digitalmusic.org | Digital Music

April 18, 2013 – With Juniper Research predicting that nearly 20% of consumer cars in North America and Western Europe will feature mobile-app integration by 2017, the idea of the “connected car” is quickly becoming a reality. With that in mind, music business association NARM and digitalmusic.org, the home of NARM’s digital initiatives, are set to tackle in-car music listening trends during Music Biz 2013 at a Town Hall entitled “The Connected Car Experience,” which will be held Tuesday, May 7, from 3:45 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. During the Town Hall, representatives from top companies in the space such as the Warner Music Group, Pandora, Slacker, Gracenote, Aha Radio/Harman International, and Kenwood USA Corporation will be on hand to discuss how both the music and auto industries can take advantage of these trends and examine exactly what consumers want from their music experience while on the road.

“With streaming services and cloud-based music lockers announcing deep integrations with top auto companies, the ability to safely and efficiently enjoy next-gen music services while driving is becoming more and more important,” said Jim Donio, President of NARM. “This forum will provide an in-depth look at this trend and give music and auto industry executives a chance to put their heads together to build the cars of the future.”

The full schedule for the program can be found below. The event is open to all Music Biz 2013 registrants. For more information or to register for the conference, visit www.narm.com/events/musicbiz2013/rates-registration.

Music Biz 2013 Town Hall: The Connected Car Experience
Tuesday, May 7

3:45 – 4:15 PM
Keynote

An address/presentation from Mitch Bainwol, President and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Having previously served as Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, Bainwol has extensive experience on both the auto and music sides of the connected car equation. His presentation will bridge the gap between the two worlds and help to illuminate the path forward.

4:15 – 5:00 PM
Automotive Entertainment & the Consumer

An overview of the opportunity for extending digital music services into the car, consisting of research on current user activity, forecasts, and the present/future of the in-car experience.

Moderator:
• Alex Pham, Billboard Magazine

Panelists:
• Robert Acker, Aha Radio, Harman International
• Howie Singer, Warner Music Group
• Ty Roberts, Gracenote

5:00 – 6:00 PM
Developing for the Car

Examining the nuts and bolts of how to turn opportunity to reality, featuring representatives of auto manufacturers, after-market stereo companies, and digital music services.

Moderator:
• Karen Allen, TAG Strategic

Panelists:
• Steve Cotter, Slacker
• Keith Lehmann, Kenwood USA Corporation
• Geoff Snyder, Pandora

The full Music Biz 2013 event runs May 6-9, and includes a comprehensive slate of panels, keynotes, and townhalls ranging from the Music Business Academy for those just starting out to the first-ever Metadata Summit for those already immersed in the business, to the Billboard “Future of the Biz on the Future of the Biz” panel followed by a performance by alt-folk sister act von Grey. The event closes with an Awards Dinner, where Buddy Guy will receive the Chairman’s Award for Sustained Creative Achievement and Emeli Sandé will receive the Breakthrough Artist of the Year Award. Other honorees include Ted Cohen, Founder and Managing Partner at TAG Strategic, and Record Store Day, who will receive NARM’s Presidential Award for Sustained Industry Achievement and Independent Spirit Award, respectively, with more to be announced.

More than £1bn was spent on downloaded films, music and games in 2012, the highest annual total.

Read more here.

The Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) and digitalmusic.org’s first UK Music Startup Academy took place at London’s General Assembly on October 17.

The event was designed to give practical advice to entrepreneurs wishing to enter the music industry. The day-long course brought together some of the brightest minds from around the UK and Europe, to learn from some of the music industry’s finest.

Music industry analyst and blogger Mark Mulligan opened proceedings, stressing the importance of creating a ‘Unique Experience’ for the consumer. Highlighting how competitive the market is Mulligan highlighted some of the innovations that have changed the shape of how we consume music over the past decade. In particular Mulligan looked at the shape of the music streaming market and how he viewed today’s music landscape.

Jez Bell of Omnifone followed Mulligan, by running through the complexities of publishing and the commercial considerations that must be addressed by any startup. His talk addressed not only how publishing works on the global stage, but also some of the reasons for these complexities, whilst highlighting the dangers of overlooking licensing by new businesses and serving up practical advice on how to navigate the legal minefield.

The afternoon session saw ERA’s Director General Kim Bayley deliver an insightful presentation about content acquisition and business development. This whistle stop tour of how to approach both the investment community and the record labels reiterated the importance of defining your product and market before embarking on a business venture. See Bayley’s presentation here.

The final presentation of the day came from startup company Mixlr, who already have over half a million users of their social live audio platform. Since being founded in 2010 Mixlr have strived to create a social audio solution which enables users to produce high-quality audio broadcasts and share them with their audiences. Originally designed as a way for DJ’s to promote their music, Mixlr has developed into a cost effective solution to broadcast and has attracted attention from many top companies. The latest addition to Mixlr ever-growing list of customers includes Premiership football club Queens Park Rangers, who have identified the benefits remote broadcasting can provide.

The day was rounded off by an interactive session on APIs with the class creating their own new business plans with the aid of some freely available APIs.

