By Jimi Zimmardi

I thought about all of the events surrounding the invention of the Compact Disc in the 80’s and how it has changed our lives forever as musicians. All of the Napster style file sharing is still going on with our music. It has changed our lives significantly in a wide variety of ways including how we get our music, how we listen to our music and how we, as musicians, market our music. I could have never thought that we would live in a society that involved ITunes, You Tube, Amazon, Ebay and the internet as a whole. The CD Digital format combined with the Original Napster (rhymes with Original Gangstah)

Has had a huge impact on all of us. The slow erosion of our industry that has evolved over the last two decades is reminiscent of what an Alzheimer patient goes through.

Many people who have had relatives deal with Alzheimer’s Disease call it “The Long Goodbye”. I just hope that things look up for all of us and that we’re not in the middle of an epic downslide in our industry.

With all of the record company layoffs, inconsistency of A&R reps due to the high turnover, labels crumbling and other peripheral matters to make you sick to your stomach, it leaves you scratching your head sometimes. Dream Works Music Division no longer exists because Bill Gates, a very smart financial genius, saw a tremendous bleeding of lost revenue. So where does that leave our industry when the leader of Microsoft sees no potential for survival for his label? There was no potential for profit,

so he made the correct financial decision. Disappointing? Absolutely, because it affects ALL of us.

Now a $15 CD that a consumer buys in an average CD retailer can not be the record label’s sole income to survive. We all know that. It leaves every performer to tour as a necessity to make their living for them and their label. The revenue in touring can stream in from ticket and merchandizing sales leaving touring as a necessary, but lucrative thing to do for all of us. For my colleagues that are Voice Instructors, we can deal with that because with long tours comes more voice clientele.

As we start each year, I think about all this stuff because I never dreamed that things would be like this as I busted my butt perfecting my craft the last 3 decades. All of my voice students at this time of year examine their progress of how their year was and we do year-end evaluations and set up personal and band/group goals for the New Year.

Now the questions I want you all to ask yourself are: 1) Is it possible to make any of these financial and economic issues surrounding our industry part of our own New Year’s resolutions, goals and focuses? Of course we always look to what we can do for ourselves when we set our goals because we all need to survive and the pay the bills. But let’s bridge the second question with the first for a moment. The second question is in two parts: 2) What can we all do to get the message out to discourage downloading for all ages to protect our industry? And can we work at all levels within our industry and our government to try to save our industry and our futures?

It saddens me in many ways about how our industry is floundering economically and how most of us have had to shift gears in our careers to make a living. I am doing less production and more vocal development these days. I yearn for more quality artists. I wonder if many quality artists out there are giving up because of a potentially dismal future career in music.

So I am urging all of you who love our industry like me to take care of yourself, but also think about all of the small things that you can do to help our industry. Over the downloading era these past years, I always have told everyone that tells me that they download a CD for free to consider how we are not supporting the industry and the artist by doing that “innocent” little task. It almost sounds like I’m telling a smoker to put the cigarette out which makes me look a whiny little pain in the ass, but the word must be spread. (By the way I used to smoke, so I would never tell a smoker that).

So as you make those New Year’s resolutions and goals, I urge you to think about MANY small things that you can do to help our industry. And if there can a big thing in there, that could be amazing too!

I am considering collaborating with many industry and celebrity people about forming a “Save our Music” type campaign if enough powerful and influential people are involved and we can get funding. If any of you out there want to get involved, feel free to Email me at jazprod@aol.com. Happy New Year!