Music Ally

Earlier on, Feargal Sharkey said something about people forgetting the actual music when talking about new music business models. Words like ‘monetising’, ‘content’ and ‘platforms’ kinda hammer the point home.

Even so, that’s the title of the next session at Music 4.5, the London conference digging into the opportunities and challenges around digital music. DJ Chris Coco and The House London’s Darshan Sanghrajka are going to talk about remixing music without labels, while PureSolo’s David Kaplan is going to focus on engaging with big media brands.

Sanghrajka is up first. The House London is a branding and tech company in London – their name clearly shows they know their branding onions – “We were going to call the talk ‘Put Simon Cowell on a desert island and make him listen to his back catalogue for 40 years’,” he says.

Quite. But the subject is life without labels. He kicks off by highlighting artists talking about going D2C as far back as 2004, yet says “the digital movement has actually empowered record labels more than what these guys thought in 2004″. And that artists are still having issues with their labels, despite all the new tools for online promotion.

He cites the example of OK Go’s spat with EMI over whether they can embed their videos or not. “What does EMI know?” he asks. “Our thesis is that music will always need record labels. However, for artists to get more chips on the negotiating table, we need to give them the tools…”

Darshan says that artists “need to be allowed to focus on producing music” – just because an artist has a MySpace account and a login button doesn’t mean they can use it to promote themselves. And he introduces Radio 1 DJ Chris Coco, who’s been working with his company.

Coco says that the old industry model was about labels taking a chance on bands, investing in their marketing, and then getting rewarded for it. Whereas now, he says that artists have to do a lot more work to prove that they’re marketable first. “The labels have turned from being creative A&R things where they would nurture an artist… into basically simple marketing machines and banks.”

Darshan moves on to DJ Ironik, who gigged for seven years, built up a fanbase, and now has a label deal. He replied to every single MySpace message, and built a real relationship says Darshan, before having his breakout hit Stay With Me. “And that was when the labels started realising who he was,” he says. “They made him do all the work and now they’re on board, but the difference is now the chips are in his favour.”

Oh, and: “Sandy Thom, Lily Allen – that’s all rubbish… They had marketing spend behind them, and labels to make them look unique. They were manufactured. It’s all hype.”

Oof. Back to Chris Coco. “The first thing I said to Darshan when I met him was I don’t believe in Facebook, I don’t want to waste time on it, and have all these friends who aren’t really friends,” he says. “But he explained to me that you have to do this… with the social networks, you can find more people who like what you do. The problem I have is I don’t want to spend hours interacting with Jean from Nebraska and looking at her photos of her holiday in Hawaii. Because I don’t know her… What I need to do is find a way of managing all these social networks in one easy quick hit.”

Darshan says this isn’t as uncommon an attitude as you might think – citing recent comments from Cameo Carlson from Universal Motown Republic Group that even young bands don’t want to tweet as proof.

He says the challenge for tech people is to create a system so that Jean from Nebraska can end up running a fan community for the artist she loves – making her worth talking to. Sort of.

Coco again: He wants tools to help him make “little bits of money” from what he’s doing – so if he wants to release an album on his website, he doesn’t know how to run a shop. As I hear this, though, I’m thinking that widgets to do this kind of stuff have been around for years – Nimbit anyone? The tools are already there for this D2C stuff, so is Darshan saying that they’re not good enough, or artists don’t know about them?

“Information is what artists need,” he says – artists need access to the same data that labels get on sales, not just so they’re sure they’re getting paid, but to help them understand what they can do better.

The House is going to make these tools, with Coco, anyway. Darshan was an engaging presenter, but even so – there are lots of companies doing this stuff for artists already. It will be interesting to get more data on exactly how House’s widgets will be better or more innovative.

Over to Kaplan from Pure Solo, who’s going to talk about what his company does. Describing the company as online karaoke is a bit of a simplification – it’s not just about people caterwauling Angels, but also about making sheet music and backing tracks available for its users.

It’s a browser plug-in, and people record their songs and share them with friends on Facebook. “We don’t monetise the copyright, we monetise the experience,” he says. “It’s the experience that’s fun, so it’s the experience that we monetise… If it’s interactive, and if our users can share those recordings, yes you can do deals with big brands, and take that experience and identify with the big brand owner, and their users, whoever they may be.”

PureSolo has done just this with The X-Factor, but now it’s also selling its platform into primary schools in the UK – a deal from last month – where kids get to make recordings, and have them burned to CD to take home to their parents.

This is the Music 4.5 equivalent of having to grimace your way through a Nativity Play. Be afraid, parents. (But actually, it’s a marvellous idea and a great deal for PureSolo).

And now the company is getting into video too, while looking for more brands to work with. “Is this karaoke and just about singing? Most definitely not,” he says. PureSolo is working with Jazz FM and three big jazz artists, with users invited to play along to the tracks, with the aim of winning spots at festivals around the UK.

Plus it’s launching a global competition for guitarists in a couple of months’ time, working with a huge globally acclaimed guitarist – the winner will get to spend some time working with them.

He says he can’t name who it is. Slash! Steve Vai! That Bloke In Kasabian Who’s Not Serge! Time will tell. But it does show how Pure Solo is branching out. “If you’re a brand, publisher, songwriter, or a band or artist, there is an opportunity to interact online,” he says.

Tags: Music 4.5

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 12:40 pm and is filed under Digital Music News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.