Marketing Pop Culture

Digital Music Forum: The Indie Takeover?

Jaylaan Ahmad-Llewellyn, Bluhammock Music
Jim Cooperman, Wind-Up Records
Matt Laszuk, IRIS Distribution
Amaechi Uzoigwe, Definitive Jux
Mitchell Wolk, ADA
Rich Bengloff, A2IM (moderator)

First, some apologies: This is not a live blog post.  I did something stupid and lost the original post.  Kinda bummed that Typepad hasn't created an autosave feature.  Anyway, I'm recreating this from memory.

Jaylaan: Not lamenting over the industry that was.  Trying to figure out how people are consuming music today and how I and my artists can get paid off of that.

Amaechi: Look at the glass half full.  Find the niche for your artist and serve it well.

Digital Music Forum: A&R in the Digital Age

Maria Egan-Cohen, Columbia Records
Daniel Werner, Epic Records
Elliott Mazer, Left Turn Music
Allan Kovac
Kelli Richards, The All Access Group (moderator)

Richards: Why go with a major?

Egan-Cohen: Resources.  She focuses on bands that have established a track record and a following, and are looking to get to that next level via the machinery that a major can offer.

Final thoughts: I'm leaving this panel.  The discussion has turned to promotions and 360-deals, which is disappointing, frustrating, even.  I'm interested in hearing how they're adapting A&R for the digital age.  Instead, there's a lot of talk about promotions and building artists into brands.  Does this signal a shift in the role of A&R?  Is that the function adapting to digital?  From an audience standpoint at the conference, it feels like a bit of a bait-and-switch.

Going to catch the end of the digital rights & clearances panel.  Even a legal session is more interesting than this.

Digital Music Forum: Global Music Marketing in the Digital Age (panel)

John Fleckenstein, BMG Label Group
Mark Ghuneim, WiredSet
Peter Rojas, RCRD LBL
Shahi Ghanem, Brickfish
Doug Perlson, Targetspot
Vicki Saunders, TouchTunes Music
Celia Hirschman, KCRW's On The Beat

Peter: How do you offer a great experience for users so that they'll keep coming back?  Question is not to sell music.

Fleckenstein: Start working with artists from Day 1.  It varies by artist.

Ghuneim: Search and display doesn't yield engagement.  Engagement takes place across the edges.  Artist development means getting the artist to where they are a full business.

Perlson: Internet radio.  80MM users/month.

Saunders: Digital jukebox that enables people to access their music at specific locations.  This is in beta.

Hirschman: User fatigue on social networks.  Is there a lifecycle?

Ghanem: Just a media network.  None of them will be going anywhere anytime soon.  What you see is less fatigue and more specialization in terms of needs.  How do we capitalize on the social media genre as a whole, particularly as it relates to me and my brand.

Ghuneim: Ubiquity is the new exclusivity.  Trend towards trusted sources.  Also actionable data generator.  Need real two-way API's with opensocial.

Hirschman: Where should small labels/artists with little money spend their dollars?

Rojas: They don't sell.  Believes good content sells itself.  Released over 250 artists in the past 3 months.

Ghanem: Invest in passionate, engagement-based marketing.  Target a small user base and get them excited.

Saunders: Bands must know their audiences: where they are, who they are, and clear that they want to talk to you.

Perlson: Search is the weakest performing marketing play for music.  Social networks might be more useful.

Fleckenstein: Incredibly difficult to target. 

Hirschman: BMG, have you taken an aggressive free approach to certain bands?

Fleckenstein: Free single downloads to test who's the audience.

Hirschman: What campaigns have worked for you?

Perlson: Gotta know the goal of the campaign at the outset.

Hirschman: Widgets.  What do you think?

Ghuneim: Embrace many strategies based on what consumer behavior is dictating.

Ghanem: Most exciting thing happening is the fan, so you turn around the model and make it interactivity.

On respective businesses

Rojas:  One other person works with him.  Remember: Economics of the web require that you structure your business differently.

Ghanem: Salespeople that are focused on verticals.  The Yahoo! model.

Digital Music Forum: Michael Robertson founder of MP3.com

Michael Robertson, Founder MP3.com
Jim Sheridan, Onehouse LLC/Pho Group

Talking about his idea for a digital music locker.  His underlying idea: everything digital is moving to a cloud.

Downsides of locker:

1. Music is passive
2. How do I get it to all of my devices

Amazon music was the nail in the coffin for DRM music from Best Buy or Napster.com

Lockersync: Autosyncing.  Anytime you download a song, it gets zapped to your locker.  His device is connected to that locker.

Demos his autoplay.  With the creation of playmix, you can create a radio type experience.  Now, is he building a business on the backs of the intellectual property of others?

Here's how he uses personal locker.

• Same level of security as banks
• No anonymous access
• They have access controls and looks at simultaneous access.  If too many people access a locker, then the locker is shut down
• He's selling delivery and distribution of the music.

He's been sued by EMI and has refused their request to show them the contents of everyone's locker.

Streaming seems to be an inevitability, a digital inevitability, as he calls it.

The future of the locker?  Locker gets into many kinds of storage devices such as phones, cars, etc.

BTW, lockers are free.

Final thoughts: Bottom line is that he's got the financial wherewithal to weather the legal battles he gets.  I mean, this guy gets sued every time he launches a new piece of technology.  So, while his story is inspiring (and it's great to hear about cool stuff), there's this cautionary side to it.  If you can't afford to litigate, you probably don't have money to get the necessary clearances for the music in the first place.

