hypebot

Interview: 4QFor Nick Fitzsimmons Of Penny Distribution

We continue our ongoing 4QFor (Four Questions For) series with Nick Fitzsimons of Penny Distribution a music distribution, marketing and promotion service based in San Francisco. Nick also blogs about the industry here. (Read more 4QFor interviews with the heads of RouteNote, OurStage, Sonicbids, imeem, We7, ReverbNation, New Music Strategies and Nimbit here.)

Q1. What major changes to you foresee in the music industry in the next year?
I think the major revenue streams that used to make up the majority of an artists earnings (CD sales mostly) have been shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces.  There's been a shift in focus to other revenue streams (publishing, subscription based models, ad-supported models, online marketing, cross promotion) and I think this trend will only speed up with upcoming legislative changes to, for example, internet royalty rates as well as changes in the publishing industry.  Recorded music has become increasingly less valuable to an artist and will continue to become less so – but opportunities to make a viable career in music are more numerous than ever before.

Q2. How are you and your company prepared to benefit from these changes?. –  Right from the outset, we saw a need to re-establish the trust between artists and labels.  Providing flexibility and transparency for artists is the key – We wanted to empower artists to take a look...

Interview: 4QFOR Insomonia, RouteNote CEO Steven Finch

We continue our ongoing 4QFor (Four Questions For) series with Steven Finch, the CEO of Insomnia Ltd, which owns music 2.0 start-ups www.routenote.com, www.crenk.com, www.adphilia.com, and a record label and recording studio. You can learn more about Steve's companies here. (Read more 4QFor interviews with the heads of OurStage, Sonicbids, imeem, We7, ReverbNation, New Music Strategies and Nimbit here.)

Q1.  What major changes in the music industry do you foresee over the next year?
2008 will be a very interesting year for the music industry. We will continue to see the major labels complaining about the music industry declining, when in fact it is only CD sales that are heading downwards. The distance between the major labels and independent labels will continue to get closer, thus proving in this day and age that artists don’t need a major label to succeed!

Q2.  How are you and your company preparing to benefit from these changes?
We strongly believe in independent artists and labels being able to promote their music to the widest possible audience, without having to worry about barriers to market. RouteNote wants to eliminate these barriers for independent or unsigned artists, and allow good artists to stand out from the crowd.

Q3.  What excites you?
The music industry as a whole really excites me. It is changing and twisting all the time and with so many emerging business models in the marketplace at present, who knows which ones will actually succeed or fail. Lots of people are talking about music heading towards ‘free’, I think this might be the case...

Exclusive Interview: OurStage.com's Ben Campbell

We continue our ongoing 4QFor (Four Questions For) series with Ben Campbell, the CEO of indie music site OurStage.com which takes a "Let The Fans Decide" contest approach to music discovery. (Read more 4QFor interviews with the heads of Sonicbids, imeem, We7, ReverbNation, New Music Strategies and Nimbit here.)

Q1. What major changes in the music industry do you foresee over the next year?
This year, we will continue to see a drop in CD sales for major label artists and the subsequent demise of the labels as we know them. However, the labels will adapt and acquire in order to keep their brands in the marketplace. We’ll see more start-ups trying to be the answer and the industry will have a big wash-out in 2010. A very few new-world-order businesses will rise above the noise by delivering real value to artists and fans.

Q2. How are you and your company preparing to benefit from these changes?
OurStage is one of the new world order companies that is trying to lead the way to change.  Rather than having some guy in a suit in NYC or LA make the decisions, we let the fans decide who is great – via a fun, fair process that can’t be gamed.  OurStage then offers top ranked acts real world opportunities for exposure like performance spots at major music festivals, meetings with top industry players, opening slots with famous artists, major press coverage, and $5,000 cash. 

Q3. What excites you?

Exclusive Interview: Sonicbid's Panos Panay

Our 4QFor (Four Questions For) series continues with Panos Panay, the founder and CEO of Sonicbids.  Sonicbids' core product is is an electronic press kit, but is repositioning itself as a matchmaking website for bands and people who book or license music. Its membership includes 130,000 bands and 10,000 music promoters and licensors from 100 different countries. In the past year, Sonicbids helped facilitate over 60,000 deals among its members.

Q1: What major changes in the music industry do you foresee over the next year?
I foresee an even more rapid migration from the old music business ecosystem. There will be more Radiohead and Madonna-like breakaways from the old established guard; and the "niche" will play an even more prominent role in 2008.

