Since we started our Haas business school experience we dare to say that the 5th San Francisco Music and Technology Summit last week is the best experience we had so far. Why? Simply because it has absolutely everything we love: music, entertainment, entrepreneurship, music legends, independent musicians and much more.
Our ambassadors having a good time at the sfmusictech mixer
We, Jason Dolan, Adithya Jayachandran and Miguel Martinez went to the event in the Hotel Kabuki at SanFran as Haas and DMEC ambassadors. As soon as we arrived we felt that warmth and cool vibe of the music industry mixed with the dynamics of technology and entrepreneurship.
Brian Zisk and his production team pulled together an amazing event with high quality panelists and public.
The keynote of the day was the presentation of the just released Google Music, a music discovery helper. It’s a search feature of Google which allow users to access songs, videos or lyrics directly with a simple search input like a band’s name, lyrics or any other info that relates to what you are looking for. The content is provided by different partners that where present in that keynote such as My Space, Gracenote, Pandora and You Tube (it’s really cool. Check it out!). One phrase that caught our attention in this panel were the words of RJ Pittman, Google’s Director of Product Management: “in Google our most important metric is ‘customer happiness’ “. This is the reason why they are doing this. Besides, we think is the least invasive way to enter into the music market. Interesting.
The audience during one of the many panels of the day
One of the main discussions among the public was that if this was another way to get free music easier, but the consensus was the benefits are greater than the costs, especially because the search considers a few protections such as only reproducing a song once between a given period of time.
Other important topic that was present across almost every panel was how bands use My Space these days. The previous consensus was that My Space is basically dead when it comes to promoting a band. But the new partnership with Google Music ignited the idea that updating and using a My Space site would be again a useful tool for band promotion. Although the idea is consistent, all panelists agreed that if a band’s website appears below a band’s My Space site, they are doing something wrong.
A third interesting discussion was generated in the live events panel with members like Zack Darling, organizer of Burning Man. While the panel was having a discussion about the use of mobile devices in concerts by the audience to influence the performance, interact with the musicians and to inform friends and other people what is happening trough tools such as Twitter and Facebook, they also debated about the problems with coverage from mobile carriers. Obviously, there are economic and technical issues with increasing bandwidth and coverage for specific events or locations, but this tendency is seen as a potential for future massive use. Still, question remains unanswered.
One of the panels during the summit
Finally we just want to mention that being in the Producing and Mastering panel was simply amazing. Legends that worked with artists like Santana, the Death Kennedys, Neil Young and Janis Joplin were in it. Even though it was a technical conversation, some really interesting insights were discussed. For example the historical shift between pro audio and home studios because of technology. This new way of doing things is here to stay. At the same side, avoiding the classic mentoring/teaching system will mean the end of some of the greatest techniques in the music industry. Efforts like educational interactive material could somehow diminish this problem and there are current efforts in that direction.
You can listen to all the panels in the summit’s website.
Stephan Jenkins, Third Eye Blind 3eb! / True Meaning
The last speaker of the day was Stephen Jenkins, musician from Third Eye Blind, who was also present in the last summit in May of 2009. He talked (a better description would be tried to talk) about the latest release of his band, which was made without any major label behind it using all the technology available nowadays. He also commented on his charity project, true meaning.
The day ended with the cocktail party where we all relaxed and had a few drinks in honor of DMEC and the opportunity of being there. At the end of this blog you’ll a find a few photos that illustrate the good time we had.
For the end and according to us, the best quotes from all the panels:
1. “You’ve got 7 seconds to impress your audience” – Jay Frank
2. “Music consumption is higher than ever” – Jeff Sass
3. “What is popular enough? – not having a day job” – The ‘Getting to Popular’ Panel
4. “Every piece of content is abstracted and available via API” – Lee Martin
5. “Gone are the days you are going to build something and figure out how to monetize later” – Mark Sugarman
6. To musicians: “Get your own URL” – The ‘Social Networking: The Future For Musicians’ Panel
7. “Play live. Meet people. Make direct connections.” – Stephan Jenkins
8. “Pro tools killed big studios” – Ken Walden
9. “Greatest marketing tool: live show” – Zoe Keating
10. “Life is too short not to pursue what you are passionate about” – Jeff Yasuda
We are just looking forward for the next summit! We’ll surely be there.
Jason, Adithya and Miguel, Music Industry Experts of DMEC
Summit featured on NBC Bay Area News 12/7/09
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