Here are some panel highlights and notes I captured. I have added a few of my own thoughts/comments as well:

Panel: Digital Summit 2010 and Beyond - What Does The Next Decade Have In Store For Everyone At The Table?

Although I got into this session a bit late and wasn’t able to get a seat which made is a bit difficult to take notes, this was by far the best panel I attended. Moderated by Ted Cohen, who is the quite the character (I say that in a good way!), lead a discussion that was lively and passionate. This panel could have gone on for 4 hours and it still wouldn’t have been enough time. Tom Silverman (Tommy Boy Records), Fred von Lohmann (EFF) and Eric Garland (Big Champagne), Vince Bannon (Getty Images) were four of the panelists, along with Stella Mowen (Hot Topic) and Tamara Hrivnack (Warner).

• Downloads, streaming, the cloud, CDs, these are all different ways that people will consume music. The key thing to understand is that consumers want choice and with that comes opportunities to make money across different channels.

• Eric Garland made a very good observation when he said that for most artists, the internet/digital media has neither helped or hindered them. The problems and challenges they face will still be the same 5, 10, 15 years.

• Tom Silverman nailed when he said that people have to redefine what success is in the music industry. Citing Corey Smith as an example, who is making a good living as a musician without making the sacrifices that don’t fit into what he values in his life. Some people really do want to know their kids and live a fairly normal life. If artists only knew the sacrifices Madonna had to make, they might not think that being a “success”, as defined by others is all that is cracked up to be.

• Not such a good idea suing people who download music as they could be your best consumers. Kicking people off the internet is draconian.

• According to Eric Garland, ISPs have absolutely no interest in an charging an ISP levy for music. They may consider talking to the movie people because video traffic is choking their bandwidth.

Digital Music News posted live coverage from the panel and which you can read here.

Panel: Could Collective Licensing For P-2-P File Sharing Be A Future Source Of Income For The Music Industry?

So, what happens when you have three or four lawyers on a panel like this? You get a lot of legal talk that titillates lawyers and lobbyists while leaving music fans glazed over with a stoned look on their faces.

All kidding aside, an important battle is being played out that will potentially impact consumers, artists and labels/publishers. The question right off the top: Is an ISP levy (or tax as some opponents call it) a solution to the file sharing “problem”?

• Gary Greenstein believes it’s a potential solution fraught with it’s own set of issues that need to be understood and addressed. For instance, what does the ISP fee cover? Music? Movies? eBooks? How will it be allocated? You also have to deal with all the different royalties/rights like performance and publishing. Will we ever reach any sort of consensus?

• Walter McDonough, who represents the Future of Music Coalition stated that what the music industry is facing isn’t really new. If you go back 100 years and read the legal documents/arguments and news articles about copyrights/royalties, we mirror the same issues being faced today. Take for example John Philip Sousa, a composer and conductor who didn’t think too fondly of the upstart recording industry and their phonographs. In a submission to a congressional hearing in 1906, he argued:

  These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy…in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.

  And today we hear that if artists won’t get paid, they will stop being creative and no new music will be written and recorded. The histrionics remains the same, the technology different. Digital technology and internet is today’s equivalent of the young and status quo threatening recording industry of 1906. Technology will always pace ahead of business models and people’s willingness to change.

  Although McDonough is pro-ISP levy, he doesn’t believe there will be legislative action on this issue and that we are facing political stalement in Canada, the US and Europe because of elections/minority governments and weak economies. The political will isn’t there to make it happen. Another interesting point he makes is that the telcos/ISPs are in no rush and have no interest in a levy and unless there is action now, it will be too far and gone because the teleco’s will be far to powerful and have exerted enough pressure through their lobbyists to ensure that an ISP levy never happens.

