For how concerned most people seem about the future of music and creators in the digital age, you'd be surprised that there aren't more people talking about it. This is important. Yet, sometimes it feels like there just aren't nearly enough people writing about it. I would like to think that I have a pretty good handle on the conversations that are happening around these subjects, because I have Google Alerts mining the web for the terms recording industry, record industry, music industry, music business, music biz, major labels, and file-sharing, among others. If there's something said that includes any of those terms, it ends up in my Gmail.

Plus, I scrape Twitter and subscribe to a couple hundred blogs. Every day, my reader has about +1,000 unread posts and I scroll through these headlines, looking for news and anything that's interesting. I understand that the internet is a big place and it's entirely possible that a handful of great and insightful writers are missing from my scope. Or, that I've somehow missed an essay or two, for the reason that, my isolated community of music industry thinkers didn't pick up on it. But the piece was a big hit somewhere else. I also keep an eye on Digg and try to use StumbleUpon to unearth things that might exist outside of my reach. I monitor the conversations and links that get posted in PhoList.  I do all of this, in an attempt to find the pulse of the conversations that are happening online, and I've come to the conclusion that someone or something is missing from the digital sphere. My hunch is that you're the person who's absent from these debates.

Every day, when I open up my Google Alerts, scrape Twitter, and read my blogs, I'm hoping that I find you.  The fearless and curious writer who is not afraid to ask big questions, be wrong, and search for the pieces to the puzzle that may take you years to solve. There aren't enough of these people and I'm hoping that you'll join us. The record and music industries need your imagination, big questions, and creativity. How they are getting by without them is beyond me. These are troubling times. At others, they are the most exciting times to be in the industy.

So join us already. Who do you think is missing from the conversation?