SXSW Interviews with 7Digital’s Vickie Nauman and TAG’s Ted Cohen
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.
Vickie Nauman, President 7digital (Interviewed by Jules Parker)
"The entire industry ballooned from 1980s to 2000s, all on the transaction of CD pricing."
"There is a tremendous amount of room for artists to develop their fan base."
"Even though there is a lot of discussion on which business model will win, music lovers have always wanted to listen to free content, which used to be just radio. Also, they have always been keen on their music collection; now they can tag it on the cloud, let friends know what they’re listening, and do everything else that actually adds value to their collection."
"The single most important issue is artists and those invested in them getting paid. There is too much focus on licensing, distribution, and all other things not directly about the music itself, which generates costs and reduces the payment to the artists. Music lovers actually want to pay for their music, and they want the artist to benefit."
Ted Cohen, TAG Strategic (Interviewed by Rami Korhonen of Playmysong)
"We need better communication across the table. Artists, songwriters and other music makers want to see better returns on their contributions. It also seems that sometimes we talk across each other. As an industry, our current business models are more aggressive than the old ones. We were paying stores to display our music, now we’re asking digital media to pay to offer our content."
"We have this awkward period when the old revenue streams are drying up, and the new ones aren’t covering up the difference yet. The retail market has eroded over, and we need to find out how to make digital sales pick up. What is the monetization, is it replacement or incremental?"
"The fear of being pirated is eclipsed by the fear of not being heard. At EMI we had this artist whose music we wanted to give away as MP3s, but couldn’t get permission, because the label felt it devalued the music. 6 months later we dropped the band because they were not selling enough. We have to get past the unit cost. Isn’t it better to be heard by 30 million than only the 100.000, who pay for the music? It is not devaluation of music."
