Music Ally

Here’s another vid from our Resonancia Colombia conference, which was organised in partnership with the British Council and held in Bogota recently. This time, it’s the Q&A with The Orchard co-founder Scott Cohen, interviewed by our own Paul Brindley. He has informed views on how the digital music ecosystem is shaking out, its relevance to Latin America, and many other topics. Enjoy!

Tickets are going fast for next week’s Mobile Music In The Dock event, which we’re holding at the Deloitte Auditorium in London on Tuesday 25 November.

Here’s some more info on the plan for the night. Mobile music is charged with promising more than it can actually deliver, with Jeremy Silver from Sibelius Software making the case for the prosecution, and Ralph Simon from the Mobile Entertainment Forum making the case for the defence.

There’s a stellar line-up of expert witnesses too, including:

• Paul Kenny, Global Head of Music, Vodafone
• Tim Grimsditch, Global Product Marketing, Nokia Music
• Mark Mulligan, Senior Analyst, Jupiter Research
• Scott Cohen, Founder, The Orchard
• James Bates, Media Director, Deloitte

Who’s the jury? Everyone in the audience, that’s who! We’re looking forward to a great night full of debate and discussion, before a final verdict. With booze and nibbles, obviously. It all kicks off at 6pm next Tuesday, and tickets are £60, or £40 if you’re a Music Ally subscriber. For more details and to buy tickets, click here.

At the recent Resonancia Colombia conference in Bogota, co-organised by Music Ally and the British Council, REM manager Bertis Downs gave a keynote interview, questioned by our own Paul Brindley. Watch the video above to see what he had to say on digital music and emerging business models. “One of the first things I’ll say is nobody knows anything…”

Tomorrow sees the launch of Nokia’s Comes With Music service in the UK, via a deal with Carphone Warehouse to sell the first CWM handset, the 5310 XpressMusic. Nokia has lent journalists and bloggers a handset and an early login today, so we’ve been having a poke around.

It requires the installation of the Nokia Music application on your PC - a 65.9MB download - which is essentially Nokia’s version of iTunes, allowing users to manage and play their music library in the same application from which they download new stuff. There’s an option to have it scan your hard drive for DRM-free music you already own.

Right from the start, Nokia has clearly placed a big emphasis on the user interface. There’s a nifty rollover tutorial the first time you launch the application, every element has a pop-up explanation when you hover over it, and there’s lots of drag’n'drop functionality. So how does Comes With Music itself shape up?

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Michael Bornhausser, Julie Meyer and Charles Grimsdale form the jury for this year’s Popkomm IMEA (Innovations in Music and Entertainment)

The jury for this year’s Popkomm-IMEA comprises three outstanding entrepreneurs and investors. The finalists for the Innovation in Music and Entertainment Award, now taking place for the fifth time, will be selected by Michael Bornhausser, Julie Meyer and Charles Grimsdale. “Together with our partner Music Ally, which is acting as hosts for the first time this year, a more distinguished or technically qualified line-up would be hard to find” commented Dr. Ralf Kleinheinz, MD of Popkomm GmbH.

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We love a drink and a debate. So we’ve decided to hold another one of our Music Ally Debates, offering topical discussion, booze and nibbles, courtesy of hosts Deloitte. ”What Next for Music Retail?” takes place on Monday 14th July at the new state of the art central London Deloitte venue. It features a great line up of speakers including Omnifone CEO Rob Lewis, EMI’s Keith Jopling and HMV’s director of e-commerce Gideon Lask. And we”ll be presenting the results of a fascinating survey of industry executives on what they really think about music retail.

See here for more: www.musically.com/events
NOTE: Contact us for Music Ally subscriber / Trade Association discounts.

Music Ally has partnered with Popkomm to organise this year’’s Popkomm Innovation in Music and Entertainment Awards. The awards recognise innovation in the music and entertainment industries. This year the event will be hosted by Music Ally as part of Popkomm on 8-10 October in Berlin Germany. The (more…)

Music Ally TV presents The Great Escape 2008: The Leading Question & Music Ally Research Findings. Part 3 of 3 videos.