WMC 2008 Panels: Digital Dispatch

WMC 2008 Panels: Digital Dispatch

27 March, 2008 | 2.00PM

• Section: Music News Topics: Beatport Blog, Miami WMC 2008
• Written by: Mr Tunes

There is no question that the most popular discussion these days for artists and labels is about the digital realm.

Digital Dispatch aimed to discuss some of the options for releasing music online today and included representatives from Yahoo! Music, eMusic, Qtrax and INGrooves. 

One segment of the panel was spent discussing the merits of whether or not you need a label these days since you can release online by yourself.

The general consensus was that with a label or not, it’s still a difficult landscape to tackle with so much music being made available these days.

You have to be really unique and creative in order to captivate your audience and run a viable business as a musician.

Jeff Straw from INGrooves provided some insight into his company and how they can help to get your music on digital music sites like Beatport, which is something for label owners to consider using since it can be quite a difficult process getting your music released on all the different online outlets.

This applies not just from the standpoint of getting your music selected, but also in preparing all of the encoding and artwork requirements, since each site is very specific.

On top of it all, INGrooves has a sync division to help place music in film and television.

Allan Klepfisz from Qtrax is proposing an interesting take on the scenario by offering an ad-supported P2P style model which tries to capitalize on the fact that most music listeners have gotten so used to having everything for free that they will want to continue to download in this fashion.

Interesting to note that he says that a lot of people think starting an ad-supported music service is easy, but it takes a lot of work to make the business model viable.

It’s also a controversial business plan because it necessarily addresses the question of how traditional download stores, such as iTunes and eMusic, will compete if another service is offering the same music from the major labels for free.

As for now, that part is unresolved.

And on to the next panel!

• (0) Comments
• (352) Views