Written by founding Gang of Four bassist and digital music marketing guru Dave Allen the magnificent essay “Dear Musicians — Please Be Brilliant or Get Out of the Way” has been making the rounds online since it first appeared on Pampelmoose and Fight earlier this month.

Its dominance in the music-blog landscape is easy to understand. Allen has written nothing less than a manifesto of music’s future.

Aimed mainly but not exclusively at independent musicians, Allen’s thesis is that artists must stop relying on traditional means of making and selling product (i.e., CD releases) and focus more on monetizing “the experiential awareness that surrounds their brand.” He writes:

Creating music is only the first step to creating something valuable and timeless. For instance, David Byrne played a building. Music released as part of an event is the future – Radiohead’s release of In Rainbows was the first step toward the album release as event, if it’s an album at all. How it’s done is also important. The container has changed forever. Remember what Rishad Tobaccowala has to say to advertising agencies trying to embrace the social web – “The future does not fit in the containers of the past.” It is no different for bands. The organizing principle of recorded music is now in the hands of musicians, not technologists, not record labels.

Who are some creators of valuable and timeless content, as Allen so often puts it?

To name a few: Dirty Projectors for their “Stillness Is the Move” video, Karin Dreijer Andersson for her work as Fever Ray, Sunn 0))) for its earth-moving live show.

Now that musicians have the ability to get their content — notice how we’re using that word instead of just plain “music” — directly to consumers via digital means, musicians shouldn’t wait for labels, publicists, bookers or anyone else besides the fans to tell them what to do.

The brusque note in the essay’s title is no joke.

With the exception of iconic media experimenters such as David Bowie and the late Michael Jackson, most musicians just want to play: write songs, put out records, play shows.

And that’s all well and good, but those who want to make a living at it and really see their name in lights (oh, how that concept has changed), have got to think outside the metronome.

And if not, well, they’ll get pushed aside by people who are both innovative in the way they create their art (the examples above) and progressive in the way they market it.

Here at Locker Partner, we can’t tell you musicians of the world what to do in terms of being the next Beck or Patti Smith, but we can point you toward effective use of social media and equip you with tools such as our proprietary RockDex platform.

The rest is up to you.