Tidbits from Music 2.0

David Card | August 09, 2005, 10:30 PM

I'm out west at Music 2.0, hosting a digital music services panel and keynoting tomorrow. Some tidbits from the first half of Day 1:

- About 200 people in the room for the keynotes and good panels; heavier tech than "Hollywood," no Apple presence, more Yahoo and AOL than Microsoft; more radio than you usually see (podcast hype reaction)

- P2P panel - all heat, no light. What else is new? Michael Weiss of StreamCast calls MySpace "MySearch" unironically, and says it's all about pedophiles and drug deals. He might just be jealous that a community content "sharing" site might - might - actually have a business model. Or at least an exit strategy.

- Sony BMG's chief digital honcho, Thomas Hesse, gave one of the most articulate and sensible presos on digital music and record labels that I've heard. Yeah it was at the 20,000-foot level, and he's way more bullish than I am on the efficacy of CD copy-protection, but it was a clear strategic vision.

- Music "ubiquity" is about building an access infrastructure with the consumer at the center (making the label a smaller fish in a bigger pond). It also means "an explosion of products," and the return of the single. He likes phones a lot, and he believes in release windows and price discrimination. Labels will have the scale to manage the multiple relationships necessary for all these products and windows. I gotta say, this all makes sense to me.

- 100% of Sony BMG new releases will be copy-protected by 1Q06 at the latest. 60% are now

- 6% of Sony BMG revenues are digital (counting ring tones); 10% of US revenue, 3% in Europe

- My digital services panel was fun, but I couldn't take many notes. eMusic is worth taking another hard look at, as I've said before.

- Podcast panel was predictably short on making money, or actually even justifying the effort. Will any large or valuable audiences listen to this stuff?

- Yahoo talks about "folksonomies" (consumer created taxonomies) and "head conent" that sits in front of the long tail (not floats on the illegal fumes).

- David Goodman - a true believer - at Infinity Broadcasting thinks "a German guy talking about technology in his bedroom is interesting" but he also concedes that "most anything in life kind of sucks as it relates to content." Not sure how to read those two statements.