heute:pop:blog.  

Holidays. And not just sitting by the beach for a week but really getting away from life’s routine, seeing other places and getting to know new people. That’s what I’m doing right now.

I haven’t had an iPhone/Blackberry for four months and of course haven’t been working. But I also haven’t produced a radio show (in fact have hardly listened to any new music), haven’t been involved with the new OpenMusicMedia events and haven’t even been blogging.

I spent the last four months in South America with Raila and feel truely relaxed – in fact I’m surprised how easy it was to disconnect from my life in London. We are moving to Canada soon so I have been ‘homeless’ since we left and all my belongings boil down to a 15kg Deuter backpack. I have two pairs of trousers and two jumpers.

Nevertheless (or perhaps because of all this) I look forward to getting back into something you can call a ‘normal routine’. And for me this routine will start with something fun:

I’m moderating a panel at SXSW in Austin this year, the topic of our discussion is ‘how will we listen to music in 2020‘. I will be joined on stage on the 17th March by Alexander Ljung (SoundCloud), Ben Perreau (Gigulate) and Steve Savoca (Domino). With such speakers this should be an intersting talk, if there is anything specifically you want to see discussed, feel free to post a comment here.

If you are at SXSW as well please let me know, would be good to meet you there: jonas(at)jonaswoost(dot)com.

PS: if you’re more intersted in my time off rather than SXSW you can find some pictures here and you can follow me on twitter here.

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)

When I realized that I won’t be able to attend this years Transmission conference because of other commitments (it will become more clear next week) I was disappointed. I had such a great time last year and I felt I’m missing out.

Fortunately I was able to participate at least in one way: I took part in their Politalk48 session which is basically a panel of experts who discuss a topic via email over a period of 48 hours. The results are then published on the TransmitNow website for anyone to read. The topic was “Next Generation Leadership” and the outcome can be found here.

If you have seen me recently on a panel or doing a presentation you would have noticed that there is one topic that I’m very interested in: how the consumption of recorded music has changed over the years and how it will continue to develop.

Looking into the past is vital but also fairly easy. The future is the tricky one and for some the most fascinating: I want to find out how we will consume recorded music in 10 years from now but to find some good answers I might need some help.

This is how I came up with my idea for a panel at SXSW next year in Austin. As you might know, they encourage people to come up with ideas for a panel or presentation and post them on their website for anyone to vote on.

Of course you guessed it by now: please vote for my panel suggestion at the SXSW 2010 Panelpicker. You can see from my description on there what I’m trying to do. Also, please suggest people that should be on that panel by posting a comment here or on the Panelpicker. Maybe I won’t be the only one that’s trying to promote themselves.

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

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.

Those who listen to my show on a regular basis (and understand German) will see that Gerd Leonhard and myself share many ideas about the future of recorded music. He put together a brief overview on his thoughts in the YouTube video below.

It’s a great summary and there is a lot in those 10 mins – might be worth watching twice.

EDIT: as just pointed out by Chris, there is of course a second part to the above:

Hopefully I wasn’t talking too much about the potential future of ad supported music services this week. These are tricky time for anyone working in music, may it be music owners or services that want to bring music to the fans.

You can listen to my latest show here.

1. Jimi Hendrix ‘All Along The Watchtower’
2. Archive ‘Bullets’
3. Fredo Viola ‘The Turn (A Pagan Lament)
4. The Decemberists ‘The Rake’s Song’
5. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy ‘Afraid Ain’t Me’
6. Suicide ‘Ghost Rider’
7. Architecture In Helsinki ‘Hold Music’ (Max Tundra Mix)
8. Cazals ‘Somebody, Somewhere (Moulinex Remix)
9. MSTRKRFT ‘Fist Of God’
10. Passion Pit ‘I’ve Got Your Number’
11. The Wee Rogue ‘Into The Mist’

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.

I always want to blog while I’m going to conferences but more realistically I will give my report on Midem next week when I’m back in London. Things just get too hectic for me to be able to sit down for a moment and write a few words. I am told there are less people going this year but my schedule is now full. I know already I’m going to regret having booked too many meeting.

I will leave you with with a video from one of my favourite bands of the moment, Frightened Rabbit (found this via nomnomnom). Awesome stuff.

Frightened Rabbit “I Feel Better” from Sam Molleur on Vimeo.