LOS ANGELES, May 16, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The Ovation Tower, the music industry’s first live digital media distribution kiosk and HD digital advertising platform, developed for major music venues, today announced deals with Nederlander Concerts, MediaNet, Abbey Road Live, SeePoint Technology, Aderra Media Technologies and YCD Multimedia. An e-commerce solution for rights holders and a new platform for the live fan, the Ovation Tower is a product of Migratory Music that enables the on-site digital distribution of live concert performances immediately following the performance and the artists’ digital music catalog. Additionally, Ovation Towers offer promotional content and a direct-to-fan digital advertising platform for artists, venue partners and outside vendors.

“There is nothing comparable to the experience of a live show. However, few artists issue live recordings and when they do, it’s generally many months after the concert has taken place,” said Ian Murray, President of Migratory Music and inventor of the Ovation Tower platform. “As a music fan and frequent attendee of live events, I found even the best concert experiences broken. With technology a passion of mine, I set out to develop a platform which would broaden the live experience for music fans and provide benefits to artists and multiple facets of the music industry.”

Created to bring music fans closer to their favorite artists with a personal and instant audible memory from a live concert, the Ovation Tower completed beta testing at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles and City National Grove of Anaheim during 2011 and has fifteen kiosks installed for its second season at The Greek, which began May 4. Capturing a live performance on-site, using an innovative recording process and seasoned team of sound engineers from live powerhouse Aderra, the Ovation crew can produce a studio-quality live album available for purchase from the Ovation Towers before, during or after the performance.

“We are pleased with our partnership with Migratory Music and thrilled to enhance the experience for concert goers at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. The Greek was the first venue to partner with Migratory Music and install the Ovation Towers last year. Since then, we have installed the Towers at City National Grove of Anaheim, another Nederlander Concerts venue,” said Rena Wasserman, VP of Operations for Nederlander Concerts and GM of The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. “Being able to offer concert goers a live recording immediately following concerts is a great amenity, plus the visual impact that the Towers present at the venues complements the overall experience.”

In addition to the attendee being able to order their live album anytime throughout the show, the Ovation Towers offer a hand-selected digital catalog tailored to the genre of each show with content from all the majors and many independent labels through its music licensing deal with MediaNet. The Ovation Tower has digital distribution rights to sell the artists’ full digital catalog, as well as the capability to offer promotional tracks in support of new artists, photos, videos, eBooks, sponsor ads, deals and other exclusive content.

Ovation live albums are available for under $20, while digital catalog albums are sold for under $15.

With a simple touch-screen user interface and transaction time of less than a minute in most cases, consumers have the option to download the live content to their portable device via the dock or USB connectivity on the Tower console in addition to receiving a secure link via email to download their purchase at home.

Through its HD digital advertising platform, the Ovation Tower offers an additional revenue stream for artists, venues and advertisers. When five Ovation Towers are aligned, a ten-foot wide by three-foot tall HD video billboard is created, driving traffic and attention to venue schedules and sponsor advertisements. The ads are customized on a nightly basis and tailored to the demographic, event and venue to optimally engage digital consumers and heighten awareness of upcoming events, new releases, featured advertisements and more. The Towers’ HD billboards are powered by YCD Multimedia’s MuVi Wall software and are customized for each venue in a configuration of one to five screens.

“As the manager of up-and-coming independent soul artist, Allen Stone, I was looking for new and engaging ways to get his name out to music fans, and ultimately help generate revenue down the road,” said B.J. Olin, Artist Manager, Red Light. “The promotional opportunities and benefits that the Ovation Tower platform had to offer us were exciting and unique. Working closely with Ian, we created a promotional download offer for Allen’s first single and a relative digital billboard campaign which enabled us to raise awareness of him to over 100,000 SoCal attendees of The Greek and the Grove. If that weren’t enough, Migratory alerted those that had downloaded the single to his upcoming shows in the greater Los Angeles area months later. Since last summer, Allen has sold out every date that he’s performed in the area and there’s no doubt that the Ovation Tower exposure was a key component in making this possible.”

About the Ovation Towers

The Ovation Tower is the music industry’s first live digital media distribution and HD advertising kiosk developed for major music venues. An e-commerce solution for rights holders, the Ovation Tower enables on-site digital distribution of a live performance within minutes of a show’s conclusion, as well as access to the artists’ full digital music catalog, promotional tracks and exclusive content. Through its HD digital billboard advertising platform, participating artists, venues and brand partners are able to share in new revenue opportunities and engage digital consumers for heightened awareness of upcoming events, new releases and featured advertisements. Developed by Ian Murray, the Ovation Tower is a product of Migratory Music.

