www.musicweek.com
28.06.13 MusicWeek 7
INDUSTRY AND TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVES DISCUSS THE MUSIC INDUSTRY’S FUTURE
DIGITAL BY RHIAN JONES
'Piracy is on the way out' T
he future of the relationship between the music and the technology
industry is bright and piracy is on its way out, according to a panel of tech bosses and music industry heads speaking at the Consumer Electronics Conference earlier this month. Virgin/EMI’s Mike Smith, UK Music’s Jo Dipple and Imagination Technologies CEO Sir Hossein Yassaie said the next generation of music consumers would not illegally download as education, legitimate streaming services and copyright law worked together to win the battle against piracy. Smith said he was “very optimistic about the future,” as the music industry worked ever more in tandem with technology companies. “The music industry is painted as living in the dark ages and that’s not the case,” he said. “We’re very keen to work as closely as we possibly can with technology and roll out every
business embattled under enormous stresses, consumption is thriving. Smith conceded: “We’re not
[L-R] Mike Smith (Virgin/EMI) and Jo Dipple (UK Music)
Music is more a part of people’s lives than ever before. I’m very confident that the scale that music is at the moment is going to increase our growth. Even though it is embattled under enormous stresses and strains [music consumption] is thriving” MIKE SMITH, VIRGIN/EMIX
way we possibly can to get music to the broadest audience. “I disagree passionately with the idea that YouTube is killing the music industry - one of the reasons why the industry is combatting piracy is that people
can consume music for free and the copyright owners will be getting paid [for YouTube views]. “I’m excited that music is
more a part of people’s lives than ever before. Even though it’s a
necessarily getting the revenues it was getting in the past but I’m very confident that the scale that music is at at the moment is going to increase our growth.” Yassaie – who heads Imagination Technologies Group plc. which produces mobile graphics and microprocessor chip technology – said things had moved in the right direction over the past five years. “I’ve been introduced to the
music industry in the last five years and the complexity of it used to scare me but as I’ve developed relationships I think massive progress has been made,” he said. “I think the level of
investment people have to put upfront was an issue a few years ago, but that recognition is now there and people understand how important it is.” Streaming services offering
secure content were “the ultimate answer to making sure people
get paid,” Yassaie concluded. Discussing piracy and the
young music listeners of today, Smith said the next generation “is prepared to pay”. “When I grew up TV was
free and everyone now accepts you pay £15/20 and often £40 or £50 to get the TV channels you want,” he said. “It’s an education thing and I
think there is a generation coming through that is now prepared to pay for what they want. The mistake that the industry made is we didn’t make it very easy to get that content.” UK Music CEO Jo Dipple
spoke of establishing “the very first Skills Academy for music”. The academy will act as a portal for the music industry, to ensure the “best and brightest” kids from colleges will have a chance of gaining a “proper” ßpaid apprenticeship. “It also means that the music
industry will be recruiting the best trained, talented and diverse work force,” she said. “A work force that will have been brought up on the successful marriage of creativity and tech.”
Musicmetric puts $5m investment to work
London and LA-based firm Semetric has begun investing the $5m raised at the start of 2013 into revamping its Musicmetric Pro platform with new features. The company says that its enhanced analytics assist rights- holders in finding the optimum site, time and geography in which to launch promotions or buy advertising. Spotify streaming and iTunes sales data can now easily be compared alongside behaviour patterns across BitTorrent and social media networks. Monitoring tracks and video
plays provides dynamic analysis of an artist’s performance - data from YouTube, Soundcloud, Spotify and VEVO are now all viewable and comparable against
expansion across Europe is Jurgen Van Leeuwen, senior vice president for sales & global marketing, Alex Crickmay, sales and business development director and Eli Shapiro, vice president engineering. The North American team is
other individual artists. Everything can also be benchmarked against a pool of artists which means a user can compare their performance against the relevant area of the market – whether that’s Top 10 pop or Top 100 alternative.
Meanwhile, the company has
reorganised its management structure as Jeremy Silver steps up to helm the senior team in a new role as executive chairman alongside chief executive Gregory Mead. Driving Musicmetric’s
led by executive vice president, Daniel Savage, a former general manager of Madonna’s Maverick Records. He is supported in LA by 30-year music industry veteran Mark Tindle. The new senior vice president sales joins from Nielsen. In New York, Liz Camerelli joins as director of sales & business development from MusicMind. Jeremy Silver, executive chairman of Semetric (pictured), said: “We are increasing our
user-base daily across the U.S. and Europe. Bolstering our senior team with such experienced executives is helping us underpin our success alongside continued, iterative product development, all of which lays the ground for our future entry into other entertainment verticals.” Chief executive Gregory Mead added: “Being able to aggregate data to show performance and prove success is vital. By bringing iTunes and Spotify data together with more granular track information and our uniquely available BitTorrent data, we’re making this process easier and growing the confidence of the industry in using data people can trust to back up intuition.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60