I subscribe to a number of blogs that cover “the future of music”, which means the future business of music. Not much coverage of the actual music. Its provided for fascinating reading over the last year or so. My analysis: holy shit!

The thing I find most interesting in many a blog entry is that very few ever involve a musicians viewpoint. We hear from the record labels, consumers, lawyers and big execs. Nothing from the musicians view. I often feel that like I’m a musical sweatshop worker, toiling away so others can benefit.

This tells me that musicians need to have their shit together and learn about this stuff. Otherwise, we’ll be on the wrong end of the brave new music world.

I’m also surprised when talking to other musicians who are unaware of many of the issues surrounding the future business of music. DRM, RIAA, music discovery sites, music 2.0, music social networking, gooveshark, royalty rates, LastFM, pandora, imeem, lala, project playlist, and many, many more.

So here’s a short list of a few blogs/sites that I read covering the new frontier of music business…

mediaor – great round up of music business news, related particularly to digital issues
Future of Music Coalition – National non-profit education, research and advocacy organization
Digital Music News – Very thorough…
Duke Listens – Blog of Sun Labs Paul Lamere
Future of Music – website for the book of the same name (highly recommended)
Larry Lessig Blog – Blog of Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig. Hes a lawyer and an expert in copyright (among other things)

I love talking about this stuff so send me your comments and lets start the discussion…