Category: Digital Media
Mesh 08 Keynote with Ethan Kaplan
May 21, 2008
I'm going to give live blogging a try for Ethan Kaplan's keynote at Mesh 08. Apologies in advance if I screw this up. I'm really not a reporter/blogger-type. I'll probably forget to write or inject my own opinion in places making for a total mess.
9:15
Stuart MacDonald making announcements and thanking organizers/sponsors.
Stuart is the CEO and founder of Tripharbour.ca.
9:25
Announcing MeshTV for this year's Mesh conference, for video content uploaded by attendees. That's interesting. Not sure the value of it considering that they will be posting edited versions of the conference to the site as well. I personally like having edited video as a consumer. I loath having to wade through video for the "good stuff".
9:30
Mathew Ingram introducing Ethan Kaplan VP Technology for Warner Brothers Records as a True Geek.
9:35
MI: Is this a good time to be an artist?
EK: Good time. In the past 15 years there is more fluidy in creating art that has multiple representations. A statement of being.
MI: Experimentation By NIN et al. imply the end of the Big Record Label.
EK: Labels are like VCs. hmmmm... interesting comparison. NIN/Radiohead started with the old model. Record labels put a certain amount of risk upfront to get reward back: patrons of the art. Labels invest a lot upfront in order to reduce the stress on the artists in hopes of getting better results. Similar 10 to 1 ratio. Labels looking for 1 success out of 10.
9:40
MI: NIN/Radiohead?
EK: Radiohead: the distribution story has overshadowed the fact that it's a really good album. agreed.
NIN - what Trent is doing fits his modus operandi.
MI: Were they stunts? What does a new artist do?
EK: All artists need to address: How can a I retain of what I produce (Good lawyer), How can I control what I represent (Website, modes of experience), How can I control what is represented (marketing, writing good songs, etc.)
9:45
MI: Artists seem to be losing control?
EK: Not really. We have reduced control back to the artist and their work and relationships with the fans. It's gone back to what A/R was supposed to be.
9:50
MI: Do we need government mandated fees to compensate artists (ISP tax)
EK: Difficult question. I choose not to focus on this (I know Ethan did not want to talk about this.) Free used to be radio and the upside was CD, now if the base line of free is hire above CD, then we should improve value of experience rather than value of artifact. If you get lost in the policy debate, you lose focus on what can be controlled or things that create value. Sounds like anti-ISP levy.
9:52
Audience: I wonder how artists can manage the process of social media - it's a lot of work. I worry how will this affect creative process?
EK: It's a lot of work. The first thing I did was get rid of all Flash Websites. (applause). We build social sites on Drupal for our fans. We want their registration. That's how fans claim their affiliation to an artist. Social website are supposed to connect the fans to fans and fans to artists. An good artists knows when to back away.
MI: Some artist feel that fans get too close. Don't want them to change. Try to affect their process.
EK: Advice: don't read the discussion boards of your fans. Good bands know when to back away.... that's the fan's world not mine. It doesn't need to be a one-to-one relationship. very interesting insight
10:00
Audience: How do big labels use social media to pick up success stories? How do you find new artists?
EK: Tech and A/R run differently. A/R people club hop to find new talent. Everyone is on the web 24/7 looking for stuff. Everyone in the company can act as A/R. There is no shortage of resources of finding any new artists on Social Media sites.
10:05
Audience: What are labels doing to push up the value chain
EK: Focusing on direct to fan experience. Starts with the way we create a website. Its not just a website it is the focal point of distributing music, merchandize, tickets, direct connection with fan. A 365 stream of content and monetization. The Website is the new album.
Audience: Will a label mean anything in the future like it
EK: With consolidation in the 90s we lost our histories. The days of IRS are gone. It has migrated to the indie bands - to indie - labels - to the major label. The labels identity doesn't matter as much as that of the artist. Labels have no personality - days of Iovine and Clive are gone.
10:10
Audience (Stuart MacDonald) - Have people stopped buying albums now that they can buy singles. Are they buying back catalog now that they can only buy one song readily from older music.
EK: I don't think we touched 10% of what can be done with catalog. I think there is interesting stuff that can be done with legacy music. People forget history we are focused on hits and immediacy - a la techmeme. This is a priority for me.
Audience: Is music going to free are you exploring other models.
EK: There will be multiple models. I like the music as application concept: APIs and SDKs on devices will open up some interesting possibilities for music . Curious. I'd like to know more about this actually.
Audience: What do you think of the LastFM
EK: It was foolish for Nielson not to acquire it. It's disappointing that the data is now walled-gardened.
Audience: RockBand Guitar Hero what are your thoughts?
EK: Games are important. Interesting to see how those two games are driving older music and singles. Good illustration that experience can drive more revenue than the artifact. GH and RB has fed back to artifacts have actually driven more downloads.
10:20
Audience: How do you price experience versus artifact?
EK: Easier to define costs and margins with artifacts. When you are pricing for experience, the pricing is determined by metrics related to traditional marketing rather than fixed costs processes.
10:23
Audience: Live music, will labels offer live concerts moments after its complete for sale.
EK: Live music is more popular than ever. The tour used to be not part of a traditional record deal. It now is. Live music is the root of the music experience. Official bootlegs drive demand for fan bootlegs to close to nil. There are cool technologies to service fans at shows UGC, photostreams, etc... There are lots of things we can do in that space.
Audience: You mentioned monopolistic behavior by concert companies is LiveNation now the labels' competition.
EK: There are a lot of competitors anyone who is servicing the artist. We should not get caught up with what - we should focus on our relationships and what we can do. Its a danger game to get caught in "the grass is greener" with us versus other companies like LiveNation. What can we do better than other companies we are one of the only companies with a tech department and that is an important advantage for us.
