From my perspective, Digital Music Forum and New Noise Santa Barbara can be summarized by the following:
Digital Music Forum: Record business execs and their cronies at big touring companies continue to try and find new ways to make tons of money from acts like U2, Prince, Pearl Jam, Michael Jackson. Their archaic and shitty business practices continues to kill em’ softly.
Note: After the Online Video panel at DMF, I hear two Record Company dudes standing next to me call an Online Media Company dude a weasel, then offer to buy him pizza. This no-trust relationship will help our business grow because we know it’s important to work with cool people who care about music. Keep up the good work major labels.
New Noise Santa Barbara: A genuine approach to starting a music conference/festival, but it’s apparent that tons of lawyers continue to flood the music game. They recognize that licensing and trademarks will become a good source of income for musicians, which they can take a percentage from.
Note: Good thing is that everyone there seemed to have a real interest in music and artists. Great first round Jeff and Tim.
Overall, the conferences were good. A highlight for me was the Top Music Trends panel. James Lamberti from Topspin gave a great presentation on data collected from artists and fans in a Direct-To-Fan business model. If I could encourage you to check out anything that I learned last week, it would be this. You can see the presentation given at Digital Music Forum here and an analysis of his presentation here.
I won’t bore you with an in-depth analysis of what the hell is going on in the record business because we all know. I will leave you with an underestimated quote for the new music biz from Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman: “Follow the Music.”
Let's Talk Music.