subject: Music Publishing [print this page] Of course the internet has changed the way almost every branch of business conducts its business. It has made the world available to anyone with access to a computer; within milliseconds we are bombarded with more information than we could possibly digest in a lifetime.
Given a few hours work, anyone can knock up a website; broadcast their message to world and start flogging anything to anyone who's looking. Yes, things certainly have changed. We would all like to think that any new technology has been designed for the good of all and will make our lives better in all sorts of ways. But, as has so often been the case, a great technological step forward quite often results in irritating side effects which were utterly impossible to predict.
A good example of this is music publishing. Pre-internet, if you bought something from a music publisher you were in no doubt that it must have had to pass through a whole gauntlet of editorial trials from an initial quality control barrier to final and detailed editing. The whole procedure was run by professionals, people in whom you could trust. But the rules of the online world mean that anyone can now set up as a publisher and with very little effort throw together a flashy website allowing them to look very trustworthy indeed. You could argue that this the brave new global democracy at work. 'You can be anything you want to' is the mantra X-factor generation. Great, so we're all liberated and have unlimited free will. Trouble is, we no longer know who we can trust and who is trying to stitch us up.
Just type 'school musicals' into Google and you will be flooded with a torrent of musical flotsam and jetsam. Some of it will be good, some excellent, sadly, much will offer extremely poor value. What we must always remember is that Google is blithely indifferent to all of these qualities. It has its own agenda for sorting and presenting the goods on offer. I can't imagination the good folk at Google HQ listening to clips from 'Robin Hood - the Primary School Musical' and deciding whether it offers value for money before ranking the page.
A publisher with a 'pile 'em high - sell 'em cheap' attitude can look every bit as attractive and well placed as one offering a high quality product at a reasonable price. So please don't judge a website by its cover. The internet may have brought the world to your door but it's your responsibility to decide which bits to let in.
