MUSIC|MEDIA|DESIGN

I’m not sure whether Berkleemusic’s course “Online Music Marketing with Topspin” is a more troubling development in the music industry or academia, but after Topspin’s major-label-like launch I have to wonder.  The biggest problem here, aside from an academic institution partnering to pimp a (fairly vaporous, deliberately obscure) corporation’s software, is in the fine print: Students are required to use the “Topspin software” to complete the course, which winds up hitching your catalog to their revenue stream.  Apparently Topspin is the new Taxi, glomming itself to every revenue online revenue stream on the strength of a lot of promises.  Check out the requirements for the course.  Take a minute.  It’s deep:

Obviously the chart above is the lede, so I won’t bury it: a 5% cut of any successful artists’ online take is a fat share, not something to be taken lightly.  Which is the second problem: Is that 5% gross, or net?  Is it on revenues only, or do they spiff expenses through their vaunted “eco-system”?  The terms (“all transactions” and “fee”) suggest the worst, but honestly, who knows?

These requirements suggest more and deeper problems with this model.  Berklee is a legitimate university, with supposedly transferrable credits.  While one can make a strong argument that a business student might deserve credit for becoming a wizard with a proven toolbox like Excel, it’s a little harder to imagine a course in Outlook or Firefox as college-level pursuits.  For now we’ll give Berklee the benefit of the doubt, and consider this akin to ProTools certification.  That opinion is subject to change if Topspin makes it clear the “software” at the heart of their system “requires” users to “enroll” in a course like this, and submit at least some of their work to Topspin’s “fees”.  That’s something else entirely.

One of the Topspin owners is surely the ideal guide, but can his partner provide objectivity in a world where reality is whatever he says it is?  It’s a closed system where Shamal Ranasinghe literally writes all the rules.  Mike King is probably a great teacher and savvy in the business, and hopefully has spent a significant part of the past year using the system with his own work.  I wonder whether his artists and projects use it, and are they subject to the same 5% fee as students?  That would enhance the credibility of the course considerably, but it’s still more than a little unusual.  Would you buy a computer that required personal training from Bill Gates?  Anyone whose ever worked with a developer knows that what creators find intuitive can often be baffling to the rest of us.

That gets to the bottom line.  What exactly is Topspin?  I see the impressive list of investors and artists they claim use the system.  But I have real trouble imagining David Byrne, Peter Gabriel and The Beastie Boys can afford to hand over 5% of their biggest revenue stream to anyone willingly.  I suppose, if that were the total load as they seem to indicate, it wouldn’t be bad.  But again, where it’s taken (net/gross) and by whom matters.  It appears Topspin is training an army of Neuvo-Recordhippies to sign artists up for all kinds of futuristic music systems, from great to faddish.  The Berklee course is part of a music management program, and Topspin appears to be positioning itself to be a new, indispensible middleman… sort of like an iTunes working the distribution and marketing sphere instead of retail.

There are a lot of other companies, offering most of these services with a wide range of terms, and Topspin’s pitch is integration.  So it’s quite possible that integration is a bargain at 5%.  But it’s opaque and fluffy roll-out makes it hard to know.  By keeping it’s workings hidden behind a $1000 sign-up fee, it may not be clear for some time. Like Tom Sawyer’s fence (or the Emporer’s New Clothes), no one wants to step up to admit they’ve been had, or don’t understand something.  Even when it’s intentionally opaque.