Below is the first in our bimonthly series of interviews on new social music platforms from across the globe. The way we are consuming music is becoming more social with each waking hour of our existence, Music is Social.

Spencer Pawson is a past pupil of London Metropolitan’s Music & Media Management course & a self proclaimed specialist in Long Island Ice Tea.

You can check him out here, http://linkd.in/vPqH5l

Thecrowdsource.net is an example of the extremely important grass roots support for up and coming bands and venues that support them. Respect.

ND : First off, tell about your new Project. How long has it has been going and
where you see it going?

SP: theCROWDsource aims to aid the difficult early period in which bands’
promotional skills are minimal, their names are largely unknown, and
where they can face real difficulties in gaining attention. In addition the
project aims to make it easier for audiences to take a last-minute chance
to go out and see bands. As such, theCROWDsource is currently focusing
on promoting the plethora of free gigs around London.

The project began in May 2011 and, finally, Phase 1 is nearing completion.
Plans are afoot to expand the project and, although we’re very excited
about it, we aren’t yet in a position to reveal our next step. However, we
can say that we will be introducing audience and band profiles; enabling
customised listings and permitting bands to control their content if they
wish.

2.ND:  You mention in your ‘About us’ page that you are dedicated to doing
everything you can to see fuller venues’, do you see a problem with venue
numbers in London these days? Are you getting support from the London
live venue scene?

SP: We would like to see full venues, period. We strongly feel that any
spare capacity is a wasted opportunity for those concerned: whether
it’s an audience looking for a night out, or for the bands, promoters and
venues trying to stay in business and get ahead. These are early days
for us, helped by a smattering of gratitude and acknowledgment from
bands, promoters and a couple of venues. We will actively seek further,
dedicated support once phase 1 is completed and we’ve a product we can
shout about!

3. ND: How are you funding this?

SP: At present this project is purely self-financed. We are in the same position
as many of those fledgling bands and promoters – doing something
because we want to and because it feels like the right thing to do.
However there are revenue streams due to come online within phase 2
that are in keeping with our stated aims.

4. ND: I know you are looking to keep things ‘real’, is there is a platform for
sponsors to be involved at some stage, what is the future plan for The
Crowd source’?

SP: The primary idea is for all interested parties to become involved.
To ‘crowd-source’ the enthusiasm for live music and get it heard using
contemporary methods. As opposed to seeking specific, commercial,
sponsorship we will add anyone who is willing to cooperate to ‘the

CROWD force’ and provide a free platform for their services and products.

5. ND: As a start-up, what are you finding the most difficult barriers

SP: Our main difficulty remains developing the website with finite resources.
In addition we are somewhat embarrassed by our lack of marketing skills
and as a result, frustrated that our message and intent is not yet properly
expressed.

6. ND: You mention also that you are keen to create awareness through social
Networks,
a. is it working for you?
b. what is your take on how social media is affecting the live music
scene?

SP: It’s beginning to work. We feel we have a fledgling community with a
unique identity and that support keeps us going.
We believe that the future of live music promotion lies predominately
within online promotion and social networks. The outlook is reputational;
word of mouth referrals from trusted sources. The live music scene needs
to adapt and accommodate this.

7. ND: Which, in your eyes, are the coolest new venues in London?

SP: Cool is a concept that we’ve never really understood. We favour those
venues that don’t treat bands solely as an excuse to sell drinks (although
we recognise the actual economics). So, we favour those that give
something back, be it promotion, a space to relax, a little heart… We think
the Shacklewell Arms has got it right, right now.

8. Any new bands out there that have really caused a buzz?

The breadth of bands is a constant inspiration. Although it’s different
strokes for different folks; through the website we’re featuring a band
per week. So far we’ve favoured five bands: Psychologist, Real Fur, The
Opiates, Blue on Blue and this week we have Bombers.

