by Scott G – The G-Man

Ted Cohen is considered a visionary in music and technology, and I agree. After all, he played an important role in devising the licensing agreements that helped create the Rhapsody subscription service and the iTunes Music Store. He got started in computing in 1979 with an Atari 800 (“8K of memory tricked out to 48K”) and has embraced technological advancements ever since.

He was in Artist Development at Warner Bros. Records in the late ’70s and early ’80s, working with Prince, the Pretenders, Talking Heads, Fleetwood Mac, the Ramones, and many others. He moved on to become Sr. VP of Digital Development & Distribution for EMI Music.

Today, he is managing partner of TAG Strategic, a digital entertainment consulting firm working with emerging businesses and multinational companies. Current and former clients include Hello Music, Amazon, Emblaze Mobile, Microsoft, StreamJam, Verizon, SanDisk, Motorola and UK Trade & Investment.

Ted Cohen is also an optimist. “I think the future of music looks pretty bright,” he said recently, making it the underlying theme of his keynote address at the SESAC conference held at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles. In fact, he had many fascinating and very upbeat points to make about the music business in general and indie artist opportunities in particular.

In his hour-long presentation for the performing rights organization, Cohen took listeners on a quick rollercoaster ride of all aspects of the music business. At the start, he put today’s situation in perspective: “This is the first time in history where a working business model was replaced by people just saying ‘I’ll take something for free.’ We have moved from an era of consumer empowerment to an era of consumer entitlement,” and he got to the bottom line right away: “What we have to do is figure out how to monetize consumer behavior. It’s not about devaluation of music; it’s about the re-valuation of music. We just need to find the monetary sweet spot the public wants.”

Part of the solution may result from changing mindsets. One of his suggestions is to stop calling music “content.” He feels this term is misguided. “We experience music, we don’t consume it. If we consumed it, something would come out the other end.”

Another part of the solution is to recognize and embrace change. “Here’s the old way things happened in the music business. . . ”

Old Way:
* Write great songs
* Record in expensive studio
* Release album
* Release single
* Hire promotion
* Buy ad in Rolling Stone
* Make expensive music video
* Hit the road with tour support
* Schedule in-store performances
* Do some TV appearances

“Now, the only thing that is still on the list is the first one. . . .”

New Way:
* Write great songs
* Record at home
* Social networking for distribution and marketing
* Collect e-mail addresses & connect with people
* Make Flip video or phone-cam video

“Ten years ago, distribution was king. Now, distribution is trivial. Anyone can get it.
Today, it’s all about getting people’s attention. The trick is ‘rising above the noise’.”

In this century, everyone has access to music. The idea, according to Cohen, is to make certain that passive fans become active participants. That’s what makes social media networks more important for getting music out to people.

Cohen is also upbeat about “New revenue streams: pay per play, pay per view, subscription services, ad-supported music, brand-subsidized music — there are a lot of ways to go.”

He is especially keen on subscription services for music. “I like the subscription model, where you pay a flat fee each month and get all the music you want.” He calls music subscription “a lean-back experience” because the music is available when desired and you need do so very little to have access to millions of songs. “This is a recurring revenue stream for artists and music publishers,” he notes. Additionally, “Subscription encourages listening to more songs, the ‘deep cuts’ on an album, and it lead to listeners finding new songs.”

The subscription model in the midst of the new ubiquitous distribution approach means “There is no need to record an entire album. If you have three great songs, create the three-songs and put them online. It’s whatever you want to do. There’s no longer a reason to get 12 songs together, get them to a label and wait months for them to hit stores.”

Cohen has never lost his love for music. “The freshness of music today is what’s most appealing to me,” he has said. “If I’m listening to a lot of indie music that’s been delivered digitally, then a lot of it is very fresh – 20 to 30 days old at most. It’s exciting.”

A big issue with all the access to music is filtering. There are firms that attempt to search for music you like, but perhaps the best filters are other listeners. “Most people I know aren’t sharing files, they’re sharing playlists,” Cohen points out. It’s not that the algorithms don’t work. Cohen’s firm works with Hello Music and he’s happy to discuss companies like Echo Nest. Many of these firms “combine algorithms and social behavior – what kind of music do your friends like, what’s happening on the music blogs, and so on. The problem with algorithms is that they search for and find similarity. They don’t find uniqueness. If something is truly unique, it’s not matched to anything.”

Cohen is pleased that much of today’s technology is going to bring music to us wherever we want it. He speaks of “The Connected Home” and “The Connected Auto” and is eager to embrace the new methodology of distribution and communication.

