MusicTank

You have come to this page in order to take advantage of the discounted multiple ticket offer.  Purchasing this ticket will give you discounted access to the two remaining think tanks in this series of four seminars.  Please note that only one e-mail confirmation is issued for this three-date booking.  The remaining dates are:

18 Nov - Coalition Of The Billing | 2 Dec - Squaring The Circle

TOPIC:

Illegally downloaded any music recently?  Given that nearly two thirds of all internet traffic is made up of P2P activity these days, if you haven't, then most young people you know are.  Since Napster first reared its head in the late nineties, the recorded music business has tried in vain to put the genie back in the bottle.  The result - some pr blunders and an estimated 20:1 illegal/legal download rate.

For music fans it’s been a golden age where hard to find and out of print releases have been readily available alongside the latest hits of the day, but with no way of monetising these streams the record labels have been forced to watch their profits dwindle while the world’s been moving online.

The UK government has taken notice and is overseeing a three-pronged initiative aimed at educating and developing awareness, dealing with the most serious infringers and facilitating legitimate offerings. 

This series will focus on that third prong: effective legitimate alternatives.  Over the course of the four events we will review what people want, where technology is heading, what the most plausible new models are and how they might be licensed.

PROGRAMME

Think Tank 3 – Coalition of the Billing

Tue 18 Nov

What’s the best way to license these new services?  Labels are now ready to license as widely and flexibly as possible yet understandably wish to control the value they place over their rights, especially when ISP music services may one day provide their major income stream for recorded music.  Might collective licensing through a mandated body enable the widest range of music to be legally available, from finished studio recordings to live bootlegs, radio sessions and mash-ups?  Or is that incompatible with the business needs of rightsholders, leaving such content doomed to continue to exist unlicensed?

How will future licensing vary between streams, on-demand streams and downloads when technology is increasingly causing the three to converge?  How can we streamline and simplify the process for licensees, is it desirable or possible to create one-stop joint ‘master and composition’ licenses to make everything easier?  Will labels increasingly extend vertically into the businesses they are licensing, such as MySpace, and how will monies track back to artists? 

Keynote: Peter Jenner (Sincere Management).  Panel incl. Jez Bell (MCPS-PRS Alliance); Tom Frederikse (Clintons); Simon Wheeler (Beggars Group); others tbc.

Think Tank 4 – Squaring The Circle

Tue 2 Dec

The final think tank will look to pull together the conclusions from the series.

How can the different stakeholders better understand each others’ needs in order to develop the most effective and compelling new services? Is further consumer research necessary? What can be modeled and test-marketed? How might UK platforms be affected by developments in other territories? And how could the film, TV and software industries plug into these new models?

In scoping areas for further development, MusicTank will facilitate consultation, analysis and research required to better inform the conversations that will deliver real innovations and help square the circle.

Keynote: tbc.  Panel incl. Will Page (MCPS-PRS Alliance); Simon Persoff (Orange); others tbc