Real Fur : http://bit.ly/sYvJEw

The Opiates : http://bit.ly/rPxNc5

Blue on Blue : http://bit.ly/t6pNtD

For more information please visit www.Thecrowdsource.net

(head , founder of Compost Records, Drumpoet Community, Derwin Recordings, Angora Steel, Compost Black Label)

www.compost-records.com

„Synch“ becoming the most important keyword at any independent label since the mess of illegal filesharing, accompanied and due to dwindling record sales. Some labels concentrate more and more on so called „synch promo“.
What does this mean, how it works, which options do an indie or even self managed artist
may have? It is a wide wide field, a real jungle, sometimes a nightmare, often frustrating,
a hustle, hard work, a lot of luck, too, but today it is an essential indispensable „thang“ in
independent music industry.

Beside and beyond the mechanical collecting or average sublicensing of music repertoire,
synch deals always demanding a certain legal status, certain ways of promotion and a know how of dealing with agents, agencies, pre-paid synch shops.

Compost started in 1994, nowadays our music repertoire gained a catalogue of 4000 tracks.
Lately since 2002, Compost Records – including our affilate subsidiary labels – have
developed the synch promotion and synch exploitation in a variety of methods, ways and
deals. This was a necessary step, first to survive as a label, secondly to achieve those royalties for the artists, which were lost through filesharing, diminution of CD, vinyl sales and last but not least the entire economy crisis. In the last five years our fetched turnover of synch deals made minimum 20 % of our and our artists total income per annum.

Here some extracts of how we organize our synch promo worldwide (with pre-selected music in which we believe, so we do not spread all our music):

Physical product (CD) mailout to music supervisors, tastemakers, editors and editing
studios, for film / scores / TV.
Frequently re-search of recent movie- / film end titles / end credits to feed , update and
expand our database all the time.
Physical product mailouts to few selected film agencies, ad agencies and computer
games production companies physical product mailouts to synch plugging agencies, agents who dealing music for synch physical product mailouts to selected advertising industry (commercials)
Digital free download promotion of relevant synch-friendly releases with our own
promotion tool (incl. player, optional feedback tool, full artwork, biog, info datas,
genre and sound description) to music supervisors, editors, score producers, studios,
film agencies, pluggers, agents, computer games prod. comp., relevant specialists in
the advertising agency world.
Once a year selected digital and physical mailout of genre specific titles
Once a year selected digital and physical mailout of best of synch titles
Upload of full repertoire content (or updates) onto the database of our synch plugging
promotion agencies / or single agents. We have circa twelve (12) partner deals
worldwide, but always looking for new ones.
Selecting, manufacturing, mailing of promo give away CDs in direct cooperation
with involved publishing companies. To select repertoire together with publishing
company could bear the advantage that publishers foreign subpublishers could work
and promote our repertoire bit more proper in their countries. Usually the majority of
publishers doing not much, some nothing with our repertoire, except they administrate
those.

Upload to so called Pre-Paid Shops
Select , cutting, administer, handling and deal selected repertoire (mainly parts of our
repertoire) for so called Library Music.
Categorizing and describing music repertoire in atmospheres, disposition, genres, and
giving them particular adjective and emotional descriptions. Important for Pre-Paid,
Library.
Various cooperation with other labels in synch promo. (for example with Pulver
Records (HearDis! Corparate Sound) , Lovemonk (Spain), Future Classic (Australia),
Trailer Media (UK)
In 2012 : Launch of our own Compost Library scoring tool portal as a composer
library platform and database with search function and specials. Offering quality
music, offering any kind of production by our artists, offering full length score
productions, trailer or commercial production, while also pre-paid options.

A very few comments, thoughts, provocations, questions, theses and snippet around the
keyword „SYNCH:

Synch-friendly means, you don’t need to promote your house or techno DJ-tool tune,
which every score or music editor can imitate, programming by themselve in a very short
time.

Sometimes a „Synch“ request comin in on Thursday and must be cleared over weekend.
Are you prepared fort his?

