post ADE will Oct. 29

So back home from Amsterdam, and pretty much recovered from all those free drinks, heh heh. Apart from our crack-den hotel room, all in all was a great time, and probably have to do it all over again in years time I reckon!

My panel on the Stimulation of Digital Revenues went well, the room was packed and a couple of interesting points were brought up. The focus however was a bit different from what I was hoping for: Jack the moderator seemed to equate growing revenues with increased commercialisation, which was a bit too "Music 1.0" for my liking. Sure the standard way of growing revenues is to appeal to the mass market, but I was more interested in how we can exploit the long tail, how to grow revenues from niche markets. I really believe that the niche has a long way to go, whereas the "hits" are going to take quite a battering as people are able to access any music they want at the click of the button. At a conference for dance music it also seemed a bit out of place: a lot of dance music genres have never broken into the mainstream, and maybe never will, but this isn't to say there aren't decent revenue streams which can be built around them.

The conference had a really relaxed feel to it, and the numerous bars on every floor also helped. The two venues were really nicely set up with lots of space for meetings, or to chill out with a drink for a few minutes. The only minor gripe was with the wireless internet, which after connecting to required a minutes wait before you could actually browse anything, and with my iPhone was pretty much useless. Could have been a bit faster too. But anyhow a big hello to everyone I met, it's always good to put faces to names.

 

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