Google has just launched into a surprise roundtable at its music event in Hollywood, where a number of top music executives and artists are discussing the news and the music industry. I’m live blogging my notes below (everything paraphrased).
Guests:
Mos Def
Wendy Nussbaum (UMG)
Steve Savoca (Domino Recording)
Syd Schwartz (EMI)
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park)
Ryan Tedder (OneRepublic)
Mike Shinoda: We used to be called Hybrid Theory. We settled on Lincoln Park, we went online to see if we could get our URL. We were online early on, changed the name of the band to get URL that would give the fans the most direct link to our fans.
Q: Did you ever think international? Do you think about the French version of the Linkin Park website?
MS: We’re in the process of doing that right now to create an easier experience for fans in Asia and Europe..
Q:What do you think of what we’re launching today, what do you see happening from record label perspective?
WN:I think this is an amazing new product launch. Consumers want something easy, Google gives it to them. The key thing for us is that you’re leading people to legitimate sources of music. Whereas Googlesearch is dynamic, don’t control what rises to the top. This is guaranteed to be our partners.
Q: We’ve been talking about music discovery.
Syd Schwartz: I remember back in the day part of my things to do was build out my jazz library. I remember going to Tower Records, saw Donald Fagan of Steeley Dan, was trying to follow him to see what he got. Took a while, I discovered some great stuff but was sort of stalking the guy. Now I look at what has been presented here today… There’s never been anything like this to help discover music.
Q:What gets you excited in the world of Technology?
Mos Def: I think Google and technology and events like this have been incredibly important to artists. We’re still absorbing it, I think it will take half a generation to fully understand these. It’s a huge presence in artists around the world. Me, I walk around every day feeling I’m in Battlestar Galatica. I’m still really getting over the cell phone to be honest.
Q: Are you thinking of these as a megaphone?
MD: It’s a way to share new content. I think what we’re in now is similar to the early 20th century which had lots of technological advances. It’s a wide open field. What you see here with having an artist recording a song Tuesday, having it out Wednesday or Thursday is really exciting, helps connect more organically.
Q; You represent lots of up and coming artists, what does this launching mean to you?
Steve Savoca: It’s absolutely outstanding to have an independent having a seat of the table today, this means a lot to us. What we do is niche, we’re tlaking about artists that are primarily word of mouth. People come to our artist through hearing about them and wanting to listen about them immediately. What we’re talking about here is instant gratification — hear about it, search for it, listen to it. This is a huge opportunity for us. What Lala has invented and what iLike brings these are fantastic, what’s been missing has been a conduit to bring music fans to these services.
The challenge remains, we have to change consumption behavior. We have to make it turn key to access these amazing music services, and I think that’s been lacking.
Q: I was watching the video for your music video to Apologize, started counting up the numbers for number of people who had watched the video. And setting aside all the fun and crazy covers, just looking at yours, over 120 million views. Can you speak to how this has an influence on ou going forward?
Ryan Tedder: When the Apologize remix came out, the question was do you feel Timbaland was what made you guys break. I always tell people we broke through MySpace. I’m not going to say which record label was dropped, by the same label who dropped Katy Perry and Jonas Brothers. We joined MySpace forever ago, when it had 2 million people. I thought if I have to shower posters around town, that sucks. The Internet.. MySpace was perfect, free, we used that like crazy. If I knew that I had a show or something coming up I would find every high school in that city, and Email everyone from age 16-22. We became top unsigned artist on MySpace, labels came after us. Apologize was on MySpace for three years before it came out. By the time it came out, no discredit to Timabland, had quarter billion listens before it hit radio. OneRepublic wouldn’t be here without Myspace. On Google when you typed in a song, the first 6-7 things were bittorrent illegal download sites, this fixes that. Someone once said we had 75 million illegal downloads. When I hear about this Google thing, that’s what gets me most excited because now those will be top.
We’ve partnered up with MySpace to help launch the album. This was perfect timing for us, this made total sense.
Take A Load Off Mary o Take A Load For Free o Take A Load Off Mary o And And And You Take The Load Right Off Me
When I think of music and technology working together, Mos Def is the first name that comes to mind.
Ha! I never thought about that. Yeah, I guess that is a match made in heaven. If Google really gave a crap about the indie artists they would just buy up one of the sites/platforms currently available for indie artists. It is a shame that they are missing the boat and in their round table they get a bunch of known artists to talk about their interaction. The music industry is turning indie and Google should embrace that instead of sticking mainstream.
BTW, most indie artists hate MySpace. They use it simply because there is nothing else that has caught on as well as MySpace. MySpace has the user but the reality not a well thought out platform.
And music will never be the same again (which anyways isnt the same as it was)
Music? Technology? Call up Radiohead for some schooling.
these seem like pre-myspace era bands. They should have brought in some talent who established themselves by using social network and internet tools because they had no other options. Not those who merely add it to an already strong label-backed marketing arsenal.
That’s because there arne’t any that are universally known. It’s the growth of the middle.
@Brendan biryla.
they should of had soulja boy i hear he’s a myspace talent.
linkin park has always used the web very well. However, I didn’t like the way they didn’t put full songs on myspace. They put teasers instead. It was annoying. But aside from that, they’ve used the web to do communication/forums very well.
Yahoo has been doing this for years. Congratulations to Google on catching up finally!
A search for Linkin Park gives you *full length* audio (not 30 second clips) using the fancy YUI-based music player.
http://search.y...h?p=linkin+park
It also gives you lyrics, bio etc. So much for Google’s catch-up feature.
The assumption: more free play from legitimate services (like iLike/MySpace and Lala) will convert to more sales.
The reality: it will increase these services streaming costs.
I hope google gets more into offering music search-able by different metadata than the norm.
It would be great to search and find music by tempo for instance.
Apps like Cadence are doing some of this already , but a major doing this would be very cool.
http://www.cadenceapp.com
This move will prove to be a very successful one, if Google can get people to start paying for music again.
Great Post!
itunes has already done that but its always good to finally see some competition.
I am speaking in regards to discovering music (through search), and making instant purchase decisions. Rather than searching for illegal DL’s through Google, and downloading them instantly.
iTunes is cool, but only for people living in an ‘iSphere’, the rest of the world lives ‘outside’ this sphere, ya know.
Where is the new technology and features that makes us all go “WOW”.
Why are we still kicking a dead mule of ‘99 Napster here.
I think Google has a ton of power in this space, but clearly this is nothing more than a “mashup” attached to search.
In movies, we get Blu-ray and 3D Avatar movies that are mind blowing, in music we get the same merry-go-round of MP3 web quality sludge.
Cut the scams and deliver people some real shit.
So you can search and listen to a song once.. get some artist and ticketing info…. Im a little bit disappointed.. is this the best Google can do?