At one point in his presentation, he recommended a book called “Ruling the Waves” (“Ruling the Waves: From the Compass to the Internet, a History of Business and Politics along the Technological Frontier” by Debora L. Spar). Cohen mentioned one example from the book, the way radio was as much of a “wild west” scene as much of today’s internet usage and payment battles. “Back when radio was new, you could have three stations broadcasting on the same frequency.” The result was chaos, “and nobody could be heard.” But with FCC regulation, each broadcaster gets assigned a specific frequency “and now all three broadcasters can do business and the
public is served.”

I checked out Spar’s book and found a relevant passage: “Governments provide the property rights that entrepreneurs eventually want, the legal stability that commerce craves, and the stability that society demands. For in the end, even pirates and pioneers want order. Once they have staked out their claim or claimed their loot, they want someone else to protect it. And that someone is usually the state.”

Hearing Cohen’s views on music, technology, rules, and breaking out of conventional approaches was a unique, exciting and valuable experience. I recommend watching for interviews, speeches and position papers from him. If he’s an example of “an old record company guy,” as one person described him, I wish there were a lot more of them.

Article Copr. © 2010 John Scott G.

Permalink: http://musicindustrynewswire.com/2010/09/01/min3236_015334.php

In its early days, one of MTV’s slogans was “see the music you want to see.” That expression got an upgrade today.

The band Arcade Fire teamed up with Google to make an interactive video that features satellite photos and Street View shots from an area designated by the user, presumably centered around his or her childhood home although there’s no way to regulate what address is entered. (We did not grow up in Times Square, above.) The project is called “The Wilderness Downtown” and was directed by Chris Milk, who has also worked with Modest Mouse, Kanye West, U2 and Green Day.

The video begins at dusk with a shot of its “star,” an unidentifiable, sprinting hooded figure. As the music plays, browser windows open and close revealing both the figure and the neighborhood from different angles. Users are invited to write a postcard which is then animated, and the video ends with shots of the neighborhood overrun by computer-animated trees. The song is “We Used to Wait” off of the band’s latest album, “The Suburbs,” which was released early this month. Though it’s far from perfect, the video is still captivating. And, of course, words pale in comparison to the actual, resource-intensive experience.

The project relies on the feature-rich HTML5, the latest version of the Web’s standard markup language which Google has been touting in conjunction with its Chrome browser. The video is also the latest of Google’s “Chrome Experiments,” which showcase the capabilities of HTML5.

Permalink: http://www.theatlantic.com

Courtesy of Hypebot.

Audioboo is brewing a new feature that will let users send private messages to each other – like Twitter’s direct messages, but audio. Destination: Massive.

Describing it as a social answerphone, Audioboo thinks it should be ready for release next month. When it does launch (Audioboo is finishing it as we write), users will see an inbox for their private messages and will be able to send a private message to any other Audioboo user. Presumably the ‘block’ feature comes later.

The advantage over an actual voicemail message is much like the advantage of sending a DM on Twitter; you don’t need their mobile number. You just need to be both using the service. Audioboo also keeps your messages stored, unlike your mobile operator, along with your geo-location data and any associated imagery, file names and so on.

Thinking about how Audioboo is used and what it plugs into gets very interesting. If you’re not in a position to type a message, you can record and send a boo instead. There’s a five minute limit (though a planned pro version would allow you more) – but five minutes of audio is a lot more message than 140 characters.

The fruits of Audioboo’s partnership with Pure radios (Pure was one company behind Audioboo’s recent funding) could also be interesting. Next month the first Pure connected radios will include Audioboo in their digital menu. That means you could record an Audioboo mesage on your radio and, like Audioboo chief executive Mark Rock says, send it to your Gran. Who’s obviously an Audioboo user.

“It’s difficult to actually talk to people you’ve connected to on social networks since you rarely know their telephone number. What private boos allow you to do is simply to connect to them via voice, which is often a much richer experience than text. When you add in the location and image data we provide, then we think private boos are going to be a really interesting way for people to stay in touch.”

Eventually, users will receive a notification on whatever device they use when a DM arrives, which means the mobile apps will be updated soon after launch. And where does this lead? Think beyod voicemail. This gets interesting if you think about the one-to-many modle on Twitter, where we want to follow interesting people. Audioboo’s direct messages will be about receiving personalised audio from brands or popular channels.

“The core central concept behind this is the personalisation of audio – something that radio or broadcast services currently do very badly,” said Rock.

“It’s a fan club approach. Subscribe (possibly for a fee) to Stephen Fry’s Audioboos and get personal messages from him, which may be general to his subscribers or, potentially, a birthday message just for you alone.”

Permalink: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2010/aug/24/audioboo-direct-messages?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mediaredef+%28jason+hirschhorn%27s+Media+ReDEFined%29

Live coverage from Bandwidth Music / Technology Conference continues…

Ted Cohen’s Lunch.  Lots of free-form discussion and open dialogue…

Artist development. Does it still exist?  Larry Weintraub, “it just doesn’t exist” in the sense that labels are not able to put huge amounts of money behind specific artists.  Now, the connection between the fan and the band is a greater opportunity, not focused on before.  ”Now it’s 101,” before opportunities were squandered.

