This week, we’ve approached people whose job it is to stay on top of trends, to see the big picture, and to provide solutions that will help strengthen our community. We asked these folks for their view on the year ahead.

Jo Lenardi, a Portsmouth resident and Seacoast music fan, has spent 38 years in the music industry, focusing on marketing and selling music for labels as big as Warner Bros. and Reprise Records, and as independent as Barsuk, where her job titles include Head of Sales, Head of Radio, International Licensing, and Project Management. Jo also recently ran a marketing business, where she consulted on all facets of the music business for major and independent record labels. In other words, like all the rest of us alive today, she’s lived through seismic shifts in the music industry. Unlike us, it’s her job to know what’s going to happen next.

What do you see changing about the way we find, buy and listen to music in 2013?
In my world (independent labels), more people are discovering new music via sharing on the social media sites, streaming services, blogs, YouTube and even more traditional outlets like NPR, The New York Times and Rolling Stone.

As for purchasing music, 2012 was the first year digital sales topped physical sales. Most of the digital sales happened at iTunes, Amazon and eMusic. Music sales are down at the big-box chains that sell music, like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, but overall sales were up 3.1 percent in 2012 over 2011, which is a record high.

We have lost lots of great mom-and-pop record shops since the birth of Napster, but the shops that have survived are holding their own after going through at least 10 years of struggling to compete with digital music. The resurgence of vinyl has helped a lot of shops keep their doors open. Kids are buying and collecting vinyl again! Sadly, I think, most people do listen to music on a computer or, even worse, a phone.

Who is wielding power in the music industry this year—music makers? labels? festivals? Apple? fans? Whose power is declining?
I think all of the above are winning.

Fans win because they have more music to listen to at their fingertips than ever before.

Music makers have the power to do it themselves if they choose rather than going through the traditional way of hooking up with a record label. For some, just getting their music out to the world via their own Facebook page, website or even distributed through CD Baby or iTunes and touring locally is enough. Some, not so much. Unless they are very, very lucky and/or have lots of capital to get themselves out in front of the world, it could be a struggle to make a living off of music for a long, long time.

The major labels still rule at getting radio airplay for artists, slots on late night TV and the majority of the national press, over the independent label artists or artists that release their own music. Which is not to say independent labels haven’t had more sales success in the last few years, because they have with artists such as The Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear and Mumford and Son.

What do you think is the future of direct appeals to fans? In 2012, I am thinking of Amanda Palmer. Or, locally, Dan Blakeslee releasing “Tatnic Tales” on vinyl with the help of pre-payments. Others just ask for more direct cash donations. How much appetite do you see for this? And I guess this ties into the idea of how we pay for music. There are so many different ways to do this now.
We have an artist or two that have left our label to do it themselves. I am not sure if they have been happy with their decisions or not. They used PledgeMusic or Kickstarter.

Once again, though, I think the success of these kinds of deals are entirely based on one’s own expectations. I know that Amanda Palmer raised more than $1 million for her last music/art project. The sales of the music part of her project are somewhere in the ballpark of 35,000. I have no idea how she feels about that. It seemed like a huge project with many layers and lots and lots of work.

In order to get national or worldwide recognition you have to have a great team that you can trust in place to do all of the day-to-day heavy lifting. Sometimes that can be friends and family helping you out for free, but that will only take you so far. Sometimes (like in Amanda Palmer’s case) that includes lawyers, managers, booking agents, art directors, publicists, radio pluggers and so on. It takes lots of capital.

I don’t know where her project ended up financially, and I think her case is very unusual.  I don’t think many artists are earning a living via the pay-what-you-like method or able to do much more than record music, play a few shows and maybe manufacture their work.

Any artist coming of age today was raised in this do-it-yourself world. So who is still getting “discovered” by labels, and how? Building a loyal following in your hometown and having great songs are the most important things you can do to get someone to notice you.

My own personal experiences with how artists are “discovered” are still the traditional ways. And it’s still mostly about who you know. Lawyers, managers, booking agents, label people, writers, bloggers and some very astute radio DJs can be great “ins.”

Bands are also discovered via websites like Bandcamp and Myspace, too, but with way less frequency.

I get music sent to me digitally from all over the world a few times a week. We try to listen to everything we are sent, but honestly it is hard to keep up with all of our other responsibilities we have at small labels.

What obsesses you about the industry this year? What changes are you gearing up for?
Year after year the thing I obsess about most is educating the music listener that in order for the artists they love to continue to make music and tour the country they must support them monetarily. If they discover something on one of the streaming services or from a friend or any other way and continue to listen to it, please purchase it in some form. Buying concert tickets and T-shirts is one way to do this, but in order for the artists to continue to not only record music and design artwork and pay for packaging, manufacturing (if they are releasing physical product) and promotion, they must be paid for their art.