For a lot of people, creation is their livelihood. For others, it's where their livelihood ought to be. As Richard Florida wrote in his 2004 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, "Stimulating and glamorous as it may sometimes be, creativity is in fact work...The creative ethos is built on discipline and focus, sweat and blood." All music, art, movies, writings and games were brought into being by their creators - and for these creators to have created them, there was some underlying motivation to do so. Without their creators and their motivations, creative works simply would not be. Why then, in today's Internet culture, is all creative work expected to be free? Why is it that some individuals feel it is their right to take things that do not belong to them, without receiving any permission to do so? Why, in the Internet culture of "free," are those creations we enjoy and value most the ones that we are most likely to simply take? This is not a book about copyright, nor is it a book about the evils of free. This is a book about right and wrong. This is a book about respect. This is a book about the value of creative work. This is a book for the creators. May you keep on creating.
As the Director of Web and Marketing for online sheet music retailer, Musicnotes.com, William F. Aicher (Bill Aicher) brings over a decade of experience in e-retail to leading online sheet music publisher and retailer Musicnotes.com's marketing and web teams, with a focus on design, user experience, and communication with customers through the web site, e-mail and social media. Aicher also oversees the company's free guitar tablature community, MXTabs.net.
During his tenure at Musicnotes, the Musicnotes.com web site has been ranked within the Top 500 Internet Retail Web Sites for six consecutive years, and was recently selected as one of the Hot 100 Web Sites to watch in 2009 (both by Internet Retailer magazine).
Musicnotes has recently surpassed 2 million paying customers and over 7 million paid downloads, and continues to grow at a sales rate of over 25% year-over-year.
You may have seen him present at industry events, including for a recent webcast for Adobe's Omniture, Internet Retailer Conference (IRCE), eTail, the Madison Advertising Federation, WebSideStory and others.
His most recent book, Starving the Artist: How the Internet Culture of "Free" Threatens to Exterminate the Creative Class, and What Can Be Done to Save It, released in April of 2010. In it, he takes his decade of experience in the online music business and applies it to examine the current state of creative works, their value, and why we need to preserve it.
He is also the author of the philosophical thriller, The Trouble With Being God.
He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000 where he double-majored in Journalism and Philosophy. He lives in Madison, WI with his wife, Hope, and sons, Liam and Nolan.
