heute:pop:blog.  

I’m happy to announce my involvement with the start-up Gigulate, a music news aggregator based in London, UK. I will help them with Business Development out of North America.

The full music experience is more than about recordings. Although the actual ‘audio’ part is often the focus point, music as an art-form is much more complex: only by adding up things like the social experience of music, the relationship with the artist, visuals around the music and live gigs you can make music complete. One of the other aspects that are important is news about artists you like. Being a fan is about enjoying the music as much as observing the musicians and following the journey that leads to the audio output and live performances.

With the amount of user-generated and professional journalistic work on the web there currently isn’t shortage of news. Unfortunately this increased choice of stories leads to an exponentially increased difficulty to find the items you’re after and services that manage the information on the web have not only been hugely successful but vital for our daily online life.

Many music fans will have a few trusted sources for their music related news but I always felt that finding stories about my favourite artists was a lot of work, especially with my diverse music taste. There are too many sites to check if I want to be up-to-date on what’s happening around the musicians I follow and tools like RSS and Twitter only increased the amount of information I would have to go through.

Gigulate solves this problem for me. Not only will Gigulate check thousands of sources for music related news but it personalises this for me based on my Last.fm profile or artists in my iTunes library. This feature might be in its infancy right now but has already been proven very useful for me.

I’m also very impressed with Gigulate’s ability to recognize that a piece of news is related to a certain artist and to work out that two separate news-pieces are about the same story by just analyzing the content.

Without a doubt, Gigulate still has a long way to go and I’m excited to be part of it. I will mainly be working on developing partnerships, both commercial and strategical, which help music fans as well as the music industry to navigate through the large amounts of music news on the internet.

Following last nights great OpenMusicMedia event in Toronto I’m very much looking forward to our nest session in London on the 26th May. I will be back in town that week and hope to see you there. Below my post for the OpenMusicMedia blog with all the details:

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)

This is a copy of a post from our OpenMusicMedia blog, would be great to see you there on the 17th September!

After months of trying to get this nailed down we are very pleased to announce that Joi Ito will be in London and joining us to lead the conversation at the next OpenMusicMedia! Joi is the CEO of Creative Commons so make sure you clear your diaries for 17th September for what looks set to be a great session.

Most of you will probably have heard of Creative Commons already, but we think that it’s a topic that is not discussed enough by a music industry that has traditionally built its business around a different view of copyright. There’s lots to discuss and we’ll only have one evening, but here are just a few of issues that we’d like to talk about:

• What role does Creative Commons have to play within the music industry?
• Does CC mean we are just giving away our music for free and no one makes any money?
• The existing licensing structure for the music industry has been working for so many years, is CC just making it more complex?

As always we want you to get involved as much as possible in the conversation – before, during & after. We’ll be meeting at around 6pm and the talk will start at 7pm, usually lasting around an hour. We strongly recommend that you stick around after as often the best part of the conversation happens over a beer or two.

The event is free and open to everyone but please RSVP on Facebook to help us working out how many people will attend. Please note that we expect this to be a busy night so we recommend arriving early in order to find a seat. If you’re late we can’t guarantee entry. Leave a comment below or contact us on Twitter if you have any questions.

Thursday, 17th September 2009
6:00 PM

William IV

7 Shepherdess Walk
London, EnglandN1 7QE
(Yahoo! Maps, Google Maps)

The comfort zone. It’s hard to complain when your in it but you know that something is wrong. You become stagnant and you don’t seem to develop -  something that can not only be frustrating but also dangerous.

I don’t actually want to quit my job at Last.fm (I do really like it) but it’s time to set new challenges and see new things. I have been in London for about eight years and been with Last.fm for four of them and now it’s time for something new.

One of the most important things in any job is that you keep learning. It is part of your pay package and if you don’t gain any knowledge you are essentially underpaid. Applying that logic I was paid extremely well for years at Last.fm: I met a lot of great people, learned about the business (and its countless issues) and saw some amazing places. Unfortunately by definition any learning curve has to flatten out so it’s time to find something where I can start at the steep end again.

Raila and I will move to North America early next year after taking some time off and spending a few months in South America. We will live in Vancouver. My last day with Last.fm will be the 2nd October 2009 – please get in touch if there is anything you need before I’m off.

This post was originally published on our OpenMusicMedia blog but I re-posted it here for you guys to read as well. Would be great to see you there:

We wanted to do something slightly different for this next meetup, we wanted to discuss ‘Music As Culture’. Leading the conversation will be New Music Strategies’ Andrew Dubber and Jez Collins. This conversation actually started at Unconvention Salford but we felt it was one worth continuing down in London for OpenMusicMedia. But what exactly does ‘Music As Culture’ entail? We’ll leave it to Dubber to explain below…

Music As Culture

It’s no surprise to anyone that the music industries are struggling in the digital age. Faced with a filesharing populace, an incredible array of media choices, a tough economic climate, and plenty of other things for people to spend money on, it can be pretty tight for a lot of people in the industries.

