Ustrategy

Live blogging from NewCommForum 2010

Today I'm at NewCommForum down in San Mateo. A best-kept-secret conference that impresses me with the quality of its sessions, conversations, and people.

This morning, the session opened with United Breaks Guitars on the screen--a video which has become one of my favorite examples of what New Media has been enabling people to do: express themselves as powerfully, and equally to what was once only possible for powerful customers and attorneys. Halfway through the video, Dave Carroll--the singer who created the video in protest of his poor experience with the airline--came on stage and completed the song live.

This, is the quintessential expression of the convergence between the online and the offline world that so many brands are trying to figure out and that consumers, are vying for whether they are able to articulate it or not. Just look at the buzz around startups Foursquare, Loopt, QuickMark who are looking to capitalize on that invisible—and yet so solid—line between our real and digital worlds.

Great start to a full day of closing gaps, visualizing the future, and connecting with those thought leaders who go beyond the twitter monologue and who are truly interested in—well, thinking, about the possibilities, the future, and our evolving culture.

And, a mid-morning update: Edelman's VP of Digital reported Carroll's campaign resulted in a loss of $180M...the equivalent cost of replacing 51,000 guitars. United is a client of Edelman.

Getting To Popular: How Musicians Use Social Media for Marketing

Opening the SFMusicTech conference is a panel of musicians, content syndicators, and consultants discussing outreach strategies for musicians:  Francis Ten- West Indian Girl (and Moderator), Davis Powers- Current TV, David Katznelson-Birdman Recording Group, Zoe Keating- Cellist and Composer, Matt Goldberg- VolumeEleven, Emily White-WhiteSmith Entertainment.

Ten: How do we define “popular enough”?

White: Not having a day job. If you can make your living doing your music, that’s success. Your retirement plan is your email list.

When I took on Family of the Year, I had to do some education. I showed them what we could do on Facebook and Twitter and we actually released an EP in the last 3 months.  Email list is extremely important. Amanda Palmer sold 10,000 albums in the first week, 8,500 directly through her site, 1000 through iTunes, and only 500 through the label.

Katznelson: Sustainable momentum-fueled organization. In the world that we live in, playing live is essential, getting out there is essential. It means you’re a working artist hitting the pavement with your art.

Keating: Introducing your music to people who can introduce it to more people than you could. My career has moved with the internet. Working with people who are more known than I am. RadioLab has helped me even more than twitter—and maybe led me to Twitter. The show is distributed nationally on NPR and has done more for my career than anything else. My goal is to be omnipresent because then things just happen for you. Start in as many places as possible, start small and get known.

My responsibility is to stay on top of the best communication method for my fans at any point in time. Some people I can only reach on Twitter, others through email list, others on MySpace. I figure out how they want to be contacted and I contact them that way. I answer my fan mail and twitter messages. It’s a lot of bang for the bank and it’s nice to be in touch with them.

You need to be ready. Magazine spread, being on KCRW 3 times, twitter. 7X7 magazine said: we had all these musicians to choose from but you were ready.

Has reached a point where she doesn’t know anymore where her influencer come from. Sold 30,000 albums without a label “and I keep all that money to myself. It may not be a lot to a big label but it’s a lot to me. I bought my house with iTunes.”

Playing at tech conferences has worked too. Get out of your music world. Doesn’t go to music conferences because they tend to hold to the past whereas tech conferences seem to talk about the future. I think of myself as more of a nerd than a musician some time.

Goldberg: It’s about finding what your fans like, look for someone who played music like you and emulating what they’re doing. If you’re a jam band, you’ll focus on that market…you put yourself on jamband.com. Diversification and effort.

Next thing is streaming. They’re figuring it out. Justin.tv is willing to promote bands now and you need to be there first.

Ten to Powers: You (Current TV) ARE the gate keeper buying content or collaborating with content producers.

Davis: current TV is in 50mil homes.  It’s knowing exactly the audience artists want to get in front of helps much more for authentic ideas and collaboration. We’re creating content.

Ten: How would a band get on Current TV?

Powers: We hand pick everything. Playing gate keepers and content selectors. respond to pitch: White pitched Dresden Dolls which Current put on Jimmy Kimmel—but don’t have a process for UGC.

Gate Keeper are changing every second. Keating is on suggested user list now but that’s going to go next time. Read the Tipping Point.

White: Almost everyone today knows HTML or someone who does. Family of the Year:  The base player is a web designer, another is a web designer, the other is an actress, another is an engineer who recorded everything. 6 people who are their own label.

Ten: What are some tools musicians use?

Most use Google apps. Additional tools: tunecore, tweetbeeps, bipedit

fanbridge, Iota, TopSpin, Cashmusic—developing OS platform for artists, Nimbit- bundle with Physical goods, Bandeyes, WordPress

Tips for production:

Keating: I record everything myself with a microphone and a computer.  I have one person I trust for fresh set of ears.

Ten: you can do all the recording yourself. Spend you money focusing on mastering and mixing.

