✖️ Social VR & music subcultures 👯 Amazon Echo changing music? 🎤 Money at the speed of information 💸
Hi everybody,
It was lovely being in hot Barcelona last week for Sónar+D, moderating a panel, and speaking to lots of interesting startups, entrepreneurs, and artists. Thanks to the Sónar+D organisation, WeAreEurope, and c/o pop convention who suggested me!
Congratulations to Mimi for winning the Sónar+D startup competition - cool to see something as high-tech as a sound personalization startup win something like this.
Love,
Bas
From me, for you
TheWaveVR could let online music subcultures thrive
I got to try out TheWaveVR at Sónar+D and it made me realize a few things, and connect some dots. Virtual reality as a social platform is going to do great things for music, but with an unexpected audience.
www.musicxtechxfuture.com • Share
Startups
Music Glue CEO: 'Music retail will be dominated by artist-direct approach within five years'
Mark Meharry tells Music Week his thoughts on the industry’s e-commerce landscape as his company celebrates its tenth birthday.
Profile: Midemlab winner Soundcharts
Having artist data from every social media site, streaming platform and digital store in a single dashboard, in real time is a practical, useful solution to a real need. Soundcharts does that, for an affordable monthly fee.
Profile: Midemlab winner TrueLinked
TrueLinked is a platform created specifically to aid the interaction of classical musicians with bookers and arts organizations. It provides a direct line of content between artists looking for gigs and buyers, events and venues looking to hire.
Streaming & beyond
How Amazon's Echo is making major labels rethink their tunes
As voice-activation technology from Amazon, Google and Apple goes mainstream, labels are looking to adapt to – and capitalize on – the latest frontier. (Another thought: all of these have their own streaming platforms… which provides a real strategic challenge for Spotify & other services that don’t have their own hardware)
Spotify earnings: growth comes at a cost
Everyone’s talking about this. Now, music industry analyst Mark Mulligan weighs in. Thorough with some interesting outtakes, e.g. a positive trajectory on rights costs. Must-read.
Pop stars like Beyonce have turned Instagram and social media into their own record labels
At the Meet the Experts sessions at Sónar+D, multiple artists came up to me for some quick tips on digital strategy… My main tip: don’t underestimate Instagram as a platform. You can’t compare them 1-to-1, but it may well be better than Facebook right now (also read: the location-based music marketing opportunity in Instagram Stories).
Wide view
Is language as we know it still relevant for the digital age?
According to a number of neuroscientists and philosophers, language might not be the ultimate medium for the transmission of ideas. In the digital age, it is essential to understand its role and explore the new possibilities technology creates. See also: When Facebook designed chatbots to negotiate with one another, the bots made up their own way of communicating.
Inside Ripple's plan to make money move as fast as information
An interesting read about fintech startup Ripple, but the headline alone is worth some contemplation. Using blockchain technology, people are trying to build ‘the internet of value’ in which money moves as fast as information. The only way the music business thinks about blockchain is as some type of Global Repertoire Database 2.0, but that’s a dangerously limited (and limiting) way of thinking.
www.americanbanker.com • Share
Different languages: how cultures around the world draw shapes differently
In November Google released a game called Quick, Draw! - a type of pictionary where you have to draw something that its AI can recognize. Now researchers have crunched a dataset on circles to see how people around the world draw them. Interesting conclusions - and if something like drawing a circle is already such a big deal, imagine the music listening and creation process.
Fun
8 fail-proof tips for writing an album press release that music journalists won't ignore
Great piece of satire by Amanda Van West.
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📰 Last week: Remix culture goes mobile-first 📲 Streaming in emerging markets 🇨🇳 Midem recap 🇫🇷
Regular insights about the future of music, media & tech. Written & composed by @basgras.
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