Musician and Future of Music Coalition co-proprietor Jenny Toomey
The good, the bad, and the extremely useful
Issue #30
The Future of Music Coalition continues its mission of providing critical tools and information for musicians
By Jeremy Ohmes
Published: December 1st, 2006 | 12:00am
No matter what type of musician you are — from the moneymaking major-label act to the unsigned, barely-scraping-by singer-songwriter — the Future of Music Coalition is sure to be your best friend through thick and thin.
A not-for-profit set up in 2000 by Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson, both ex-members of the ’90s indie outfit Tsunami and co-founders of the label Simple Machines, FMC was initially a means to get their label’s diminishing back catalog into print again through new music technologies. “We wanted to do something really simple — what we thought would be simple,” says Toomey from FMC’s base in Washington, D.C. “We wanted to identify the best technologies for indie artists to use and to share so that indie artists wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
Learning the tricks of the digital trade and how to make smart choices when it came down to digital downloads and royalties, Toomey and Thomson started to assemble a guide and Web site to share their information and music-business acumen. “Very quickly, we began to get concerned about larger issues that would have a far greater impact on indie artists than the more trivial details of which compression format they choose to use to upload music files,” Toomey says.
Six years later, these larger issues are at the forefront of the music industry and the FMC is an unbiased, educated, and artist-oriented wellspring of information and resources for the music community. Through public forums, traveling panels, musicians’ testimonies, valuable articles, diligent research, and even a musician’s hotline, the FMC tackles the good, the bad, and the ugly of the music industry. They provide an independent analysis of everything from piracy to radio payola to advances in digital-music technology and its affect on musicians to seven ways to get cheap and easy health insurance.
Did you know that in 2003 the four major record labels (Universal, Sony, EMI, and Warner Bros.) agreed for the first time to make health benefits available for all artists on their rosters? Did you know that many radio stations accept payments to play certain bands? Did you know that if you incorporate your band, not only do you receive tax breaks (i.e., writing off equipment, gas, even practice time), but you can also receive small-business health insurance through many insurance providers?
These are just the tip of the FMC information iceberg. So no matter what type of musician you are, if you’d like to know more about the particulars of your hobby, career, or starving art, visit futureofmusic.org.
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