• The one guy who stood out with the most radical of ideas was Sandy Pearlman (producer for Blue Oyster Cult, Clash and former Black Sabbath manager) who has advocated for years the 5 cent download solution. (PDF). 70% of internet traffic is music and video, with the biggest chunk of that 70% being pirate video and because there isn’t a lot of money being made in the online legal music sales channels, it’s time to focus on monetizing the pirate universe. People don’t want to have to deal with rogue websites, spyware and bad torrents in their search for music, so at a 5 cent price point, you are valuing music enough as to not to consider it free, yet making it extremely affordable and easy to access. According to his studies, had this solution been implemented in 2006, the music business would have generated $40b in revenues.

• Greg Stephens, a songwriter and lawyer who is also pro-ISP levy hopes that a made in Canada solution will be the beacon for the rest of the world. He hopes that we don’t need the government to get involved and that all the players (artists, labels, publishers) can finally co-operate and get a solution done.

My take: It seems like such a simple solution that should put an end to any further discussions or complaints about file-sharing and illegal downloads. In reality, the ISPs are probably looking at the music industry and saying go figure out your own business problems, don’t make your problems, our problems, we just sell a “dumb pipe” and don’t want to control what people do online. And what if they did agree to an ISP levy, we may solve one problem but I can only imagine a whole host of other issues that will creep up.

For consumers: Is the levy compulsory? Can they opt-out? If they do and yet still download music, how should they be treated if caught? What about the 75 year old Grandmother who uses basic internet access to send email and receive pictures of the grandkids? Should she have to pay the levy?

For artists/rightsholders: Is $5/month good enough? $10? How does each artist/rights holder value their music? How will they ever reach an agreement? Should Bruce Springsteen get a larger share of the money because his music is downloaded more than an unknown indie artist? In subsequent years, can artists demand that the levy be increased? How will consumers react to fee increases?

For ISPs: They will probably add their own “admin fee” on top of the levy because of the costs involved in collecting and handling the fee. So that $5 or $10 will probably be $8 or $13. As we all know, the more a product/service is handled, the more it will cost consumers as companies dip their fingers in to grab a piece of the action.

Panel: Rebel Without A Pause: Bob Lefsetz

Who doesn’t read Lefsetz’s Letter? Love him or hate him, this guy knows his stuff and isn’t afraid to speak his mind about the music business. He strolled on stage to a packed room and within minutes went off on his usual rant. I didn’t take detailed notes because pretty much everything he spoke about has been covered in his blog on numerous occasions. Nonetheless, to hear him speak is as how comes across in his blog. A loveable gladfly. So, what did he cover?

• Be very very good and write music that makes you want to listen over and over again. He cited Gnarls Barkley “Crazy” (a terrible song I can’t listen to) and Owl City “Firefiles” as two songs that have stuck in his mind.

• Give away your music because why would anyone pay if they don’t know who the hell you are

• Touched upon the Livenation/Ticketmaster merger and how shrewd of a move that was. They will control ticketing, artist management, concert promotions and the venues. If you are a band and these guys come along and offer you a deal, take it. And, Ticketmaster knows they are hated by consumers and really don’t care.

• Time and attention is precious. Will only take music recommendations from people he trusts.

• There will be money to be made in filtering who will tell you what to listen to but didn’t elaborate any further.

• How do you make great music, get it to the audience and get paid for it? It won’t be the people currently in power but will be in the hands of today’s young creators.

The Q&A was very interesting, Lefsetz didn’t hold back. I won’t bother describing the interactions with the audience when you can take a look at these short video clips I found on YouTube. You really have to appreciate the harsh honesty in his answers.

What dose Bob Lefsetz have against hip-hip? - Hip-hop was honest and then become bastardized by the money. Hip-hip is only so broad and the media says we are in a hip-hop nation but the reality is it is a small pie. There isn’t a style of music that has polarized more people than hip-hip.

Business School Sucks - Do not go to music biz school because most people who are successful never made it through school. It’s all about the individual.

