Lenny Ibizarre will be playing at midnight at the end of the Pikes Hotel IMS party tomorrow - the line up looks like this:

20:00 Rob da Bank
20:20 Sportsday Megaphone - Live
20:45 Rob da Bank
21:05 Slagsmalsklubben - Live
21:30 Rob da Bank & Pete Tong
22:30 GoldFish - Live
23:00 Pete Tong
24:00 Lenny Ibizarre

One panel we’ll definitly be at tomorrow is

15:30 - 16:20 IMS Think Tank
Chairman: Bobby Sims, Popshop Ents / Universal Music
1 Kim De Ruiter, Mercury Records, UK Head of Commercial
2 Marcel Eingh, Sony BMG Int, VP Brand Partnerships
3 Ralf Luelsdorf, T-Mobile International Head of Music
4 Ross McGregor, Sony Computer Ents Europe
5 Roger Wade, Brands Inc
6 Cleo Willraf, Universal Publishing

Thursday began with another evocatively titled seminar:
“Cult of the Amateur”. Andrew Keen, the speaker and author of the book of the same name, is an internet entrepreneur and a brave visionary to set his stall out in front of such a large contingent of electronic music professionals, but he spoke from experience and with some authority, as a writer and analyst.

However, he clearly worried many of those present with his analysis of the role of the internet in destroying music industry income streams.

He began by recalling how the industry welcomed the net with open arms as a solution to the delivery problems for music - no physical product to manufacture, no delivery to myriad retail outlets and immediacy! But, er… no income stream.

In an attempt to solve that problem, the record companies united to crush the free music rebellion in the form of Napster. Keen described this as their Waterloo because that battle cost them the war when it spawned ‘peer to peer’ data exchange.

His argument arrived at the conclusion that nobody buys music any more - it’s free and freely available, so the only way to make money with music is through live performance. A good example might be the 500 million dollars earned by the Rolling Stones on their last tour, despite their new album bombing!

It seems somehow ironic that electronic music, which replaced live bands two decades ago, now finds itself being devoured by yet more electronic technology.

Andrew’s final point was that attending a live gig is quite different to listening to the music on your iPod, and people don’t mind paying if they’re having a good time…

The afternoon seminar was a somewhat subdued affair after the excitement of the previous afternoon. The audience were out in force, but the atmosphere felt a little negative as those present confessed to the fact that they often downloaded stuff for their own sets or to sample and were attempting to come to terms with having to distribute their own material at severely diminished prices and profit margins.

The morning message had clearly sunk in…

Related posts:

1. Basement Jaxx in Ibiza at the IMS closing party - the video
2. Pacha’s El Hotel Terrace opening party & IMS etc
3. Todays IMS, Ibiza photos
4. Lenny Ibizarre live at Pikes Hotel breakfast club
5. Ocho Restaurant, Ibiza opening party review and photos

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 8:57 pm and is filed under ims, international music summit, lenny ibizarre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.