One step inside Universite de Quebec a Montreal's Design Building, and you know it's not, say, a chemistry building. Large glass doors open into a lobby, which wraps around a majestic staircase. Stark white pipes crisscross below the ceiling and the walls are a uniform, yet bold colour of grey. In the actual space where the panels are held, speakers are set up around the room and are blaring the Mutek 2003 CD before the sessions.

Today's topic is "(Re)Defining Distribution: Roles and Challenges in a Changing Market". We’re trying to tackle the reasons behind the decline in music sales and whether distributors can do anything to reverse the trends. I feel as though there’s an unspoken reasoning, namely the internet and "illegal" file sharing, that's on people's lips but not verbalized. It's probably a combination of trying to keep the conversation rooted in distribution issues, and knowing there's another panel discussion tomorrow tackling the internet issue (which I plan on attending).

There's no need to reinvent the wheel. Michael Bull (Caroline) thinks that cross-pollination of ideas and styles is key. For instance, he believes that electronic musicians can learn a lot from the punk scene by touring like them, i.e. get on the road, do everything on the cheap, all while getting your name out and effectively distributing and publicizing yourself. Sigy Zahn (Neuton) also believes that genre mixing is key and blames record labels for being ignorant of basic business procedures.

When it comes to spending, many labels and distributors think that throwing money at a record is a good strategy, which Paul Raymer (Fusion III) and Jeorg Heidemann (Universal Germany) dismiss as patently false. They explain that not only can distributors completely miss the boat and push a record in the wrong market, but also a record can be overpushed and not recoup in proportion to the expenditure. That is, suppose you were to spend 'x' dollars pushing a record, and it sold 'y' copies. Distributors who had falsely read their intended markets could then assume that if '2x' dollars were spent pushing the record, then you were sure to sell '2y' copies or even more. If they went through with the extra push, and the record sold 1.3'y' instead, it may be viewed as a failure (relatively speaking) given the expenditure. I gained tremendous respect for people who need to deal with these multivariable problems each and every day.

I detected a feeling of superiority from the panel toward labels, basically echoing Sigy's comments that labels are prone to screwing up while the distributors do an amazing amount of multitasking. Of course they're a bit biased toward themselves, as anyone would be, but I'm strongly inclined to agree with their viewpoints. Not only must distributors have an intimate knowledge of the actual music, but also it’s essential that they not become sloppy with their business. Labels can, and do get by without the latter (and some might argue they can also survive without the former) but there's just no way a distribution company could possibly stay afloat through ignorance because they're constantly spending money weeks or months before they see any money themselves. You just can’t spend money on publicity, buying from labels, shipping to sellers, and stay afloat while waiting weeks or months for payment from the sellers unless you're running an extremely tight ship in all aspects of business.

Things get more heated when the discussion turns to pricing issues, and dissent from the audience follows. Paul flatly states that pricing is not an issue, and even claims that prices aren't high enough. He believes that it all comes down to simple supply and demand, that is, if there's a record that people really want and it's distributed properly, then they'll pay good money for it. From the floor, someone asks why the price of the music is going up when the cost of making it (due to the proliferation of bedroom producers and labels) is going down. He responds by saying that this logic is misleading and reminds everyone that no matter how the music is recorded, there's still a lot of middle men between the performer and the consumer, all of whom need to get paid.

I agree that the path from artist to consumer is far more complex than most people (certainly not distributors) realize. However, don't rock labels rely on the same middlemen? Korn's label wouldn't spend a cool couple of million to make the record plus a few videos without a plan to recoup somehow, would they? If a record can be made for ten grand instead of a thousand grand, you've got to win somewhere on the food chain, don't you?

But regardless, today's discussion rarely strayed from the need for distributors (or distributors and labels together) to do better business. There wasn't much about the need to do different kinds of business. Everyone would prefer to function as normal and ensure that everybody gets paid according to existing practices. A drastic shift in the very nature of distribution, such as legal or "illegal" downloading, wasn't really considered. There is the notion of mp3's not having much effect on electronic music sales because they cater to a "fringe" market. Only Jon Berry (Force Inc., and the moderator for the panel) spoke up and claimed he strongly disagreed with this viewpoint. The irony is that significant shifts in the music business have indeed been taking place over the last few years, and most people don’t realize it.

I have written previously concerning the loss of the CD's "mystique" due to the recent commonality of CD burning technology. This is a potential cause of the decline in music sales, but it is not the symptom. Large chains probably don't think about it along those lines, but they do know that these causes, whatever they are, are hurting their bottom line. They are quite good at figuring out how to improve their bottom line, and they have done so by switching their attention to DVD sales. This aspect of their business was recognized in today's discussion, but its significance was not emphasized. Think about it: HMV has an eighty year history of selling MUSIC, and they've now turned over half their stores' floor space to the sale of MOVIES, and they've accomplished this change in only a few short years. How much more drastic can you get than turning over your inventory to focus on an entirely different product?