Can Library Music for Synch be the future and ability to survive in the music industry, if
you are a creative, innovative musician or producer. The answer is „yes“ it can be, but it
can and should be always a good extra income.

Can Pre-Paid Music for Synch be the future and ability to survive in the music industry, if
you are an creative, innovative musician or producer or label. The answer is „No“! It’s a
jungle, and it destroys the prices and value of music for commercial synch.

Does an expensive gift, a special customzied, quite expensive CD packaging may drive
your chances to get a synch deal? Or is it the promoters face, the frequency of promotion,
the quality of bundles or is it simply luck? All a bit. Networking is very important, but
above and beyond that, it is hard work and certainly definitely a question of appearance,
of profile of your catalogue. Networking of quality labels with quality music in the world
of commercials will be more and more becoming a keyrole. The future for us looks bright,
but there is still to much suspiciousness and greeness between labels. And there are not
much indie promoters working as synch pluggers, who are working sucessful, cool and
innovative. Futhermore there are certain jobs which could be done. The engagement of
an „Contacter“ or „Account Excecutive“ in the advertisement industry is omnipresent. In
our independent music industry this kinda job doesn’t really exist.

Maybe a part of your song was used in Korea in an commercial advertisement spot. How
do you search for that? It is possible to search.

Does it makes sense to promote your music to hundreds of TV background music editors,
although they can use your music without an official synch-request , insofar it is not for
commercial reasons? Yes it makes sense!

How do I get access and contacts to important music supervisors, editors in Hollywood or
elsewhere? Are there business relation manuals and databases ?
How do I know what kind of music these agencies, pluggers and editors looking at the
moment?

There is no guideline, book or calculator of how much money you could quote / fetch for
a national or worldwide synch deal with specific usages like online/TV for a timeframe of
half a year or so. It’s sometimes a risk to quote to high, it could be a fault to agree to an
lousy offer, it’s necessary to contact publisher to get their experiences, it helps to study
the price policies for particular usages at Pre-Paid Synch shops. Finally you need artists
approval.

What does MFN means ?

Does it make sense to offer tracks where each or even two out of three composers
(authors) have separate publishing deals. The answer is simple: „No!“

Can the label deal the publishing side ? Tricky question, tricky situation, tricky answer
later on.

Library Music typically owns the copyright on the sound recording (master rights) AND
the publishing rights, all this licenses are easy to obtain from one source in one transaction
(Direct Licence). You may asking me now, does this works with my music, which is
already released and published. Yes it could work as for Library Music. How this may
work is one of the best kept secret in the synch music industry, but i tell you it can work.

In demand, often requested synch-friendly music has lot of edit points, good breaks.

Some of these topics, and much more issues around the keyword SYNCH will be
discussed during the panels of Future Music Forum, taken place at The MACBA Barcelona on the 22nd & 23rd September 2011.

In the last decade or so, the Internet has made so many things pretty much obsolete. There’s simply no demand for them anymore. Travel agents, cashier checks, postal offices or any kind of middleman – all memories from a not so distant analogue past, made redundant by the explosive rise of digital. In the music market, it’s the record labels
that have taken a severe beating by today’s unstoppable online developments. The traditional record company business model has proven impossible to maintain in the digital age and with the arrival of social platforms, they’re at risk of losing their purpose in the distribution & promotion chain entirely to an unlikely competitor: consumer
brands.

