Musicians and Technology
Greetings from your new DMEC music industry expert. As a musician, I’d like to kick off my first blog posting with some information around how musicians currently use technology to increase attendance at shows, promote their music, and break into the industry…without the hassle of actually having to play in front of a studio executive. Let’s start from the beginning…say you are a new artist, just wrote and recorded your first few songs (using these iPhone apps), and want to let your friends know about your talents. Where can you post them? Well, myspace and a facebook fan page are the obvious places to start. But assuming you have decided to monetize this hobby and have published a CD with a bar code (through discmakers.com), you can work through cdbaby.com to stream your songs on lala.com, amazon, zune, rhapsody, and itunes, and even have your songs appear at the top of a google search (through lala). Yeah, if you have a bar code, it’s just that easy. In fact, you could probably belch into a microphone 35 different ways and those unique sounds could appear on itunes within a month. If you would like a review of those belches to show up on itunes, you could drop $75 and have radioindy.com write one for you. (It is important to note that you do actually have to apply to get your songs on pandora or most other radio programs.)
Now, say you actually recorded legitimate music and aspired to perform at a bar or club …where should you start? Well, you could always conduct a google search to find the local venues, and email the bar managers individually (then harass them in person when they don’t respond), or you could pay a small monthly fee to sonicbids.com to conduct an extensive search of not only local venues looking for musicians, but also festivals and competitions. If you were successful in securing a gig and wanted to inform all of your closest virtual friends on facebook, myspace, and twitter of this momentous occasion, you could set up an account on artistdata.com, enter the date, time and location of the event, and artistdata would automatically send an announcement to all of these sites and update any music calendar you may have.
And success! You have made it! Or have you? “I’m tired of the bar scene,” you say after 3 shows. “It’s time to take it to the next level.” As an impatient musician, overconfident in your abilities, you can then pay an annual subscription of $300 to taxi.com to have the opportunity to submit your songs ($5 for each song) to music industry executives looking to sign you (or a more talented version of you) and place your music in ads, movies, and TV shows.
So good luck and remember that if after 2 or 3 submissions, you still haven’t made it, there’s always the magic of a viral youtube video…
Apple Trek
Last Friday DMEC headed on a Company Trek to Apple, with a group of 50 very excited Haas students. Only days after announcing the revolutionary iPad, we were in the heart of where this product was created!
First, we heard from Apple University, a program in which MBA grads write cases based on events in Apple’s past. This group will interview those involved with the business decision to put iTunes on Windows to create a case. Then, this case will be taught to leaders throughout the company to help them become better Apple leaders. Very interesting! And even better for us, they’re hiring!
Then we had the chance to hear from the VP of Finance. We were lucky enough that he had awhile to spend talking to us. First, he walked us through the amazing growth that Apple has had in the last decade, from growth of the Mac, to the iPod, to the iPhone, and hopefully the iPad! He also shared with us with some of the features that have made Apple successful, including risk-taking and focusing on few products. And he also quoted Steve Jobs in saying that, “Software is our competitive advantage.”
Finally, we had the chance to hear from a Product Marketing Manager who has focused on Safari and iPhone OS. It was very interesting to hear about the expansive role of the Product Marketing Manager at Apple, a role in which someone may have to work on the technical details of a product with engineers one part of the day and give quotes to newspapers about the latest Apple product the other part of the day. What a fascinating job!
After walking around the Apple campus, we had the chance to go to the Apple Store on site, where we received the employee discount! We then headed back to Haas, many of us hoping that we would be able to spend our summers right back here in Cupertino!
A big thank you to Brian Ellis, DMEC’s outgoing VP of Careers for organizing, as well as to Apple for hosting us!
Haas visits Apple!
SF MusicTech Summit - Music.People.Tech
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
City of Angels (or Lost in Traffic) - Part I
Last week DMEC held its annual trip to LA, which for me was also a first visit in the city. We had a packed agenda, courtesy of many club members who utilized their networks to assure an awesome trip (and orchestrated by our ultra-capable co-VP careers, Richard).
DAY I - Time Warner, Blizzard, Alumni, Traffic
We started the first day visiting Time Warner in Burbank. We met with people from various departments - from the DVD catalog marketing, to Content Acquisition; from DVD Production to Digital Marketing. One of the key takeaways from this meeting was the immense impact that new content delivery method and the digital channels have on the thinking of everyone in the industry. These forces are highly acknowledged by the industry expert and raise tons of fascinating questions related to the existing business models. Two initiatives that the Time Warner people mentioned that are highly impacted by the digital content revolution are the inclusion of digital copies of movies with the purchase of standard DVDs and the Warner Archive - a new online service that allows users to select rare movies from the WB archive and have them specially burned and delivered to them personally (instead of going into mass production as was done in the past).
