The 2010 Bandwith music and tech conference ended last week, and I am still thinking about the great time I had there! I was lucky to be invited to speak and participate with a great group of people. It felt intimate, and there was lots of variety. Jac Holtzman’s presentation was a real highlight!
My session was entitled “COMING TO A SCREEN NEAR YOU – How visuals are changing artist marketing and artist development”.
I vividly remember a moment five or six years ago that changed my perception of the explosion of video screens on our culture, and ultimately its effect on music. I was driving in Los Angeles and I pulled up next to a family in an SUV. It was one of those big hunks of metal, tricked out with a big screen in every seat. I watched as the family was driving along next to me watching a movie together (something we see in every minivan commercial now…). Something about that really effected me and a voice in my head said “this is wrong”. The car was meant to be driven while listening to music, not watching TV! The fact a generation of kids were going to be driving around watching movies instead of listening to music made me mad! Some of my favorite music moments were driving along with my favorite tune, while my mind explored the terrain around me!
But my natural curiosity kicked in and I’ve been spending a lot of time at Warner Bros trying to understand the new world of visuals. What does it mean for music when there are screens everywhere, in all the devices we listen to music with? Is the future of music apps? You Tube? Lyric Videos? Or is it something we haven’t seen or discovered yet? Artists are starting to ask the same questions and it’s getting exciting!
My goal at Bandwidth was was to have a conceptual talk about all this, share data from projects I am working on, and get into some specific tactics on how to harness a new visual world to market and develop artist careers. The original presentation was 80 slides! But to everyones benefit, it was a discussion, not a one way presentation and we let the conversation guide us.
Here is the part of my keynote presentation I covered. You can read some highlights and play by play on Digital Music News. Theres is also a lot I didn’t get to that I will post later. Thanks to Eric Garland and Lisa Lum for helping with stats, and pulling it all together!
