digitalmusic.org | Digital Music

"Ahead of next week’s Music Biz 2013 industry conference in LA, we spoke with Bill Wilson, VP at organizing trade association NARM/Digitalmusic.org, about the state and future of digital music. One of the main focal points of this year’s event is a metadata summit for music executives. The summit gathers together executives from major industry players, including Sony Music, Spotify, BMI and the RIAA to discuss how to better work together on data solutions for the music industry." Read more from The Next Web here. Read More »

"This is a substantive change in the business," NARM VP of digital strategy Bill Wilson says. "Everybody is understandably cautious about this. These artists are making their own business decisions based on how they feel. We just have to keep reinforcing the positive side of what streaming brings."

Billboard magazine’s latest white paper on the future of innovation in the music industry — compiled during its recently held FutureSound conference — contains some key insights, and data gained from private discussion salons moderated by digitalmusic.org … including direct quotes from Bill Wilson, digitalmusic.org's VP of Digital Strategy and Business Development. The white paper, which is a series of summary articles each based on a different takeaway from the conference, is available for download here. In the “Discovery: the Key to Digital Fortune” section, Wilson emphasizes the need for a coherent, clean, and standardized metadata infrastructure currently lacking in the music industry: “Everything else is just curb appeal,” he’s quoted in the paper. “Without accurate and complete metadata, all you have is a nice façade, but no floorboards, plumbing or wiring inside your house.” Metadata management is a significant topic in throughout the piece, with Google’s Tim Quirk and Ford Motor Company’s Jim Buczkowski both adding their points of view as well based on their on-stage comments. Wilson and digitalmusic.org member/advisor Ted Cohen, managing director of TAG Strategic, teamed up on the sidelines of the FutureSound conference to moderate a series of invite-only salons designed to drill down deeper into the issues raised on the stage in a more private setting. Read More »

Hypebot's Sr. Analyst Hisham Dahud recaps last week's Music Startup Academy in San Francisco in his article titled, “8 Questions All Music Startups Must Answer." Click here to read the full article. Read More »

"The problem is that in the digital era, the mom-and-pop stores are software developers," says Bill Wilson, VP of digital strategy and business development for NARM and digitalMusic.org, which recently launched an online API directory as a resource for developers. "These are kids who love music. These are the same people who probably would have opened up mom-and-pop record stores five, 10 or 20 years ago." Read more at http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/record-labels/from-this-week-s-billboard-emi-opens-up-1007955372.story#AWjAYzbHo6rpjU6L.99 Read More »

digitalmusic.org participated in New York Gaming Meetup's 'Conversation of Music + Games' as dozens of developers, musicians and artists met to discuss the difficult and complex subjects of getting the music rights for games. Read more about it here. Read More »

digitalmusic.org and TAG Strategic gather music industry investors and startup founders for "a business-minded group therapy session" at the New Music Seminar Tech Summit. The problem, as one philosophically-minded audience member pointed out, is that there are too many problems in the music industry. It certainly felt that way Tuesday afternoon at the New Music Seminar Tech Summit, “Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained – A Look at the Digital Music Vertical.” The discussion at the AMC Loews Theatre focused on the difficulty of acquiring investment as a music industry startup, the issues with music copyright laws, the free-downloading plague and innumerable other chinks in the business. Click here for the full story. Read More »

“The NARM organizers have done a great job pulling together the traditional music stakeholders of labels, artists and publishers alongside tech companies – I appreciate that because most events tend to draw one or the other, but we value both,” said 7digital’s Vickie Nauman. “I had a chance to sit down with both Warner Music and Concord Music and continue to be impressed with how they are working to create new opportunities with 7digital for their catalogs.” Click here to read the full post. Read More »

Excerpt from full LA Times article: "San Francisco-based INgrooves has been in business for 10 years, but few people have heard of it or its chief executive, Robb McDaniels. That’s beginning to change, in part because the company earlier this year purchased Fontana, a Los Angeles distributor of physical albums for more than 200 independent labels. INgrooves is turning the most heads, however, for its role in the new digital economy. Last year, INgrooves distributed songs that rang up roughly $1 billion in digital revenue. And while it's true that distribution isn’t the kingmaker it once was, as only a handful of labels have the resources to ship albums to thousands of physical stores, it's an interesting perch from which to witness the digital tidal wave that has permanently transformed the music industry’s retail landscape. As a sign of how much things have changed, McDaniels, 37, is scheduled to deliver the keynote address on Wednesday at the annual Music Biz 2012 conference of NARM and digitalmusic.org." Read the full article at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2012/05/robb-mcdaniels-ingrooves-on-streaming-music-narm-2012.html Read More »

"This year I hope the Music Startup Academy sessions during the SXSW Accelerator help the next generation of great music apps get a kick start," says Bill Wilson in his interview with SXSW as he discusses his participation in this year's event. For the full interview, click here. Read More »