Music Discovery, Sales, and Sharing: Companies Demo. Live Blogging from SFMusicTech

Six companies demo their products at SFMusicTech:

SoundHound - An iPhone app:  search music tracks by playing audio or text and get access to lyrics, videos, artist biography, albums, and purchasing options all from your iPhone. If you already own the track it’ll play full track. Integrated in the cloud and on-device music search. Can access from iPod library, launch on Pandora station, and get song idea. Partnering with GraceNote for lyrics.

 

Playdar - An OpenSource “music content resolver.” Uses common API that is service-agnostic for mapping songs to individual provisioning services like Napster, Spotify, Mog ,Raphsody. “Looks like Linux for now” but with powerful community-driven functionality.

GetPlayList –  Enables people to share playlists on the internet in an automated process. Went live today. Approved by all 4 major labels and various indie label. Makes sharing music easy.

BandCamp - A self-service platform that helps artists monetize on their art throgh better visual search, edition control, cart functionality with options relevant for artists including type of format and on-the-fly tax calculator.

LyricFind - Announcing and launching today a new Android application--free. There are 1.2 million tracks, no reliance on network. Have signed deals with 2000 music publishers. Demoing lyric song line recognition.  2.99 ad-free version also available. Content doesn’t come from publisher but from content team. Artists need to get content listed in AllMusicGuide or become listed as a publisher.

PigLightShow - Using old art in a new way to produce unique lightshows. All automated, no human operator required.

The Next Big Thing in TV and Video at NewTeeVee Live 09

This year, GigaOm’s NewTeeVee Live has explored TV Everywhere. In addition to general sessions, the conference featured 10 upcoming video startups—each providing a critical element of video and TV viewing puzzle. Five of these companies’ predictions for TV and Video are summarize below:

Elemental Technologies (Sam Blackman, CEO)

The company (elementaltechnologies.com), which is headquartered in Portland, raised 7.1M Series A funding in June 2008 and has burned $2M in 3 years with 27 employees. Customers include the CDC—the number one consumer of video, as well as Adobe and Microsoft.

Blackman’s prediction:

• Unlike other forms of media, the internet will not destroy the Pay TV business models.
• Consumers will want a high quality, seamless, video experience across multiple platforms: mobile, laptop, TV.
• People are going to be willing to pay for it to achieve the ease of use across platform that will pay for the infrastructure

FreeWheel (Doug Knopper, Co-Founder and Co-CEO)

FreeWheel helps publishers manage content regardless of where it is today or device. At NewTeeVee Live, FreeWheel announced a partnership with Warner Bros. for delivering online videos across the web.

Knopper’s prediction:

• In the $200 battle for online video—the consumer is the winner.
• Winner in this world will be 1) companies that create content and services that are new and compelling and that consumers are willing to pay for it and 2) Companies that create new value chains.
• Everyone is going to get their content in some fashion over the internet.
• TV everywhere is going to be come content anywhere.

Boxee (Avner Ronen, CEO and Co-Founder)

Boxee is announcing the release of its Beta next week in NYC, featuring a whole new user interface, social components, and the physical product—the BOX.

Ronen’s predictions are that by 2015:

• The biggest internet show is going to be bigger than the biggest TV show in terms of overall business
• More Apple subscribers for video content than Comcast subscribers
• People will watch more videos and will pay more money for them

Inlet Technologies (Matt Smith, Senior Director, Systems Architecture)

Inlet Technologies is focused on “giving users what they want.” It’s motto is: More=Better. More feeds, more camera angles, more choice, more opportunities. On Thursday, Inlet Technologies announced it has signed a deal Universal Sports to power and create a unique web experience that will replace repurposing TV and enhance the viewer’s experience.

Smith’s predictions:

• 2010 will be the year of More
• Quality will count even more
• The user will become the programmer
• Platform-specific programming will take over repurposing TV content

Canesta (James Spare, President and CEO)

Canesta provides 3D natural interfaces and gestures, powered by a single 3D sensor chip and integrated into TV experience, comparing its disruption to the way touchscreen technology changed the mobile experience.

Spare’s prediction is that the possibilities brought about by 3D gestures, interfaces, and interaction will change the way people consume content.

This post was originally written for, and published by, Ubergizmo.com—the largest privately held gadget blog in the US—now distributed in 6 languages and read in 212 countries.

EchoNest: MIT Minds Come Together to Build a Music Intelligence Platform

EchoNest is the brainchild of Tristan Jehan and Brian Whitman who met at MIT’s Media Lab. EchoNest provides music intelligence platform and enables third parties to use the platform to build the next generation music application.

Spotify is one example of a company tapping into the EchoNest’s intelligence capabilities, matching users’ likes with new suggestions through EchoNest’s algorithms, similarly to Apple’s Genius but with a user interface that works better for music aficionados.

