You can download the full documentary in HD on their website.

As a side note, it’s because of PressPausePlay that I now have an IMDB page.

This year I have again submitted an idea for a talk at SXSW and the public voting process has now started. This time I have decided not to submit a panel idea like in previous years but I want to try something different: Ben Perreau and I will debate on the influence of Public Broadcasters on digital music innovation and its positive and negative effects, you can find the whole description below.

As always we appreciate your votes in the SXSW PanelPicker and feel free to leave comments about what we should cover in our debate.

This is the idea we suggested:

Public media & digital music innovation: a debate

This debate will consider digital innovation in an environment with public broadcasters. Jonas Woost (Executive producer for Radio 3 at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) will defend their role and Ben Perreau (Director of digital content at Global Radio / previously an entrepreneur) will consider the negative effects.

Public broadcasters have long played a vital role in media, not only by providing citizens with independent information but also through universal entertainment. Publicly-funded organizations like CBC and NPR have tirelessly championed new music, supported artists that struggle to find audiences on commercial outlets and helped provide a test-bed for innovation. On the other hand public broadcasters, free from the constraints of commerce, have strayed into areas where private enterprise might. As a result, countless innovations from the likes of startups and commercial businesses may never have come to light. To what extent does this inhibit plurality and the economies of places where public broadcasters operate?

Questions answered

• Should/shouldn’t public broadcasters develop digital music products such as streaming services, social music etc?
• How do public broadcasters compete with digital music services from commercial providers?
• With the difficulty in finding investment for digital music services should public broadcasters consider investing in this sector?
• With VCs and advertising clients looking for a quick return when dealing with digital music services, do public broadcasters and their ‘long view’ provide a useful alternative?
• How can public broadcasters continue to support niche or emerging music in a digital context that might not find exposure on commercial outlets?

Last week we got 150 leaders and thinker from the Creative Industries together and managed to produced an event that seems to have been not only inspiring also highly enjoyable. Even though I have attended and spoken at many conferences over the years I had never been involved so closely in organizing one. So I can honestly say that I’m not used the the sense of achievment I feel when I watch the video below. All this was taking on the 10th and 11th February in Victoria and I think it speaks for itself.

Next up: Beijing.

transmission: GLOBAL SUMMIT 2011 from transmitNOW on Vimeo.

This year I have submitted not one but two panels since I will attend the Interactive as well as the Music part – one idea for each part of the conference.

I would appreciate if you could vote for my ideas in the SXSW PanelPicker, this is what I’m suggesting:

1. Digital Content: What Books Should Learn From CDs

I always found it fascinating that other content industries have difficulties learning from the mistakes of the music industry from the last ten years. This panel will invite people from the music and book publishing industries and discuss what they can learn from each other. You can vote here.

2. Entrepreneurs in Music

I will invite different music entrepreneurs and compare how they’re making it in their respective fields. Starting with a musician I will also get a start-up CEO, a indie record label boss and a band manager on the panel and talk about the joy and struggle of working independently in music. You can vote here.

Voting closes 27th August. Also, make sure you support my fellow OpenMusicMedia organizers, you can find a list of their suggested panels here.

The recording industry has always been more obsessive about metrics than other entertainment areas: music charts have been a vital tool not only to measure success of songs and albums but also to act as a marketing tool for record sales.

Over the last few years we see a lot of new services that focus their business on collecting and aggregating more accurate and detailed music data. The internet has enabled those services to get access to richer data sets than the pre-web sales driven charts such as popularity and discussion around artists.

In the second OpenMusicMedia NYC we want to discuss how those companies can (or maybe cannot) help the music industry to make better decision. Questions we want to address include:

• How important is more detailed data for the music industry?
• Does an obsession with numbers and statistics stop companies from taking risks and therefore stop innovation?
• Collecting data from different websites and displaying those seems straight forward – but what about interpreting them?

We have invited Alex White from Next Big Sound to lead the conversation and guide us through some of the issues of music related data aggregation. As always, this will not be a presentation but an open conversation between everyone in the room with Alex leading what could almost be called a round table discussion.

