EDUCAUSE Live! December 16, 2009 1:00 p.m. ET (12:00 p.m. CT, 11:00 a.m. MT, 10:00 a.m. PT)

Music 2.0: Revenue Streams, Consumer Behavior, and Policy Issues

Special Guests

Michael Bracy
Policy Director
Future of Music Coalition

Michael Bracy, a partner in the government affairs firm Bracy Tucker Brown & Valanzano, co-founded the Future of Music Coalition and currently serves as a board member and policy director and co-owns Misra, an independent record label based in Austin, Texas. Bracy is known for his policy work in front of Congress and the FCC, including promoting media consolidation, advocating for radio regulation (including low-power FM), and ensuring public interest principles are at the heart of the legal structures that will help dictate new technological frameworks. Bracy is a recognized public advocate both for the music community and for the need for increased citizen participation in the policy process. He has testified before the Congress and the FCC and speaks often on these issues at conferences and in the media, including CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Billboard, and elsewhere. Bracy attended Georgetown University, where he and his future wife co-hosted a radio show on the campus station. He also spent seven years in Seattle working in the educational communications field specializing in producing and directing live, interactive educational and government television programming.

Kristin Thomson
Education Director
Future of Music Coalition

Kristin Thomson is a community organizer, social policy researcher, entrepreneur, and musician. After graduating with a BA in sociology from Colorado College in 1989, Thomson moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked for two years as a national action organizer for NOW, the National Organization for Women. She left NOW in 1992 to make a full-time commitment to Simple Machines, an independent record label she co-ran with Jenny Toomey. Over the label’s eight-year history, Simple Machines released over 70 records and CDs, published The Mechanic’s Guide to Putting Out Records, Cassettes, and CDs, and organized three high-profile music festivals in Washington, DC. While running the label, Thomson and Toomey also wrote, recorded, and released four highly acclaimed Tsunami records on Simple Machines and toured the United States, Canada, England, and Europe extensively. In 2001, Thomson graduated with a master’s in urban affairs and public policy from the University of Delaware. As FMC’s education director, she is responsible for project management and research and has overseen event programming, including recent Future of Music Policy Summits.

Summary

Your host, Steve Worona, will be joined by Michael Bracy, Kristin Thomson, and the topic will be "Music 2.0: Revenue Streams, Consumer Behavior, and Policy Issues."

Thanks to the Internet, there are now a mind-boggling array of tools and services that help musicians and record labels promote, distribute, and sell their music. And as this legal marketplace for music matures, consumer behavior is shifting away from ownership of music (legal or illegally acquired) toward on-demand access to music. This presentation will start with a virtual tour of a small array of licensed music services and include a discussion of the policy positions that would optimize the growth of a legitimate digital marketplace for music, one that would ensure artist compensation while also promoting legal music discovery and consumption.

Related EDUCAUSE Resources

• Legal Downloading
• Archives of past EDUCAUSE Live! seminars

Additional Resources

• Future of Music Coalition