heute:pop:blog.  

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.

Because of the tube strike in London we had to cancel this event but we have now confirmed a new date.

We look forward to seeing you on the 1st July 2009 at the William to discuss Videos & Music. You can find all details below:

In all our previous OpenMusicMedia sessions the focus has primarily been on music – we talked about recommendations, live music, different ways of consuming recorded music and of course how the whole ecosystem of music works (or not) and what has to happen to make it work in the future.

For our next night we want to discuss an art form which has always been closely related to music: videos. We have invited Caroline Bottomley who is the founder of Radar Music Videos, “a music video commissioning platform and music video director network” to present us with her ideas on the future of music videos. She will be explaining why her website is important for musicians and video producers and from there we will try and explore how digital technology has been affecting visual content.

As always the conversation will kept very broad – topics we want to talk about include:

• Do artists need music videos these days?
• Is it easier of harder to get exposure for your music videos in the age of YouTube?
• What makes a video ‘viral’?

As always this will be an open discussion and you will set the topics for this 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.

Wednesday, 10th June 2009 1st July 2009
6:00 PM – 11:00 PM

William IV

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!

In his essay earlier this year Wired’s Kevin Kelly outlined his theory of 1000 True Fans. Interestingly enough 1000 is the average number of fans that invest in each successful artist/band on Sellaband, the controversial site where artists aim to raise $50,000 by selling ‘parts’ to ‘believers’.

For our next OpenMusicMedia Meet we’ll be joined by Sellaband’s Creative Director Pim Betist who’s flying into London as our special guest for what should be a very interesting converstation. Come and join in by getting down to the William IV pub next Wednesday 30th July.

For more info go to our OpenMusicMedia blog and make sure you RSVP if you want to come down.

If you weren’t lucky enough to be there for our first ever OpenMusicMedia Meet with Anthony Volodkin from HypeMachine, then here is what you can expect:

WHAT: the OpenMusicMedia Meet is a group that gets together regularly in London to discuss, explore and shape the future of digital music and media. The format is open and everyone is invited. The group serves as a meeting point for people with similar interests and open up conversations between them. Everyone is encouraged to hang around after the discussion to eat and drink. The William IV serves great food!

WHO: A melting pot of label execs, journalists, social media types, digital distributors & retailers, entrepreneurs, music geeks, bloggers and future thinkers. The group is open to anyone who has a professional or personal interest in this space.

WHERE: Upstairs at the William IV pub. Just a 5 min stroll from Old Street tube. www.williamthefourth.com

DRESS CODE: Informal. No vested interests, no politics and no agendas.

ADMISSION: An open mind, open ears and a passion for the topics discussed. There is no charge, though the more booze you buy the nicer our hosts will be. After our discussion we encourage everyone to stay and enjoy the great food at the William IV. Looking forward to seeing you all there!    

Back from Newcastle now, I was on a panel with Thomas Dolby, Scott Cohen (The Orchard) and John Webster (MMF) discussing “digital music” last night. The topic was broad and so was the 2 hour discussion. I prefer doing it in an hour and then having conversation afterwards with people individually but this worked pretty well as Russ was doing a good job guiding the conversation. I mostly enjoyed some insight from Thomas as he could talk about the changing landscape of the music industry over the last 30ish years from an artist point of view. 

It’s nice to have people on a panel that are ‘doing things’ as oppose to ‘talk about them’. We were discussing this when we talked about who we should invite for our new OpenMusicMedia meet. I felt it worked really well to have Anthony there as he could talk about his product as well as music blogs in general. It’s good to talk about ideas but even better to see them in a practical context. We are now thinking about the next topic, two things we are interested in is the ‘music feels like free’ discussion as well as data portability. More on that soon on the OpenMusicMedia blog. We’re also putting together an old school style mailing list, not everyone is good with rss and twitter it seems…

Oh and by the way thanks to everyone who made is down last week and contributed to a great night! 

If you are in London tonight feel free to pop into out OpenMusicMedia Meet at the William IV about 10 min from Old Street Station. We’ve got Anthony Volodkin from the Hype Machine telling us more about his great site followed by a broader discussion about blogs in a music context plus beer and food. 

Would be great to see you there, you can find all infos here.