Monday, March 12, 2007

Major Labels' Digital unStrategy

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Digital Music Forum East conference in New York. There were some very amusing and enjoyable debates (albeit few surprises), with many conversations - if not most - focused on "To DRM or to not DRM" and licensing ("we want more, even if it is of less").

Reuters was obviously covering the same conference as well, and have basically summed it up in this story:


Record labels' digital strategy -- do nothing - Yahoo! News: "So what are labels doing other than licensing their music to digital services that they hope will become successful? According to many service providers and industry analysts, the answer is -- nothing."


One thing that I found very useful in the conference was the use of Mozes. Basically, there was a large screen on stage during all of the keynotes that had an SMS number and code displayed. Attendees could send questions and comments to that number and within a few moments would be displayed on screen.

In some ways it's reminiscent of the PartyStrands service from MyStrands. Although they are focused on bars/nightclubs and giving the crowd a way to interact with each other, influence the DJ and basically create a temporal music micro-community.

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