Rusty on Radio

SanFran MusicTech Summit

Rusty Hodge — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:28:00 +0000

I'll be moderating a panel on new developments in streaming at the SanFran MusicTech Summit this Thursday, May 8th at the Hotel Kabuki. Our panel will start at 1:50pm in the Osaka Room (the downstairs room behind the Spring Room). With me will be:

John Richey - Wireless Music Delivery Expert, Apple
Greg Ogonowski - VP of New Product Development, Orban
Chris Grigg - Head of Standards, Beatnick
Tim Pozar - VP of Engineering, UnitedLayer

We're going to be talking about delivery methods. New codecs. Streaming to mobile devices. Internet radio hardware devices. How to determine if you really need a content delivery network. It should be real fun.

Here's a blurb about the summit:

The SanFran MusicTech Summit will bring together digital thought leaders from the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as from all around the country to the region which currently leads the way in innovating (both socially, and technologically) new ways of interacting with both music, and musicians. We will be working long term to help enable a sustainable, ongoing, Northern California based music and related technology market.

About that preroll

Rusty Hodge — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:53:00 +0000

A couple people wrote in complaining on how we added a "preroll" support SomaFM message to our streams.

That was a mistake; The preroll was only supposed to show up when people were listening via third-party sites which embed our streams on their sites (next to our ads). Unfortunately, I made a mistake in a config file and left off one line... and that caused everyone listening with Windows Media to get the message...

Here's an example of what we were trying to affect. That's one of many sites that embed our streams in their pages, as if they were the source of our content, and then sell ads around our stream!

I tried to make it so that when they connected to our stream, they got the donation pre-roll first. After all we are paying for all the bandwidth and royalties and they're selling ads on our content!!! But rather than just block it, we thought we could make more people aware that we're supported by our listeners.

But I made a type in a config file. Left in an extra "#". And so all Windows Media listeners were getting the preroll. Not just the leachers.

So its fixed now.

If we ever do something like that in the future; it will be done where you only hear the leader/preroll ONCE a day at most, not repeated every time you change channels. But even that would be reserved for something special, we wouldn't do that on a regular basis.

Ibiquity's new plan to save HD Radio...

Rusty Hodge — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:57:00 +0000

Ibiquity briefly discussed their new plan to save HD Radio: government requirements to HD radio technology in all radios sold in the US. Guys, that isn't going to fly. You're not going to get the US Gov to legislate you a monopoly. "But they did it with FM, they forced radio makers to include FM on all their radios, and UHF on all their TVs!" Yes, but HD radio is not a frequency band. HD radio is a proprietary modulation scheme and iBiquity Digital is the sole developer and licenser of HD Radio technology in the U.S.

Of course Ibiquity wants the FCC to make their system mandatory, they'd then get a license fee on every radio sold in the US.

They must be big believers in that old saying, "If you can't innovate, legislate!"

EVDO, Wireless Performance, Radio Remote broadcasts and violating your terms of service

Rusty Hodge — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:07:00 +0000

As I sit here in my Las Vegas Motel Room (the Best Western Mardi Gras, selected only on the basis of price and proximity to the Las Vegas Convention Center, where NAB is taking place) I'm thinking about how bad wireless performance is in general.

Right now, I'm typing over EVDO, because the hotel internet - powered by Lodgenet's StayOnline - is completely dysfunctional ("timeout connecting to network"). This is the same StayOnline that gave us so much trouble at the Marriott in Austin when we were trying to cover SXSW. I guess I should learn never to depend on the in-room wireless internet at most hotels/motels, because if the hotel is busy at all - the network will be unusable.

But, we have an EVDO card! We bring our own bandwidth with us rather than rely on the hotel internet, because that way we can always have internet access over "Sprint's EVDO Rev. A networks with data speeds up to 3.1 Mbps!" Only it doesn't work that way. In fact, these days, we're lucky if we get 500kb down. Here's what I get from the Speakeasy Speed Test:

Not too impressive.

