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.

Being ‘home’ also means it’s back to work for me so after a six month hiatus this blog will become active again. Lots of exciting things happening already and my notebook is full of notes, ideas, thoughts and to-dos. I loved my time off and feel very refreshed but I have to admit that I do look forward to getting back into ‘it’ again.

Saying that, my first day ‘in the office’ was actually last month I moderated my panel at SXSW which I thoroughly enjoyed. I came across this little video of our panel on YouTube so if you haven’t been there you will be able to see what we looked like. Unfortunately this is only 45 seconds long so that’s all you’ll be able to see.

My suggestion for SXSW 2011: make sure the first name is on the name signs as well, a few people came up to me after our talk calling me Mr Woost (which made me feel odd).

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.

Just a quick note for everyone who is waiting for my latest shows. I’m now on holiday (first Vancouver and then Hawaii) and I’ll upload them as soon as I can. Not sure about the internet connection at these kind of beaches.

If you are in Hamburg you’ll still be able to listen to a new show next Wednesday, I’ve recorded it already.

In the meantime you can follow me on twitter where I’ll try and make people as jealous as possible. There will be some pictures as well.

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?