I went to SF Music Tech Summit. It’s a really fun event put on by Brian Zisk.
This post is my random thoughts during the conference. Take them with a grain of salt.
I’m at TechCrunch Tv’s “Keen On” Interviews. Andrew Keen is interviewing music people. He is coming off as a self important pompous ass. I don’t like this guy. I walked into the session during Matt Serletic of Emblem Music Group. Andrew Keen is asking questions he has written down. He’s not even listening to the answers.
Next up is Brandon Boyd & Mike Einziger of Incubus. I have no idea what they are discussing because Keen is so annoying. These guys seem like nice guys but are a little dull.
Is Keen qualified to host this panel?
When asked what they would say to the people who “leaked” their music they said their fans stood up for them and reported where the record was posted and promised to go out and purchase it.
By the time this panel was over I developed a real dislike of Keen.
To quote George Bush, this guy is a first class A-HOLE
1:00
Live Music Marketing panel. Featuring kevin Lyman, Gabe Benveniste, Zack Darling, Julia Hartz, Ian Hogarth, Aaron Siuda
They took audience questions about marketing your shows. So far all of the answers involve social media. And everyone who asked a question plugged their company. Most of the answers also included new media buzzwords like ‘targeted, metrics, discovery, trusted space, verticals, etc.
Kevin Lyman hasn’t answered anything. I think he may feel out of place here. He finally chimed in and said he finds that billboards on the side of the road work best for Warped Tour.
Lets face it: you don’t really learn anything from these panels. You come here to network. This room was packed.
I bailed on this and moved to the State of Music Apps with David Porter of 8tracks.com. This was more of a community discussion. Some guy brought up the copyright infringement topic because a guy brought up podcasting of DJ content like mixes and Mashuos. Ugh. This subject has been beaten to death.
Sitting here i notice a guy wearing frog shoes.
Conversation turns to how to monetize your app.
Time to bail on this one.
Next i moved to the New Product and Technology demos talk.
The guy from some company called Social genius was showing his app called AudioVroom and played Bad Company. The crowd of hipsters moaned.
The host of the talk, Cortney Harding, defended Bad Co as an underrated band. I like her.
Next up was Soundhound showing an app called Hound. Not sure if this is an update to the soundhound app music recognition app. Ok it’s a different app. You can hold down a button and say a song or artist and up pops the artist, songs, lyrics and more.
Next: Music Hack Day. A weekend of music hacks, basically a nerd event for hackers.
He showed 2 hacks:
1. Matt Kelly – crowdjuke. Txt msg your artist and it adds them to a party playlist.
2. Soundrain. Makes a widget that combines soundcloud and Minno so yiu can sell your songs that you have hosted on Soundcloud from within that widget. I like this.
100% of the sale goes to the artist.
Next up. Topspin. A platform for artist to market themselves directly to their fans.
.3:00 – a band called The Mowglis played.
Then i went to the Tools for Your Band panel.
None of these guys look like musicians. At least not rock musicians.
Jolie O’Dell of Mashable was the moderator. Hot chick tech pundit.
On the panel was YouTube, the Orchard, RootMusic, Atom Digital, Thinglink.
Jolie is a good moderator so far.
So far I’ve “learned” that the best tool is Facebook. More new media buzz words like “engaging, Trent Reznor, viral”.
Tips. Put links in your YouTube video notes.
Use Tumbler for tour blogs, etc. But you need to share other people’s content.
Fish where the fish are.
Ways to use Twitter: use hashtags. Follow people who follow artists who are similar to you. Give people a reason to follow you.
New drinking game. When a panelist says engagement, have a drink.
Damn, Jolie is hot.
Another tool. Live video Stageit. YouTube live. Ustream Justin tv
Use apps that work well with other apps.
Thinglink dude is on a plug tear. Jolie rolls her eyes when he speaks.
How to make money: sell the experience. I don’t know if I’m buying this. No pun intended.
Register with Sound Exchange
Pair up with other bands.
Make good content for your fans.
Last round. 2 panels. How to Scale and Strategic Partnerships. I wanted to go to both.
Stopped at How to Scale.
Pandora, twitter , songkick and Soundcloud
Room was packed and smelling ripe with people stink.
Bailed and moved upstairs to the Strategic Partnerships panel.
The panelists are all really smart but this is dull.
One guy says all of the music tech companies are all doing similar things and need to start thinking different.
Other guy accused him of reading off a TelePrompTer. That got a laugh.
Ok I’m getting out of here.
Thanks for reading.
Your friend,
Butler
