Rekap Hari Pertama Konferensi All That Matters 2012

Widi Asmoro adalah Entertainment Services Manager Nokia Indonesia, yang tahun ini kembali menghadiri konferensi All That Matters di Singapura, mewakili Nokia sebagai salah satu sponsor acara. Tulisan ini pertama kali terbit di blog pribadinya.

Tahun ini saya mendapat kesempatan untuk kembali mengikuti ajang diskusi musik dan teknologi skala Asia, Digital Matters & Music Matters. Seperti tahun lalu, ajang ini kembali diselenggarakan di Ritz Carlton Millenia Singapore sepanjang empat hari dari tanggal 22 – 25 Mei 2012. Meski skala Asia, pembicaranya adalah kaliber dunia. Sebutlah yang hadir di hari pertama ada Ralph Simon, guru mobile content entertainment, Michael Schneider, jagonya aplikasi mobile yang pernah membuat aplikasi untuk Lady Gaga dan Katy Perry, dan juga Ted Machover, dosen yang juga profesor di MIT Lab.

Hari ini dibuka dengan tiga workshop; Gaming Matters, Digital Publishing Matters, dan Video Matters, yang berlangsung pada saat bersamaan sehingga peserta harus memilih salah satu dari materi tersebut untuk diikuti. Saya ikut Video Matters. Siangnya setelah lunch seremoni pembukaan dilakukan oleh Presiden Digital & Music Matters, Jasper Donat dan lanjut dengan beberapa panel diskusi seperti digital entertainment, tantangan publisher untuk me-monetize content digital dan juga memilih platform yang tepat untuk membuat apps.

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[Music Monday] Why Music Download Stores Won’t Work In Indonesia

The more I think of it, the more I think that many music services – at least in Indonesia – are going about it the wrong way. Since 2008, Indonesia has had a number of online music download stores. Various business models were tried – an ISP tried ISP billing, telcos tried charging via SMS, and some others even had a choice of payment systems; either through SMS or electronic voucher.

Investments in (quite expensive) hosting and delivery systems were made, in an attempt to replicate what seemed to work overseas – the music download. Essentially, users will pay for a song that they want, and only the song that they want, and download it to their choice device. Most services were required to implement digital rights management (DRM) as a way to circumvent unauthorized copying, and the files themselves were usually confined to the device that downloaded the file.

Needless to say, it didn’t work. It has never delivered the results that the music industry wants, that’s for sure.

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[Music Monday] Wait, You Can Make Money For Music From The Internet?

The [recorded] music industry has been in very dark days lately, especially in Indonesia – I’ve frequently written about the current situation so I won’t revisit it. But the breakdown is this: there is currently no real way the [recorded] music industry can make money from their work. CD sales are diminishing, music through mobile is going through a crisis, and there’s not really an online music store worth mentioning for the local market. But this does not mean that the Internet cannot make money for you, the musician or music label.

I’ll admittedly be broad about this – I won’t say there are a million ways to make money for music directly from the Internet, but there are definitely a lot of ways to make sure the Internet works for you and gets you that much-needed money. Music may be virtually free for most music listeners, but it doesn’t mean making the music you want does not cost money. Even downloading Audacity or Gamelan will take some money off your Internet bill.

Trying to pitch to a music magazine to cover your band may not cost money but bringing along coffee for the journalists goes a long way. And so on. Even if you’re a self-proclaimed indie artist that does not want to spend money, eventually you’d need money for food, right?

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[Music Monday] Taking OpenEMI’s Torch And Taking It Further

On April 22-24, 2012, a conference aptly named Rethink Music was organized by the Berklee College of Music in Boston. They basically brought together professionals from all over the music industry – from media, from the music labels, from artist management, and even from technology companies like Youtube, Rhapsody and Echo Nest (you can look at the whole speaker roster here). But one of the most interesting things announced and discussed at Rethink Music, in my opinion, is OpenEMI.

The basic concept of OpenEMI is to provide access to startups who want to create music applications and services based on EMI’s music library – and if the app is interesting enough, EMI may partner with the startup to develop it further. You can either request for a access to a wide range of songs, or request deeper access to single artists with more audio, video and other content. This developer-friendly system is supported by Echo Nest, the company that also has a wider-range API for music applications that power services like Spotify’s Radio feature.

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[Music Monday] Music Labels, Make Something Simple And Put It On The Web!

As covered by DailySocial a few days ago, Touchten launched a music app in collaboration with Aquarius Musikindo, one of the ‘major independent’ labels (this is the term they use in the industry to note a large music label not affiliated with the Big Four: Sony, Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI). This move deserves applause as it shows that the music labels are willing to try out untested new waters, instead of trying to find a new medium to repeat the old business model of record music and profit by amount of sold copies.

I mean, if we’re going to move on from the issue if piracy, we might as well try something new. The increasing trend of concerts being a major income contributor for musicians has emphasized that the recorded music itself, obtained legally or illegally, is a way to sell a music experience, which in some cases in better enjoyed live.

I think if you checked each person who came to a Katy Perry concert, not all would have bought the original CD – but they definitely have paid full price to buy the concert tickets. Why? Because the concert is an irreplaceable experience, with different meaning to different people. Just like the songs themselves.

