Interviews with LyricFind’s Darryl Ballantyne , MMF’s Jonny Dawson & Music Kickup’s Antti Silventoinen
(UPDATED) The following excerpts are from 2 days of interviews conducted by Helsinki based streaming company LiveMusicStage at SXSW 2013.
These interviews were filmed and streamed live on Austin Tech Talk from the LiveMusicStage booth at digitalmusic.org's lounge.
LiveMusicStage is an online venue where fans can participate in interactive live-streamed concerts, broadcast by venues, festivals and studios from around the world.
"Darryl Ballantyne, CEO LyricFind (Interviewed by Dmitri Vietze)
"If you have the lyrics, there is a market for it, a secondary revenue stream to tap into. Fans search for songs based on lyrics, and end up buying the songs. There are some direct revenue possibilities, but most of it is indirect."
"Nightmare is an understatement for lyrics licensing. You never get a license worldwide; we always need to manage country by country. To add a level of complexity, there are also usually multiple owners to a song. As a result, the challenges in managing that data are astronomical."
Antti Silventoinen, CEO Music Kickup (Interviewed by David Hazan)
"I feel the single biggest issue in music industry is that we have too many players eating from the same bowl of soup. We need to shorten the distance between artists and fans. There must be teams around the artists to support them, but they need to focus on ensuring the revenues for the artists."
"Record labels are struggling, as the music industry is becoming more and more artist-centric. My personal prediction for 2020 is that record labels become infrastructure sellers, rather than music sellers. They will benefit from their huge marketing infrastructures and connections, and can offer the whole experience."
"I want to see a win-win music industry, where most of all fans and artists are well connected. This is what Music Kickup is for."
Jonny Dawson, Music Manager at MMF (UK)
"We who have come to the industry in the digital age see so much potential for growth, we haven’t really experienced a downturn. The new digital platforms have so much potential to grow music as an industry."
"If a band makes music they think the crowds want, they will fall flat on their face. The only rule of thumb for me is that if the hairs on the back of your neck stand when the band starts playing, they are the ones you want to sign. It does not matter whether they are rock, country, hip-hop or something else….."
"It’s all about increasing the ease of licensing. It’s been difficult for new digital startups due to licensing. The platforms that reach critical mass are the only ones that matter, and it should not cost those companies 10s millions to get licensing done. Global Repertoire Database is where everyone puts their rights and through which licensing deals will be done. Licensing prices will be lower, but there will be more licensing."