Digital Music Forum: Is the Copyright System broken (panel)

Jon Potter, Digital Media Association
Michael Petricone, CEA
Steve Marks, RIAA
David Israelite, NARM
Gary Greenstein, Wilson, Sonsini

Potter: Yes. Major differences in magnitudes of payment fees incurred by different competitors.  Limit the statutory damages, and prove actual damages.  None of us are price setters anymore.

As with Gerd: Potter says that companies that try to use music as a first play will be sued, which is why they do it as a secondary or tertiary play. 

Petricone: Chilling effect on innovation.  Must protect fair use rights.

Israelite: Songwriters must be paid, per an earlier agreement.  Also, every other country in the world pays a blended rate (mechanical and performance)

Marks: This whole thing is an economic issue

Funny, but I'm assuming the pros and the cons are sitting on opposite sides

Rich from A2IM (question from audience): A consensus is forming that the CRB rates are too high.  My question: When will that consensus form some kind of action?

Final thoughts: This was a highly charged discussion.  More time needed to really explore this tension between innovation and compensation.  Ironic that the established record business desperately needs indies but, particularly in the case of internet radio, current copyright law is stifling a huge avenue for exposure and music discovery.  It's not clear that the majors are seeing this need.

Off to lunch now.  Hopefully, I can find a place to charge the computer.

Digital Music Forum: Gary Shapiro of CEA

CEA=Consumer Electronics Assocation

His push is about the Digital Freedom Campaign.  Much of his work is about making the copyright laws make sense and be more responsive to consumers.

We've already had two speakers rave about Verizon FiOS (the guy from Capitol on the last panel) and Gary.  Interesting.

This presentation leads into a panel on copyright, which has someone from the RIAA.  This should be interesting, since Gary's presentation is all about a worldview that advocates opening  copyright law to the digital realities.

What's the CEA doing to push open standards and interoperability?

Copyright extension term debate.  Tradeoff is longer protective term in exchange for loosen restrictions on usage.  Shorter term means high exclusivity.

Digital Music Forum: Digital Music Trends Impacting the Music Business

Jeff Zakim, Blue Note Label Group
Gerd Leonhard, music futurist
Alan Cohen, Guitar Center
Brian Young, Zude
Syd Schwartz, Capital Music Group
Steve Jang, iMeem (not here)
David Card, VP Research Analyst, Jupiter Research

Guitar Center has 30% of the market for music instrument sales

Zude.com: new tech that enables bands to manage their social networks.  No programming experience needed

iMeem does 25MM uniques/month

Themes:

Here and now--What about digital music makes it easy for a labels to do better marketing?
Technology gives a better sense of what's happening in real time.  Last.fm charts, iMeem charts, iLike charts.

Fans have become a key asset.  You can keep the dialogue going.  Monetize while you learn.

Gerd: Most of the cool stuff that happens on the web is illegal.  "Everything that's cool is forbidden."

Gerd and Steve Jang are getting into it.  Although, since steve doesn't disagree with his premise (above), I'm not sure why he's challenging Gerd's point.

Has Guitar Hero has an effect on Guitar Center?  Response: An interesting effect.  They did a promotion ($50 off) for a real guitar with each purchase of the game.

Guitar Center has a service for $40 that allows users to upload an entire album.  Think about the upstream opportunity (handoff to record labels, for example)

Gerd's bringing it back to the issue of attention as currency

iLike is up to 25MM users in 8 months

Personalized advertising is the future, according to Gerd.

Jang: Monetizing the attention that results from their content.

Digital Music Forum: David Pakman keynote interview

Frank Rose, contributing editor of Wired interviews David Pakman, eMusic's CEO answers what's a label going to be in the future?  Great marketing companies. Perhaps more like an ad agency.  Focus on certain market segments.  Major labels good at creating celebrities.

Indies have had a better model in place for longer.  360 deals good for small-medium labels, but he sees larger, more dramatic changes ahead for the majors.

Music industry has embraced consumer desire for digital singles.  His point: You have to let the customer buy what and how they want.

Rose: Recommendation engines, music discovery.

Pakman: This is the best possible time in music.  You can hear anything you want, anytime you want.  eMusic focuses on selling the long tail.  Last.fm, imeem.

They outsell iTunes in classical, Jazz and Blues.  Their customer base doesn't buy Jay-Z.

Frustrated by debate over access vs. ownership

Heading to Digital Music Forum

If any of you will be at DMF today, please look for me.  I'll try to do some live blogging, but I'm not sure if the facility has wi-fi.

Even more Radiohead: Amplive's remixes approved

Hat tip to Digital Music Wire for the heads-up on this.  Apparently, Zion-I producer Amplive has been given the go-ahead from Radiohead to release his album of remixes "In Rainbows".  One stipulation seems to be that the "Rainydayz Remixes" have to be offered for free.  One one hand, this is great news for fans who got an earlier taste of a couple of tracks at such sites as The Couch Sessions:  The entire album is now available on Amplive's site.

Amplive's album now becomes the official remix album.  Does he get paid for his work?  While he won't make any money from this, I'll bet that his phone/Blackberry/Sidekick blows up with tons of new opportunities over the coming days and weeks.  I think it's safe to say that he's been vaulted onto a new level.  Nice career move, and I say that in the most respectful way possible.

Also, seems that it wasn't just out of the goodness of their hearts that Radiohead approved the release.  In his thank you video, Amplive references the public outcry for the remixes.  Apparently his work struck a nerve.  Check it:

More in-depth coverage is here on Wired's site.

Click here to download "Rainydayz" by Amplive.