You see the problem happens when there are too many EVDO users. And for Sprint (like Verizon), that means all the people that have their multimedia phones. And there are more and more of those out there all the time, fighting for the finite amount of bandwidth at each cell site.

We really saw this last weekend, when we webcast from Yuri's Night. At first, the webcast worked great. We had plenty of speed. But as all the geeks started arriving for the big party that evening, the network started getting slower and slower. By 8pm, that stream (from Stage 2) rebuffered so much it was pretty much unusable.

We were doing the main stage broadcasts from WayneCo's Bus which is equipped with a Motosat satellite internet uplink, which usually only gets about 256kb max for uplinks, unless you pay a hefty additional fee (which uses multiple transponders). So we didn't have enough bandwidth to stream both from the bus, and had to resort to EVDO for the other stage.

WiFi was also out of the question. With 5 SSIDs visible, the only reliable one was the backhaul network for the ticket booths, and not connected to the internet. The public internet was so overloaded that it often disappeared for minutes at a time. And only once were we able to maintain a connection, and that was before the event started. So we couldn't WiFi between our encoding gear at Stage 2 and the bus.

Everyone is always making promises of the happy wonderful infinite bandwidth wireless future. But it's still a way off. In a crowded situation, WiFi is about as useful as a CB radio, OK for really short distances, but for useful distances (200 feet or more) it falls apart. In this case, we could barely get 40 feet out of the WiFi base station in the bus to a remote machine. Sprint's EVDO works great sometime (4am in the morning in places where there aren't many users, for example) but lately in many different places we've used it, the service is over subscribed and slow, slow, slow.

Verizon's EVDO works just as badly as Sprint.

Wayne de Geere, who graciously provided his bus as our base of operations, has a Verizon EVDO, which worked about as poorly as the Sprint one. We chose the Sprint service because of Verizon's Terms of Service actually prohibit streaming audio and/or video and updating webcams and pretty much anything actually useful you'd do with their service. Sprint's restrictions are pretty much limited to things that violate the law.

Bottom line: we should have brought lots of wire. And run 600 ohm balanced audio from the stages back to where we were. Or installed wired ethernet connections to each stage. Or used something like a Marti SRPT 30 analog remote pickup unit, the technology that terrestrial radio broadcasters have been using for 30+ years.

Low tech, old fashioned, but tried and true.

Last question on the HD radio panel

Rusty Hodge — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:28:00 +0000

I was on a panel about HD radio today, and the last question they asked was: "End it or Mend It?"

I'll spare you the details, but I was the only one that bordered on "End it", I said some days, I think we should end it, other days I think we can mend it.

But afterwards, a couple people came up to me and said, you should have just said, "kill it now!" There is a lot of frustration in the radio industry over this. HD radio isn't taking off. It's being marketed completely wrong. It doesn't solve a problem. It's taking too much of the limited resources that terrestrial stations have.

I guess I should have been meaner and just said, "End it now" after all.

Update: Video of the HD Radio panel here, courtesy of TV Worldwide.

Clear Channel and HD radio leverage iTunes for brand awareness

Rusty Hodge — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:15:00 +0000

Clear Channel adds HD radio tagging for iTunes: "Clear Channel Radio, the largest radio broadcaster in the United States, is now tagging tracks played on its digital radio stations to help listeners buy music through iTunes. The company is leveraging HD radio technology to provide the new service."

What does that mean? In reality, it means if you have a compatible HD Radio with an iPod dock (which there is apparently only one model at the moment), if you are listening to HD radio (not analog FM, but only HD radio), and you hear a track you like, you press a button. Then the next time you dock your iPod, that list of "tagged" songs is transferred to your iPod in a special playlist. Then when you sync to your computer, you'll have a new playlist in iTunes that doesn't have the actual songs, but the names of songs you tagged. At that point, you can buy the songs on iTunes, and then add them to a new playlist, and then load them onto your iPod.