BandMetrics Helps Bands Keep Track of their Fans

BandMetrics tracks fans’ performance metrics--and therefore, artist brand performance--on radio and video, and social media channels, providing global analytics, comparisons, sentiment score and overall score.

Bands can see how they do on fans’ conversations and on outreach channels and use the information to drive outreach strategies.

Drop.io Enables Collaboration with Rich Media

Drop.io’s Playslit.io enables users to instantiates a drop—a live creation of rich media that is uploaded to a URL. It can be used for work groups, teams, classrooms, live events, musicians, and artists at large.

Every drop has a customized side bar widget, enables private collaboration between artists, makes it possible for artists to retain control over what and when they share music, and measured ways to interact with fans.

users get a custom URL and branding, automatic hook up to applications, RSS, podcats, and full federation across access channels.  For interaction, it enables paywall, iPhone support, and contact. Content is owned by users.

Check it out at: http://Drop.io/sfmusichtech

SoundCloud- Company Showcase

Eric Wahlforss- CTO SoundCloud has 5 minutes to present his company.

SoundCloud enables users to collaborate, send, receive and distribute music. It features easy to scan through tracks, converse via comments, and focuses on delivering high quality audio, one-click distribution to other channels, open music output/input APIs providing sound files

SanFran Music Tech Summit Brings together Music, Technology, and all Things in between

I’m at the SanFran MuysicTech Summit today—one of the more intimate and conversational conferences in the Valley. Brian and Shoshana Zisk put this celebratory event once a year—bringing together music, technology, and the people who care about both.

We’re starting this morning with a panel dedicated to reaching fans. On the panel: 

Dave Champaine- Local Music Vibe

Jeremy Welt- Warner Bros Recrods

Dvae DeVore- FanMail

Panos Pannay- Sonicbids

Aaron Clark- Mozes

Moderated by Sean O’Connell- Music Alliance

Welt speaks about the subtlety of channel use and making sure both artist and fans know how to use the channels.  “You need to let the fans what you’re doing on each channel. If you’re on facebook, let them know this is where you put information, but if they want to communicate with you, they should use MySpace.”

Clark speaks of the importance of authenticity in communication.

Pannay highlights the evolution of communication between fans and artists. Fans now expect to have a say, to have a two-way communication.

Welt: The evolution of communication also means artists get to hear what fans think—it may not always be positive.

DeVore: “There’s a lot of bad messaging in the music industry. No one really knows who’s in charge. Who’s role is it to be in charge of understanding the fans and developing the strategy for communicating with these fans.”

Welt: “It’s really hard to connect to fans if you don’t have a strategy. You have different rights owners, each person is communicating with the fans in a different way.” There’s no consistency. That’s a challenge artists need to face. Someone needs to coordinate all that.

Champaine: “More and more it’s up to the artist to reach the fans.”

Pannay: “I believe there are all kinds of new ways to develop new audiences.” Paradoxically, bands don’t think of these. You have to think of a new—or perhaps an old school way—of how to develop a fan base. “The music industry has a lot to learn from politics.”

“The brands and the message need to be owned by one entity. In era when there are so many messages who are going in and out, having someone who owns all these channels is critical.”

Welt: Artists should have their own site not owned by otheres. Make sure you can control that.  Make your hub first and then start building it out. If you have your own hub, you can bring all the other channels into it.

Champaine: “By encouraging the artist to put their external links on their webpage, more people end up coming back to it because different fans live in different social networks. By having one location where they can reach their music, they start there and then extend.”

Clark: Bands need to consider how their decisions impact their fans. The more channels, the more confusing it gets for fans to determine which channel they need to use.

Jake Owen leverages text messaging and IVR. He opens conversations via text messaging, calls them back or texts them messages. He sets up a camera, then films himself as he reviews the feed--reading comments outloud—and keeps the camera on as he calls fans back. Using this method, he became real and so has the conversation with the fans.

DeVore: Cost of new (music) customer acquisition is 10 times the cost of reaching out to existing customers/fans.

Welt: There are various examples of using creative strategies to differentiate artists and build the conversation with fans. Michelle Branch used the internet. InSync, Backstreet Boys were all the rage, and the fact that she took a different direction: just playing the guitar, speaking to important messages to the fans, helped to drive her forward. Authenticity of music, different path.

Ashley Tisdale’s strategy was to go on YouTube and converse with her fans. Once the fans came to see her messages, we surfaced the message about her upcoming records, etc.

Mastodon do incredible visual merchandising like shirts. They connected with their fans through this creative commerce.

The panel emphasizes it’s important that artists stay authentic in how they communicate with artists. Some do it via twitter, facebook, SMS…others Jack White of the White Stripes does that through creating new music bands. While the panel is partial on whether artists must be on the internet, using social media tools to reach fans, they agree unanimously that whatever the channel, it needs to speak to where the fans go to get information.

DEMO 09

I am in Palm Springs California, live blogging at DEMO09 for Ubergizmo- the third largest gadget blog in the US. For the up-to-the-minute coverage, visit http://live.ubergizmo.com/