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Music Has A Metadata Problem And Next Month’s Music Biz Summit Hopes To Solve It
Music has a metadata problem. If you can’t find it you can’t track it; and if you can’t track it you can’t get paid. That’s the problem and the promise behind Music Biz’s annual Music Metadata Summit.
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The Music Business Association (Music Biz) will bring its Metadata Summit back to Nashville this year on Monday, May 16, during the Music Biz 2016 convention.
The fourth annual Summit will feature a keynote presentation from SOCAN’s Michael McCarty, Chief Membership & Business Development Officer, and Jeff King, Chief Operating Officer, who will discuss global revenue, discovery, and attribution, as well as sessions on international infrastructure, new business models tied to metadata, and global publishing data. Featured will be top executives from 7digital, AFEM, Beggars Group, BMI, Consolidated Independent, County Analytics, Dart Music, DDEX, Digimarc, Loudr, MovieLabs, Music Week, PledgeMusic, PRS for Music, Rough Trade Music Publishing, SOCAN, Syntax Creative, and TGiT.
“Ever since we launched the Metadata Summit four years ago, we have been impressed by the number of people who have come out to learn more about and contribute their expertise,” said Bill Wilson, Vice President of Digital Strategy and Business Development for Music Biz. “Metadata is the bedrock on which the digital music business is built, and many of the issues facing the business around payment, discovery, and attribution all rely on metadata.”
First held at Music Biz 2013 in Los Angeles, the event has drawn record crowds in previous years, leading to the creation of the Music Metadata Style Guide, currently in its third update, which provides a set of common naming conventions and data entry standards for companies to use when listing, ingesting, and managing digital music.
Admission to the Metadata Summit is included with the price of a full Music Biz 2016 registration. Music Biz members may also pay $99 and non-members $129 for access to the Metadata Summit and all other Music Biz 2016 events on May 16 only. These one-day passes can be purchased now via Eventbrite. For updated information on Metadata Summit speakers and sessions, click here.
The full currently confirmed agenda is below.
9 – 9:15 AM
Metadata Summit Introduction
- Bill Wilson, Music Biz
9:15 – 9:45 AM
Metadata Summit Keynote
All around the world, the current digital music royalty payment system is in chaos. The race is on to bring order to the confusion. Those who made the music must be paid fairly and fast. Music rights owners, administrators, and licensors all want to see royalties get to those who earned them. The heart of the music/tech discussion has suddenly evolved from “How much should the artists be paid?” to “How effective are the pipes through which the money and data flow?” The system, after all, was built for another era. Today, we are witnessing a profound change in the copyright world. Transparency without accountability is meaningless. This keynote will focus on how to fix the system on a global scale, examining royalty flow, the role of metadata, and the need for modernization.
- Jeff King, SOCAN
- Michael McCarty, SOCAN
9:50 – 10:40 AM
Acronym Salad: Digital Standards & Identifiers Status Report
DDEX Update
- Mark Isherwood, DDEX
ISRC Update
- Paul Jessop, County Analytics
EIDR Update
- Kip Welch, MovieLabs
10:45 – 11:45 AM
Delivering Globally: International Infrastructure Opportunities & Challenges
With US & European markets maturing, how does one capture the exponential growth coming from the BRICS? Are you globally focused with a supply chain integrated across Asia, Africa, and South America? What are the economic, technological, and cultural challenges to growing your digital business (and properly delivering your assets) to partners with burgeoning digital opportunities? This panel will explore the best path to global market reach and consider the infrastructure and demands that go hand-in-hand with expansion.
- Moderator: Rob Weitzner, Consolidated Independent
- Paul Langworthy, 7digital
- Timothy Trudeau, Syntax Creative
- Simon Wheeler, Beggars Group
11:45 AM – 12 PM
Metadata Summit Morning Wrap-Up
- Bill Wilson, Music Biz
1 – 1:45 PM
Back to the Drawing Board: New Business Models in Global Metadata
Data, like water, is going to be the most valued commodity in the 21st Century. But what kind of data are we talking about? And can data ensure that all rights holders will be fairly remunerated? Hear from some of the world’s most forward-thinking data miners about new initiatives and business models shaped around data.
- Moderator: Emmanuel Legrand, Music Week
- Jean-Robert Bisaillon, Iconoclaste – TGiT
- Chris McMurtry, Dart Music
- Benji Rogers, PledgeMusic
1:50 – 2:50 PM
Composition of a Composition: Data Challenges, Strategies and Best Practices in the Global Publishing Environment
Publishers and digital music companies alike can generally agree on the importance of music metadata, but the transfer, management, and use of that data is often the topic of spirited debate. In the extremely fragmented world of digital music rights, the exchange of information needed to license, track, and account for music usage is critical for music startup operations — and sensitive or highly confidential for rights holders. This panel opens a conversation about issues related to sharing, organizing, and leveraging information about songwriters, song owners, and song ownership shares. In addition, this panel highlights the surprising challenges faced by both music publishers and digital music companies in the metadata-driven business of modern rights management.
