Aug 21 2008
Bandwidth Conference
Spent late last week the Bandwidth Conference. An amazing time as always. It’s great to be somewhere where so many of the people I deal with (or want to be dealing with) converge to discuss what we do for a living.
Some amazing panels – I actually took notes!!! How rare is that at a conference these days. Some highlights:
- Larry Weintraub‘s panel on how the youth are interacting with music online. AKA “All the different ways we don’t pay for music…” However, I also took away that if you engage them right, they’re thrilled to pay for merch, tickets, and heightened experiences. That’s certainly something.
- 42 Entertainment’s panel about the NIN Year Zero project was a jaw-dropper for sure. I had heard and read plenty about it, but seeing the behind the scenes theory and approach was fascinating. These people have set the bar. The unspoken thing however is that NIN’s fans are the PERFECT – and possibly only – fans that will go this extent (and have the tech savvy) to make it work. Having said that, it scales down nicely to many other artists.
- Marketing to the older demographic. This one was real important to me as we do so much of that at my company. Was glad to hear my ideas are basically spot on.
- Master of Your Domain – talking about how artists are enabled to be their own label at this point through partners, third party companies, and technology. Ian C. Rogers from Topspin was on it and I think he and his team have it right, was a great panel. And he gave me and my company mad props which doesn’t hurt!
For anyone working in or interested in the digital music space, consider going to the conf next year.
