While many may agree that the Cloud has offered huge conveniences for consumers to access content, it has also opened a new avenue for content distribution.  In many media and entertainment industries, content distribution was always restricted to carriers (eg. ISP,s CDs, DVDs, etc.).  With cloud-based content, some may argue that there is simply no need to ‘own’ discs, papers, or hard drives that contain content if it’s available easily through different devices.

Cloud computing does, however, expose a new range of questions regarding rights and ownership. When content is accessed across country borders, whose laws are governing this transaction? Are there any liabilities if the cloud provider’s service is being disrupted and content cannot be accessed? When consumers are adding content they have previously purchased to a cloud based ‘locker’, should content owners be compensated for any of those transactions?

When accessing cloud-based content and information, the device that acts as the information gateway is suddenly in a powerful position; device manufacturers may decide to block access to certain cloud content services or charge for it. They may insist on receiving parts of any revenue that content creators may generate through these devices.  Device platforms may also not support certain technologies and, therefore, directly influence how cloud-based content is distributed to the consumer.

The consumer’s relationship with their devices (and, therefore, their relationship to content) has been changing rapidly over the last few years.  With the continual innovation of more capable and compact mobile technologies, consumers tend to be much closer to their devices and, in many cases, have them nearby at all times. Consumers have become accustomed to having instant and constant access to information and entertainment as a result, and this places content owners under pressure to constantly ensure their output is available once it has been created. Unlicensed sources may be preferred if their legal alternatives do not yet offer the access to desired content. This may suggest that there has been a huge power shift between consumers and creators of content – with new devices occupying the space between them.

While lack of control may be perceived as an obstacle in cloud-based distribution, this isn’t a subject matter that’s out-of-the-ordinary with content owners.  In fact, consumers have been able to easily share digital content since the advent of network computers. Nevertheless, new and open channels of distribution can also be seen as opportunities to access new consumer bases and find new revenue streams for media, entertainment, and other content-based industries.

Discuss this topic as well as many others at transmitCHINA 2011 presented by BlackBerry, September 14-17 in Beijing.

Last week we got 150 leaders and thinker from the Creative Industries together and managed to produced an event that seems to have been not only inspiring also highly enjoyable. Even though I have attended and spoken at many conferences over the years I had never been involved so closely in organizing one. So I can honestly say that I’m not used the the sense of achievment I feel when I watch the video below. All this was taking on the 10th and 11th February in Victoria and I think it speaks for itself.

Next up: Beijing.

transmission: GLOBAL SUMMIT 2011 from transmitNOW on Vimeo.

transmission: GLOBAL SUMMIT 2011 from transmitNOW on Vimeo.

Full disclosure (in case it’s not obvious): transmission and transmitNOW are a client of mine.

Jonas Woost on Jonas Woost from thenumber creative on Vimeo.

It is with pleasure that I can announce signing up the team behind the Transmission conference as a new client. I will help them in the role of Director of Community Development.

Everyone who has ever been to Transmission (or on of the TransmitCHINA satellite events) knows it’s not the usual music industry trade show but a think-tank style conference that focuses on finding solutions and inspiring ideas. It does not compete with the other numerous networking and deal-making formats. We will now make sure that we can continue the conversations that we kick off during to conference dates past the last day of the event and have a dialog throughout the year. That’s what I will mainly work on.

For our next big event in February we will broaden the focus from the music industry to additional creative digital industries and build a hub for people that want to develop ideas around the economy of digital media and entertainment.

I invite you to follow TransmitNOW on Twitter or Facebook to be part of the conversation.

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.

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.

After lunch we saw presentations from Jackie Suebeck (from Footprint Worldwide) who talked about China followed by Mathew Daniel from R2G who is based in Beijing. I liked this thought: “If your music is being pirated in China then you’ve already done some things right”. He was referring to the fact that if music is already popular to some degree you can then try and monetize that.

The final presentation in the afternoon came from Simon Wheeler who gave us an overall overview on how the Beggars Group is facing the current challenges in the industry. He was saying that they are cautiously trying new models to see what is working out: “You have to be in the market to learn”.

The next day you could clearly see the effects of the showcase the night before (or the drinks that has been consumed during this) with Paul Hoffert certainly making less sense than the day before.

We started with a presentation David Neale from Telus giving us a great sales pitch on how Blackberry and Telus offer great opportunities for the music industry, I don’t think I was the target audience for this.

Kelly Cha talked about her experience of being a radio and TV presenter as well as musician in China followed by a great presentation from Scott Chohen of The Orchard about a two tier approach of monetizing music: only 5% of the market actually purchases recorded music and they can be monetized through existing models (download shops, subscription services, etc) but the 95% of consumers that do not pay for music directly have to be charged at the “point of connection”. This would mean some sort of fee that the user will pay to the ISP which will then get paid out to the music owners. Certainly not a new idea (and he has been talking about that for a long time) but he presented it well and from a slightly different angle. My favourite quote: “you have to monetize the customer not the content”.

After Paul almost forgot about him, Charles Caldas from Merlin then went on stage to talk about the indie community and their struggle ‘against’ the majors.

After another round table session we then saw an interview with Seymour Stein which was a great finish to the event. It was really just a story telling hour where heard tales such as how he signed Madonna. About the internet he said: “it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, it’s here”.

Final thoughts? Great event. Two days of meeting lots of people and having stimulating conversation, just what the industry meets. Unfortunately many of the presentation were a bit weak and our facilitator could have been a bit more prepared to guide us to the busy schedule.

For this one I am excited though: I just confirmed my ticket for the Transmission conference which takes place in Vancouver this year in the first week of December. This has been highly recommended to me by Sean Adams who was saying this is one of the best industry conference he’s ever been to. And he is going to a lot of those.

The Transmission guys are approaching this gathering of people from the music and technology sectors differently and I think I’m going to enjoy this as

• it’s limited to 200 people (I feel a intimate setup makes it easier to connect to people)
• there seems to be a tight schedule of interesting talks and round tables (being German a good organization is something I always appreciate
• it sounds like we will have people talking from outside our industries (I get bored by hearing the same people talking about the same topics so this could be very refreshing)
• I expect the topics to be very high level and therefore educating (again, you often hear the same things at panel around the world, I want to hear people explaining, educating and inspiring me)

As you can see I built up high expectations, I hope they will be met. And if not there is always Vancouver, not the worst place in the world to spend a few days in anyway.

Is anyone else going? Or have you been?