- Moderator: Annie Lin, Loudr
- John Coletta, BMI
- Paul Dilorito, PRS for Music
- Larry Logan, Digimarc
- Michael McCarty, SOCAN
- Gandhar Savur, Rough Trade Music Publishing
2:55 – 3 PM
#GetPlayedGetPaid
In November of last year, a global partnership was announced between Music Biz and AFEM (Association for Electronic Music). As part of their joint work streams, the groups are planning a launch of the #GetPlayedGetPaid brand at Music Biz 2016 during the Metadata Summit. #GetPlayedGetPaid is set to serve as a promotional vehicle to help educate DJs, producers, artists, songwriters, and more to make sure they are getting paid for their creative works, as well as discuss the transformative challenges necessary to make these processes better on a global scale. Details and next steps for the brand will be discussed during this session.
- Mark Lawrence, AFEM
- Robby Towns, Music Biz
Music Biz 2016, which will return to Nashville from May 16-18, is the music industry’s premier event, giving the commerce and content sectors a place to meet with trading partners, network with new companies, and learn about new trends and products impacting the music business. Registration is open now. For more information or to sign up for the conference, visit www.musicbiz2016.com.
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4 Ways To Succeed With Inbound Permission Based Fan Marketing
As the world of advertising continues to evolve, independent artists must learn to rely more on permission-based inbound marketing, rather than more traditional invasive advertising tactics.
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Guest Post by Jeff Barrett on Hootsuite
Small business marketing has turned a corner, and traditional outbound marketing efforts such as direct mail, TV ads, and telemarketing are becoming less and less effective. In fact, 86 percent of people skip TV ads, more than 200 million Americans are on the do-not-call list, and 90 percent of execs ignore cold calls.
Consumers are in control. They can tune out your marketing efforts and search online for products and services. To capture their attention, small businesses need a more effective permission marketing-based strategy to attract, engage, and convert more visitors into lifelong customers.
Inbound marketing utilizes that permission-based approach, reaching people organically through SEO, blogs, and social media. Instead of interrupting consumers with cold calling and ads, inbound marketing leverages captivating content that solves a real problem for your target market, ultimately guiding potential customers directly to your website where you can pull them into your sales process. And it really works. Inbound marketing delivers 54 percent more leads than traditional marketing at much lower costs.
Image via Voltier Digital on Mashable
So how can your small business tap into inbound marketing to capture and convert more customers without spending more money? Here are four things you should do to make inbound marketing work for you:
1. Develop your content strategy
The first step to an inbound marketing strategy is to provide valuable content to your audience. Think about who your ideal customer is and understand their needs, wants, and interests to create the content that drives inbound marketing for your small business.
Image via River Pools
For example, Marcus Sheridan, owner of River Pools and Spas, stopped investing in ads and direct mail, and instead started blogging and distributing content that answered his audience’s burning questions about inground pools. By positioning his business as a thought leader in the inground swimming pool industry, Sheridan was able to cut costs associated with outbound marketing and drive more traffic to his website than any other pool website in the world.
2. Build your social media following
Once the content is created, it needs to be released in engaging and entertaining ways that encourage sharing. Creating a quality social media following is one of the most impactful ways to spread content.
Through market research, you’ll find that your audience gravitates towards certain platforms and tends to engage with social media at different times of the day. Once you’ve settled on the two or three main social media channels you’re going to use to distribute content and interact with your audience, social media tools can help you organize and intelligently time distribution.
Much like the shift from outbound to inbound marketing, the way we post has changed. Research has shown that visually stimulating posts are drastically increasing. Short videos, pictures, and infographics are much more likely to be viewed and shared. In fact, photos and videos will soon account for almost 70 percent of content published on Facebook.
Image via Ethos3
The variety of visual options also means that content can be reformatted and recycled. For instance, a popular infographic can be transformed into a whiteboard animation video without having to start from square one.
3. Capture prospects with form submissions
Attracting and engaging interest from prospects is only the first step in converting customers and fueling sales. When content is trusted and is viewed consistently, it becomes easier to create leads by using resources and form submissions.
When prospects view the website is an excellent opportunity to get their information by offering additional content or an email subscription to be updated with content. To acquire this information, send prospects to a landing page where they will enter their personal details (such as name and email) to access a stream of quality content they’ll find useful or engaging.
Image via STL Rent A Box
There are numerous programs and companies that offer automated email response systems to streamline this process. These systems can also collect information, tracking clicks as well as the types of emails each prospect has been most responsive to. Using this information, targeted emails can be sent to the most engaged prospects converting them into customers.
4. Nurture prospects into customers
Whether your inbound efforts generate leads from social media, organic search, or your blog, lead nurturing can help you get a higher return on investment (ROI) from your inbound marketing efforts by turning more leads into customers.
Not everyone is ready to become a customer after interacting with your content, but email marketing can help you continue to educate prospects and keep your business top-of-mind when the time does come for them to buy.
Small business marketing automation and customer relationship managed software provider, Hatchbuck, advises that small businesses nurture new leads with a series of touchpoints. As contacts are nurtured, the actions they take can indicate their level of interest and readiness to buy. Actions such as visiting a link, watching a video, or filling out a form can impact lead score so that marketers can systematically determine when a lead is ready to be sent to the sales team.
Image via Hatchbuck
With lead nurturing, instead of burning through every lead right away only to have few convert, your business can nurture them over time, increasing your conversion rate.
If your company hasn’t invested in inbound marketing, it’s time. It’s been shown thatadopting inbound marketing strategies doubles website conversions rates from 6 percent to 12 percent. The future of marketing will rely heavily on creating trust and relationships with customers through content and getting found through inbound channels such as SEO, blogs and social media.
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