Ep.04 - Mark Mulligan: Two Decades Under Napster’s Fallout

Mark Mulligan is a media and technology analyst. With real-life experiences both as a signed musician and an internet analyst right at the Internet’s boom, Mark’s professional focus is guided by the deep interconnection of music and technology. Mark founded MiDiA Research where he works with Labels and other service companies, to understand what consumers need and understand the future of the music industry. Join us for an insightful and engaging conversation about the many existing ways to advance a music career in today’s technological landscape. 

Show Notes

• Where Media and Tech come together
• Interconnection competition on your mobile device
• Signing a record deal at the verge of the Internet revolution
• The Napster bang
• Overestimating the near term impact, and underestimating the long-term impact
• It might take 10 years for Blockchain to be fully adopted
• What do people need? That is where the future is going
• The first-ever file sharing Network
• Destroying the Record Industry
• Napster and now we get what we want
• Audience in control
• A decade before the music industry fully licensed what Napster started
• Do not look at what it is, look at what it means. Look where the (football) pass is going, not who’s got the ball
• “Streaming it’s just one thing that enables everything else.”
• The idea of selling music goes back not so long ago
• A recording is just a tiny bit of what artists do
• Write your novel through music, do not expect people to 
• Record Label deal contracts: rights in the known universe and beyond…
• How to be permanently in debt
• Creative slavery
• The Agency Relationship and Environment
• Empowering the artists - time to put some leverage on the table
• Know the business, know the money flow, know who pays.
• Partnership vs. servant
• Read, talk, engage in conversations to investigate and learn about your industry
• Find a tool online to solve your needs and support your career
• People can’t buy you into a Spotify playlist, so do not waste money
• Want a head start? Listen to the people making music that works in the market
• Marketing has been democratized through social media
• Your song becomes the property of the audience, so encourage others to play around with your music
• Shared researches
• What to do with data?
• “Everybody’s got something they can learn from everybody”
• Find what you really care about and share it
• Keeping up with music 
• Being a musician is being a business
• The satisfaction of Music and its surroundings

Resources

1. Mark Mulligan website
2. CD Baby
3. TuneCore
4. Amuse
5. Amuse Fast Foward
6. Napster
7. Streaming services
8. The Recording Industry