Live from Music Matters Asia
I’m currently in Hong Kong attending the Music Matters Asia music industry conference, where, unsurprisingly, digital media and internet file sharing is the hot topic. The slogan of Day 1: mobile is the future. The primary growth area (and really the only meaningful growth area) for music through 2010 is monetized mobile downloads.
Here are some highlights from yesterday’s panel discussions. I’ll add info about more highlights over the next day or two.
-Major labels in Asia claim to embrace and look forward to digital, online music distribution as an opportunity more than a challenge. I’m not sure if this was conference-induced exuberance or whether it’s a real sentiment (probably a little of both). I’m also not sure whether this professed excitement is shared by the major label home offices in New York and London. It would not surprise me if Asia executives were in fact more rosy about the future than their bosses because high piracy rates have historically forced music companies in Asia to be flexible and adjust to new situations, so embracing new revenue sources is natural for them.
-I thought the best panel of the day was “Meet the Neighbors,” the only non-music industry panel. On this panel were executives from “neighboring” industries: videogaming/online gaming, television, and mobile communications. They raised two of the most prescient points made all day. First, one of the panelists remarked: I’ve been listening all day and I haven’t heard anyone talk about musicians.
1) Everyone talks about ringtones, downloading, market share, but what about the artists? Cliche, yes, but it is an absolutely key point that the industry can only survive if people are able to connect and experience artists and technology and business models enable and encourage artists to create great music.
2) The industry has to get over it’s centralist, top-down mentality. Music is not just what record companies distribute to passive consumers. Consumers today want to create, and share their creations. They want technologies and business models that enable that and are seeking and finding those regardless of what the business model record companies push.
Ian Lamont
May 12, 2006 @ 9:52 am
I’d add a third point, which is kind of a hybrid of points one and two: Artists are not passive players in the industry anymore, content with merely playing shows, recording albums, and following the music industry’s directives. There is very much a DIY undercurrent percolating among new and established bands. You see it in the U.S. with thousands of bands signing up for MySpace accounts, or making arrangements with local DJs or newspaper websites to play their own music, without record label participation. You see it with successful bands like Weezer, which uses its own website to preview song tracks or connect with fans. I recently visited Taipei and saw a lot of grassroots band activity totally outside the sphere of the major industry players — people running their own music festivals, recording their own CDs, and even creating their own performance and purchasing space at a complex called “The Wall”. It’s really a different world, and I think the industry needs to learn how to participate more as enablers rather than controllers.
Eric Priest
May 12, 2006 @ 10:33 am
Very much agree. Actually, one of the panelists at the conference was a Hong Kong star named Edison Chen. He was with a major and then left to do things on his own because he said his label just didn’t get it, tried to control everyting he did, and he didn’t make any moeny anyway. Now he gives music away for free on the web but says he’s never been happier or more successful–he makes his own creative decisions and can monetize his musioc how he wants. His experience was characterized as being an extreme one, but I know a band signed to a large regional indi label that makes terrific music but the label has really no clue how to market this band because the band plays rock but the label really only understands pop. So the label has done what Edison called “putting you in the freezer”–essentially shelving you until your deal runs out. I think Edison’s experience is reasonably common, and labels have to9 figure out how to deal with that or they will lose more artists to the DIY approach.