I interviewed Andrew Dubber of the excellent New Music Strategies last week, and received some fascinating and insightful responses to questions concerning online promotion for musicians, future distribution models - and how the RIAA could dig themselves out the hole they’ve got themselves into. Here’s the first part:

What would be your advice for new artists in need of a promotional push? Pursue traditional press avenues? Or just concentrate on the online channels?

Actually, getting press/promotion for your music is the easiest bit these days. It’s just time consuming, and sometimes it’s worth bringing in a professional just because it’s such a job of work. As you say, there are so many avenues from traditional press to social networks — and a decent PR strategy should include as many of those things as you can muster. Online channels are different to offline ones — but they don’t replace them.

With the advent of new retail models like We7 promoting free downloads, is the RIAA justified in continuing to sue file-sharers when it seems possible that all music will be free within 2 - 3 years?

Music’s already free — at a ratio of about 40:1 (free downloads to purchased). We7 is just one way to extract revenue from all that value being generated. The major record industry’s never been justified in suing file sharers - and particularly not from a business perspective. It’s suicidally change-resistant, it’s the worst PR strategy an industry has ever managed to come up with - and it’s costing more than they’re recouping. It’s a legal moneypit. They may have massive resources, but they’re not limitless.

Sadly, it seems that the best way to make money in the record business these days is to become a lawyer.

As they continue to garner negative press for their sometimes tenuous lawsuits, what would your advice be to the RIAA?

Stop. Apologise. Backtrack. Refund. Spend the next five years on a concerted positive PR campaign. Give better deals to your artists. Contribute to green charities. Release the other 98% of your entire back catalogue in digital format. Give generous gifts and bribes to your customers — whatever it takes.

You’re in a hole. Stop digging. Jettison old ideas and spend the money you’ve been spending on lawyers on things that will make people feel more positively about what you do and how you do it. It will take time. It will be expensive. The alternative is irrelevance and ruin.

And while you’re at it, consult some of the smartest minds on the planet from organisations like Creative Commons and the EFF to talk about ways to make money from a more open, technology-friendly, Long Tail-ready business model. I reckon it will take around five years for this to work, and you’re going to have to start sooner or later if you want to still be in existence 10 years from now.

Think you’re too big and powerful for that to happen to? 80% of the most powerful companies on the planet listed in the Forbes 500 guide 20 years ago simply don’t exist anymore. Their fatal error? Resistance to change.

But it’s astonishing to me that an industry that has the capacity to generate so much pleasure and value in people’s lives by making music available have managed to so royally screw that up and make everyone hate them with a passion. It’s absolutely pathological.

Let’s not forget here though that I’m not talking about ‘The Music Industry’. I’m talking about the Record Industry, which is a small subset of the Music Industry. And even then, I’m only talking about a minority of organisations who command the lion’s share of the economics of that section of the industry.

The fact that they aggressively pretend to be the music industry is kind of laughable. It’s like the lion claiming to be the zoo.

Let’s not make this mistake: the music industry is NOT in any trouble. By and large, the music industries as a whole are doing just great — particularly live music, music education and the community music / social enterprise sector. Mismanagement on a global scale may attract headlines, but as long as people derive value from an engagement with and experience of music, there will be money to be made.

Click back tomorrow for part two of this interview.

Jamie T – Sheila

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