I’ve been thinking a lot about my “position” on filesharing and how it affects musicians, especially small independent ones like myself. As I go to more and more conferences and events, I’m starting to realize that there’s still a lot of confusion out there. There are many, many artists who still don’t know how to get a domain name, let alone understand stuff like “blogging.” And many are still very concerned about piracy eating into their profits. So I think there’s some opportunity here for outreach programs by the EFF, Downhill Battle, IPac and Creative Commons to educate musicians about these issues.

This is just my opinion, but here goes: as independent artists, all of the energy we spend worrying about filesharing and pirates and P2P and all of that scary stuff should be channeled into winning more fans and keeping them on our side.

I don’t say it enough so I’ll say it here: I love my fans. I worship them. (I don’t really feel comfortable calling them “fans” — I like to call them “listeners.” But for now it’s easier to type “fans.”) It’s the fans that encourage me to continue writing and recording, to keep trying to get gigs, to continue pursuing some sort of music career. Fans encouraged me to put out a record, fans bought the record, and fans spread the word. Right now, fans are helping me find gigs and giving me great ideas on what to do next.

My mailing list is pretty small, only a few hundred names. But it means the world to me that handful of people are interested enough in my musical dabblings to trust me with their email address.

In the end, fans are really all I’ve got keeping this whole music thing afloat. It really is that simple. And if I don’t show proper appreciation for them, well, I just suck.

Winning fans is hard work, and fans will hold us accountable and keep us on the path. True fans will let us know when we’re hot and when we’re making mistakes.

Losing fans will do more damage to your music career than any P2P pirate. A fan should be far more valuable to us than a sale.

(That’s not to say I don’t want CD sales, of course. I’d like to think I could quit the day job at some point and do this for you full-time. But I’m realistic.)

The first thing on a musician’s mind should not be “how can I keep my music off the P2P networks?” No. The first thing on our minds should be “how do I keep my fans happy?” followed by “how do I find more fans to keep happy?”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that slapping copy-protection on our CDs and making it harder for people to enjoy our music is not keeping our fans happy. Putting copy-protection on a CD is like putting a big sticker on it that reads “hey, thanks for your money. Oh, by the way, I don’t trust you, so I’ve removed your ability to play this CD in your computer, car or iPod. Enjoy!”

It seems to me that when we have enough fans, we’ll already have the best copy-protection ever: living, breathing people who want to support us, to see us do well. If you have 1000 fans and each of them buy your newest record, you’ll have done better than 90% of records released on major labels! You’ve totally won!

It’s really hard to keep that goal in focus, especially when musicians are being bombarded with doom-and-gloom messages from the record industry. I don’t know why we listen so much. So much of the system is totally irrelevant to our musical pursuits. Radio won’t play our music. Labels won’t develop our careers. A record that sells 100,000 units is considered a failure. Tell me again why I should help save this crumbling system?

I’m more afraid of losing fans than losing control over what happens to my MP3 files. Fans give our music relevance and keep it relevant long after we’re gone. How can we lose?

Previously: Waiting For The Shoe To Drop

Next: Where I’ve Been: One Year Later