Discipline Global Mobile (DGM) is a small, mobile, independent music company that aspires to Intelligence.
The raison d'etre of DGM is to connect music, musician and audience in a way that supports the power of music, the integrity of the musician and the needs of the audience.
How can one small, underfinanced and overworked company have any positive effect in a world driven by powerful, wealthy interests that escape easy accountability? Three possible answers:
- Our concern is to be who we are, and to do what is in front of us.
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Simply being who we are is itself a qualitative action; and qualitative action is ungovernable by number.
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Whether DGM succeeds in the world is out of our hands. If we provide what is necessary, useful or popular, we are a success.
A (Very) Brief History of DGM
DGM began operating in 1992 as a response to the dishonest and exploitative practices of the EG Group of Companies. The EG Group collapsed in 1991, undermined by the EG partners' ambitious interests in property and the Lloyds' insurance market. During 1988-91 EG diverted artist income from the EG Music Group by "loans" to another of the partners' companies, Athol & Co. This led, in turn, to the sale of phonographic and publishing copyrights controlled by EG. The sale was contested, with resulting litigation ongoing during 1991-97 between EG, Virgin Records, BMG Music and myself. At the end of the litigation, the EG partners were no longer partners and EG, as a respected player in the music industry, mostly a bad memory to those whose interests EG had claimed to represent.
This was only the beginning of DGM.
The new DGM site is based on the insights of David Singleton and which led to the creation of BootlegTV (1999-2001), an online music distribution company based in Seattle. BTV closed during the Great Downturn but, even by then, the interests of VCs had already prejudiced the company's operation and direction. This parallels our experience within the music industry: the commercial interests of record companies, and other music suppliers, have an almost wholly negative effect on how music is served to open ears and hungry hearts.
More recently, the accounting practices of Virgin and BMG have not, in the licensing arrangements that followed litigation, been ideal. A current item of interest (March 2005) is that Virgin US has lost the entire King Crimson catalogue of master tapes. To misplace the masters of a large and established catalogue requires either talent or much practice, and these are not the only two possible explanations.
DGM's first stage was as a music production company, and a record company to the extent that it licensed records;
the second stage, as a small, mobile & independent record company;
the third stage, presenting the vision of BootlegTV;
the fourth stage, managing King Crimson recordings while repositioning and recalibrating itself.
The launch of DGM's new web site is the beginning of the fifth stage. DGM begins again, again.
Tuesday 5th. April, 2005;
DGM HQ, Wiltshire, England.