Q2: How are you and your company preparing to benefit from these changes?
PANOS: I think that we are right smack in the middle of it with our business model, though we are evolving too. You will see Sonicbids go beyond just helping bands book gigs - you will see us helping them develop an audience.

Q3: What excites you?
Wow, everything. This is the best time to be in the music business. I am excited about what I call the rise of the "middle class" artists. For the first time since the beginning of the music business...

Interview: 4QFor KnowTheMusicBiz.com's David Rose

We continue our ongoing 4QFor (Four Questions For) series with David Rose, the founder and President of Kudzu Media Group and the Managing Editor of KnowTheMusicBiz.com, an online community and resource center for artists. (Read more 4QFor interviews with the heads of imeem, We7 ReverbNation, New Music Strategies and Nimbit here.)

Q1:  What major changes in the music industry do you foresee over the next year?
The music industry and related technology solutions are changing so rapidly it’s difficult to forecast which specific new trends will be emerging in the next year. I think it is clear two existing trends will continue to accelerate: 1. The continual emergence of new and innovative technologies to market and distribute music (and hopefully ways to monetize it) and 2. The already crowded field of artists vying for the attention of music fans, venues, booking agents, retailers, program directors and record labels is only going to become more crowded as the traditional barriers of entry to the industry (cost of recording, lack of distribution options, etc.) continue to erode.

Q2: How are you and your company preparing to benefit from these changes?
Everyone has heard the saying “Knowledge is Power” but you don’t really appreciate how true that is until you work in the music business. The music business is inherently complex and there are now so many technology related options available it can be overwhelming to simply try and keep up.

We founded KnowTheMusicBiz.com as an online community and resource center to help serious artists and others interested in the music business find the information they need to build a sustainable career. We believe artists who truly understand publishing, licensing,

Exclusive Interview: 4QFor New Music Strategies' Andrew Dubber

We continue our ongoing 4QFor (Four Questions For) series with UK music industry educator commentator and consultant Andrew Dubber. He is Senior Lecturer in the Music Industries at Birmingham City University, blogs at New Music Strategies and has some interesting projects planned for 2008. (Read more 4QFor interviews with the heads of imeem, We7 ReverbNation and Nimbit here.)

Q1: What major changes in the music industry do you foresee over the next year?
I don't foresee changes in the music industry. I leave fortune telling to the fortune tellers. What I do is describe those changes as they happen, evaluate and analyze what they mean for the independent music sector, and suggest strategies based on the new music environment.

It's far more mundane than jetpacks, silver jumpsuits and meals-in-a-pill, but I'm much more interested in how your music business can make money with new (and actually real) contemporary technologies.

Q2: How as you preparing to benefit from these changes?  Personally, my mission is to achieve my two main goals. The first is to be interesting, the second is to be helpful. If I can do that around describing those changes and new opportunities in new technology and music, I'm pretty much living the ideal life. A bit of public speaking here, a spot of consultancy there, a splash of travel, and the rest of the time keeping my Music Industries students in the know at Birmingham City University. And if someone along the way gives me a bit of money for being helpful, then there's a benefit too.

Q3: What excites you?  The new and the interesting, second hand jazz vinyl, train travel, good coffee, genuine talent intelligently applied - and getting feedback from people who... 

Exclusive Interview: 4Q4 With WE7's Steve Purdham

We continue our ongoing 4QFor (Four Questions For) series with ad supported download service We7's founder and CEO Steve Purdham. Steve has built several global technology companies including such SurfControl which was valued at its peak at £1bn.  (Read our 4QFor interviews with the heads of imeem, ReverbNation and Nimbit here.) 

Q1 What major changes in the music industry do you foresee over the next year?  There are so many emerging trends set to take off in the next 12 months - the final death of DRM, increased consumer pressure for new distribution models, more bands moving to control 360 degree strategies, more examples of the internet being used to deliver new creative ideas e.g.: Radiohead, We7, Pandora, Live Nation, Starbucks. Finally, one of the main changes will be realization across the industry that the mobile world and the internet is one and the same.

Q2 How are you and your company preparing to benefit from these changes?  At We7 it’s about standing behind the consumer and the bands, giving them functionality and facilities that reflect how they want to provide and consume music. The big fight is to get people to realise that free music does not mean ‘I don’t value music’, that free actually means ‘paid for  by someone else’.

