After all the hand shaking, speech making, and historical precedent setting that came to a massively satisfying celebratory close on Tuesday night, you would have thought the President-Elect would have had to–I don’t know–sit down for a few minutes. But it’s Friday and already the train is pulling out of the station. Maybe this is how it always works, or maybe it’s just plain necessity considering how many things are broken in our nation, but damn does it impress me.
There are a lot of people working hard on the issues of the day, and yes, the most pressing involve life and death and war and mortgages. But some of them are tied to creative cultural life, innovative technology, and fair distribution, so the folks at the Future of Music Coalition aren’t wasting any time either. If you’re just coming out of your post-election news fog now, you can get up to speed quickly here. And you’ll want to be in the loop, because artists and new media folks have needed a moment like this for a long while and we don’t won’t to miss the opportunity now.
I have considerable respect for the Future of Music Coalition, and regret that the community of writers has no such forward-thinking lobbying organization. Freelance arts journalists, for one instance, are not well represented on issues of copyright or much else by the Authors Guild, Pen, ASJA or what’s left of the Nat’l Writers Union. Believing the future of music has something to do with those who disseminate news and views of it, I’ve always wanted the FMC to enter this part of the fray. Well who knows, maybe the new administration will be alert to how the digital revolution is affecting people who’ve written for a living. One can dream.