An all-star panel from left to right: Steve Rennie, David Dufresne, Taynah Reis, Matt Mason, and David Haynes
On Tuesday, October 9th, our team attended the 11th SF MusicTech Summit conference at Hotel Kabuki in Japantown. We started the morning off with the Artist Tools panel featuring our Executive Director of Marketing, Matt Mason.
Of all the debates over old vs. new methods for distributing music and getting compensated, Matt’s quote, “Data is the new hustle,” resonated the most with moderator Hisham Dahud (Hypebot) and the audience. You can now watch this entire panel. Here are some more highlights:
“The tricky part for artists now is choosing from so many available marketing tools.” With @bittorrent @soundcloud @bandzoogle #SFMusicTech
— Ticketfly (@ticketfly) October 9, 2012
“data is the new hustle.” -@mattmason #sfmusictech
— anneke elyse jong (@annekejong) October 9, 2012
RT @bittorrent‘If you’re an artist, you have to become a technologist or get lost in the shuffle of things.’ – @hishamdahud #sfmusictech
— Conduit(@Conduit) October 9, 2012
We recently encouraged our users to support the Internet Radio Fairness Act. Pandora’s CEO, Tim Westergren, was on hand for the opening keynote with Los Angeles Times journalist, Jon Healey.
“We stream more hours of music than YouTube streams videos” @timwestergren #sfmusictech
— songbird (@songbird) October 9, 2012
Westergren says there are 100,000 artists on Pandora & 70% are indies. Reveals artists making $100K to up to $2 million. #sfmusictech
— Jaime Sarachit (@PRGal) October 9, 2012
Of course, an artist’s perspective was of great interest. Cellist Zoe Keating admitted she was willing to sacrifice her Pandora royalties for more exposure. Here’s a breakdown of her sources of income.
@songbird @zoecellointerestingly, she offered to waive royalties in exchange for promotion. @timwestergren wasn’t interested #sfmusictech
— Adam Hertz (@AdamHertz) October 9, 2012
Data was undoubtedly a recurring theme throughout the day.
Data suggests 42 different revenue streams for musicians these days. No one has access to all 42, but 10-15 very possible. #sfmusictech
— Reyhan Harmanci (@harmancipants) October 9, 2012
Since BitTorrent works with so many artists, this panel on artist data collected by the Twitter team was particularly interesting.
7 of the top 10 @twitter accounts are musicians. Sad that Obama is behind Britney Spears at #7 #sfmusictech @cbrumelle twitter.com/heidyv/status/…
— Heidy Vaquerano (@heidyv) October 9, 2012
Adding images to your updates does get you more engagement.
Artists: take note. 9 out of 10 tweets with the most engagement (retweets, favorites, etc.) have an image attached. #sfmusictech
— BitTorrent Inc. (@BitTorrent) October 9, 2012
.@cbrumelle‘s Top #Twitter pts for optimization outside of wank-spamming: 1) Authentic voice 2) Know your audience 3) Use pics. @sfmusictech
— Dan Hawie (@dan_hawie) October 9, 2012
One of ours even got noticed by Amanda Palmer.
HOLY SHIT LOOK EVERYBODY WE ARE A POWERPOINT!! RT @bittorrent panelists talking about @amandapalmer & her online….instagr.am/p/Qk36F0DnMG/
— Amanda Palmer (@amandapalmer) October 9, 2012
But updating too much over the course of a day isn’t exactly recommended.
Mobile is always a point of discussion and executives had their weigh-in on the future of this platform:
“I would do a mobile optimized website before building a [native] app” – Ayal Kleinman, Warner Brothers Records #sfmusictech
— Jordan Harband (@ljharb) October 10, 2012
From @ethank “LTE on iPhone 5 is the best thing to happen to mobile music, ever” #sfmusictech
— dustin shey (@indiequick) October 10, 2012
Finally, more than Twitter or even Facebook, artists felt that YouTube was the best way to get noticed and a must for anyone hoping to make an impact.
“YouTube has been a billion times more powerful than Facebook or Twitter.” – Nataly Dawn, Pomplamoose #SFMusicTech
— hypebot (@hypebot) October 10, 2012
Overall, some attendees definitely got the message: BitTorrent is a valuable distribution platform that provides a solution for content creators.
most intriguing platform for monetizing music distribution at #sfmusictech – @bittorrent
— Steven Cooper (@stevenmcooper) October 11, 2012
The afterparty
We sponsored the open bar for SF MusicTech’s afterparty.
Many members of our team showed up to help us celebrate the end of an eventful day – including founder Bram Cohen.
The final act
Ending #sfmusictech on a high note (pun intended) with a performance from @pomplamoose.instagr.am/p/QlngADjnDK/
— BitTorrent Inc. (@BitTorrent) October 10, 2012