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=50279828&lang=en

SOURCE: Migratory Music

Press Contact
DeMarco Media Group
Karen DeMarco, 310-850-5959
karen@demarcomediagroup.com
or
Business Development
TAG Strategic
Karen Allen, 310-402-2800
karen@tagstrategic.com

Ted Cohen (left, Managing Partner, TAG Strategic) and Bill Wilson (right, VP, Digital Strategy and Business Development, digitalmusic.org) congratulate Rob McDermott (Mad Mac Entertainment) on winning the raffle for a Sonos sound system. (Photo: Brandon Fuller)

An event billed as a “digital dinner and salon” brought together a digital-minded crowd at the home of Ted Cohen and Deborah Sass of TAG Strategic in Los Angeles Tuesday evening.

The event was co-hosted by digitalmusic.org and sponsored by Zya, Sonos, Ticketfly and West 10 International. “It was a beautiful and slightly indulgent setting to reflect the state of the music industry,” Vickie Nauman, President North America at 7digital, tells Billboard.biz. “Music talk was the salt and pepper on the party. The food was great and the company was better.”

A trio from TAG Strategic: Karen Allen (left), Ariyana Smith and Danielle Morgan (Photo: Brandon Fuller)

The evening was also a showcase for some digital music products. Rob McDermott of Mad Mac Entertainment won a raffle for a coveted Sonos entertainment system. Zya, maker of a music creation tool that mixes the visuals of ” Guitar Hero” and the tools of recording software GarageBand, gave guests a product demonstration in a cozy TV room outfitted with a booming stereo system and projection screen nearly as big as the wall.

Fred McIntyre (former SVP, Product & Strategic Development – CBS Interactive Music Group & Last.fm) and Cindy Charles (Cindy Charles Consulting). (Photo: Brandon Fuller)

Spotted at the event were Christina Calio (Director, Relationships and Strategy, Media and Entertainment Group, Microsoft), Syd Schwartz (founder, Linchpin Digital), Ryan Chisholm (Manager, Bill Silva Entertainment), Jay Frank (founder, DigSin), Antony Bruno (Community Manager, digitalmusic.org) and Fred McIntyre (former SVP, Product & Strategic Development – CBS Interactive Music Group & Last.fm).

The crowd dines on a buffet of Indian dishes, talks digital music and admires the Zya-branded glowsticks decoratively placed on each table. (Photo: Brandon Fuller)

Tech Types Tackle TV-Music Tie-Ins at NARM
By Phil Gallo, Los Angeles
Billboard Magazine
May 10, 2012

Turning living rooms into virtual record stores guided by television shows and ads is just a few technological clicks away from becoming a reality. How to get there — and who needs to play role in that development — was the subject of a presentation and debate Wednesday at the NARM panel “How Can We Build a Robust Music Discovery Experience in Digital Television?”

Audible Magic marketing VP Jay Friedman, Ted Cohen, managing partner of TAG Strategic, and the NPD Group’s entertainment industry analyst Russ Crupnick took attendees on a journey through television’s relationship with music and advances in technology that allow consumers to purchase goods or get information based on what they are watching and added in a few stats on music fans and their habits for good measure.

“The fracturing of fan bases presents opportunity after opportunity,” Crupnick said as he provided details of research that shows a) 60 percent of musically active fans learn about songs an bands through radio, b) retail activity has become more impulse buy than planned purchase and c) 42 percent of song purchases based on music heard on television fits in the “unfamiliar” category, meaning the buyer did not know the song prior to watching the show.

“They’re crying for back announcing in television,” is Crupnick’s deduction. “We have to do a better job informing consumers what was just played.”

Solutions came in various forms. Friedman, naturally, touted Audible Magic’s automated content recognition system, a database of millions of songs that, like Shazam, can identify a song. Audible Magic is working with television set and set-top box manufacturers to integrate options into the hardware to create “a consistent user experience.”

The key is immediacy. “If a viewer is a presented with the opportunity to buy the music they are listening to while it is being played, they are eight times more likely to make the purchase” than someone who waits until a show’s conclusion and then looks for a particular track.

The way Friedman envision its — and he was backed up by others — is the presence of a second screen that would drive the commerce without interfering with the program.

“Ease of use is the single driving factor,” says Vickie Nauman, president of 7digital North America. “We have to make the user experience short and simple as possible.”

Brian McNelis, senior VP of Lakeshore Entertainment, who runs a soundtrack label as part of his job, says anything with more than two clicks to get the consumer and product connected is not worth the effort. He cited research that indicates 50 percent of the potential buyers drop out with each ensuing click. “My mantra is two clicks to a sale,” McNelis said, noting that he was never more thrilled than when he saw moviegoers purchasing Lakeshore’s soundtrack to “Drive” on handheld devices inside movie theaters.

Panelists saw efforts by the BBC and HBO as positive while Google TV was too much of a sprawling mess with 64 apps and fewer than 5 million users.