To use internet radio people, this sounds silly. After all, we have a list that shows everything we've played recently, and that list links to where you can buy the tracks or CDs.

What is the real reason for this "breakthrough technology"? Twofold: 1. It brings up the awareness of HD radio to people who are googling for "ipod". 2. It is an attempt to show the music industry that radio does indeed promote records and that's why terrestrial radio should continue to get an exemption from sound recording royalties.

Note to radio manufactures: a feature in a radio that would be really useful? TiVo-like features. The ability to record the end of a show after you've turned off your car; or a timed recording of a show so you always get the full program you want to listen to. Or a button that you press that saves the last 5 minutes of what you've just heard.

Or how about this lower tech solution: press a button and it stores the name of the song you're playing. You could then recall a list of the songs you liked, right there on the display of the radio. No need to dock, sync, undock, sync again, etc.

But by the time you've gone through all the steps it takes to use the "iTunes Tagging" from HD radio, it would probably be faster to just to write down the song name!

Top (terrestrial) Radio Execs start sounding desperate

Rusty Hodge — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:23:00 +0000

Emmis Broadcasting CEO Jeff Smulyan, quoted in Radio Ink, confirms that he just doesn't get it:

'We're not hiding from new technology, we're driving it. One of the hottest-selling features for the iPod is an FM tuner.'

Or maybe it isn't? Here's the top 10 selling iPod accessories from the Apple Store as of 3-April-08, and I don't see the FM tuner anywhere on it. But the more important thing he's missing is that the FM radio is an iPod remote as well. In fact, it's the only remote control for the iPod that Apple sells now (aside from the one that requires a dock).

'...But one of the biggest reasons for MP3 sales over iPods is that tuners are built in.' The iPod is nearly the only digital audio player available that doesn't come with an FM tuner, but Smulyan said said he believes Apple will soon commit to radio tuners in its market-dominating device.

And I believe Google will give me billions of dollars. That doesn't mean it's going to happen, but it's a nice fantasy world to live in.

Terrestrial radio has to keep repeating this, hoping someone will believe that people do listen to commercial terrestrial radio to discover new music. I think they're just saying that to try and stop the tide of the approaching music royalties being pushed by MusicFirst and the RIAA.

Terrestrial radio across the country adds in total less than 30 tracks a week. That's across all commercial formats, all across America. A typical FM station might add a few tracks each week. Look in the music trades- most stations list less than 5 adds a week. I can discover more music than that just by browsing the recommendations on the iTunes store.

'Our goal, in the next five years, is to have a radio tuner in every portable phone, in every PDA sold in the United States,' Smulyan said. 'We want to reach 400 million more devices in the next five years.' "

I guess I should be thankful that he's not saying put a HD radio receiver in every iPod. (Among other things, that would be a huge battery killer as well).

Tell my why would Apple want to add an AM/FM tuner in to all their iPhones and iPods? It's a $49 accessory with a cost of goods of well under $5, so why would they want to give up that margin, especially if Smulyan is correct and it is actually one of the biggest selling accessories for the iPod? They probably make more margin on it than they do on the Shuffle itself.

People are caring less and less about AM/FM radio all the time. Look at the demographics: they're not getting any new customers. And they're losing a lot of their old customers.

Oh, and Radio Execs: it's not all about the technology. It's about providing the content that people want. And terrestrial hasn't been doing that for a long, long time.

The biggest stumbling block to the death of terrestrial radio altogether is current copyright law. The fact that we have to jump through hoops to distribute Podcasts, the facts that there are so many limitations to the Section 114 music licensing, the fact that we have to pay such high royalties: these are what is keeping digital radio from completely obliterating terrestrial radio.

I'll leave you with one last comparison: Shortwave Radio. This used to be huge 40-60 years ago. There were stations all around the world broadcasting over Shortwave to reach global audiences. People would buy special radios just to pickup the BBC in the US. But now no one listens to shortwave, and many shortwave stations are shutting down their shortwave transmitters, going online instead, because no one listens to shortwave over the air anymore.

