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.)

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.

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)

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

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

I also talked about my trip to Toronto for Canadian Music Week and what I’ve been up to there.

You can listen to all this here.

1. Clues ‘Perfect Fit’
2. Oh No! Oh My! ‘Skip The Foreplay’
3. Ape School ‘Wail To God’
4. Asobi Seksu ‘Familiar Light’
5. The Twilight Sad ‘Three Seconds of Air’
6. Tim Hecker ‘Sea of Pulses’
7. Cathode ‘Stabiliser City’
8. Bat For Lashes ‘Glass’
9. Handsome Furs ‘What We Had’
10. A.C. Newman ‘Take On Me’
11. Those Dancing Days ‘Those Dancing Days’
12. Mount Eerie ‘Flaming Home’
13. Lawrence ‘Rabbit Tube’ (DJ Koze Remix)

You can listen to all the below here.

1. Those Dancing Days ‘Those Dancing Days’
2. AGF / DELAY ‘Congo Hearts’
3. The Decemberists ‘I’m Sticking With You’
4. Grizzly Bear ‘Knife’ (Live)
5. M. Ward ‘Rave On’ (Featuring Zooey Deschanel)
6. Lambchop ‘Paperback Bible’
7. Shout Out Out Out Out ‘Guilt Trips Sink Ships’
8. MODESELEKTOR ’200007′ (Paul Kalkbrenner’s Tap Sum Bong 20009 Remix)
9. Lawrence ‘Rabbit Tube’ (DJ Koze Remix)
10. Gui Boratto ‘Take My Breath Away’

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.