Recent research demonstrates a link from openness and inclusion to massive untapped potential for all kinds of businesses. Consumers have a bigger say in the fate of the industries than ever before – and while they recognise the commercial aspects of music business, they do not accept that old systems of control are relevant to them anymore.

By empowering consumers, opening access to archives and for scholarship, enriching the public domain, according popular music the same cultural status as classical and folk musics, and treating audiences as part of the music process (rather than as merely passive consumers), the society we live in is a much richer and vibrant one.

It’s good for culture, it’s good for the economy, it invigorates local scenes, it’s a lifeline for artists – and it’s great for business. In fact, it might just be what saves the music industries.

As always this will be an open discussion and you will set the agenda for the night. We’ll be starting the discussion at around 7pm but feel free to be there by 6pm and have a drink with us. You can find all the details below, if you have any questions, leave a comment or contact us via twitter.

The event is free to open to everyone but if you can please RSVP at our new Facebook group.

William IV

This is where you can have a look at the results from the Music Hack Day I was mentioning this morning. Some really cool stuff in there.

Also, you will find me at the Lovebox Festival in London this weekend, give me a shout if you are around.

You can listen to my latest show here.

1. David Bowie ‘Life On Mars’
2. Florence And The Machine ‘Howl’
3. Noah And The Whale ‘The First Days Of Spring’
4. Oh No! Oh My! ‘I Love You All the Time’ (Acoustic)
5. Emmy The Great ‘MIA’
6. My Latest Novel ‘I Declare A Ceasefire’
7. The Low Anthem ‘Charlie Darwin’
8. Why? ‘Eskimo Snow’
9. Yo La Tengo ‘Love Chant’
10. King Cannibal ‘So… Embrace The Minimum’
11. Holy Ghost! ‘I Will Come Back’ (DJ Mehdi Remix)
12. Fuck Buttons ‘Bright Tomorrow’
13. Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head ‘Slow Motion Tag Team’

I went to the UK launch of Chris Anderson‘s new book ‘FREE‘ last night which unsurprisingly was a very busy event since he is a bit of a digital media pop star. With being a celebrity come the critics that have to proof that your ideas are in fact rubbish and that try to find examples where “The Long Tail” does not work and where “FREE” destroyed jobs.

I’m not one of those guys. However I had to think of something when Chris was talking about some of his ideas last night. They gave out free copies of the book (an abridged version, not the full one) so I can even quote him now. He is writing:

“What the Internet does is combine all three, compounding the price declines with a triple play of technology: processors, bandwidth, and storage. As a result, the net annual deflation rate of the online World is nearly 50 percent, which is to say that whatever it costs YouTube to stream a video today will cost half as much in a year.”

Although I agree that the above applies to any technology costs this does not work for any licensing expenses. The licensing fees for content is already the biggest expense for many services that stream or otherwise deliver content to consumers. Although there is certain evidence that the cost of content is going down (the PRS has recently lowered they per stream royalty for music streaming services) I don’t believe that this trend will keep on going at a rate of 50% per year.

Nevertheless, Chris Anderson’s book ‘FREE’ looks like another must read for anyone who is interested in how technology changes moder day economics.

We’re very pleased to have Spotify speak at our next OpenMusicMedia meet which happens on the 10th March, as always at the William IV in East London.

Spotify is a streaming music service that gives listeners free and legal access to millions of tracks via their desktop client.  It’s a service that has proved popular amongst early adopters and is already changing the way that many people access music.

Join us for our OpenMusicMedia Meet in London next Wednesday (4th Feb 09). This time Songkick’s Ian Hogarth will be leading the conversation as always at the William IV near Old Street Station.

The theme set by Ian is ‘Live & Kicking’ and he’ll be talking about how the industry has boomed over past 9 years and where the concert industry is going to be in 5 years time. How start-ups and technology are going to accelerate that, and what you need to do to get on the train. With traditional recorded music sales in decline is the future of the music industry live? What can artists and bands do to monetize their live performances? Is it sustainable? What changes are we seeing in the live music sector? And what happens if the music doesn’t lend itself to the live arena?

Find more details on the OpenMusicMedia blog and hope to see you next week!

I went to the Digital Music Awards last night together with Dave (who gave me his spare ticket, thanks for that) and this is my verdict: What a soulless event. I’m all for celebrating yourself but last night the no one even attempted to ‘award’ themselves for the work they have done but it was just an excuse to get drunk on the expense account.

Someone made a very interesting point though: he felt that everyone he talked to was only about the marketing and promotion of the music and not interested in the music itself. It reminded him of the way the music industry was acting like back in the 80s. We agreed that the people we saw in the Roundhouse last night are the corporate part of the industry of the future: everyone who was there last night is about innovation and the change of the music industry in the context of ‘digital’ but in 10 years time those will be the decision makers big companies that will slow down innovation.

In other words: last night they were wearing suits for the occasion but they’ll be needing those every day in a few years time.