Moderating for the event will be Jonas Woost, co-founder of OpenMusicMedia as well as the former Head of Music at Last.fm. Jonas joins us from from his new home in Vancouver, where he is setting up a media consultancy business. Our co-moderator is Steve Savoca, global head of digital business for Domino Records and producer of OpenMusicMedia NYC.

We will meet on the 7th July at reRun and the event is free and open to everyone. However we would appreciate if you could RSVP on our facebook page. We look forward to seeing you there!

OpenMusicMedia NYC
Wednesday, July 7
at reRun (part of reBar, 147 Front St, 2nd Fl in DUMBO, 11201, New York, NY)
7-9 PM
Map: http://bit.ly/9VqMoh

Please RSVP on our facebook group.

I noticed that Karim from Techvibes was kind enough to record my short introduction for the OpenMusicMedia event in Toronto two weeks ago and this is the video. (By the way, the bricks you can see in the background are part of the oldest wall in Toronto.)

The event is organized by Generator and Evolution 2010 and I will be joined on stage by Ben Perreau (Global Radio/Gigulate) and Paul Campell (Amazing Radio) on the 24th May.

When I was on the phone today with our moderator Russ Conway I was reminded again of the gap in our terminology: we keep using the word ‘radio’ when we speak of services such as Last.fm and Pandora. The truth is that they have very little to do with the original ‘one-to-many’ broadcasting service called radio but we don’t seem to have a better term. ‘Personalized Streaming Music Service’ just doen’t sound very neat.

And something became clear today: I’ll probably have to get used to the fact that people will call me a ‘former Last.fm-er’. I noticed that’s the case with many of the guys that left Last.fm and I now often catch myself introducing myself as the former Head of Music. It just makes it easier for other people to understand what I’m all about even though we are more than the name of our old employer.

After years of proclaiming the ‘death of the physical format’ we’re still celebrating the traditional independent record shops. While big chains are disappearing or changing their inventory from music to other entertainment products the local record store still seems to have an important role in music discovery and delivery.

In our next OpenMusicMedia session on the 26th May we will be joined by Stephen Godfroy who is the Director of Rough Trade Retail to discuss some of the following issues:

• What is the current and future role of independent record shops?
• What is the state of the physical record business?
• With digital music becoming ubiquitous, what does that mean for physical formats?
• What role do record shops provide for a local music scene?
• Will record shops continue to act as a ‘filter’ for music recommendation or are they mainly a point of distribution?

We will meet again in the William IV in East London, a short walk from Old Street station. Sticking to the OpenMusicMedia formula this will be an open conversation and we’re looking forward to everyone’s contribution. All OpenMusicMedia events are free but we appreciate you RSVPing on our facebook event. To get in touch please leave a comment below or send us a message on Twitter. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Wednesday, 26th May 2010 6:00 PM

at the William IV

7 Shepherdess Walk
London, N1 7QE
(Google Maps)

As a co-founder of OpenMusicMedia I certainly wanted to see what the guys in Toronto are doing with the idea since I knew they had some good events last year. What I didn’t expect is that they would invited me to lead the conversation is the next OpenMusicMedia Toronto event which will take place on the 12th May.

Our conversation will focus on location based music services and we’ll discuss if those are necessary for the industry as well as music fans. The idea started with me thinking that 15 years ago a lot of the music discovery and consumption happened on a local level: we would find new music on local radio station, in the local record shops or through friends we hang out and go to gigs with. With the Internet things became very global and now we can explore music from all over the world and we are not bound to our local areas.

More recently we see the success of services and websites that are focusing on your area (Foursquare being just one example) and in our next OpenMusicMedia session in Toronto we want to discuss what this means for the music industry. Do we need more ‘local music services’? What role will local radio stations have in the future? After the closure of many local record store around the world will we they see their comeback over the next few years?

As always with OpenMusicMedia, I will not answer those questions but only act as a moderator for a big discussion in an informal setting. If you’re around it’d be great to see you there.