I met up with Soundcloud’s UK manager, Dave Haynes earlier today. He was celebrating a venture capital investment of 2.5 million euros, announced today.

I talked to him about how independent music can make the most of the service.

I’ve been having conversations today about a ‘non-DRM solution’ to filesharing. This conversation comes up pretty regularly, actually. I’ve now been approached by no less than three companies that would like me to examine, and perhaps endorse their own system.

Each time, it involves watermarking files. The idea is that it is completely invisible (and inaudible) to the listener, but tracks where the mp3 (or some new proprietary audio file) comes from, and in most cases, information about the person who originally bought it.

I’m sorry, but no. That’s not a DRM-free system of anything. That’s Digital Rights Management by definition – only this time it uses surveillance, rather than the more clumsy and obvious ‘reach in and break your computer’ tactic of older TPM (technical protection measure) systems.

It’s just as bad. Probably much worse.

[Read more]

Olaf & Tak at Lappi Restaurant. Cool people.

Of course, one of the conflicting things about conferences like Is This It is the fact that while cognitively you may be at odds with a lot of the information and opinions being spread around by some of the more conservative and old-school thinkers that seem to dominate the proceedings during the day – you do get to meet some amazing and very cool people.

One of the reasons that Is This It was so great for me was exactly that intersection between people, around half of whom were not too familiar with Helsinki – and so the whole thing had an air of discovery and adventure about it as well.

Forced to sit in groups of 10 and discuss things at length, you make some great connections with people you may not have considered approaching and talking to. And yet, precisely as a result of being a bit chatty and conspicuous, I’ve been asked to guest lecture at one or two Finnish universities, including the Sibelius Academy – and present at a couple of conferences. Just as a result of just a few conversations at Is This It.

Given that travelling and giving talks is my equivalent of going on tour and doing concerts, this is a brilliant result. And if there’s any lesson to be learned here – it’s about serendipity.

[Read more]

I spent the past four days at a conference in Helsinki called Is This It. 150-odd music industry people charged with coming up with 100 or more new ideas to invigorate and reinterpret the business. A conference that put music back into the music industry. A place for learning, creativity, networking and genuine reinvention.

I decided to live-blog it via Twitter – and as soon as I started doing so, a pattern began to emerge and I started to have one of the most important, meaningful and eye-opening experiences of my music industry analysis and consultancy career.

Before very long, (and without a shred of sarcasm or cynicism on my part meant here at all) Is This It turned into my best conference ever – and I’m so genuinely grateful to the organisers for holding it. Not just because it was inspirational (and in truth, going back over my notes, quite a lot of it was) – but also because so much of it was just so utterly and unbelievably horrifying.

[Read more]