Q3 What excites you?  Chaos, new ideas, emerging technology and fighting tradition – all these are the reason that I joined We7. The music industry is irrationally seductive and because of the fabulous creativity in the music world, it often forgets that it is still an

Exclusive Interview: 4QFor ReverbNation's Michael Dorenberg

We continue our 4QFor (Four Questions For) Series with Micheal Dorenberg, the CEO of music community and artist services site ReverbNation.  Also, check out recent 4Q4's with imeem's  Dalton Caldwell and Nimbit's Patrick Faucher.

Q1: What major changes in the music industry do you foresee over the next year?
It sounds kind of obvious, but there will finally be a recognition that the true asset Artist's have is the relationship they have with their fan base, in terms of breadth (numbers of fans) and depth (strength of the influence) and duration (how the influence endures).  The music, branding, cache, and all other pieces of the "product" are means to that end. 

The implications are twofold:  Artists and those that represent them (labels, managers, promoters, etc) will begin to seek ways to measure the value of those relationships and they will begin to monetize them beyond selling digital downloads and concert tickets.  As advertising and other methods of leveraging those relationships become available, accepted, and more important, the understanding of "engagement" with the fans will supersede old metrics like the sheer numbers of fans.  Companies like ComScore and Facebook are already shifting the value metric of websites and applications to engagement, and the paradigm will hold for Artists as well. 

Q2. How are you and your company preparing to benefit from these changes?
ReverbNation believes that an Artist must be present everywhere their fans might be, and that those interactions must be designed to maximize the value for the artist.  We help artists efficiently deliver their content to fans in the places they live like MySpace, Facebook, IM's and Blogs, and ensure that every interaction encourages fans to spread the content , is carefully tracked, and will benefit the artist to the fullest extent possible. 

We give artists a "Home Base" with the tools and information they need to move fans down the "value funnel" from casual listener to customer, to "promoter". We are preparing to...

Exclusive Interview: 4QFor imeem CEO Dalton Caldwell

This week's 4QFor (Four Questions For) features imeem's young founder and CEO Dalton Caldwell answering the same questions we put last week to Nimbit founder Patrick Faucher.

Q1. What major changes in the music industry do you foresee over the next year?
Over the next year, everyone will be a lot more serious about new business models in digital. There’s a lot more going on out there already- look at what we’re trying to accomplish here at imeem as well as the disruption caused by the recent Radiohead album launch. It’s time for people to get the memo that digital is about more than ringtones and iTunes.   

Q2. How are you and your company preparing to benefit from these changes?          
We strongly believe in ad-supported music and imeem has been the most successful in proving out the model.  There is a tremendous market opportunity for ad-supported music to work on a large scale.  We could easily see a reality where total digital revenues from advertising dwarf download sales.

Q3. What excites you?
I’m excited to prove that ad-supported music really works and that the site has been able to scale to the large growth over the past year and service over 18 million users. At the end of the day though, I still really enjoy music and being around music and still get chills when I hear something good.  My parents taught me to do what I love and what I believe in…so here I am.

Q4. What’s next?
A major label executive once told me that the future of the music industry is and always has been in the young people trying to build something new in reaction to the old.  He cited folk, punk and rap.  For young people and digital music, the genie is out of the bottle, we are living in the post-Napster world. Teenagers today don’t even remember the old Napster… a 14 year old today was 7 years old when it was shut down. Technology disruption happens time and time again to established industries, but no matter what, the world keeps turning.  People and industries always adapt and that’s what will happen in the music industry as well.

4QFor: Four Questions For Nimbit's Patrick Faucher

Today mark's the launch of an ongoing Hypebot series 4QFor where we ask music industry leaders, pundits and artists the same four questions. We hope that each different point of view will provide insights into the evolution of Music 2.0.

Patrick Faucher is the CEO of Nimbit, a true Music 2.0 company that enables direct artist to fan sales and communications on web sites and across social networking platforms.

Q1.What major changes in the music industry do you foresee over the next year?
You'll see an accelerated migration toward a new model for labels and artists, which is more of an artist-centric, 360-degree approach to the business. More artists will be distributing direct to consumer, especially from their own websites and at shows. Some may do this on their own, and others will partner with a label that understands the new landscape and can offer real value in terms of helping the artists develop a market.

Q2. How are you and your company preparing to benefit from these changes?
We power the direct-to-fan sales of thousands of artists, as well as their labels, with our ecommerce platform. We are offering tools that automate sales, online marketing, catalog administration and content management across all the channels that our clients need to manage. We recently launched the Online Merch Table, which is the only commerce widget available for artists that integrates direct-to-fan sales of CDs, MP3s, DVDs, merchandise, tickets and mobile content into a single shopping cart, and can be distributed across multiple sites and social networks.