Panel Report:
Crossroads Of Media & Technology: Version 2.0
Moderator
Mike McGinley SRO Consultants
Josh Brooks MySpace
Scott Fedewa Live Nation
Oliver Holle VeriSign
Sumant Sridharan Live Digital
Damon Williams Music Choice

During these times of extreme and and rapid change, it's hard to say what's to come and maybe even harder to predict what will stick. But if this panel is right, bottom-to-top programming is the future.

With the explosion of such industry-changing phenomena like MySpace and YouTube, consumers are getting used to generating their own content. Many of the panel speakers presented tools and Web sites that allow users to do just that in the Web 2.0 world of wikis and social networking sites.

Live Digital allows users to make their own content channels and choose their advertising, Live Nation's Web site is MySpacing itself to allow venues to create their own profiles and Music Choice, which provides digital audio and video content for millions of cable homes, is set to become more interactive.

SRO Consultants' resident "goon," Mike McGinley, acting as panel moderator, mentioned what he called the "Three I's" - innovators, imitators, and idiots.

"In the old days, it used to be that the imitators, because things didn't change that quickly, could run really, really nice businesses," McGinley said, adding that visionaries like Bill Graham were the innovators of the concert business. "The problem in today's world, as business and things change so quickly, is imitators very quickly turn to idiots, and you have chaos."

McGinley said he believes companies like Live Nation and AEG are uniquely positioned to succeed in getting into the music business, more so than the record companies, which might need to adapt to stay afloat.

The concert companies are in better shape to move in "because, number one, they have a much better relationship with the customer, and number two, their core business isn't falling apart," he said.

Live Digital GM Sumant Sridharan said there is "kind of a constant theme of confusion and chaos being caused by technology," but he thinks this chaos or disruption is creating "a window of opportunity that's going to last through the next year to two years." He added that it is essential to adopt Web 2.0 and new technologies.

Live Digital allows users to create their own media outlets in the form of online channels. Sridharan said the company has attracted 3 million visitors per month for each of the 10 months of its existence, with more than 1,000 user-generated channels springing up in two weeks.

One of the more unusual and innovative traits of Live Digital is its feature allowing users to choose which products to advertise on their channels "and make money" from advertising.

"In the past, you had basically 100 tastemakers on TV, program directors and radio DJs. What we've done essentially, is create an army of tastemakers that number in the millions of people," Sridharan said.

McGinley introduced the next panelist, VeriSign's Oliver Holle, as being a part of a company that might be able to "meter this pipe" in the Web 2.0 world where "content will flow like water."

Holle described VeriSign as an "intelligent enabler of digital transactions." The company enables voting on "American Idol" and other shows, handling up to 15,000 votes per se-cond, Holle said. VeriSign also delivers broadband content for a number of brands, including the BBC and AOL.

"What you see is mobile, broadband and TV actually converge, and there's a big need for consolidated infrastructure and that's where we try to stand in the middle," Holle said. He stressed the importance of mobile technology and SMS.

"Maybe SMS seems very basic and not very interesting, but SMS is the key to success for any kind of mobile service and you need to engage the user with very basic interaction like SMS," he said.

Holle used a Britney Spears concert as an example, where 10 percent of fans bought tickets through SMS. These fans were sent another SMS message after the concert, giving them an opportunity to buy ringtones, DVDs, CDs and other Britney-related products. About 85 percent of these fans purchased something, Holle said.

One of the companies to really get this whole user-generated content thing going is MySpace, the online social networking juggernaut with more than 160 million users.

MySpace's Josh Brooks said the site "kind of enabled an efficient form of communication. And we continue to offer great new tools to enhance experience."

Brooks said MySpace does sponsor tours occassionally, "But it's almost a better story when you hear it happening organically, without us. It's happening with the tools that we offer."

With MySpace Live, Brooks said, they don't really do anything revolutionary - just small, intimate secret shows that help publicize a band about to go on tour. More than 30 bands have done secret shows in the U.S., usually big names in small venues or smaller bands on the cusp of cool, like Franz Ferdninand and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

"It's an amazing forum to publicly get it out there," Brooks said. He said Pharrell's secret show had about 1.2 million video plays. "The band really reaps the benefit of that."

So what's to come from MySpace?

Brooks said there is a "strong, strong drive to move everything on MySpace to the mobile platform. And there's more to come," he said.

Music Choice provides music to millions of homes through cable. More than 95 percent of digital cable homes have Music Choice's digital audio service, the company's Damon Williams said.

So far mostly known for its digital audio service on cable, Music Choice (with the backing of labels, Comcast, Microsoft, EMI, Sony and a host of others) launched a music video on demand service in November 2004.

It also produces original video content.

"Basically, we are with you guys to create marketing programs and content that will benefit everyone's business," Williams said, noting the company's good relationship with artist managers, agents and promoters.

Ryan Borba