10:30
Audience: Why would I ever pay for music again?
EK: We hear music a couple hundred times on a daily basis (That's a bit much, actually). music is often consumed as a passive experience and that is being monetized via licensing. The question is will you pay for an artifact again? The traditional notion of paying to a CD is going to change. You pay for music for the same reasons you pay for anything other than the bare necessities of life.
10:35
Audience: IS Facebook beating MySpace?
EK: Different audiences. Bands are on both. Facebook is friends. MySpace is content.
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WHEW! This was very hard to do. Props to all you bloggers who live blog this all the time. I'm exhausted The content is not direct quotes. It's paraphrased and may be inaccurate in places. It was difficult to keep up. Especially for a two finger typer.
Rework Music Brainz or start something new
February 21, 2008
I've gotten a few (3) e-mails asking about why we aren't using Music Brainz for our metadata project, and I think I need to elaborate on what we are doing.
First I do not mean to slag Music Brainz in any way. In fact we are using Music Brainz for our project. We think it is valuable. However, we cannot avoid the main issue that updating and editing Music Brainz is tedious and complex, and that is the nut of the problem. Wikipedia, with all its crazy syntax, is easy to update and it is immediately satisfying. The same cannot be said about Music Brainz.
So, where should our efforts be?
Improving the update experience in Music Brainz would be a daunting task. I have been involved in a number of massive media repository projects, and I know the can of worms that will result. It is a major effort that will result in major arguments, accusations, and acrimony. Librarian verus tagger. If you have been there you know what I am talking about. If you haven't, no amount of talking can explain the pain - you have to experience it yourself.
OR
Take all the hard work (data entry) that has been put into Music Brainz, augment it with Wikipedia data and make it dead easy for any person or service to update. This also means not caring about rigid data structures. This we can do relatively quickly. Once it's done, it's open for everyone to use including Music Brainz. In fact, I'd be keen to have metabrainz.org take over the project if it looks like there is broad support for what we are doing.
Our project is not meant to replace Music Brainz in any way. We want to have an open and dead-easy-to-update music metadata web service for fans. It uses Music Brainz it is not trying to be a replacement for Music Brainz.
The World's Greatest Music Collection is for Sale. Minimum Bid: $3,000,000
February 18, 2008
Evidently the world's greatest music collection is for sale. The minimum bid to purchase this collection is $3,000,000. It has been valued at $50,000,000. By whom and how this collection was valued I do not know.
I actually find this very intriguing. It is indeed a massive collection:
The listing states:
"Every recording in the collection was purchased by the collection's owner over the past fifty years and represents a lifetime of work and his desire to see the music preserved for future generations. Advancing age and health concerns are forcing the owner to sell."
Is this collection really preserving music? Perhaps there are songs on those pieces of vinyl that have not been digitized. But this pic below is clearly thousands of CDs:
If someone offered, 30 million MP3s, what do you think the chances are that someone would buy it for even $1,000,000?
There is a collection here, but it is not the music. It's the packaging.
Strutta is fun
February 17, 2008
I dropped by the Strutta offices on Friday to say hello to my old office mates and check out their super secret website. Plenty of pleading and a bit of bribing was in order to get the super secret viewing. I brought over some beers to celebrate their internal launch, and to lubricate them sufficiently to weaken their resistance to giving me a quick demo of the site.
It only took one beer, before I was getting the full on demo, but hey told me that I was not allowed to talk about what the site actually did. That didn't sit right with me; so, I challenged them to Rock Band for the right to post about the entire product. Unfortunately, I got schooled. Horribly. I am now sworn to secrecy, but here is what I can say.
It's about video content. OK, everyone kind of knew that.
It has discovery and gaming elements.
The UI had me thinking, I'd love to play with this on my Wii. That's high praise in my books.
It's actually FUN, and that's the most important thing in my opinion. If, I'm going to be engaged into content on the Web, please make it fun. Make it an enjoyable experience.
Sorry I can't go into more details. Though if you bring over a few beers to their offices you are likely to get a sneak peak, too. Just brush up on your Rock Band skills first.
The essential architecture for a digital media package
February 12, 2008
In my previous post, I described a basic music experience that I would like to have. In this convenient experience there are two types of content with two classifications.
A. The two types of content. Let’s call them:
1. Official Content .
2. User Generated Content , or should I say Fan Generated Content.
and,
B. The two classifications of content. Let’s call them:
1. Free Content. Content that is readily offered without thought to compensation.
2. For Sale Content. Content that the owner wishes to make some financial return. It may be offered for free in lieu of other considerations.
So we have four quadrants:
Quadrant 1: Facts
(Top Left)
The upper right quadrant of Free/Official content. This is the metadata and factoids for the song, album, or artist in question. It can also be the meta-media, which the copyright holder is offering openly for consumption, such as album art, liner notes, possibly even lyrics.
Quadrant 2: Original and Fair Use
(Top Right)
This is original and fair use content generated by the fan. This is the reviews, photos, artwork, opinion, etc. It may even be copyrighted material under fair use provisions.
Quadrant 3: Creative Works
(Bottom Left)
This is the creative content developed by the artist(s). This includes audio, video, pictures, imagery, interactive content, etc. Consumption can be “Free”, and compensated by other modes other than money. This can be any type of content not just the typical song, pics, and video. Think interactive digital items. Widgets if you must, but don't limit your thinking to the common Flash widgets populating the web-o-sphere at the moment.
Quadrant 4: Derivative Works
(Bottom right)
This is content that has been remixed, mashed-up, reused and re-published as a derivative work. The question mark represents content that will be anything that reuses column 1 content. Like quadrant 3, we shouldn't pigeonhole this region to video, pics, audio, etc. Also, let's not forget that other artists can be fans, too.
We believe this is the essential architecture for a digital media package solution.
