April 14, 2010 at 9:53 pm, by Carl

Just this week I was in the midst of several technology conversations.  Believe it or not, my College is actually having professors debate whether laptops should be used in the classroom.  We aren’t alone, so don’t go hating on us.  🙂  Actually, its not the laptops that scare people as much as the smartphones.


Anyway, then later I was reading Fast Company‘s latest article about technology and education. This will be useful for me tomorrow when I speak at a conference for educators in Florida.  My topic is the changing face of America and the new generation we are teaching in our classrooms.


Then, this AM, my good friends John Aedo and Matthew Porter and I were discussing looming trends connected to technology.  Well, in that mix, I told them the story about teaching early Rock and Roll history to my students.  In that class, I will bring up Sgt. Peppers by the Beatles, usually seen as rock’s greatest album ever. One of the reasons it is so important is what they did with the cover art.  So, this time as I am teaching, I realize that most students simply have no idea what I am talking about because, unlike students of just 5-8 years ago, these guys don’t even buy CDs anymore.


There is no cover art—ok, iTunes has art, but many people never really look at it.


The reality, though, is that we simply are not going back.  Even though it looks increasingly like we are at the start of The Matrix world, or the always interesting (and scary?) “Singularity,” we are not going to go back over that bridge to “B.A.” –Before Apple (and iTunes, Google, Twitter, iPad, Windows, iPod, etc. . . ).


So, with that in mind, music came up in the conversation with Matthew and John.  Not surprising since Matthew was the drummer in my old band, Anodyne. Well, check out this info graphic from the Cult of Mac.

The point from the information is that an average artist will make about $0.30 from a CD sell with a normal contract, but they’ll make $0.94 cents from a CD sold on iTunes.  Of course, they’ll do a LOT better selling with CD Baby (hint, hint).


Our experience with things like commerce have changed and we aren’t going back.  Take a good read of the post by the Cult of Mac gang because they go further to show that, if you really like an artist, then the WORST thing you can do is just stream their music with services like Rhapsody, lastFM, or Spotify