As more panelists offer their perspectives — Daryl Berg, executive director of music for TV show producer Shine America spoke about the inherent difficulties in having playlists set up online prior to a show’s airing, while others spoke about getting artists paid — the more the discussion turned to anecdotes about user experiences and frustrations with the digital space and the lack of music discovery mechanisms.

“Music discovery is now a solitary experience,” West10′s director of sales Barry Smith said of the shift from the 20th century experience of playing music with friends and discussing/purchasing records. His assessment prompted debates about the effectiveness of Spotify, Twitter, Facebook and so on in turning on people to new music. The consensus in the room was that social media reinforces what you already know, so the sooner TV can be equipped with analytic software services, the better it is for music.

Webdoc Showcases New Levels Of Fan Engagement; Incorporates SoundCloud, Songkick And Topspin

Launches Webdoc Embeddable Widgets For Each Service

Cannes, France – 28th January 2012 – Webdoc, the most expressive way to share your passions online through the creation of rich media posts, has today announced integrations with SoundCloud, Songkick, and Topspin. First revealed today at Midem 2012, the trio of new services provide a significant boost to Webdoc’s audio and music offering; providing fans and pro users with a range of new opportunities for self expression, sharing and community engagement.

Since launching in December 2011, Webdoc has experienced groundbreaking fan engagement. When British-Irish boy band One Direction asked their fans to wish happy birthday to group member Zayn Malik on Webdoc, within 48 hours more than 6,800 fans had created rich media posts to show their love; spending on average between 15 to 30 minutes on the page, while creating, consuming and looking for One Direction material online.

British jazz funk and acid jazz band Jamiroquai have experienced similar results, with the band’s Digital Manager Neil Carwright commenting, “As a fan engagement site it really surpassed my expectations. Engagement was far higher than I thought was possible.”
From today, social sound platform SoundCloud is now officially represented on Webdoc through the new drag-and-drop widget. This allows both fans and professionals to incorporate SoundCloud tracks in their Webdocs, played via the HTML5 player, plus further express themselves by creating playlists, track polls, ratings lists and ‘This or That’ sound comparisons.
Songkick allows fans to track their favourite artists’ live performances and to be the first to know when tickets go on sale. Performers can now insert the new Songkick widget in to their Webdocs to directly sell tickets to their gigs and shows to the public, turning interactive flyers or posters into selling platforms all of their own.

Topspin is a direct to fan sales and marketing platform used by artists and filmakers to grow their online audiences and convert fans into customers. Topspin users can now extend their fan engagement, streaming, and commerce widgets inside their Webdocs, offering professional solutions to commerce, merchandising, ticket sales, email collection, social media sharing, and fan club memberships.

“It is extremely exciting for us to see our expression canvas used to such great effect, not only by individuals but entire communities like Nirvana, One Direction, or Labrinth” commented Stelio Tzonis, Webdoc CEO. “The impact of this new type of expression is amplified well beyond ‘likes’ or comments, and explains the unprecedented engagement levels we’ve been seeing.”
Webdoc users can create their own rich media posts with a few clicks, simply by dragging and dropping their pictures, videos, designs, sounds, and widgets from their favourite web applications such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. The resulting rich media posts – known as ‘Webdocs’ – are hosted on webdoc.com, from where they are easily shared and embedded on social networks and blogging platforms, empowering even the most modest Internet user to build something memorable and expressive on the web.
Other recent implementations include:

• Sharing of Nirvana memories around the 20th Anniversary of the group’s album ‘Nevermind’

• A promotion to create a Christmas Card for One Direction

Webdoc will be covering Midem 2012 in association with Agence Waa; follow what happens on their Webdoc – www.webdoc.com/agencewaaa

- ENDS -

Media Contacts:
Alice Regester – alice@33seconds.co
Luke Geoghegan – luke@seconds.co

About Webdoc
Established in 2010 by co-founders Stelio Tzonis, Cyril Pavillard, Mathieu Fivaz, Alexandre Tzonis and Vincent Borel, Webdoc is a social place offering the most engaging way to share and unite with others through the creation of rich media posts. As instant as a status update, more expressive than anything else.
Webdoc offers expression canvases that enable anyone to mix user-generated and discovered content from the web, including services such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Google, SoundCloud, Songkick and many more. Webdocs are sharable through social networks and embeddable on all popular blogging platforms. Top brands and bands today leverage Webdoc to engage their communities in totally new and expressive ways.
The company is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland and has subsidiary offices in London and San Francisco. For more info: http://www.webdoc.com

About SoundCloud
SoundCloud, launched in 2008 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, is a social sound platform that lets anyone create, record, promote and share their sounds on the web, in a simple, accessible and feature-rich way. SoundCloud allows sound creators to instantly record audio; upload large files; share them publicly and privately; embed sound across websites and blogs; receive detailed analytics, plus feedback from the community directly onto the waveform player. For more information go to: http://soundcloud.com