The first UK Startup Academy event was deemed as a success and thoroughly enjoyed by all in attendance. Kim Bayley commented on the event by saying “It was a fantastic day, with some new and exciting ideas being exchanged. Innovation is at the heart of the music industry – events like this harness raw talent and provide a platform to develop new ways of thinking.”

Following years of doom and gloom surrounding the rise of internet piracy and the death of physical formats, we’re finally hearing some good news from the UK music industry.

In May the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) announced that UK digital music revenues overtook those from physical formats. It means that the UK music industry is finally catching up with the US and China who were already earning the lion’s share of their revenue from online digital music distribution.

The BPI report states that consumers spent a total of £155.8m on music in the first quarter of 2012, with 55.5%, or £86.5m coming from digital music revenues. This trend is set to continue with the growth of music downloads as well as subscription and ad-funded music services.

Click here to read more.

Excerpt from longer recap writer by music industry professional Linda Ury Greenberg 
For full recap, click here.
For panel video recap, click here.

The Town Hall Meeting at Music Biz 2012 took the opportunity to examine data – how it’s best used and when it leads us astray. Ethan Kaplan, VP of Product for Live Nation Labs, kicked off the session with a reminder that not all data is good data. He admonished the participants in the town hall to remember that if the way that one manages a product pre-determines the results, than that data is not useful. He recommended instead that data results be analyzed in partnership with context and experience in order to draw conclusions. He recommended that product developers and managers use user experience and product design to guide decision making. The ultimate goal, Kaplan concluded was to create the product possible with the least amount of friction for the consumer. Using these guiding principles will allow decision makers to better manage the sometimes overwhelming streams of data about a particular experience.

Kaplan’s keynote was followed by a presentation by Russ Crupnick, of The NPD Group, who shared how their data gathering techniques have evolved over the years to better reflect the marketplace. His “Small Data, Big Insights” presentation showed how NPD has shifted its focus from way back in the day when they had a panel of 8,000 people sending in postcards detailing everything they bought in music (where, when, genre, format, etc.) to now, when NPD has reinvented the MusicWatch product to derive data on experiences – concerts, merchandise, listening, P2P, people enjoying their own collection or sharing others, etc. Of course, NPD is also incorporating social media and all of the other Influences that touch the consumer (e.g., radio, TV, stores, streaming services, etc.) into their data collection.

The next study was presented by David Bakula, the SVP of Analytics and Client Relations from Nielsen, presented another metrics case study, focusing on research Nielsen conducted to look at the Limewire Case.

What Nielsen discovered was that those who continued sharing files in 2011 were much heavier music users. A small number of very prolific downloaders were responsible for a good amount of the file sharing – 20% of users represented 60% of the volume. What does this tell us? Shutting down Limewire did what has happened every time a file sharing service is shuttered – the heaviest users migrate to other file sharing options, since that is what they do, that is a key way they acquire music. But, on the flip side, the positive effect is that awareness of piracy does deter people from using the illegal methods, so when a case gets a lot of press and people become aware of the implications of illegal behavior, many will be deterred from continuing that behavior.

Following Nielsen’s discoveries, Colin Willis shared a number of data points collected by his company, Next Big Sound. He used two case studies to demonstrate the benefit of well used data.

Case Study #1 demonstrated how NBS has been working with Sony Music to develop a Report Wizard that allows users to choose a report template and customize all of the pieces. This flexible tool allows users to create a report focusing on community or content, artist or demographics by any geographic location, including the specific media necessary to answer the business question. It is especially useful when establishing benchmarks, to evaluate how your artist is performing vs. the rest of the pack. The problem or challenge for Sony was inefficient reporting processes and multiple documents across labels that did not allow for clear, readable metrics. NBS worked with the client to develop a solution to the problem.

Case Study #2 showed how NBS worked with Universal Republic to provide data for a specific action – how can we get the artist Gotye on Saturday Night Live? The solution was to use NBS data to compare and contrast other artists who had appeared on SNL and time-shift the dates to be sure they could accurately correlate the timeframes vs. Gotye’s Facebook metrics. The ultimate sign of success was a booking on SNL. Colin wanted to demonstrate just one way the NBS information could be used to answer a specific artist question but noted that the data’s flexibility allows for unlimited combinations of artists and platforms for analysis in the U.S. and other countries.

The Town Hall concluded with a panel discussion moderated by Universal Music Group’s Geoff Mayfield. The panelists were Jason Feinberg, VP, Digital Strategy & Development/D2C at Concord Music Group, Sanem Alkan, the Co-Founder and President of Social Genius, Jay Frank, the Owner and CEO of DigSin, Mark Keeney, VP of Marketing at Rhapsody and Rob McDermott, CEO of Mad Mac Entertainment.

This roundtable discussion gave label and marketing people the opportunity to respond to and talk about their personal challenges of dealing with the overload of data from sales and social media and to comment on what is most important to them, in their day-to-day efforts for artists.

In many different ways, everyone kept coming back to what is probably the key result from all of the research sessions – the huge need for easy to use data collection and aggregation systems that are intuitive, flexible and global. The metrics have spiraled out of control and everyone is looking for a way to pull the mounds of data together in a meaningful way.