heute:pop:blog.  

That’s it. I have to set up a Google alert for my name – and don’t pretend that you haven’t done that already. Then I wouldn’t have missed Michael Schmid’s great summary (sorry German only) of the panel discussion at the Dancing With Myself conference on the FM4 website. This round table took place in Berlin on the 17th of January and I was part of it.

There we discussed the future of music reviews anf journalism. In this very lively discussion I took the role of someone who doesn’t believe that we need ‘professionals’ that recommend music to us and who decide what is good and what isn’t. My point was that we have enough tools that allow us to find more music in a democratic way such as Last.fm.

Almost ironic to hear that from someone who is producing a radio show every week for over four years. I guess have fully excepted the fact that it’s very old fashioned and that the ‘relevance’ of my show can only go down from now on.

We’re very pleased to have Spotify speak at our next OpenMusicMedia meet which happens on the 10th March, as always at the William IV in East London.

Spotify is a streaming music service that gives listeners free and legal access to millions of tracks via their desktop client.  It’s a service that has proved popular amongst early adopters and is already changing the way that many people access music.

Thanks to everyone who came down to our OpenMusicMedia meet last night. Anyone who missed it can check out this short interview with Songkick‘s Ian Hogarth which nicely sums up what we talked about.

Big thanks to Andrew Dubber for recording this, I think there might be some more footage coming. Thanks also to David Emery who took some great pictures and added them to our flickr group.

Ian Hogarth – Songkick from Andrew Dubber on Vimeo.

Join us for our OpenMusicMedia Meet in London next Wednesday (4th Feb 09). This time Songkick’s Ian Hogarth will be leading the conversation as always at the William IV near Old Street Station.

The theme set by Ian is ‘Live & Kicking’ and he’ll be talking about how the industry has boomed over past 9 years and where the concert industry is going to be in 5 years time. How start-ups and technology are going to accelerate that, and what you need to do to get on the train. With traditional recorded music sales in decline is the future of the music industry live? What can artists and bands do to monetize their live performances? Is it sustainable? What changes are we seeing in the live music sector? And what happens if the music doesn’t lend itself to the live arena?

Find more details on the OpenMusicMedia blog and hope to see you next week!

Even though the attendance was down at Midem, I (and most people I talked to) had an enjoyable time and it was certainly worthwhile making the trip this year. Everyone I wanted to meet was there and there was an interesting vibe in the air: everyone wants to get on with their business and make it through 2009. It looks like a tricky one.

I always want to blog while I’m going to conferences but more realistically I will give my report on Midem next week when I’m back in London. Things just get too hectic for me to be able to sit down for a moment and write a few words. I am told there are less people going this year but my schedule is now full. I know already I’m going to regret having booked too many meeting.

I will leave you with with a video from one of my favourite bands of the moment, Frightened Rabbit (found this via nomnomnom). Awesome stuff.

Frightened Rabbit “I Feel Better” from Sam Molleur on Vimeo.

I now had a few days to digest the Transmission conference that happened last week in Vancouver.

It was quite intense (and that’s a good thing) and very educational. This is something you cannot say very often for music industry events, most of the time we are discussing the same issues over and over again and when you attend these events on a regular basis there are not many new idea coming out of them.

Transmission was different, probably for two reasons: a) many of the people attending were experienced professional who would have interesting ideas and b) it was a busy two day event with various presentations, round tables and meals. Essential we were kept busy for the entire time which I enjoyed.

Thursday started with an introduction of our ‘general facilitator’ Paul Hoffert who was introducing us to the ‘bagel effect’ which deals with a 50 years cycle between “freedom and security” which explains the disintermediation in the music industry. It was an interesting start and dropped us right into the deep end.

He was followed by a presentation by Dennis Adamo who is trying to resurrect allofmp3.com. After claiming the music industry is losing $5bn per year through unlicensed music downloads and the best way of “converting pirates into customers” is to drop the price, he lost my attention. Surly p2p file-sharing is more then just about the cost for the consumer and music services will have to attach additional value to recorded music if they want people to pay for it.

Mark Holden was speaking after him about his company Hip Digital and the download store they built for Aeroplan and Nectar Card. There seems to be an opportunity for the industry to generate revenues through people redeeming their reward point for music. Seems to make sense but surly this is a niche market, right?

This was when most peoples favourite part started which were the round tables. Up to 10 people from different industries would discuss topics for about an hour and the outcome would be reported back and at the end of the conference we would have a look at the overall results of our conversations. I met plenty of people who I hadn’t met before and I would normally not meet since they might work in different ports of the music industry.

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