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:

Want a catchy way to get people to play your music and share it with all their friends around the world at the click of a button?

Ape Radio is a custom skin for a music feed from the Loud Feed back end that also powers content feeds into the label’s Apehouse digital music store. The User Experience is like streaming, but it is actually using MP3 files. The Apehouse Label is run by Andy Partridge who readers may remember from XTC.

Think about it, if you are lets say Josh Wink, and you want to promote your new album called “When a Banana was just a Banana,” why not create a banana shaped widget that is sure to get more plays and be shared amongst friends that will have a viral effect and take on a life of its own.

Have an idea for a crazy widget of your own? Try us.

(special thanks for the picture, you can buy the tshirt here)

First off, maybe the image is strong, because Myspace has truly helped many artists and labels, so it is sad to see them not continue in that direction.

Myspace is still the largest and dominant social network, yet it mistreats artists and labels, big and small. The site is under increasing pressure: Facebook is catching up at a rapid pace and should surpass Myspace as the world’s largest social network, but also Myspace Music which was supposed to help labels monetize their content, is failing. The major labels are not happy (as usual, except for EMI), but now there are more and more growing complaints, especially from the independent labels and also all the widget makers, digital stores and many others hoping to help artists monetize their content on their myspace pages.

Until recently, artists could copy paste Beatport, Loud Feed or any other widgets on their myspace page and thus sell their music, since Myspace does not offer the ability to sell music unless you are with the majors (with few exceptions). However, now you can still paste these widgets on your page, but unfortunately they are ineffective since Myspace is now blocking the outgoing links from within the players.

This is a dishonest and anti competitive move on the behemoth’s part. Their inability to come up with the necessary developments to help artists should not push them to preventing others from helping artists. Besides, have any artists seen a cut of their advertising revenues?

Something needs to be done and if Myspace does not change their attitudes and show some gratitude towards its artists and labels, then the exodus to a better and more profitable place will occur. Artists and labels no longer rely on the site to succeed. To remain relevant it will have to offer more solutions to artists and labels and in particular the ability to sell content. Regardless, if Myspace does not undergo strategic changes, I am willing to bet that Last.fm or others could rapidly surpass them as the premier music social network.

Would it not be much nicer for artists to have a customizable webpage where you can have all the widgets you want to sell, license and promote your music. Shouldn’t your fans be able to buy your music from you? Well you can now do that by getting started here. Check out what AIRDROP has done with its Loud Feed page. And the truth is we are not the only ones, but we are doing our best to add features and tune them as closely as possible to the true needs of artists and labels.

Ever hear about an unconference? Much in the spirit of everything we do at Loud Feed, we are producing a music industry event in Detroit May 21st and 22nd that will focus on helping emerging artists and labels make the most of the digital age. MusicBIzCamp: The Music Unconference, Detroit09 will be different form all other music education seminars and events, as it will have the by us for us feeling. Want to learn how to create your own WordPress site? Start a netlabel? Get a distribution deal? You tell us what you want to learn and we will work together to put together panels based on your needs.

We have an experienced team of music industry professionals: from artists, label owners to social media experts and music supervisors all to give you tips on how to succeed. Come check out the panels we have already set up and get an idea for the schedule. Time is ticking so get involved now and attend for free by volunteering!

In case you wanted to get a preview of the venue, check this out!

Venue for MusicBizCamp Unconference Detroit 09: May 21 – 22 from Ron Suarez on Vimeo.

(thanks beatportal for image)

Richie Hawtin will not be playing this year’s Detroit Electronic Music Festival, but the twitter app he unveiled in partnership with Traktor leaves room for a lot of opportunity at DEMF 2009 for other DJs using Traktor. Beatport and Traktor have previously partnered for Beatport Sync and it seems like the companies are a great match, so no reason they should not be working together now.

So why don’t they put something together for DEMF? Having the Twitter feed shown behind the DJ may be a bit too much, especially considering that DJ’s like to be able preserve a certain mystique on what they play and not have the track instantly appear 30 seconds after playing. There is also the risk that it just confuses people. Matching the track’s information text with the track being mixed may not be 100% error free. Integrating Beatport sales into the feed could also represent an ethical dilemma for artists: what do you play when everything is a buy link? should artists get kickbacks? On the other hand what about giving discounts for buying from the playlists or for instant purchases?

Nonetheless, how cool would it be when hearing that track that will get you humming for the next 24 hours, you can check twitter and find out what it was. The more technologically advanced you are the easier it will be too, so if you have an iphone with a nice twitter app, you can discretely monitor what the DJ is playing. Not only that, but you can now support the artists you love by buying their music or just by being there and listening, since ultimately the app serves as an amazing start to performance tracking, so that the underground artists can get paid royalties as well.

There is a significant educational element to it, which will undoubtedly improve people’s musical knowledge and strengthen artist followings.

One thing is for sure artists and labels in electronic music can thank Richie for making the leap. You can read more about some of the pros and cons given by Beatportal and more on the techier side of the news at CDM.

Franco Cinelli & Funzion (aka Alejandro Mosso) have created 2 dance music hits for the AIRDROP imprint. First released on vinyl in a limited edition of 500 copies with art by Cocobula. It will be hitting digital a few weeks later and will be available through the AIRDROP widget store.

The strategy of releasing vinyl before digital has now become standard amongst the top indie electronic music labels, rewarding the “vinyl tribe” for its fidelity to a legacy that technology risks destroying. At Loud Feed we hope that the vinyl tradition will continue and that we can help it continue to exist, possibly using our tools to build sales and bundle digital and vinyl into a single product. Even the most die hard turntablelists have ipods…

If you have not realized that search engine ranking makes a big difference then maybe we should send you to Music Biz Camp. When googling “AIRDROP Records”, the top 5 results are going to have significantly more exposure than any of the others.

Social media like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Loud Feed have certain advantages when it comes to search, one of them being that they are overarching-umbrella brands under which others can regroup. So the fact that Myspace has over 1 million bands, gives some extra clout to each and all of them when using search, inevitably helping myspace place closer to the top as well.

Maybe Loud Feed has not beaten myspace yet, but the fact that we are already ahead of Twitter and Facebook must stand for something, and if not at the very least, a bit of pride. Especially, considering we also know that AIRDROP was on Twitter and Facebook before joining Loud Feed.

You can get your band or label on Loud Feed to see if it improves your presence in top search results. At least Loud Feed can get you integrated with google analytics to analize the geography of the traffic coming to your page, making it much easier to justify tours in Eastern Europe, Japan or elsewhere, because you will know where to find your fans.

See how it looks on the AIRDROP Loud Feed page

Shown above is a screenshot of the embeddable sales player that was just released to production. The Sales Flow widget is perfect for small labels and independent artists that want to promote their own content on their websites, blogs, social networks, or on the Loud Feed site through their Loud Feed Page. The player has a built in cart, and uses amazon FPS for receipt of payments and to distribute money to your account. Sign up for a sales account today to get started with the Sales Flow widget by going to www.loudfeed.com, or by following this link!