SEATTLE — Mobile phones and their impact on the music business and fans was the topic du jour at EMP’s Pop Conference on Friday, April 16, 2010, in Seattle. Of the three lecturers, two were decidedly academic and one was, well, involved…
Wendy Fonarow
Cultural anthropologist, author of Empire of Dirt, and 90s indie music maven Wendy Fonarow was first off, and had the most insightful and salient lecture. She has been observing audiences at indie rock shows since the early 90s in the UK and US, so brought forward a chronological impact of mobile phones at shows. Some of her observations on the impact of social behaviors at shows by mobile usage:
- Audience users who first brought (non 2-3G) phones to shows would call friend to allow person on the other end of the line to hear the show, in a shared experience.
- Early on, it was the media elite who brought in Blackberries; the moniker of ‘Blue Faces’ referred to the media elite at shows, in back, with faces illuminated by phones.
- 2-3G phones allowed for other activities at gigs, even allowing them to experience shows through The devices.
- Photo phones hasted deregulation of rock photographers.
- Dancing is now muted or intermittent; instead of audience during dancing or participating in taking in the best song, everyone filters it through devices or documents experience via phone.
- Posited the notion of “Future Interior Tense” (present and not present simultaneously), by disengaging constantly during show to deal with device, focusing on creating a moment in the future to appreciate the moment instead of living in it.
- Posterity or online personae/cyber existence is important in documentation process (I AM AT THIS SHOW, instead of I WAS AT THIS SHOW)
- Broadcasting self out of venue is a recent phenomena
- Acceleration of intolerance for boredom at shows, due to fragmented focus; audience polled still wants REAL experience, despite disengagement.
- If you’re documenting the show, you’re not dancing.
- One of the top iPhone apps was the lighter.
Noriko Manabe — Princeton University
An academic (with business background in Japan), she drew differentiation between mobile music markets in Japan and the US; the growth of music on phones via access to broadband and device improvement/online streaming via phones.
Pandora Music Service (US):
- Pandora has opened up new music exposure via online streaming –double that of iTunes
- Curators in Genome Service (Pandora), selected based on audience preferences, not individual
- Most popular attributes among listeners:
- tempo is highest
- rhythm important
- melody less important
- harmony least important
- People want objective similar music to what they like, as opposed to tastes of others; can help refine and introduce users to their own likes and dislikes.
- Critics say that Pandora stations are stagnant; not customizable enough.
- Revenue model is almost all advertising. Royalties paid according to streaming time.
Slacker (US):
- User base mostly blackberries. Adopts techniques from traditional radio.
- Business model is obtaining licenses from record labels (differs from statutory licenses at Pandora).
- Gearing business model toward subscription.
Japan:
- Global tech leader with mobile device and 3G proliferations.
- Radio not as compelling in society; no experience with genre specific radio (not as many stations, no differentiation amongst stations).
- Carriers discouraged online streaming.
- Online radio supported in US, not in Japan — devices more attuned to radio in US, with streaming open and radio culturally present.
- Mobile internet perceived as diff in Japan than PC internet
- Online radio is enhancing music sales, overall, not cannibalizing
Loren Glass/Kembrew McLeod (“Killer Apps”-performance, using mobile app mixed media)
Recounting History of Music and Telephones
This team took an unorthodox approach to the lecture, with a multimedia message in real time execution. Very bold approach, but with frenetic results.
- Musak is covered (service through telephones lines).
- Reference to phones as topics within popular music though the century.
Largely editorial and indulgent: entertaining, but not academic. Very fragmented and layered — more documentary film than lecture — and wide scope of subject with lack of focus. I found the underlying score of pop songs and generated real-time mobile instrument noodling made it impossible to focus on message.
The crowd was fairly engaged with the topic and speakers. Having not attended any prior EMP Pop Conference, I found the target audience not to be quite business to business, but geared more toward the fan as well as the enthusiastic blogger and lower tiered industry participant.