Another huge shift has already taken place in the electronic music community itself. Everybody merely takes it for granted, but its importance cannot be overstated. Essentially, it is widely understood that a full-time job is necessary to sustain most careers in these genres of music. In even simpler terms -- they understand that you (often) can't make a living solely from a career in electronic music. Getting signed to a major label and spending a life indulging in a life of debauchery is the ideal for 99.9% of rock bands. It's the accepted path to becoming a big star in the genre. I don’t believe such romanticized notions exist in (most) electronic music genres. The expectation is they'll never make enough to completely sustain themselves through musical endeavours. Multitasking via a combination of producing, remixing, DJ'ing, and running a record label is practically universal. It’s not uncommon in the hip-hop world, but both hip-hop and electronic music operate a world apart from the rock business. How many rock bands also run a record label and hold down a full-time career/day job? How many rock producers work as DJ's on occasion?

For thousands of years of history, listening to music meant going someplace and hearing it played live. The era of recorded music, and the era of making a living solely through recorded music and never playing live, covers a drastically shorter time span. Perhaps that era is coming to an end. Perhaps recordings will become worthless (i.e. not profitable) and live performance will reassume primary importance. 6:59.

Station looks exactly the same as it did last night, even though it's only five in the afternoon. Dark red lights and no sun. I miss SAT. I miss the lounge in front when you walked in, the sun shining in the large plate windows, the passersby peering inside, curious about the strange noises from within. That happy hour vibe is gone. But I keep a book handy anyhow.

While watching Samiland from a comfortable chair in the balcony, I realize the drawback of attending a festival assembled for my benefit. There’s a persistent nagging feeling that there’s nothing I'm hearing that I haven’t heard before. In this case, it's lush chords, sparse beats, clicks. Check, check, check. They earn a big gold star for sampling Mutek itself with their final track. It's the opening chords of Closer Musik's 2001 performance of "One, Two, Three, No Gravity" (complete with crowd noise) laid over a basic hip-hop backbeat. It's their least complex track and is also their most beautiful.

Then I get what's been missing from the "experimental" performances thus far -- a little noise in the system. Diane Labrosse and Aime Dontigny project sampled clanging and banging and knocking over the system, subjecting us all to their obvious love of analog sounds. It's a refreshing change in this overtly digital festival. It likely wouldn’t shock anyone unfamiliar with electroacoustic or noise music (Labrosse and Dontigny's usual MO's, respectively), but the same cannot be said for morceaux_de_machines, who dispense completely with politeness and head straight for the death noise jugular a la Merzbow or Brighter Death Now. While processing voices and other industrial sounds, they create a blazing array of chaos. They keep rubbing a thin metal strip to produce some of these not-of-this-world sounds. Later, I find out how this works -- the sound is moisture-dependent. You can feed it water by dipping it in a glass or sprinkling liquid on its surface. It can even detect the slight changes in moisture content just by waving it around in the open air. Here's my open question for rock purists. Why? Why stick to guitars when you could also be playing cool shit like this?

And finally, an hour after I feared I'd heard everything before, Coin Gutter reassure me that it's not the case. They are completely unpredictable -- serene one moment, crashing noise the next. Things will be floating along nicely and then I'll lose focus for a couple of minutes and notice there's a mountain of noise slapping me to attention. Beauty, roughness, serenity, nastiness -- No Type covered all of it effectively, but only Coin Gutter covered all of it at once. 9:14.

At first, I'm not taken with Mylena Bergeron’s churning and humming. But the liberal use of processed voices and the other ghostly sounds prove to be a grower. The duo Reconnaissance seem to pick up where Kontakt der Junglinge left off last night, with tense, high-pitched tones of the barely audible variety. The glacial progress last night was more cold and uninviting, but this stuff is more complex, with more twitching to keep you conscious, plus the sweeping lines and vibrating grids on the video screen help sustain alertness. Then, after a couple of exercises in sound/visual synchronization by 242 Pilots, it launches into their improvised visual accompaniment with Tim Hecker. He's dead-on awesome, combining noise and splendour while holding the room in his own personal trance. Actually, the whole evening's been like that, resulting in three of the fastest hours I've ever spent watching music.

The M-clock stops for ten minutes while I walk to Metropolis, and while walking I prepare for the transition to a room of Coil fans. As expected, the floor of the venue is black hell. All the seats in the balcony are the same, it's a sheet of black hell draped over stadium seating. In the midst of all this, Coil come on stage wearing white furry jumpsuits. They begin to play, although there's not much distinguishing them from all the electroacoustic stuff I've been hearing all day. Of course, Coil were years ahead of their time and influenced countless other bands. They were ahead in real time, but lagged in festival scheduling time. Obviously they’re deserving of the reverence in the air.

Philipp Quehenberger has the unenviable task of following this. For the first few minutes, people are still buzzing and milling about in front of the stage, seemingly oblivious that the poor guy is even playing. The written programme accentuates his youth -- born in 1977 along with the worldwide punk explosion -- so he's young enough to have idolized Chemical Brothers and therefore those big beats populate his set. He also goes psycho on a keyboard, playing manic lines akin to a farfisa on amphetamines. It's brash, tough, and carries the added bonus of clearing out the diehard Coil fans in time for those who want the dance floor to themselves to party with T. Raumschmiere. He’s a scruffy, lanky, tattooed freak who wouldn’t look out of place sitting on a street corner asking for change accompanied by a dog and a leather jacket. He does inhumane things to a defenseless MIDI keyboard, walks all over his table, drops chunky beat after chunky beat and gets the now quarter-full venue frenzied up nice and good. And plays the first encore of the week. 15:14.