Back in the day, traditional record companies dominated and controlled the music market. As an artist, you simply could not do without representation by a record label. The musicians were the slaves doing all the work, the record companies the masters pocketing the cash. When the Internet took off – and with it peer to peer file sharing – the
established companies saw their lucrative monopoly position crumble at an alarming rate. In response to the explosively increasing number of illegally downloaded tracks, they frantically tried to enforce copyright control on CD’s, but all too soon it became clear this wasn’t a war they were going to win. At least not like this. Instead, they shifted their strategy towards so-called 360-deals. They still invested in artists, but the focus of revenue changed from record sales alone to the total artist income, including ticket sales, merchandise and copyrights. But it wasn’t long after that the music market entered the DIY-phase. With the emergence of social media, artists no longer needed record companies to get them exposure and sales. Through platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube musicians could do their own promotion and marketing. Artists like Radiohead prove that you can indeed accomplish a lot on your own. But to be successful at doing your own promotion, you do need time, people and money. Clearly Radiohead had all three when they launched their album Rainbow in 2007 and The King of Limbs this year without the involvement of a record label. But what if you are not Radiohead? If you are the talented new kid on the block, trying to get gigs and sell demo’s to anyone listening? Self-promotion is time- and money consuming, so you still need that helping hand to go the extra mile – you need that benefactor. And since you and your innovative indie band don’t want to have anything to do with the dinosaurs of the record industry, you need to
start looking around for other partners who can help you past the tipping point and into the charts.

This is where brands come into play. Brands have the potential to replace record companies in the distribution and promotion game. Brands live and breathe marketing, activation, promotion and branding. It’s their very essence. But the big difference with record labels is that brands are not focused on selling records. Instead, they employ it asa promotional tool to build brand equity. And when done right, associations and partnerships with music and bands do just that. Ultimately, higher brand equity leads to higher sales figures. A soda brand makes its profit by selling soda bottles – not mp3’s, so they don’t need to make money of selling music. Therefore, brands can play the same
role the record companies used to do on a promotional and distribution level, but without any interest in benefitting directly from record sales. In short: brands use the artist to boost their image, while the artist uses brands as financial and promotional partners, keeping the total 360 income on their music mostly for themselves. Everybody
happy?!

Social gaming and online music consumption unite! Juha Hynynen CEO : SongHi Entertainment

According to recent surveys social network users make up more than two-thirds (and
growing) of total Internet users. The rapid growth in users makes social networks a strong
platform for social game developers to build awareness and acquire players. Consequently,the popularity of social media gaming has gone through the roof and the numbers of players have sky-rocketed into the hundreds of millions.

Game-like social media services that relate and link to real world activities and hobbies are
currently under-served and are a key point for growth. These services have a key advantage over pure-play fantasy-based services, since they are easier to adopt and familiarize by everyone. Social music gaming is anticipated to continue grow in 2012 and beyond –especially in the interactive musical communication side. In the younger demographics music is a binding force in virtual environments. Interest towards specific genres and artists and appreciation of music is already in their top-interests at this age. Although social games and services have increased in numbers in a short period of time, the music space is still under-served, especially services focused on music creation. Existing music creation sites are mainly focused on either kids at a very young age or on professional users with advanced knowledge in music theory.

SongHi Entertainment’s main offering – SongHi.com – is a unique social community for music creation and sharing targeting the mass market of all music consumers. SongHi.com’s objective is to enable users to develop and publish their own musical identity on the Internet; Users can easily create own songs, form virtual bands with friends, and share their performances with other users by publishing them on SongHi and in major other social networks. Facebook mini games geared around the SongHi music making technology and allowing users to have fun with their creative talent together with friends are in the works.

The competitive edge of SongHi is based on easy and fun music making encouraging the
users to try out with different instruments and musical styles. It is no longer enough for
social gamers to passively consume music, not even to the extent of being able to share song lists and likes. People now wish to participate and be part: The possibility of becoming a virtual music star through your own creativity changes the music gaming experience in a fundamental way. It is interesting to see how music industry is going to adapt their business models around this inevitable trend.

I totally understand where ‘admin’ is coming from but you have to go beyond this, ”yawn, o great another music conference”, and get real. The industry is spinning in the toilet and its very uncertain to say if it will rise again. This is affecting a very large industry, movement,  lifestyle whatever you want to call it,  and in my humble view music professionals from all corners of the globe should have the opportunity to visit a well put together conference on the matter.   You also have to take into account that there are a whole wide range of music conferences that are tackling a lot of different issues from mobile to live gigs to the digital music industry aspect.