Our next station was Blizzard Entertainment. We were extremely excited about this unique opportunity to visit their secretive labs and we weren’t disappointed. Our visit started in a screening room where we watched some of the new trailers for Starcraft 2, followed by a presentation by HR and Marketing managers, moved to a tour in the company’s museum and R&D space (which is probably the coolest working space I’ve ever seen) and ended with an open discussion at one of the cafeterias. 
The most impressive thing about Blizzard is their focus on their brand equity and the clear emphasis on maintaining this high quality perception. Not only that, but it seems that the people in Blizzard really know their target audience and take great care in listening and meeting their expectations.
The day ended with a free-food-and-drinks (yay!) mixer with Haas Alumni at the Bodega Wine Bar. Oh…and there was traffic…it seems as if every road in LA is completely blocked between 5am-11pm. no matter which road you choose, it takes hours to get from one part of the city to another. It was the first time I really understood those parts of The Entourage where Ari needs two hours to get to a meeting at 12pm. I mean, what place on earth has traffic jams at 12pm? At least for us it was a great opportunity to bond with our DMEC car-mates.
Coming up next: NBC Universal, UCLA mixer and a Beverly-Hills brunch!
Web 2.0 Expo Impressions
One of the perks for tech-savvy people like me studying here at Berkeley is the proximity to some of the most exciting conferences of the industry. When Amir, our VP Academics, arranged the DMEC club members free pass for the Web 2.0 Expo that happens this week in San Francisco, I immediately took this opportunity and went to hear and see what’s new in the web 2.0 arena. Mr. Elop mentioned that Microsoft is going for a converged approach and will offer free, ad-supported lightweight versions to complement the more rich standalone products. He also mentioned that Microsoft is aiming to become the most interoperable company in the world. My favorite quote: "I love my Kindle, I wish we (MS) had such a device…"
The Keynotes
There were quite a few interesting keynotes opening the conference. They can be divided into 3 main categories:
- Speakers who specifically addressed the developers on site, such as Mark Carges from eBay who pitched developers to use their platform (and specifically PayPal’s) and Michael Abbott from Palm who encouraged the community to start developing applications for Palm’s new WebOS which is running on the new Palm Pre (if this device actually delivers what the demos promise, it is one awesome gadget)
- Speakers who discussed the impact of web 2.0 on art, design and society, such as Amanda Koster from SalaamGarage and John Maeda, president of the Rhod Island School of Design (RISD), who talked about simplicity and about creative leadership.
- Speakers who talked about the future of web 2.0 - first Tim O’Reilly that made a point about the power of less and argued that we should try and apply Moore’s law to problems outside of the tech industry (make things smaller, not bigger). He also talked about Web Squared - the co-impact the web and the real world have on each other. He then interviewed Stephen Elop, head of the Business Division in Microsoft and the guy responsible for products such as Office and SharePoint. They had a very interesting discussion about the impact the cloud will have on traditional software licensing models. Mr. Elop explained that Microsoft is taking a converged approach and will offer free, ad-supported light-weight versions of office to complement the richer stand-alone desktop applications. He also mentioned that Microsoft intends to be the most interoperable company on the planet. My favorite quote, however, was "I love my Kindle…I wish we (MS) had such a device"
The Expo
Many companies presented in the main expo hall, and unfortunately I couldn’t even begin going through all of them. I did stop by at some that raised my personal interest, such as:
ProtoShare - Developed a prototyping tool for rapid creating of UI mock-ups. This intrigued me since I was working on a similar tool in the past and I was really impressed with their product (well, the demo, at least). They basically allow non-developers (let’s say, Product Managers) to create a fully navigational web-application that can be the basis of further discussion and can easily changed as necessary. Once the prototype is ready, it can be handed to the development team who now have a clear picture of the product (rather than communicating via word files, static ppts etc.). Another use case would be for startups in the initial fund raising phase who want to give their potential investor a feel of the final product.
g.ho.st - A fully functional online desktop environment, based on Adobe Flash that offers a desktop that goes with you everywhere. While the company has been around for sometime, they greatly improved performance, added lots of applications that are now available on their environment and increased the storage offered (5GB for files + 3GB for mails, and extra storage for every friend you bring to the service). It seems to me that Microsoft Live Mesh will pose a big threat on these guys, however, the company also bears a social vision as its R&D is done by joint teams of Israeli and Palestinian developers and is a living proof of the potential that technology has to bridge over differences and conflicts.
ooVoo - An interesting video chat application that allows up to 6 different people to conduct video calls online. Although it seems like nothing new initially, after talking to the people in the booth it seems as if they have quite a few ideas regarding monetization (such as SMBs) and they also provide an extensive API for developers to build online video-heavy applications.
Meanwhile, in the real world (just outside the expo)…
