TeleMedia Strategy
The Bleeding Edge of Disruption

In the old days (all of 10 years ago), aspiring professional musicians followed a well-established formula.  To become a working musician, it made sense to go to a music school at the college level, even if the student did not plan on completing the course work required to get the accompanying degree.  Underlying this formula was a key assumption.  Simply put, the value proposition was that students pursuing this path, on average, progressed much more rapidly in terms of skill and career than their counterparts who tried to use other methods of learning.

Why were students who participated in lessons and college able to make greater strides than the do-it-yourself and school-of-hard-knocks folks?  It seems there were several factors: the benefits of a music degree, the ability to observe and play with guest artists, proximity to rare information, immersion and exposure to broader musical influences, networking among future leaders, direct feedback from peers and experts in a “safe environment”, an environment that forces the student to reach the professional standard or move on.  While it is clear that each of these factors is changing with the Internet and Web 2.0, it is not yet clear how music schools will compete with or incorporate these capabilities as a means of staying relevant and improving the learning experience.

Benefits of a Music Degree?

Music degrees (the piece of paper) have almost always been a credential needed for teaching other musicians, people who want to be in the symphony orchestra, and little else.  For musicians who hoped to perform, but wanted insurance that they could work in the music field, a degree was a good idea.  While this hasn’t changed very much, it is interesting to note that the requirements for a teacher’s pedigree are increasing at the high school, community college, and university level.  These days, the high school level teaching frequently requires a Music Education degree (specialization), while the community colleges are looking for Master’s degrees as a minimum.  For people with a Performance or Composition degree, they may find themselves limited to teaching lessons these days.  While the use of a music degree has not changed much, the demand for learning music from professionals with degrees may be changing in a significant way. 

Guest Artists and Rare Information

Music students at the college level are able to observe and interact with visiting lecturers and clinicians on a regular basis.  This access to the best musicians in the world used to be unique to the university music student.  Think about it.  You might be able to pay $75 or more just to see a top performer like Yo-Yo Ma at a local performance playing prepared, rehearsed pieces in any city in the US.  For students at a performing arts college, they would likely get to participate in a lecture, some clinics, and potentially either take a lesson, or perform with the artist.  Here is where the traditional advantage was always in favor of the more in-depth experience available at the music college.  Given state budgets and other economic pressures, schools are struggling to keep up the pace of guest artists that were seen in the past, even though tuitions are soaring.

In the Internet Age, students can go to YouTube and search the string “Yo-Yo Ma” for free.  At the time of writing, over 30,000 results came up, with over 100 of these clips being the informative, lecture/clinic style that is typical at a college.  Many thousands of the results in YouTube may be poor quality and some may not be Yo-Yo Ma at all.  The odds are, however, that in this large aggregate, there are likely some tremendously powerful, inspirational, and educational clips.  All of these are free and require no curriculum or class attendance or proximity to a top music college.  Similarly, typing in any instrument type (aka “drum”) in a video web site will yield tens of thousands of video clips, many of which are educational in nature.  Some of these are on par with the quality of lessons one can get from a private teacher or college professor.  While this availability of instructional content most certainly effects the private lesson teachers the most, it’s clear that high quality “how to” information is no longer exclusive to the top teachers and universities.  It’s important to note that, at present, the viewer of YouTube content can’t interact in a meaningful way with the subject of the YouTube video in any reliable or meaningful way

Similarly, music schools typically have large libraries of rare recordings.  Many out of print and limited release works were only available in these great libraries and typically, non-students are not allowed to explore them.  Here again, the Internet is the great leveler of playing fields.  Truly important works of all styles are finding their way onto Internet Radio stations, online video sites, and so on, while iTunes, Amazon, and other retailers are putting more of the re-issues into the digital formats of today.  With limitless “shelf-space”, all of these venues are expanding to include the known universe of recordings.  The same concept applies to rare books, compositions, scores, and so forth.  It’s hard to imagine ever needing to go to a physical library. 

Immersion and Exposure to Broader Musical Influences

Music school provides a total immersion in music that is a continuing differentiator.  It is hard to overstate the value of being in classes in the morning, rehearsals and practice in the afternoon, with jam sessions or gigs in the evening.  Campuses offer students a space to rehearse and the ability to set up rehearsals or jam sessions with ease.  Similarly, most music schools have a symbiotic relationship with a local music scene, which allows the more aggressive or higher quality students to perform in a public setting.  This type of ecosystem does not yet exist in the Internet world.  While students can immerse themselves in self-study, it’s not so easy to have daily playing and rehearsal opportunities in their local scene with high quality musicians.  It will be interesting to see if the Internet can expand into this space over time.  For the near term, it appears that the immersion in the arts is still most easily achieved on campus. 

Similarly, guest artists, teachers, and other students are constantly sharing names and reference points for the budding musician to “check out”.  A broad musical exposure is critical to any accomplished musician.  After all, the whole notion of studying music is about getting a larger toolset than the three chord rock bands out there.  The cocoon of a Music College inundates students with the urgency and thought leadership about what content to explore.  One of the main off-hours activities at music schools is “the hang”, where aspiring musicians share their favorite music and recent finds.  This sharing is a real shortcut for students to find out new styles, artists, and genres that they have not previously heard.   At this moment, the Internet is not as effective at leading enthusiasts to new and relevant music, compared to a network of knowledgeable and active listeners to recommend, share, and encourage exposure to important music.  Meanwhile the Internet world is making tremendous strides in this direction.  iTunes Genius, Pandora Internet Radio, and many other applications have (human and machine) algorithms to take input on music that you like and can find other music that has common elements.  This evolution from the basic Amazon recommendations of “other people who bought what you bought also bought ___” has the potential to provide a free and market-based contextualization of all the music that a student has not yet heard. 