Which brings me to the issue of our own, when I say this I mean, Barcelona, our own digital music conference in Barcelona. This is by no means the first event to focus on the area of digital music 2.0, the city council was hosting similar events in 2007. What I believe sets The Future Music Forum apart is the calibre of speakers and music entrepreneurs all gathered together in one room for two days. Innovation and movement is all about bouncing ideas off each other, networking and dare I say getting a wee bit drunk together at the conference party. This is where people decide to say ”damn it, there has to be a solution to this mess we are in”. Inspiration comes from innovation and I personally believe we have gathered some of the leading minds in the game to discuss the future of music business.

This leads to my point above about too many music conferences. Whether its unfortunate or fortunate in our case, Barcelona doesn’t really have a proper professional conference where leading music industry heads can get together, of course Sonar & Primaverasounds are doing their best to make this happen but music festivals do lack that aura of professionalism, not sure if its due to the party aspect out-doing the serious business aspect but I have never felt serious at conferences that are ultimately a side show at these events.
The Future Music Forum Barcelona is offering that conference and networking aspect as its main event and we are delighted that not just the Spanish market is taking advantage of it,but also a very international market see the advantage in making the trip down to Barcelona.

Too many music conferences?, I think not.

It’s undeniable that mobile applications have an exciting future. The Smartphone market is growing, so much so that Morgan Stanley estimates the mobile phone, rather than the PC, will be the primary device for accessing the web by 2013. This means that mobile applications are going to be a part of the everyday lives for an ever-growing number of people.

Good apps should always have functionality at their core. It’s beside the point whether the
app solves an everyday problem – like ordering a taxi or buying groceries online- or simply
offers a fun distraction. If an application does what the consumer expects of it reliably and
consistently, then the app will have a strong foundation to build on.

However, the best apps, the ones which will become ubiquitous, take a core function and
add value to it. Whether that’s adding new features or diversifying functionality, the goal
should be to give the consumer incentives to open the app habitually on a daily or even
hourly basis. Angry Birds’ regular updates and free new levels kept fans coming back, and
also bought Rovio no end of word-of-mouth advertising.

Shazam’s core function is obviously to recognise music – that will always be at the heart
of what the service provides. But Shazam is now making major moves to recognise TV
with its new Shazam For TV initiatives. Shazam For TV harnesses the product’s existing
core function but delivers it in a completely new way that’s useful to the consumer. The
company’s recent campaign for Transformers 3, for example, allowed users to access free
and exclusive content from Linkin Park simply by Shazaming a TV commercial. The potential for this development is huge, according to Google, 72% Smartphone owners use their phone while consuming other media – like watching TV. What’s more, people are already Shazaming television to find out the name of a song in a show or ad, so it’s not a major behaviour change to Shazam the show or ad itself for more related information.

Added to this, new features like Shazam’s Lyric Play feature, which lets Shazamers see
lyrics synchronized with the music they’re listening to, are also exciting developments to
the Shazam service that give its users more reasons to keep coming back. By adding
new features and diversifying the app, developers like Shazam can continue to deliver on
innovative mobile applications, delivering products which users will continue to use all the more frequently.

This post was written by our guest blogger, Stephen Titmus, Shazam

The music industry has been notoriously slow in following technological advancements and for this reason is paying the price today, but what the music industry has never lacked is a natural, passionate following of technological aficionados. It is this community that is now shaping the future of music industry. What we are witnessing in the music industry right now is social media entrepreneurship at its best, innovators have been moved to action by the slow response of the music industry, almost like social innovators being moved to action to confront colonialism, social music entrepreneurs like Soundcloud, spotify, mixcloud, to mention but a few, have brought the music public what they have been longing for for years, quick access to an obnoxious amount of music, the option to share & comment about this music with their community and more importantly an option to support the industry and not harm it by quick & easy consumption.