RAIN Summit North

At this point in time, it had been a very long day and I wasn’t sure how much more sitting I could take. I missed the first twenty minutes as I was finishing up in the Lefsetz talk but as they were running behind schedule, I didn’t miss too much of the radio summit. I did catch the following panels/talks:

• Features for Stations’ Digital Platforms
• Making Money in Streaming
• Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy Keynote
• The Leap to Mobile

A few interesting stats where presented (I don’t have any data/references to back these up so take them as-is….):

• Mobile is in the early stages and we have yet to see it’s full potential. A lot of companies and developers are extremely bullish and are working on a lot of new streaming mobile apps, especially internet radio.

• By 2015, the “connected car” will become front and centre. Pandora is already making in-roads in the car market with a deal Ford and RadioTime is also teaming up with BMW to offer internet radio in the car.

• Vision Critical is planning to release the results of of its full internet radio study in April but Jeff Vidler did share with us that the top music streaming site in the US is YouTube followed up Pandora. The rest of the list is silvered apart between other services like Slacker, AOL Radio, Last.FM etc.

• By 2015, there will be more smartphones in use than desktop computers.

• Radio is entering it’s fourth golden age where we will see 1) the hits format sit alongside “long tail” formats (a look at this list of genres shows how many sub-genres there are. Wizard Rock? Medieval folk rock? This stuff would never make it on commercial broadcast radio), 2) era of personalization, 3) high attention levels and 4) Ubiquity (mobility/connected cars)

• Internet radio is driving consumer adoption of the Blackberry. Business development people at RIM are working hard with radio stations (terrestrial/internet) and content providers in general to help them build Blackberry consumer apps.

• Earl Veale of Corus Radio said that radio listening will be primarily on IP based devices within this decade and radio stations need to be leading the charge or else risk being left completely out. He believes it is an exciting time for radio operators to embrace the web. Corus didn’t rush to release an app but wanted to feel the market out and figure out the best approach to take. When they did release their first iPhone app, they had very modest expectations but to date have had 220k downloads. The Blackberry app has been download 40k times. Streaming mobile makes up 2% of their listeners and they see this growing.

• Joe Kennedy, Pandora CEO said it best in his keynote: “Revolutionaries with vision will see ahead what others are blind to”. When most people thought that Pandora would never survive, they have come through and now face a pretty bright future. They are the leading internet radio station in the US, working on deals with car companies and stereo makers to get Pandora on-board and now have VCs/investors knocking on their door. I guess it helps that the are rumoured to be on track to generating $100m in revenues. He spoke about how we are moving away from the broadcast era where music/news was distributed from one to many and which has been mostly one way. Pandora, and internet radio in general is a personalized, one-to-one, two way technology. Listeners can control what they listen and when.

My take: It was very surprising to hear radio people sound fairly optimistic in embracing mobile streaming and are looking at finding what works for them. It certainly is a tough and disruptive period but it’s a period that requires innovative and pro-active thinking. DJs, advertisers, program directors/managers are facing challenges that they could never have imagined 5-10 years ago. In a new world where the listener controls what they want to hear and how they want to interact, you have to start wondering what will the future role of a DJ/Program Director be? Will they become community managers? Brand facilitators? I would say that these are probable roles and the most important skill will be finding ways engage their listener community and get them to be ambassadors of their respective radio stations.

Here are a few other posts about Canadian Music Week 2010, all definitely worth a read:

• Positive Vibes from Canadian Music Week (Byrnes Media)
• Hangin’ at CMW with Bob Segarini (FYIMusic)
• CMW draws record attendance in face of adversity (FYIMusic)
• Live@CMW: Matching Good Music With Good Fans (Digital Music News)
• Canadian Music Week: Ole’s McCarty Tackles ISPs On Piracy (Billboard)
• Canadian Music Week: Jaron Lanier Says Free Won’t Work (Billboard)
• Segarini Survives CMW & Lives To Write About It (FYIMusic)

That pretty much covers CMW from my perspective. CMW organizers should be posting podcasts from most of the sessions shortly. You can take a listen to panels from 2009 and 2008 and I will tweet/blog once the 2010 podcasts are posted on the CMW site.

Gabriel Nijmeh (@gcn)

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