Digital Distribution

Tomorrow will see a truly promising press release. German music start-up pierlane GmbH (that’s the guys behind Songpier, and I happen to be one of them) is about to announce their partnership deal with major distributing service The Orchard. The Orchard will provide the app generating service to their artists and label customers. Songpier enables artists as well labels to generate premium apps, running as HTML5 web apps on a range of different platforms and devices.

That makes it just about half a year after founding pierlane, and merely a month after the public beta launch that Songpier takes a huge leap forward.

Stay tuned to see what the future brings in terms of this deal… and watch out for some neat features to be rolled out next week, plus some interesting collaborations within the next three months.

Just a hint to another article this time. Referring to my last posting on ContentSphere, I wrote an article for Music Think Tank, “Mobile Connect-with-Fans for DIY Artists - Why, and How?”. Please feel free to comment there.

After having posted on some forums, googling around etc., I finally was able to find services of the kind I was in search for - offering artists apps which they can share with their fans to directly connect. Also, one the companies (Songpier) commented on my article. Other ones are listed in my article on Music Think Tank.

Now, if you needed any further confirmation - please immediately go visit Midem’s website. The Midem blog features an article on “Music mobile apps and music streaming services”, including an excellent study compiled by Nielsen for MidemNet Lab MIDEM (link to download form).

Actually, it’s the result of a survey of well beyond 25.000 online consumers in more than 50 markets worldwide. Do yourself a favour, fill-in the form, and download the study. If you had any doubt about my article - read it.

Having conceptualised a good part of Berlin music conference all2gethernow's discussion topics (and organised even more), I suddenly find myself with heaps of thoughts and content not published on ContentSphere. Even worse, ContentSphere has been almost plain blank while working on those topics.
It just would be a shame to not make use of it. More than that, these topics are dealing with issues and they are raising questions. I contributed them to a2n because of their relevance in today’s music business.

The abstracts of those topics you will find on a2n’s schedule which is still accessible. The link to each of them I added to the list below. I’m trying to flesh out at least some of them in the near future to give you a bigger picture of what I intended them to be.

As you might have guessed, I was able to witness only very, very few of the events I drafted. But a large number of a2n’s discussions have been streamed, which makes me curiously waiting for the finalised and edited videos. I hope them to be published soon as a part of our documentation, so I can add the actual video of the discussions to my articles.

But – what are those topics and issues I contributed to a2n? Let’s see:

1. Netlabels reloaded – what’s their role?
   
2. SELL SELL SELL – How to get your music licensed in Commercials, Games, Film & TV
   
3. Creative Commons Collecting Society – and it’s no typo
   
4. Current status in collecting societies and licensing alternatives – what’s the vision?
   
5. GEMA or Creative Commons: What’s best for me?
   
6. Getting paid for Creative Commons licensed content – sounds weird?
   
7. How to compose for film
   
8. The relevance of collaborative networks
   
9. Pandemonium of social media options: strategies overload.
   
10. Search & navigation – key to customer?
    
11. Artists being solo – on stage & in business
    
12. How do technologies & social media influence music culture?
    
13. Alive & Growing – the music business
    
14. State of the art in Digital Distribution: Old school anyway? On DIY, Direct-to-fan and usability.
    
15. Lost in Music – today’s generation of musicians in fear of freedom
    
16. The future of labels
    
17. Integrating change – current strategies in music and software
    
18. Web 3.0 / Music 3.0 - What does real-time web mean to music business?
    
19. Smart Artist Management
    
20. GEMA, Pay-to-play - what else? Who pay? How much advertising do you stand?
    
21. Love & Money - raising your fanbase

Please don’t get me wrong – the storyline might have been set by me for those panels and workshops. Though, it has been the moderators and speakers who did a brilliant job in breathing life into some sketched out thoughts.

You want to know which ones didn’t make it? Here they are. At least the ones I drafted.

1. Reforming copyright: Necessity or nonsense?
   
2. Collecting societies - foot on the brake or guardian of the Holy Grail?
   
3. YouTube - whuzznotup? The Black Screen of Death on behalf of GEMA.
   
4. Fail & Success - are traditionel business models the only to survive?
   
5. Branded art - when music becomes added value
   
6. DIY is a dead end
   
7. DIY marketing: The real world
   
8. DIY and direct-to-fan marketing - cameo role or serious market factor?
   
9. Direct-to-fan marketing
   
10. Artists’ perfect 10 in digital distribution - how does the perfect platform look like?
    
11. No charts, no breaking - what does it take to become a “breaking artist”?
    
12. Workshop: Site design for artists
    
13. Fuhgettabout the producer - we can do that ourselves!
    
14. Music production on iPhone/iPad? WTF or OMG?
    
15. Technology for the masses - does common access increase music quality?
    
16. Convergence or transition: About TV, internet & hybrids.
    
17. Music collecting: No options to revamp a bad habit beloved?

Why they did they fail? It’s been the usual reasons. Cancellations, invitations not being answered, and most of all - too much content. Some issues were merged and survived, others had to be abandoned. But, you never know… you like some of the ideas and would have loved to see the panel? Please tell me. I’d appreciate it.

Looks like an awful lot of work. Happy to do it. Gonna be fun.