Retail. Question posted to Jim Donio, head of NARM.  Will physical exist?  Donio says yes, “in some form,” but NARM is attempting to be responsive by being more full service, more encompassing.  Looking at “more of the business spectrum” [this organization has a lot of reinventing to do].

Release cycles? One executive notes that “everything is 24/7,” there really aren’t structured release cycles anymore.

Heard of Acapella Records?  The founder started it in a dorm room in Santa Cruz, former Apple executive, excited at the success of Glee.

Also, most seemed very positive on the Bandwidth format, which is highly collaborative – most “are learning something” though specific takeaways were tough to get.

One Interscope executive noted that certain functions have been “normalized,” like iTunes.

Frentik lead singer – Emily Jaye – discusses having two different pages – one for the band and the other for the artist. People want the artist connection with an individual, not the band as that seems a bit impersonal.

One executive from the San Francisco Symphony (SSO) notes that technology is now engaged so actively – quite exciting how much it’s being used to connect with fans.

Bill Wilson, NARM, “music is becoming like one giant SDK,” also noted the importance of “embracing the chaos.”

Permalink: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/082010bandwidth5

• Mobile applications
• Industry Services (B2B)
• Consumer Services (B2C)

The consulting company Music Ally will nominate the finalists to pitch at MIDEM.

Why you should apply!

MidemNet Lab is your chance to take your business to the next level. Find new business partners and investors.

• Submissions & pitch sessions are free of charge
• applicants receive valuable visibility towards the MIDEM audience
• Finalists pitch for 5 minutes to a panel of judges consisting of industry experts & venture capitalists, and receive substantial and valuable feedback from them
• One winner per category is chosen by judges and highlighted to the press
• Finalists will also gain access to an exclusive networking event that brings together panel judges and respected digital & music leaders.

Find out more in the MidemNet Lab FAQ

What are the application criteria?

• You must be a company newly established (no more than 3 years ago) with a maximum of 10 full-time employees.
• You must be business ready: already launched or in beta.
• You must be independently owned.
• You must be genuinely original and innovative.
• You must be able to effectively demonstrate a positive business impact for potential partners and MIDEM attendees.
• You must have an international viability.
• You must be willing to register & attend MIDEM if selected to pitch.

Important Documents

• 

  • MidemNet Lab FAQ
  • MidemNet Lab 2010 companies’ presentations
  • MidemNet Lab 2010 pitch videos

  Apply early !

  

  • Applications are reviewed on a first come, first served basis
  • 31 Oct: Submission Deadline.

• 

  MidemNet Lab totally surpassed BandCentral’s expectations. We were able to meet like-minded companies and make business happen. An invaluable experience!”Wil Padley,
  CEO,
  BandCentral (UK)

  

  The MidemNet Lab participation was very helpful for us, it gave us great visibility and awareness of our company. In Cannes we attracted many potential new partners and we have seen a positive effect in our PR campaign as well”Christian Mix-Linzer,
  CEO,
  Tracks & Fields

Billboard Magazine’s 10 Best Digital Music Startups:

“Where Some See Chaos Or Even Doom, Others See Opportunity: The Following Companies And Entrepreneurs All Share A Vision That The Best Days Of The Music Industry Are Not Behind Us, But Still Lie Ahead”

1. RDIO (Startup Of The Year)
2. VEVO
3. SONGKICK
4. KICKSTARTER
5. MFLOW
6. ROOTMUSIC
7.NEXT BIG SOUND
8. GUVERA
9. HELLO MUSIC
10. MY WERX

Look at the image above. There are three services listed on the San Francisco Giants’ scoreboard during a baseball game. Twitter. Facebook. Foursquare. The first two are ubiquitous. Each has hundreds of millions of users and a firm place in pop culture. The third has about 2.5 million users. And much of the world has no idea what it is.

But is it on its way to entering that pantheon of great services?

This is a particularly interesting question given that on Wednesday, Facebook is expected to unveil its initial push into the location space. Earlier, BoomTown cited sources stating this would be the case. We’ve since heard from multiple sources as well that location will be at least a part of Facebook’s event (which we’ll obviously be at).

With location, Facebook has long been seen as the 800-pound gorilla in the room. And now they appear ready to check-in for the first time, as it were.

So Foursquare is dead, right? Don’t count on it.

As we’ve been saying for months, it seems highly likely the Facebook is going to take a platform approach to location. That is, they’re more likely to federate other location streams (such as Foursquare’s) while they themselves remain fairly cautious with their own location services. You can probably expect a bare-bones check-in functionality on their mobile apps (as we spotted months ago).

