Thoughts on Transmission 2008
Thursday, December 11th, 2008I now had a few days to digest the Transmission conference that happened last week in Vancouver.
It was quite intense (and that’s a good thing) and very educational. This is something you cannot say very often for music industry events, most of the time we are discussing the same issues over and over again and when you attend these events on a regular basis there are not many new idea coming out of them.
Transmission was different, probably for two reasons: a) many of the people attending were experienced professional who would have interesting ideas and b) it was a busy two day event with various presentations, round tables and meals. Essential we were kept busy for the entire time which I enjoyed.
Thursday started with an introduction of our ‘general facilitator’ Paul Hoffert who was introducing us to the ‘bagel effect’ which deals with a 50 years cycle between “freedom and security” which explains the disintermediation in the music industry. It was an interesting start and dropped us right into the deep end.
He was followed by a presentation by Dennis Adamo who is trying to resurrect allofmp3.com. After claiming the music industry is losing $5bn per year through unlicensed music downloads and the best way of “converting pirates into customers” is to drop the price, he lost my attention. Surly p2p file-sharing is more then just about the cost for the consumer and music services will have to attach additional value to recorded music if they want people to pay for it.
Mark Holden was speaking after him about his company Hip Digital and the download store they built for Aeroplan and Nectar Card. There seems to be an opportunity for the industry to generate revenues through people redeeming their reward point for music. Seems to make sense but surly this is a niche market, right?
This was when most peoples favourite part started which were the round tables. Up to 10 people from different industries would discuss topics for about an hour and the outcome would be reported back and at the end of the conference we would have a look at the overall results of our conversations. I met plenty of people who I hadn’t met before and I would normally not meet since they might work in different ports of the music industry.
