The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online
2007 completed Author
A free e-book of digital strategy for independent musicians that was downloaded half a million times and helped shape a generation of music-web thinking.
The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online began as a series of posts on New Music Strategies in 2007 and became a free e-book: twenty short, plainly argued chapters on what the internet actually meant for independent musicians, at a moment when most of the music business was still treating it as a piracy problem.
It travelled the way its own advice said things travel online. Around half a million copies were downloaded; CD Baby sent it to every artist on its books; and Bandcamp’s founders have described it as foundational to the thinking behind their service. It remains available, now on Leanpub on a pay-what-you-want basis, as a period piece that has aged uncomfortably well. A sequel for the present disruption, 20 Things You Must Know About Music AI, is in progress.