It is this community that the Future Music Forum Barcelona is looking to accommodate, the music entrepreneurs , the digital music community that is pushing the boundaries and defining how the next generation will consume music. Our target audience are the new generation of music business online, businesses who understand social media and understand how consumption of music is developing online.

With two days of carefully chosen experienced panelists giving their insights, we aim to supply our audience with food for thought and new ideas of how to progress their individual projects.

Social Music Gaming brings together two of the most popular aspects of Facebook and to reap the benefits of this fast emerging category, there are two very important ingredients – exclusive music content and innovative and fun games. Bopler Games has them both.

This post was created by MXP4 – Bopler

Long since the days of Rally-X & Space Invaders music and gaming have had a intertwinging relationship destined to be together together one day in harmony , sorry, couldn’t help it. Along came the Commodore 64 in the early 1980′s which was the first console to have a 4-bit sample on a fourth sound channel.

Then came what you would call a small boom in the computer gaming industry with artists making names for themselves as the quality of their composition was improved, by the late 80′s video game music was being sold as cassette tape soundtracks in Japan, fast forward ahead past the chiptune and to the MOD-format which basically made it easy for anyone to produce music based on digitised samples. Super Nintendo / Sega / Playstation /took music in gaming to a new level whereby full audio CD’s could be used during the game, even John Williams went on to compose the game soundtrack for the Star Wars games.

Music Streaming made specifically for games and previously released music streams are now commonly used  in games today which is now becoming a great way of releasing music to new ears as games are becoming the preferred choice of entertainment for a youth culture. The future of music business?, not quite, but a huge part of it.

Midem 2011 hosted a panel on Social Gaming & how the music industry and the social gaming industry can explore new opportunities. We continue with that theme with 2 of the speakers that were present at that session, and two music entrepreneurs, Juha Hynynen CEO of SongHi Entertainment in Finland and Albin Serviant CEO of MXP4 from France, Albin is adamant that the music industry should be following the gaming industry. He mentions & I fully agree with his comment that the ‘Music Industry is still lagging when it comes to the proactively developing new business models’, might this be simply because the music industry was run by cowboys until recently?, just a question but it makes you wonder. The gaming industry has evolved constantly and kept up with the tech trends of today and now is at the forefront of the battle to bring music up to par.

With Zynga, the social gaming powerhouse now aggressively moving into the music space with Gagaville, the music industry executives are knocking at their door, and no wonder, with more than 250 million users a month, there is an interactive, social audience just waiting to be pitched new music. Snoop doog, Dr.Dre have all contributed to this new phenomenon but the music industries biggest asset Lady Gaga hitting the games world with Gagaville, http://bit.ly/iA352C
this is a notable escalation of the industries involvement. Lady Gaga will be selling virtual items throughout the game, promoting her new album through previews of songs & the link in with pre paid game cards at Best Buy, this is such an interesting exercise for the music industry exploring new ways of business.

Let the games begin…..

The Digital Music Conference is no different, the Midem conference in Cannes, although numbers are decreasing, it still is a place where products are announced, deals are struck, music entrepreneurs gather and basically where the future of the music industry is defined. The digital music business is in somewhat of a growing stage, almost like an adolescent teen, angry, unsure of where his place in the world is yet, still popping those zips and jerking off to his next door neighbour & best friends older sister.

But grow he will, the music industry is not dead, its just finding itself again and we are here to see it through. Some people think we are crazy to be putting on events focused on the Digital Music Business through the dinosaur of conferences but how else will the industry find its feet again but through dialogue, music business contacts and creating a new path for the industry to follow.

There are numerous digital music industry events popping up around Europe and in my opinion there’s plenty of room for them all. I meet the music entrepreneurs from Greece and Italy and Portugal who are crying out for quality international speakers to meet and share ideas with, talented artists on the streets of Barcelona who complain about the business aspect lacking from the big events like Sonar and Primaverasounds. We are apart of these new breed of conferences and are striving to make them as sexy as ever.

Long live the conference industry!!