I just spent the previous two days at the Open Video Conference, which took place at NYU. This was an historic moment. From artists to programmers, a wealth of information was presented and discussed that is just the beginning for this group of people who came here from across the planet and will continue to interact through the Open Video Alliance. The alliance is putting together the principles of an open video ecosystem that will form a technical roadmap for a more interoperable and decentralized online video environment. Over and over, I kept hearing sentences, where I would think about simply changing the word “video” to “music.” I realized that these words of wisdom I was hearing from so many smart people should be guiding the direction of Loud Feed. There was a panel about DMCA takedowns. At Loud Feed we host media for the content owners and promoters hired by the content owners. Yet, we recently got a take-down notice from our ISP, that wasted a lot of time for all those involved. Several individuals wasted hours communicating, that should not have been necessary. I had to contact my client Toolshed, who was hired by a label to disseminate promotional media. Toolshed had to contact the label and everyone had to contact the ISP. At the Open Video Conference a theme I heard in numerous panels centered around the need for better metadata standards. That metadata in a properly designed standard should eliminate take-down notices for entities that provide services to content owners in an automated fashion. The “gatekeepers” have created rules to protect their dying business models that create friction, which slows down those who offer better alternatives. Better metadata offers protection to content owners without adding that friction as a side effect.
Over 700 people attended including many luminaries from the Open Software world and top academic institutions like Harvard, Yale, MIT and NYU. One of the significant messages of the conference was the importance of maintaining and growing open standards vs. “walled gardens” or closed systems that serve the economic goals of the owner of the proprietary technology, but stifle creativity and sharing of culture that potentially would raise the “sea level” to float everyone’s boats.
There are many lessons being learned by this community that offer a better path to the future of the music industry and I hope to help to build a bridge between these communities. We have already seen that video is incredibly important to the communication between the artists and the fan in the music industry. As Seth Godin has said, you cannot pirate interactivity. The new horizons that people are pursuing in the Open Video movement have a lot to say about how artists in the music industry can nurture and grow the interaction with their fans. I believe that video interaction can become a key element offering new ways to monetize that relationship in an honest way that fans respect and that could offer sustainable alternatives to the failures that have resulted from clinging to old business models.
One of the primary organizers of the conference was Kaltura, whose staff were out in force helping to insure the success of the conference. I got to meet both Ron Yekutiel, CEO and Dr. Michal Tsur, President of Kaltura. I am very impressed by the way they have applied the Freemium Business Model. This term, Freemium, was coined by Fred Wilson and discussed widely by Chris Anderson. I would love to hear from Open Source developers who would be interested in helping me to follow the example of Kaltura and considering whether and how to offer Loud Feed technology as Open Source, thus increasing the likelihood of setting the standards so badly needed to provide things like better metadata and decentralized interoperability for digital music distribution.
Here is one of what will shortly be many videos available from the Open Video Conference:
