Pandora CEO and founder Tim Westergren speaking with Jon Healey at SF Music Tech

PHOTO BY MICHAEL O'DONNELL

The Internet has been lauded as the great democratizer of this generation, and the adage was especially poignant for this specific realm of the digital world. Cellist and composer Zoë Keating, who spoke at the "Artists, Entrepreneurs & Technology," panel expressed that digital music business caused her to be optimistic and it's a more level playing field that's "better for indie artists." Keating has posted her 2011 income streams on her Tumblr to give her fans a glimpse of the financial situation her and other independent artists are grappling with.

No one seemed more interested in seeing the old music business vanquished than TuneCore founder (and former CEO) Jeff Price, who emphatically declared, "Artists never made any fucking money! What fucking world are you living in?!...The music industry is not collapsing, the traditional music industry is collapsing!" *