But just as with their status updates, many people may populate that with location data via third-party services (again, like Foursquare).

That’s not to say Facebook won’t be competing with Foursquare at all. My guess is that a big part of their location play is involving places — that is, real world venues that they can get on Facebook in a major way. As we first reported back in June, Facebook likely has a deal in place with Localeze to build out a massive place database that they’ll then populate with all this data they’re federating and creating on their own.

The potential problem for Foursquare here is if Facebook decides they want to be the ones that partner with all these venues on loyalty deals and programs. Obviously, that would be a problem for just about every location player as this is how most of them are working on monetizing their products. It would also likely be a problem for Yelp. And even Google, increasingly.

That said, Facebook could also choose to promote a service like Foursquare as their check-in partner. The two sides were talking a few months ago when Foursquare was trying to decide whether to sell or raise more money. And while the idea of an acquisition kept coming up, so did other partnership ideas, we hear.

Of course, Facebook could also go with Foursquare rival Gowalla for such a deal. After all, the company behind Gowalla, AlamoFire (they’ve since become just Gowalla), got their start doing Facebook games. And early on, many Facebook employees were known to be active Gowalla users rather than Foursquare users. They’re also still undoubtedly on the acquisition radar as Facebook continues to scoop up talent, such as the Hot Potato team.

Anyway, back to Foursquare. Assuming Facebook doesn’t kill them (which again, isn’t likely to happen), do they have the momentum now to keep growing and rightfully stand alongside Facebook and Twitter?

I already know that all the commenters are going to scream “NO” but let me tell you what I think.

I remember very well when it seemed like just about everything I read on the Internet said that Twitter was the dumbest service ever imagined and it would never go anywhere. I disagreed from day one. I didn’t know exactly what Twitter would be useful for. But I knew something was there.

Believe it or not, the same was once true of Facebook too. People were already on MySpace, so they couldn’t figure out why they would want to use the boring, more closed version: Facebook. Again, I disagreed. There was something there.

With Foursquare, (as should be obvious given how often I write about them) I again believe there is something there. But it’s still in that early Twitter-like stage where I’m not positive what it is yet. (And yes, complete with Twitter-like downtime too.)

The problem is that the initial attraction, the game aspect, lost my interest a long time ago already. Now, i mainly keep using it to see where my friends are, to let them know where I am — and maybe most of all, to keep track of my location history. (I think this is going to be something very cool to have in the future.)

That combination of things would probably keep me using it indefinitely. The problem is that those things likely won’t keep the rest of my social circle using it. And that’s the glue that holds any of these apps together — the social graph. So Foursquare needs to come up with something else to keep those people using it.

I’ve been hearing talk about people getting sick of using Foursquare for some time now. But in recent weeks the talk has gotten louder. It’s not the same check-in fatigue issue that I wrote about several months ago. Instead, it’s a more focused check-in fatigue because many of them just don’t see the point of constantly checking-in place after place — especially if they frequent the same places.

Sure, there are check-in deals and mayor deals, but most people I know (many of whom are heavy Foursquare users) never use those deals. The problem is that there simply aren’t enough of them. And the best ones are mayor deals which are basically impossible to get in a big Foursquare city like San Francisco.

So instead, everyone is simply checking-in because that’s what their friends are doing. That’s a precarious position. Any number of things could stop that. And a chain reaction would occur.

Simply put: Foursquare needs to change their game and needs to do it soon if they want to keep the momentum alive — if they want to reach the pantheon.

They obviously know that, and are working on it. And it sounds like they have some of the right ideas. At least part of the upcoming Foursquare 2.0 is said to be about “choosing your own adventure.” And Foursquare has talked about making the service easier to use by doing things like checking you in if you swipe a loyalty card at a store. That’s a genius idea.

That’s also probably the idea that is a viable business model for Foursquare in the long run. It’s something that may subsidize the whole social location aspect of the service.

But for right now, that social layer is all that matters. They need to keep users engaged or they run the risk of becoming the Friendster of location. They’re coasting right now because most of the users are still new to the service and don’t have any fatigue just yet. But they’ll get there unless Foursquare keeps things interesting. Photos and comments in the stream couldn’t hurt (yes, like Gowalla). And neither could the ability to “like” check-ins. And a completely reworked point system would be good — maybe more closely tied to just your social graph. And one can never have too many badges.

Foursquare is still a very young company. The fact that they were able to secure so many deals with huge brand names early on has perhaps elevated them a bit prematurely. Twitter and Facebook have proven themselves to be indispensable.

With Foursquare, there’s still just something there.

Permalink: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/17/foursquare-facebook-twitter/