Networking

Students at a music school find themselves surrounded by future employees and employers.  Virtually all musical work in the professional world is by recommendation and referral.  As such, the music campus maintains a current advantage, as the networks from the top music schools are one of the most powerful ways to get connected to local, national, and international scenes.  As an example, the University of North Texas’s Music program produces some of the finest musicians in the world.  Assuming a student played in the right groups and made the right connections at UNT, there is a ready-made community of alumni in every city in the world that can help a relocating musician find immediate work of some kind.  Without a connection to an international network, it can be much more time-consuming to get connected in a new community.  In 2009, it seems that Facebook, YouTube, and other informative/interactive web sites may have the capability to connect musicians who have otherwise never met; however, it does not appear that these sites can yet bridge the trust gap as strongly as the university-based relationships.  Over time, these types of social networking and connective web sites may provide a real substitute for the built-in networks associated with a music school.  At present, the networking advantage remains with the universities.  As existing alumni figure out how to use these tools, it will be interesting to see if the music college networks become even more powerful when matched with the Web 2.0 tools.

Feedback

The most relevant and continuing differentiator for university music programs is feedback.  To say it plainly, candid and detailed feedback is the main difference between the experience of aspiring performers who attend music school and those who do not.  The constant critique students get in auditions, lessons, performances and rehearsals help accelerate learning and toughen the performer in a way that is needed in the professional world.  Performers in any field get a lot of critique, so a thick skin is needed.  In the online world, there is no real parallel for all of this.  In the physical world, the only critique you get sometimes is the phone not ringing or not getting a second performance with a group.  At music school, the culture is to give and receive performance evaluations constantly.  While we can imagine interactive and high quality music lessons online in the near term, it’s pretty hard to imagine getting the same feedback for groups of musicians.  eSessions.com and other software enable web-based, multi-site musical collaboration (both time-shifted and in real time) - these types of over-the-net venues are mostly suited for replacement of the physical recording studio.  YouTube and other video sites are about the closest you can get to individual and group feedback and that process is very random.  While it feels good to get some “thumbs up” feedback from novices, professional grade music students mostly benefit from well thought-out and balanced feedback that is only available at universities.   

The Professional Standard

In the 1970’s, there was a vibrant recording scene in most major cities.  Local businesses needed jingles, while movie studios, TV shows, and so forth needed large numbers of studio musicians to compliment their messages.  Record labels existed at the local, regional, and national level, so the competition to get a record deal kept a steady stream of demo work available, which often used local “hired guns” to fill in critical skills or resource gaps.  We all know that this changed drastically in the 1980s when the synthesizer, drum machine, and later, affordable home studio and editing equipment became widely available.  For the last two decades at least, the market for “professional grade” performers has shrunk dramatically.  While music colleges continue to set the standard for what is the acceptable professional quality, the market for skills such as sight reading, interpretation for standard work, and so forth is decreasing. 

Implications

Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital, and others have pretty much proven that the youth of today are learning differently.  Students are downloading one example single for 99 cents instead of acquiring a vintage album in its entirety, viewing videos of performances for free, and reading artist biographies on Wikipedia.  I hope some researchers are actively exploring the pedagogical impacts of these changes.  What’s definitely true is that the “cost of learning” has changed, in that one no longer has to attend a great school to acquire the right information and content, or get exposed to interesting and skill-enhancing new music.  With an Internet connection and time, many of the core drivers for a music degree can be obtained - for free, without moving, and without investing years of your life in a degree plan.  What’s more, you can watch and listen to as many great performances and lectures as there are hours in the day, with no library hours and without waiting for that next guest lecturer to show up. 

The key question for universities is whether or not students can find all the right improvement ideas and information online.  The big value proposition for schooling has been - "you learn faster by spending money/time here".  Is that still true?  Given the current advantages of schools for networking and feedback, can that be translated into web-based alternatives?  If so, what can schools do?  Will the only music students in 10 years be the population of musicians who hope to teach or play classical music?  Can people learn without a guide?  Is access to content enough?

By Earl "Woody"

Woody Berner is an unconventional thinker with unique experience in music.  Woody has an undergraduate degree in Jazz Performance from the University of North Texas, where he played with the world-famous One O’clock Lab Band.  Noteworthy appearances include performances with the Supremes, Drifters, Platters, “Big Joe” Williams (Count Basie Orchestra), Norah Jones, Lou Marini (Blues Brothers),  and Tom “Bones” Malone (David Letterman Band and Blues Brothers), and the Disney All-American College Show Band.  Woody has appeared on over 25 recordings.  Mr. Berner is an avid listener and continues to perform regularly.

Woody also happens to be a telecommunications consultant with subject matter expertise in Operations, IT, and Business and Operational Support Systems (B/OSS).  Mr. Berner has spent the last 9 years in the telecom industry, most recently as a Consulting Manager with Amdocs Consulting.  At Amdocs, Woody heads up the Customer Centric Service Assurance and Tiered Billing practices.  Prior to his role at Amdocs, Woody worked directly for one of the major telecom service providers in the US and in the telecom supplier industry.  Woody obtained an MBA from the University of Texas and remains an active alumnus and Longhorn fan.  Woody can be reached at wberner@gmail.com

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