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Today on my twitter feed popped up the typical slew of music industry news and something really caught my eye. Hip Hop Press had a release about a new service for artists (independent and otherwise) called Nimbit.

Nimbit is a service that attaches to an artist’s facebook page and allows them sell their music, merchandise, and tout their tours directly to their fans. After registering for the service myself (just to check it out) it comes off as very easy to use and understand and offering a plethora of services crucial to fan-base development.

For instance, all within one web interface an artist can upload and make available their songs for download, sell t-shirts, get their music distributed digitally through major carriers (including iTunes and eMusic), and perhaps the most cool thing – monitor who is buying what.

That last bit may be well worth the investment for a savvy artist looking to target specific demographics, or perhaps even use the data to bring to a network or ad agency for use in synch for a particular product or TV show. For more info on the services offered and fees related to using the service you can click here.

This service is a fantastic way to expand and track a fan base and an excellent example of how artists viewing themselves as a brand – rather than some commodity looking to get picked up and sold by a major entity – can be put to work effectively.

Finally artists have a tool that allows them to independently market themselves and not rely on record label and music publisher budgets and schedules for exposure – even if they’re already signed!

In his article “Can Jazz Be Saved?” from the Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout poses a question about the potential death of the art form of Jazz. A well thought out read the article highlights the decline in both age and frequency of jazz concert-goers and album buyers, and speculates that jazz may very well be in jeopardy of struggling for funding and a listening base as it is most likely being viewed as a higher art form akin to ballet and opera.

Mr. Teachout makes some great points in the article and I’d like to expand on his thoughts. Take for instance this excerpt:

Jazz has changed greatly since the ’30s, when Louis Armstrong, one of the supreme musical geniuses of the 20th century, was also a pop star, a gravel-voiced crooner who made movies with Bing Crosby and Mae West and whose records sold by the truckload to fans who knew nothing about jazz except that Satchmo played and sang it. As late as the early ’50s, jazz was still for the most part a genuinely popular music, a utilitarian, song-based idiom to which ordinary people could dance if they felt like it. But by the ’60s, it had evolved into a challenging concert music whose complexities repelled many of the same youngsters who were falling hard for rock and soul.

Reflecting back on this time period we recognize the 1930’s and Louis Armstrong marking the beginning of jazz as a new type of music. Back then, while the music may have been labeled as jazz, it was simply the popular music of it’s day. Is Louis Armstrong appearing alongside Mae West any different than J. Lo appearing alongside Ben Affleck? Granted the talent isn’t comparable but certainly the relationship is very similar. These days we see loads of popular musicians on TV, in films, and even launching their own product lines.

Let’s also consider where Mr. Teachout marks jazz beginning to repel youngsters. Was it really that young listeners hated the sounds of jazz, or was it because they were moving on to the next big thing as the jazz listeners of the 30’s had moved from classical through dixie-land and onto jazz?

Something else to consider is the very basic principle that a lot of jazz, even today, is based on standards; songs from musicals and songwriters from the time period of jazz’s highest popularity. These standard tunes are repertoire to every jazz player alive and are played with and explored regularly, but part of jazz’s issue may be that we’re not looking for new standards. Most of the standards were considered ‘old’ in the late 60’s to rock’n’roll’s youthful listeners – how are we to expect today’s youth to bond anymore closely, if at all, with those same tunes?

Perhaps jazz will see a resurgence when more artists go the path of using some rock’n’roll songs as standards. A few artists that come to mind doing this now are Norah Jones, Kurt Elling, and The Bad Plus who draw on everyone from David Bowie to The Zombies to Nirvana.

So in the end perhaps it isn’t that jazz needs a new pitch, but the same pitch with different repertoire. A retooling of the jazz standard catalog may be just what the genre needs to stay alive, and potentially even thrive like it once did.

Recently Glenn Peoples tweeted a really interesting article in the New York Times which is an excerpt from a book called “Ripped” by Greg Kot.

The article emphasizes the drastic change in business practices in the music industry in the late 90’s and focuses on a new business model of streamlined consolidation and capturing more market share. He paints a picture of an industry so intent on making a quick buck on a single that artists are left to flounder undeveloped – never finding their true sound, or voice.

While I definitely agree that the music industry’s focus has almost nothing to do with developing artists and making artists money (and some may speculate that it never did in the first place), I think Mr. Kot potentially overlooks another element of business completely ignored by the music industry – selling music.

Sure it seems utterly fundamental: use a collection of music to generate income by selling music at a fair price, use the music to drive people to concerts, and use the concerts to sell merchandise while using artist popularity to get the music licensed in media. But let’s take a look at what the gurus in the music industry did instead.

First, they continued to collect songs and sign artists throwing cash advances at them. So far, so…average. There’s nothing new about this, but it is one way to add to your catalog. Second, price CDs (as Mr. Kot mentions) into the stratosphere so no one buys them. Third, drive up ticket prices to concerts and merchandise at those concerts, eliminating any interest by anyone but the ‘true fans.’ And third, completely ignore the burgeoning internet.

Oops. The last time I checked CEOs were supposed to be good at business, yet we found the record labels almost ignoring the internet, and then with the advent of Napster, turning against it entirely! How utterly insane.

Now we get to the good part. The music industry at that time (and still today) is over run by lawyers (I’m sorry did I say CEO’s earlier? Probably should’ve said JD’s). Because the industry is run by lawyers instead of businessmen (and heaven forbid someone who can play an instrument), the focus becomes less on how to make money with music, but instead how to make money with lawsuits.

Then Steve Jobs creates iTunes.

Now the funny part about iTunes is that the labels signed on…which is kind of silly. You’d think the labels might’ve looked at Napster and said “hey, why don’t we create something like Napster where people could download our music with permission but pay for it!” But they sued Napster instead rather than seeking them out for ideas about how to use the service to benefit everyone (because I would argue that the chances that artists saw very much money from any label-led lawsuits are very, very slim). And Steve Jobs, instead, said “gee, that Napster is a pretty great idea, why not monetize it legally?”

So while Steve Jobs has started to cash in on intellectual property (which is kind of the point of the entirety of the music industry), the labels start to tank. Why? Because their business model completely and utterly shifted. They weren’t focused on selling music, they were focused on lawsuits. They are STILL focused on lawsuits. They completely have no idea how to exploit the benefits of today’s technologies…they only know how to sue people.

Let’s put it in a real world scenario. Imagine you have a friend who writes and performs songs. And that friend manages to make a YouTube video that generates a lot of hoopla and they get a modest 5,000 hits. Not so bad, right? Now imagine if your friend said “gee that’s a lot of people listening to my music…I’d better pull it down since they’re not paying me for it.” How much money has your friend generated from their popularity? Oops.

Suppose that friend instead said “cool, I should upload two more songs and put my Twitter address and MySpace page on there which mention where and when I play live.” How much greater is their potential to make money now?

So while the labels could and should definitely start focusing more on artist development, or heck, even signing artists that ALREADY developed (don’t get me started), they also need to turn around and exploit those artists properly – something they continue to fail to do year after year all the while wondering what on EARTH they’re going to do about this pesky internet and hungrily looking for the next big lawsuit.