SF Music Tech

Brian Harris Frank:

We can't talk about streaming without discussing the biggest steaming service of all, YouTube

with YouTube you can stream anything whether it has been released or not,

we're going to need to find other ways for revenue to come to artists without requiring paywalls

Daryl Ballantyne:

I think spotify is going to convert the free tier to paid, but how are we going to deal with youtube

there is a lot of argument about the per-play rate, but what matters is the size of the pool of money

Brian Harris Frank:

it's not just about the per play rate, it's about where else can the revenue come from to the artists

where else can we make money within the streaming ecosystem - tickets, merch other ways

Daryl Ballantyne:

Does anyone use Tidal? Anyone? Bueller?

hany nada:

A lot of VCs are very down on music, but we have invested in a lot of music startups and made money on all of them

I see a lot of seed stage music companies; taking VC money is an evil prospect. We will kill innovative businesses

If you're going to make a 10 million dollar company, don't take VC money, take seed instead.

Kiran Gandhi:

The arts have always been a place of inspiration, using each others work and building on it

Thefuture.FM:

so many artists put off creating the metadata until later. do it early, and establish who wrote it for the split

while they are waiting for the split you are not getting paid. have the discussion about what percentage that you own

Michael Simon:

if 2 people in this room make 1 song and make 1 recording it's not a problem, but if you have 30 million…

once you start committing data to multiple databases it gets messed up

we spend the rest of our lives trying to make sense of all these poorly integrated databases

@rocknty:

every music platform has its own database of content, people are typing stuff in, and computers are matching it

unlike the movie business you have to have a unique name, that isn't true of music

lost fo duplicate names, and then there is the band "the the"

Kiran Gandhi:

what we want to see is better tagging around remixes and derivative works

Thefuture.FM:

a big part of our platform is audio fingerprinting; but differentiating similar pieces of work is still hard

@rocknty:

we can distinguish recordings if we here a complete recording, but making it work with remixes and mashups is harder

Thefuture.FM:

we take DJ mixes or remixed songs and break them down to 3 second or 6 second blocks and fingerprint those

then we can clear those through the automated licensing, and then unlock monetisation for mixed content

the IFPI says 30 million listen to remixed music a week, primarily through unlicensed sites

Kiran Gandhi:

i'm an artist, I love soundcloud because I can put stiff up and people like me

Thefuture.FM:

only youtube has a contentid that works now, and soundcloud doesn't. it's hard to identify it

we believe strongly that it should be centralised so there is one place for creators to clear sound

Kiran Gandhi:

if I upload my content to soundcloud, how can I get paid, there is no money going there

@rocknty:

instead they put a block system rather than a identification system - you need people can leave the stuff up

100 million views on a videogame montage, boom it's gone the next day

Michael Simon:

when you uploaded your drum track soundcloud you checked a box where you said you own it

we don't want to create millions of new infringers each year

Thefuture.FM:

we want to enable people to set rules on remixes, on sync or in certain territories

Kiran Gandhi:

I see a lot of my friends remixing their own and others work and having lots of fun

I want 3 options: 1. put my name in the song - which is great if you're skrillex

2. or maybe I'd rather just sell the sample to the remixer

or 2. I can take a percentage of royalties as that might be worth more. can you build it?

Michael Simon:

we can apply a robust set of rules eg it's on for hollywood records and off for epic records

the music industry has infrastcruture that runs in straight lines, but you can make a new route overnight

I spend years learning to play music, months recording and composing, and then 5 minutes on the ISRC bad data

that inaccurate data lasts forever. we need to remap those bad ISRC's back to better data

the asset won't phone home if it is not identified properly

@rocknty:

the other thing that happens is that each service has their own database. if you can match 85% you're a magician

if you go overseas, you get a katakana appendage on your song name and the matches all break

Michael Simon:

and when that japanese company goes global, the metadata gets scrambled again

Kiran Gandhi:

the most obvious one is to enter your metadata correctly; what else?

@rocknty:

you want to get your audio fingerprint into the Gracenote database with the right information

cover songs is a real interesting area - if they record it with an acoustic guitar on youtube we don't know

Michael Simon:

rumblefish has a technology called a radkey that shows that tghts have been obtained

I find it very satisfied to create recognition for people's creations

Kiran Gandhi:

is our goal to get people paid for recorded music through technology, or to unlock other sources of revenue?

Thefuture.FM:

we are migrating to a world where we are collecting pennies, and relying on a global scale for volume

Kiran Gandhi:

is bitcoin a viable solution for sending small amounts?

Thefuture.FM:

our system is blockchain based, which makes it transparent and works for small payments

Michael Simon:

it is odd that songwriters are more regulated than weapons manufacturers in this country

q:

you're living on an island - anyone can bittorrent anything; you need to make it easier to buy than to steal

Michael Simon:

I find it a bit of a convenient pass to say that stealing is too easy

q:

itunes is a virus on my computer, it takes over the music. I refuse to use it

Thefuture.FM:

it's erroneous to say we haven't made legal access to music easier

q:

it is easier to spotify than to torrent; youtube is easier still. A lot of artists give it away free and sell tickets

@rocknty:

the Ableton culture today is great you want a million kids making a million mixes and not being knocked down

we need to enable the ableton

Thefuture.FM:

we made the mix transparency report today http://www.dubset.com/2015-mix-transparency-report/ that shows the most mixed songs

we found David Guetta in 52% of mixes

we want to make the registry open source and available to the public -now they are all private

we're talking about opening up the walls and creating things that don't exist today

@rocknty:

at the moment all these platforms do it themselves behind their own walls. the plays are valuable statistics

some of it is business people worried about competition

Michael Simon:

transparency often means "i want what you have and I don't want to pay you"

I think blockchain has a big role to play here to drive transparency

q:

why aren't we asking the copyright office to create the central registry?

Michael Simon:

assume the copyright office was interested in that, it is woefully underfunded

people file papers with the copyright office to stake their claims

this si still paper, it is not digitised and I have to send

@rocknty:

its very hard to do this.once I explain ti to people they realise how hard it is and run away

Kevin Marks:

was the Berne convention a mistake? should registration be statutory?

Michael Simon:

we do register copyrights, but there is so much created nwo we can't keep up

there was an initiative to create the global repertoire database, which collapsed last year. $100M

q:

I'm hearing that artists should do more, but none of my bandmates want to talk about data. How do we do that?

Thefuture.FM:

there is an initiative to capture credits from protools and so on directly - look into those and see what is up to it

@rocknty:

when you do your credits use actual words 'Producer' - the publishing compny copyright name is hard

Michael Simon:

I work with a publishing company called p'twgs - that is hard to find

q:

one thing the music industry has been poor at is creating standards - we need to capture it at the point of creation

there is an organisation called ddex to create data exchange standards ddex.net/rin is in protools etc

go and get an ISNI - international standard name identifier

Kiran Gandhi:

one uplifiting thing each - go

Thefuture.FM:

we're at the beginning of the second ecosystem of music - don't give up we want to help artists

@rocknty:

I've been in the data business for 18 years and I just figured out what I am doing now

Michael Simon:

the tools for creation and distribution have been democratised. we have been behind. we are working on it