SanFran MusicTech Summit Recap

On Monday, May 18, 2009; I had the chance to attend the SanFran MusicTech Summit at Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco’s dilapidated Japantown. During the summit, which ran from 9 am to around 6 pm, I sat in on a few panels where musicians, record label types, and various businesses all sat down to discuss where the music industry is heading and how the changes would affect everyone.

If someone attended this summit looking for answers on how to successfully market a band to the masses on the internet, terrestrial radio, or some new music recommendation site; chances are you would walk away with more questions than answers.

GotGame attended the summit to find out what how music might be used in relation to video games, meaning song licensing for new titles and such; but unfortunately there was not much talk about the future, other than what is being done now and how the industry is reacting to it.

The first panel I sat in on was Music in Audio-Visual Works, with Zahavah Levine (YouTube.com), Iain Scholnick (ImageSpan), and David Leibowitz, Esq. (Gotuit/CH Potomac). Sitting though the hour long panel, I learned a little about how YouTube.com functions around the legal matters of music on the site in relation to the music publishing companies and record labels.

The problem with this panel was that there was not much focus on actual music in audio-visual works as a marketing tool; the main discussion was the legal issues around them. I would have liked to heard more of the marketing side or even a mention of how different licensing issues effect each site, but in the end; I came away with little on the actual subject matter of music inside audio-visual works.

At 10:30 AM, I attended the Webcasting Issues panel.

On the panel were Joe Kennedy (Pandora), Bill Goldsmith (Radio Paradise), Mike Huppe (SoundExchange), Drew Hilles (Goom Radio), and Jordan Kurland (Zeitgeist Artist Management). During this panel, I learned about how the listener is slowly moving away from terrestrial radio and moving online. The discussion then headed towards revenue allocation for royalties, where it stayed for the duration of the panel.

Guitar Hero: Not Even a Mention

2:00 PM had the Social Networking & Music panel.

Geoff Ralston (Lala), Ali Partovi (iLike), Anthony Batt (Buzz Media), and Chuck Fishman (Cisco) were on the panel. While I thought this would be a discussion about how social media is changing the face of music marketing, the panel quickly became an advertising hour for each panelist’s product. There was little talk of Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter as viable outlets for musicians to gain new fans or any ideas of how the music industry would accept social networking sites as new tools for marketing.

The final panel I attended was Music Recommendation Services.

The panel included Machael Papish (MediaUnbound), Stephen White (Gracenote), Alex Loscos (BMAT), and James Miao (thesixtyone). This panel was interesting in that the panelists were not trying to advertise their products, they genuinely discussed the changes in the music recommendation product that each had in regards to the changing market. All stressed flexibilty with their services, and that simply releasing a music recommendation algorithm would lead to consumer anger in the force-fed nature of those programs.

Music recommendation has become somewhat of a game, and that was what all the panelists were discussing, and commenting on as the next phase of the music recommendation business. Since the consumption rate of the internet is so quick, becoming the first to find something transforms into the pursuit of finding it first, but at the same time getting unknown musicians out there.

Rock Band: The Beatles?

My day at the SanFran MusicTech Summit lead me to a few conclusions. Smaller bands already know about the supposed “Web 2.0″ and how to utilize it to their advantage. In many of the panels, no one really talked about how social networking will become the new marketing arena.

There was also no mention of video games in relation to the music industry. I would have thought that the licensing of music in Rock Band and Guitar Hero would have been a big issue. Possibly after E3, the music industry will take another look at the video game industry as another viable marketplace.