Hello everyone, just wanted to let you know that I will now be located at www.siliconcalley.com. I’ve been working on the site for awhile, I wanted to do it myself. The reason it took so long was because I had to learn how LOL. Hey, I did say this blog was about me learning. So, if you subscribe, make sure you re-subscribe there. I also added some new features, and will be writing more often. Hope to see ya there!
I thought I would tell you LA entrepreneurs about a great opportunity in Silicon Valley. On Techcrunch, I saw a post about Startup Camp, so I thought I would share it.
Startup Camp is a two-day event that occurs on July 10-11 in Silicon Valley, before Foo Camp (July 11-12). Startup Camp is hosted by O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and will have room for 6-8 startups. It will focus on fundraising, PR, working with investors, and viral marketing. Speakers will include:
Michael Arrington: founder of TechCrunch; co-founder of Achex, Zip.ca and Pool.com
Caterina Fake (tentative): co-founder of Flickr
Mark Fletcher: founder of Bloglines and ONElist
Marc Hedlund: co-founder of Popular Power and Wesabe
Howard Morgan: founding investor of Idealab; partner at First Round Capital
Evan Williams: co-founder of Pyra Labs (blogger.com), Odeo, Obvious Corp and Twitter
It will be a great weekend, and you should definitely apply. If you’d like help with the application, I will help you, but you have to take me as your +1. We need to show Silicon Valley its not all beaches and mixers down here! We can work too. If you’d like to apply on your own, apply here by June 6. Good luck!
xoxo,
SiliconCalley
In an article in Portfolio Magazine, Kevin Maney says
“This flurry of experiments is painful but probably necessary, like a teenager’s goth phase. The endgame is clear, however. Artists will give away recorded music and consider it promotional, just like music videos.”
Such a perfect description. The music industry is clearly floundering. Within the past year, huge steps forward have been made. Pirated music has been plaguing the music industry for years now, and recently some solutions have been presented. Madonna, U2, and Jay-Z have signed huge deals with Live Nation. Radiohead released their album “In Rainbows” to their fans for free, and asked for donations. Imeem has been making deals with record labels to stream their artists’ songs for free, for a share in the ad revenue. All these recent happenings are leading the demise of $1 iTunes tracks, and $20 CDs.
The solution that most people are hoping for is using recorded music to be used as strictly promotional materials, and to make the money back solely on nonreproducible aspects of the business. For example: merchandise, licensing, concerts, and appearances. But there are several problems with this model. One, is that how do writers, producers, engineers, and mixers make money? They usually get percentages, or points, on each album sold. The second, is what will happen to newer artists who can’t charge $120 per ticket or expect a crowd of 5,000? Which brings me to my point.
MyAWOL.com is attempting a way out. MyAWOL (Artists With Out Labels), is an emerging LA startup, whose aim is to revolutionize the music industry for unsigned bands. Backed by members of the English rock band Genesis (one of the 30 highest-selling recording artists of all time), and run by a winning team comprised of heavy hitters in the media industry, this company may have what it takes to show us the way. The management team is headed up by CEO and founder, Andrew Bentley, the former CEO of EMI Asia Pacific, CFO of EMI International and Virgin Music Group. Rounding out the management team is Cat Guirado-Cheadle (Britith model/actress), Vlad Lodzinski (media executive with experience in large conglomerates, i.e. MTV and UPC), and Jarrell Pair (an advanced media producer and researcher, with a background in augmented reality, virtual environments, 3-D audio, and electronic music).
MyAWOL a 360 degree music resource that brings artists, venues, fans, and industry insiders together in a virtual community, catering to their individual needs appropriately. They are trying to bring fairness back to the artist and integrity to the way deals are structured. MyAWOL claims to provide artists with a set of tools to manage their career, while also giving them access to new fans through video content, live gigs, radio stations, and festivals. They also offer venues with tools to find new talent, organizing shows, and subsequently promoting them. MyAWOL also has areas for music industry insiders to find new talent and business contacts, and they offer a large database of music industry contacts for artists and industry people alike. Of course, there will be a section for music fans to find new artists and shows. They also host a bi-weekly insiders podcast, featuring some major industry heavyweights.
While all I can do is speculate on the specific features, I do find something in particular extremely interesting. Jarrell Pair, CTO of MyAWOL, collaborated with Duran Duran and the University of Southern California to produce the world’s first immersive video and audio recording of a live rock concert. He also worked with Duran Duran in developing the first use of augmented reality technology in a live concert tour. Pretty interesting, eh?
MyAWOL is currently still in development and is slated to be starting closed beta in August 2008.
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