The music business has been overrun recently by get-rich-quick dot.com businesses looking to profit from the high perceived value and easy digital transferability of music. For some, music is a limitless source of cheap content, just waiting to be exploited. Many of these companies are run by people with little or no experience of the music business, and still less understanding of why people buy music.

With so much emphasis on the digital recording and distribution of music, it's easy to forget that the essence of music is in giving and listening to a performance. When we treat music as an industrial commodity, and young people as merely consumers, we overlook the joy of participating in music... of learning to play an instrument, of joining a band or an orchestra, and playing gigs.

Whatever the means of delivery, whatever the technological and corporate structures, music will always be about groups of talented individual performers communicating emotionally with individual fans. As a musician, I'm less concerned with how music can sustain the growth of online commerce than with what the internet can do to solve musicians' everyday problems. The new technology has thrown up new ways of creating and consuming music.

As the basic unit of musical creation shifts back from the album to the single, relationships between musicians are becoming more fluid, especially in the dance arena. Musicians increasingly work on short projects of one or two tracks, rather than planning multi-album careers based on a fixed band of players. In this fast-moving environment, many artists will have to resume control over the legal and business aspects of their work... the smaller scale of projects will no longer justify the detailed and expensive input of lawyers and accountants.

The huge potential of the internet will be realised only as musicians and musical entrepreneurs gain control of the new technology for their own benefit, rather than a few city investors chasing a quick flotation. Of course, it's already happening, but at a grassroots level, so it generates fewer headlines than high-profile corporate activity.

The do-it-yourself spirit reminds me of the explosion of punk and new wave in the late 70s... it's a very exciting world to be in. My chief concern is to foster this spirit among young people. In January 1999, I proposed an initiative to the Music Industry Forum which I called Communities In Tune. Its aim was to bring community centres to the internet generation.

To provide a national network of local centres, which young people could participate in running, where they could have internet access and learn, rehearse and perform music in the heart of their local community. The emphasis was on small-scale self-help projects in which all sectors and age-groups of the community would have a stake. Its first phase would be the creation of an online information service for those interested in running centres. This would offer advice on all aspects of management, including sources of local, national and European funding.

This is not a plea for more government money. The issue is not so much about funding as access to funding. Public funds must be spent more wisely. Naive councils, encouraged by greedy consultants, have wasted millions constructing lavish venues for which there is no local demand. Obviously, you can't claim funds if you don't know they're available. Recent research commissioned by Youth Music confirms that more information and more local facilities are the two biggest requirements for attracting young people to participate in making music.

The Youth Music research also confirms that young people find websites and CD-roms the most useful music resources. The internet is the most natural way for young people to learn about music and the music business. I strongly support Paul Brindley's ArtistRight initiative (see page 2), which has the potential to transform the lives of amateur and professional musicians alike. As part of the Youth Music's Instrument Amnesty, a network of 20 centres around the country has been established to collect and distribute the instruments.

I am hoping that this might form the nucleus for my Communities In Tune scheme. Incidentally, if you haven't donated an instrument to the Amnesty and you have one available, please do so; there is still time. I have also been told about the work of website designer Arksoft, which is working on software that will provide online do-it-yourself contract drafting with automated legal advice, for those who can't afford to see a lawyer.

An organisation called Jazz Services is trying to establish a national network of venues with good quality facilities for performers, and fair business attitudes to musicians. A few tens or hundreds of thousands of seed funding to initiatives like these and ArtistRight would do far more good than millions invested in another unwanted white elephant venue. Paul Brindley's report is the first I have seen which recognises that modern musicians are entrepreneurs... running micro-businesses, creating copyrights, generating economic activity and employment throughout the leisure and hi-tech sectors.

They take huge financial and personal risks for the distant chance of wealth and stardom. But that is not their real motivation. Their real motivation is hinted at in an ode by Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy, which is the origin of the overused expression 'movers and shakers':

We are the music makers
We are the dreamers of dreams...
We are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.