On Apr. 20, I made my way to the Microsoft NERD for the second annual Music 2.0 showcase of tools and tech for musicians, marketers and managers.
As event organizer Charlie McInerney said in his introduction, Boston has two tremendous scenes in music and technology, and the more they can come together, the better off both will be. He couldn’t be more right. Frankly, my mind was blown by how many cool innovations are taking root right here in Boston to advance the music industry, for fans and bands alike. Here’s an overview of the presentations I saw at the event.
- Put Your Brand Out to Stand Out: Mic Control is a consulting firm that helps bands execute successful social media strategies. Their three core actions for execution are 1) networking 2) engagement and 3) relationship building. The goal, according to Jonathan Ostrow and Chris Taylor, is to find a way to help your brand stand out from the social media clutter. “You need to brand yourself or no one can relate to you.” Rapper Wiz Khalifa was cited as an example for the way he has branded himself in relation to hip hop, pot and Pittsburgh. Well, okay.
- Git’r Done: Ryan Spaulding of Ryan’s Smashing Life urged self-starters in the crowd to think about their objective and to find who they are and what makes them happy. “You only have 30 to 35 functional years of adulthood to get this done,” he said. “If you find your answer immediately, you didn’t look hard enough.” Another good blurb from Ryan: “You opportunity is found where others failed.”
- Empowering City Kids with Music: Gary Eichorn talked about his awsome program, the Music + Youth Initiative, which he founded seven years ago in response to cutbacks in music education in public schools — in Boston, he said, only 20 percent of high school students have the opportunity of receiving music education. So his program works sort of like a franchisor with existing nonprofit “bricks and mortar” organizations with a proven record in youth development to create “music clubhouses” for underserved urban youth. The program helps build self-esteem, self-confidence, social skills and an appreciation of music by letting kids learn and play on professional grade equipment. Partners include organizations like the YMCA and Boys and Girls Club, Berklee and Northeastern, and corporate sponsors such as Avid, Zildjian and Harmonix. There are eight clubhouses total, six in Boston, that serve 1600 kids a week.
- Helping Bands Rock: Ben Maitland-Lewis, a presenter from last year, gave a quick update on his company Indie Ambassador, which helps music entrepreneurs manage their careers.
- Better Fandom Through Frictionless Commerce: Marcus Whitney of Moontoast discussed his company’s goal of “monetizing social”. His three key points: 1) Authenticity wins in social 2) You can own your fans through commerce 3) Place buying opportunities where the fan wants to be (e.g. Facebook news feed), not where you want them to go — remove the friction from the commerce experience.
- Bringing Sheet Music Into the 21st Century: ZMX is working to revolutionize the sheet music industry, a part of the music business that has a high barrier to entry for artists, high prices, low quality and poor selection for fans but yet is very profitable for the print companies. If you want to buy sheet music, you typically have to buy a whole book for $12 or more and not a single song. If you do buy online, it may be $5, but that’s not even for a download, just an opportunity to print once. Composer royalties are paltry, as well. ZMX allows for affordable, downloadable, embeddable and trackable sales of digital sheet music.
- Aspiring to ‘Chaotic Cohesion’: Mike King, director of marketing for berkleemusic.com and author of Music Marketing: Press, Promotion, Distribution and Retail, cited the “chaotic cohesion” of Wu-Tang Clan as a model musicians should aspire to. He cited the case study of the British band Tigers That Talked who made the most of DIY web marketing. The four horsement of successful music marketing, says King, are awareness, acquisition, engagement and monetization, and the best way to execute these is in an integrated fashion that works online and offline.
- Portland Rocks: Patrick May of Skyline Music and Portland Music Foundation, talked about the latter organization as one dedicated to help showcase Portland musicians.
- ‘Make It Easy’: Nimbit gave an update on their service, which provides direct to fan marketing and sales. What works, according to them? Knowing your fan, selling directly, updating merch frequently, constant innovation, rewarding fans for good behavior in order to drive sales. In summary: Make it easy.
- Blog in Boston, Beers in Berlin: Matt Dyson, who blogs at Dysonsound, talked about how awesome it was that “one guy with a domain name” can connect with musicians all over the world. “All it takes is my small voice that has now penetrated worldwide,” he said. “If I go to Berlin, I’ve got beers waiting for me.” Though the highlight of his talk, for me, was when he disclosed how much he cares about his bounce rate. Heh.
- Saturday Night in Your Inbox: Chris Marstall of Tourfilter showed off updates to the interface of his website, which allows fans to easily set up e-mail alerts notifying them when select bands are coming to town. Tourfilter now works for 60 cities. Tourfilter also recommends bands based on shared fans and shared concert bills.
- Google Docs for Music: Joe Berkovitz talked about Noteflight, which he called “Google Docs of music.” The service allows users to create, share and embed sheet music. The service, which works on a freemium model, has tripled its user base in the past year and is being used for interactive music composition in some K-12 settings. The company’s next goal is to shift from Flash to HTML5 in order to branch into mobile.
- Going Digital: Steve Theo of Pirate! talked about how, with help from Paul Kamp of Backbone Networks, his promotion firm is shifting to a digital model for the music they provide to radio stations, in order to save money.
- Five Alive: Alastair McDonald of Bocoup talked about HTML5 audio, the W3C audio working group and more.
Here’s what Green Mountain Coffee told me in 25 words (28 if you count the headline):
As I may have mentioned before, my background is in journalism. Here’s a confession: I didn’t plan to go into journalism. Truth be told, I only “settled” for journalism because I thought a creative writing major wouldn’t be very lucrative. (Note to younger self: And you thought a journalism major would be??)