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TouchJam, A Collaboration of Game Developer and Music Industry

Working with music label Aquarius Musikindo, Touchten presents Touchjam, a music-based gaming platform dedicated to all Indonesian music lovers. J-Rocks is the first musician selected to fill this Guitar Hero type of game.

The collaboration between game developer and musician has previously been done by KotaGames and Slank through SuperSlank game. In contrast to SuperSlank, TouchJam players don’t just play the game but they can also listen to their favorite artist’s songs. Players will be accompanied by songs selected by pressing keyboard buttons. The better the player plays, then selected song will be more enjoyable.

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[Music Monday] Mengapa Kita Perlu Peduli dengan Ringback Tones

Bagi sebagian orang di Indonesia, ringback tone (RBT) menjadi sebuah isu kontroversial; membuat marah banyak orang dan memisahkan industri terkait hampir dalam situasi pro – kontra. Tetapi sebelumnya, RBT booming dan menjadi tumpuan dari industri musik (masih sampai sekarang, tergantung Anda bertanya pada siapa). Dan tidak hanya industri musik, pertumbuhan dari pasar RBT menjadikan indikasi pertama bahwa Indonesia, sebagai pasar konten digital, adalah berbeda dengan negara lain dan digerakan oleh aturan yang berbeda.

Saya telah menuliskan tentang bagaimana startup di segmen musik telah ada kurang lebih sejak 6-7 tahun ke belakang, dan saya merasa tulisan ini pas sebagai bagian dari seri yang mendikusikan ringback tone (RBT). RBT menjadi populer di Korea untuk mengantikan nada dering yang membosankan ketika Anda menunggu telepon Anda diangkat, RBT (dikenal juga sebagai ‘color ringback tones’, karena nada ini menambahkan ‘warna’ pada nada sambung Anda), teknologi tersebut akhirnya diterapkan di Indonesia pada tahun 2004 ketika Indosat dan Telkomsel mulai membangun layanan RBT mereka dan menawarkannya pada publik pada tahun yang sama. Perusahaan telekomunikasi mendekati label musik untuk memelihara agar layanan ini tetap menarik; negosiasi mengambil tempat dan kesepakatan bisnis tercipta dimana akhirnya mendefinisikan model bisnis untuk RBT di seluruh industri ke depan.

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[Music Monday] Why You Should Care About Ringback Tones

For many in Indonesia, the ringback tone is somewhat of a controversial issue; drawing the ire of many, and polarizing related industries into an almost “for-and-against” situation. But not too long ago, ringbacktones were the craze of the moment and the darling of the music industry (and remains the darling of the music industry, depending on who you ask). And not only the music industry – the soaring growth of the ringbacktone market was one of the first indications that Indonesia, as a digital content market, is simply different from other countries and plays by different rules.

I have been writing about how music startups have actually been around in Indonesia for the past 6-7 years or so, and I felt it fitting to dedicate the last post in the series to discuss the ringback tone. Popularized in Korea to replace that boring connecting tone when you wait for the person on the other end to pick up your call, ringback tones (also known as ‘color ringback tones’, as they added ‘color’ to your ringback tone), the technology was imported into Indonesia in 2004 when both Indosat and Telkomsel started building their ringback tone services and offered them to the public later that year. The telecommunication companies approached the music labels to obtain attractive content for these services; negotiations took place, and business deals were agreed which were to define the business model for ringback tones across the industry.

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[Music Monday] Forgetting About Digital Piracy

It all started with a chat. I came late, so I didn’t get to see this presentation by Robin, but the blog post covers it pretty much (it’s a good read, so if you haven’t read it, read it now!). Robin basically says that the digital era is a major shift in many things and should not be viewed just as a new ‘channel’, but also a new way of thinking. Taking a different approach, so to speak. I’ve written about this several times, even here on Dailysocial, and I generally believe that the audience has changed. Not only because of things going digital, but a true paradigm shift in the industry itself. The changes happened in large part due to the digital, unlimited copying nature of the Internet, but it impacted non-Internet industries as well.

But let’s step back a bit and look what a business is. Many businesses basically take one thing, a product or a service, and try to sell it as many times as they can, with minimum effort in modifying the product. At some point the money they invested in making the product or service can be recouped and they can make a profit. The recorded music business, in essence, is not selling music, but selling the music product; i.e. CDs, cassettes, vinyls. Produce and record once, and essentially sell copies of that recording. Even music copyright is constructed around this. The payment of royalties is based on the amount of copies sold. Of course, any copy obtained without any payment of royalties, is viewed as a copyright infringement. The act itself, whether or not for commercial gain, is known as piracy.

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GeekFest 2012 Pushes Collaboration Between Communities

GeekFest 2012 (GeekFestID 2012) have been held on Saturday and Sunday, March 31 – April 1, 2012. The event, organized by Fowab and KibarKreasi, was held at Sasana Ganesha (Sabuga) Bandung, inviting more than 20 participants from various communities.

GeekFest itself, inspired by SXSW, as mentioned in the press release some time ago, is intended to collaborate variety of existing communities such as music, video, multimedia, information technology and gaming communities. The event was devided to several programs, such as main program, mini stage and exhibition from several communities. Aside from the already mentioned above, there are also comic, art graffiti and other communities.

Although not every community gave the work of collaboration, the highlight of the main event is about collaboration. In addition to collaboration in the form of work, collaboration also comes with a gathering of several communities in one event.

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