Jeff Zakim, Blue Note Label Group
Gerd Leonhard, music futurist
Alan Cohen, Guitar Center
Brian Young, Zude
Syd Schwartz, Capital Music Group
Steve Jang, iMeem (not here)
David Card, VP Research Analyst, Jupiter Research
Guitar Center has 30% of the market for music instrument sales
Zude.com: new tech that enables bands to manage their social networks. No programming experience needed
iMeem does 25MM uniques/month
Themes:
Here and now–What about digital music makes it easy for a labels to do better marketing?
Technology gives a better sense of what’s happening in real time. Last.fm charts, iMeem charts, iLike charts.
Fans have become a key asset. You can keep the dialogue going. Monetize while you learn.
Gerd: Most of the cool stuff that happens on the web is illegal. "Everything that’s cool is forbidden."
Gerd and Steve Jang are getting into it. Although, since steve doesn’t disagree with his premise (above), I’m not sure why he’s challenging Gerd’s point.
Has Guitar Hero has an effect on Guitar Center? Response: An interesting effect. They did a promotion ($50 off) for a real guitar with each purchase of the game.
Guitar Center has a service for $40 that allows users to upload an entire album. Think about the upstream opportunity (handoff to record labels, for example)
Gerd’s bringing it back to the issue of attention as currency
iLike is up to 25MM users in 8 months
Personalized advertising is the future, according to Gerd.
Jang: Monetizing the attention that results from their content.