About Songkick
Songkick, the home for live music on the web, is now the second-largest live music destination after Ticketmaster. Recognized by Music Week as the Best Consumer Digital Service in 2011, by Billboard Magazine as one of the Top 10 Digital Music Startups of 2010, and voted Best Innovation in BT’s 2010 Digital Music Awards, Songkick makes it easy for fans to track their favorite artists so they never miss them live. Songkick aggregates artist, concert, festival, venue, and ticket information from across 70 countries, so fans can receive personalized alerts for upcoming shows in their town and find the best ticket offers. Songkick’s live music information is distributed across a network of partners including Bandcamp, foursquare, Spotify, VEVO, Warner Music Group and YouTube through their API. Songkick is backed by Index Ventures and Y Combinator as well as angels from the technology and music industries. Experience Songkick at www.songkick.com, on the iPhone and on Spotify.

About Topspin
Topspin is a direct-to-fan sales and marketing platform used by Paul McCartney, Eminem, Beastie Boys, Jay-Z & Kanye West, Kevin Smith, Trent Reznor and Arcade Fire. Topspin helps thousands of musicians, filmmakers and other artists grow their audience and sell their work. Topspin’s white label software distributes your fan engagement and commerce widgets into channels where your fans are actively consuming and sharing your media including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and across the web. Now it’s open to public and ready to grow your business. Please visit us at http://www.topspinmedia.com for more information.

Adele’s 21 was the biggest album of 2011, hitting the top spot in dozens of countries and garnering six Grammy nominations in November. Her latest single, Someone Like You, is playing everywhere. Everywhere except Spotify.

Adele is among a vanguard of artists including Coldplay, The Black Keys, and Tom Waits who have opted not to make their latest albums available on streaming-music services like Rdio, Mog, and Spotify, where users pay a monthly fee of $5 to $10 to listen to as much music as they want, or listen for free with occasional advertisements. Artists earn money from such services every time their songs are played, but some believe the revenue doesn’t match what they’d get from outright sales.

“I am very concerned,” says Dave Holmes, Coldplay’s manager. “Spotify competes with download stores” like iTunes, he says. He plans to keep the album released on Oct. 24, Mylo Xyloto, available only as a purchase for several months. “Like all of Coldplay’s other titles, the new album will be on [Spotify] eventually,” he says. In effect, Holmes and like-minded managers are mimicking the so-called windowing practice pioneered by Hollywood. Movie studios usually stagger the release of films, first to theaters, then on DVD, and later on cable channels and streaming sites like Netflix (NFLX). That strategy maximizes revenue for movie and TV producers, says Needham analyst Laura Martin, but could be a problem for streaming sites if the practice becomes widespread in music. “It certainly hurts Spotify’s perceived value if the consumer frequently searches for songs that aren’t there, even if that represents a small fraction of titles,” she says.

It’s also creating headaches for music-industry executives won over by Spotify since its U.S. debut in July. Universal Music Group (VIV:FP), Sony Music Entertainment (SNE), Warner Music Group, and EMI Group, the four biggest record companies, took large advance payments from, and equity stakes in, Spotify before its U.S. launch. Yet labels can’t force their biggest acts to support the site, says Ted Cohen, a former EMI digital chief. Some musicians have clauses in their contracts that give them control over digital distribution. Others just tend to get their way. “If Lady Gaga doesn’t want her latest album on Spotify, her label will listen or she may get a creative flu or miss certain promotional appearances,” says Cohen, who now advises music-focused technology startups. “A recording artist can be petulant.”

Spotify’s supporters turn to data to defend the service. Streaming services are already the recording industry’s second-largest source of revenue after iTunes, and London-based Spotify says it paid about $150 million to rights-holders in 2011, compared with $55 million a year earlier. For every album like Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto, which manager Holmes contends would have sold fewer copies had it also been available on Spotify when it was released, there are many more albums like Drake’s Take Care, which was available on Spotify and still went platinum in five weeks. Even Coldplay’s label is enthusiastic: “Services such as Spotify are currently generating more revenue per user to EMI and our artists than the average digital music consumer generated in a world without these services,” says Mark Piibe, head of business development for EMI. The average iTunes customer spends about $60 a year, according to three senior music executives who asked for anonymity because the figures aren’t public, while a subscriber to Spotify’s top tier of service spends twice as much. Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr declined to comment.

Scooter Braun, the manager for teen sensation Justin Bieber, says the backlash-in-the-making may simply be the product of technophobia. “There were a bunch of artists who wouldn’t sell music on iTunes when that first started, and now it’s standard,” he says. “The same thing will happen with Spotify.”

The bottom line: Though streaming is the record industry’s second-biggest source of revenue, some stars withhold their music in hopes of selling more.

Courtesy BusinessWeek: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/spotify-doesnt-sound-so-great-to-some-artists-01052012.html