#Midem Day 3: Blockchain • Copyright Reform • MidemLab • More

Day 3 of international music industry convention Midem 2017 has wrapped with with blockchain, copyright reform, MidemLab and much more all on the agenda as recapped in this post from Midem Blog in partnership with Music Ally.

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Blockchain has been a buzzword rarely far from the music industry’s lips in the last year, and as part of today’s Midem Copyright Summit, a panel of experts debated some of the opportunities and challenges around the technology.

Moderated by lawyer Sophie Goossens, it saw Bailer Music Publishing’s Benjamin Bailer; Sacem’s Xavier Costaz; Dot Blockchain’s Benji Rogers; Jaak’s Vaughn McKenzie; and Mycelia’s Carlotta de Ninni giving their views.

“Essentially what blockchain represents is a new internet,” said McKenzie. “If you think about the internet arriving in 95, it’s taken us 20 years to figure out what the ideal [music]business model is for that, which is streaming… With blockchain, we need to build a new stack for media and music.”

Rogers explained the appeal. “Blockchains force action… If I were to make a statement about a work that I own in a blockchain, and I were to send it to you Sophie, you have three choices: yes it’s correct and I agree, no it’s not correct, or ignore it, which means it’s correct,” he said, addressing Goossens.

“What blockchain may bring to the table is something you cannot ignore, because ignoring it is the same as accepting what’s there in the table is truth… A blockchain-based system at scale could force people to work with it, in a way that exposes them to decentralisation and transparency, arguably whether they like it or not.”

De Ninni said that more-private ‘permissioned’ blockchains may prove useful for some sensitive data in and around the music industry. “If we have to imagine something on a bigger and greater scale, it might be tricky. Not everyone is willing to share how much they earn. Go to Beyoncé and ask her how much they paid her to play the Super Bowl! So a permissioned blockchain could be helpful, not to hide, but to show the things to the people you really want to share with,” she said.

Read Music Ally’s full report on the blockchain panel

The Copyright Summit was opened by recently-appointed French Culture Minister Françoise Nyssen, who assured the music industry of her support.

“Defending authors’ rights is a French cause; I will make it a European priority. Count on me to defend your industry, said the Minister.

daddy-yankee

This morning, Latin superstar Daddy Yankee also dropped in to Midem, to talk about how his success has been fuelled by digital platforms. Billboard’s Leila Cabo moderated.

“Streaming is the new street marketing! What happened with the rap scene in New York [in the late 1970s]is basically what happened with us,” he said, revealing that he has direct deals with Vevo and YouTube, rather than operating on those platforms through a label.

“The label [generally]invests in you as an artist, but I own my own masters,” he explained. “When I went to YouTube and Vevo, they were surprised I had no label. I said I wanted to do a direct deal with them. No middle men. I don’t know if there is another artist who has that.”

Yankee also talked about what his younger fans are looking for. “The young generation loves content,” he said. “Work on your single but don’t stop there. Keep sending content to your fans. Right now fans love content. It’s a different generation. But you can’t sacrifice quality. You have to make sure the content is quality… Create your own movement through the digital revolution to engage your fans.”

Read Music Ally’s full report on the Daddy Yankee session

The same conference room was almost as packed for a session on bots and messaging apps, a hot topic right now:

Whilst The Bot Platform‘s Syd Lawrence said Facebook Messenger bots are now messaging bots are now the only effective solution for alerts in real time for breaking news like open ticket sales, Polydor‘s Luke Ferrar notably warned that, like most new communication tools, bots can be “labour intensive, and need a real strategy and content plan.”

Startups were the toast of the Midem main room on the conference’s second day, with four pitch sessions featuring the 20 finalists in this year’s Midemlab contest, before the winners were announced. Read our story from yesterday on the four winning startups.

The winners’ announcement was preceded by a panel session involving three past Midemlab finalists: Josquin Farge from Soundsgood; Bernd Kopin from Mimi Hearing Technologies; and Liat Sade-Sternberg from Fusic, and moderated by Midem’s James Martin. The panel talked about how their Midemlab experiences had honed their technologies and given investors confidence in their businesses, as well as sparking the odd pivot.

“It builds up trust when you talk to investors, when you talk to partners. People reach out to you saying ‘hey, you won at Midem!’,” said Kopin. “And many people we met in the audience at Midem gave us amazing feedback… the feedback we got bolstered our opinion that we needed to build up an ecosystem… We were an app company, now we’re an app company that licenses the technology.”

Sade-Sternberg delivered a warning to the music industry, however. “From our experience, investors are not keen to invest in startups where their main focus is music,” she said. “We should find a better way to bridge between startups and entrepreneurs and the music industry… The leading labels are eager to try new technology, but it gets tapped when you are starting to speak about licensing issues and how to promote the campaign.”