: “Unfortunately the Ruckus service will no longer be provided. Thank you,” That means lights out for a number of colleges, universities and students who had signed up for “free” ad supported music. Ruckus, first hatched in 2003, was […]
Listen to this episode of “With A Voice Like This” where I am speaking with Jim Goodrich about the future of music. It’s been four years since The Future of Music book came out and this radio interview starts with what has changed and what has stayed the same since the book was published. But […]
If you are into music as a career, you got to watch this. Narrated by Forest Whitaker, BEFORE THE MUSIC DIES is an unsettling and inspiring look at today’s popular music industry featuring interviews and performances by Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Dave Matthews, Branford Marsalis and a wide variety of others. The documentary film has […]
I have know Terry McBride for many years now and have had the privilege of working with the entire Nettwerk team on overall strategy a while ago. I am very proud to see some of what we worked on taking shape. What I love about Terry is his ability to act on ideas very quickly […]
Most of this is old news, but you got to love this line: “You can’t roll a joint on an iPod,” the singer-songwriter Shelby Lynne told The New York Times Magazine early last year. And, O.K., I suppose that’s among the iPod’s drawbacks. But it’s hard to think of an electronic device released in recent […]
T H E F U T U R E O F M U S I C In our (2005) book we wrote about the “Universal Mobile Device” June 1, 2015. Our Universal Mobile Devices (UMD) are “always-on” at 8 MB/second, and we have anytime-anywhere access to music, films, games, books, news, streaming video, online banking, […]
PARIS, (BUSINESS WIRE) — Music Ally, the leading digital music strategy and research company, and MIDEM, organizers of MidemNet, the international forum dedicated to reflection on the music business in the digital age, are delighted to announce the winners of the second Music Ally/MidemNet “New Business Showcase.” The winners presented their ideas at MidemNet’s 10th […]
Many people have asked me to explain the current status of royalty payments for online music. A thorough discussion of this past year’s agreement on mechanical royalties was produced by my friends at the Future of Music Coalition. There is also a good summary on the meeting of the Copyright Royalty Board this past fall […]
Artists will kick off about digital rights Several artists have already clashed with their labels over digital royalties – for example the Allman Brothers Band suing UMG – but expect more rumbles in 2009. Not least because artists are potentially getting stiffed when it comes to the raft of new deals being signed by labels […]
Music gaming is a huge growth area for the games industry. Started by Harmonix with Guitar Hero quickly selling 1.5 million copies. Then came the sequels, Guitar Hero II and III, and a string of successful stand-alone titles such as Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Then came Rock Band (also from Harmonix) via Electronic Arts. Launched late […]
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