AM/FM: You're next. What you should focus on is creating incredible programming that you can stream and podcast, and stop worrying about your expensive transmitters.

HD Radio isn't going to save you. Cookie-cutter HD2 channels aren't going to help you. Forcing manufacturers to include AM/FM radios in mobile devices isn't going to help you. You've lost the battle. Move on.

NAB- National Association of Broadcasters Show in Vegas

Rusty Hodge — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:15:00 +0000

I'll be at NAB all day Monday through Wednesday, April 14th-16th. Monday the 14th is the RAIN Internet Radio Summit (and I'm supposed to be on a panel there), the rest of the time I'll be at NAB proper... mostly in the "multimedia hall" but spending a small amount of time in the Radio hall at the LVCC.

88.5 WFDD Launches HD WFDD-3, Featuring Groove Salad

Rusty Hodge — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:14:00 +0000

88.5 WFDD in Winston-Salem, NC has launched their second HD multicast channel, WFDD-3, featuring Groove Salad at night.

So if you live in the Winston-Salem area, and have a HD radio in your car, you can now listen to Groove Salad when you drive around at night.

(We produce a special version of Groove Salad for NPR which is available for NPR member stations to use on their HD Multicast channels.)

Multicasting from the archives

Rusty Hodge — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 06:03:00 +0000

Me, 5-Mar-99: ``Multicasting. It's close. And it is going to revolutionize internet radio.``

Man, I got that one wrong! Multicasting never caught on, not because the technology was bad but because there were never any business reasons for ISPs to enable multicast support in their backbone routers... there was no financial incentive for ISPs to support it; rather it was something that would ultimately cost them money to support it, and there was no way for them to effectively get paid for carrying the multicast traffic on their networks.

There was (and still is) no settlement model, hence no business incentive for multicasting. That's the main reason it never took off.

The Performance Royalty Debate

Rusty Hodge — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 05:55:00 +0000

I'm going to miss this as we'll be setting up for the Bay Area Takeover day party at SXSW, but if you care about the state of radio royalties, go check out this panel.

south by southwest festivals + conferences: "The Performance Royalty Debate
Room 12AB
Thursday, March 13th
11:45 am - 1:00 pm

The United States is the only territory in which terrestrial radio is exempt from paying performance royalties to performers. A coalition of groups is seeking to reverse this anomaly and bring US policy in line with the rest of the world. This legislation faces strong opposition from the broadcast lobby. What are the issues at stake, and what are the chances that Congress will make it law?"

SXSW Panel: using music online

Rusty Hodge — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 05:42:00 +0000

Elise Nordling (IODA and Indie Pop Rocks! on SomaFM) hosted a panel on using music online, and all the steps you have to go through for podcasting; using music synchronized with video; videos and sound recordings of concert footage and of course internet radio royalties. A podcast of the panel will be available next week, but here are some pictures:

Elise Nordling, Brian Zisk, Rich Bengloff, Rusty Hodge, Chris MacDonald"

Rich Bengloff of A2IM and Sound Exchange board member talks with Rusty Hodge from SomaFM"

Rusty Hodge answering questions after the panel"

Here's what we learned from this panel: there is so much confusion in the legal use of using music online. Most people don't even know where to begin. Everyone wants to use music (and license and even pay for it) but it's not being "sold" in a way they can deal with it.

We could have done a whole day on the different sub-topics. People want to know. There are lots of people who want to use music online, and legally can't or don't know how to. So they end up just doing it illegally.

Note to music industry: start selling your product in a way that people want to buy it. Or they won't bother to buy it!

Remote Broadcasting Lessons Learned

Rusty Hodge — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:42:00 +0000

I though it would be great for SomaFM to do a lot of live coverage from SXSW this year- after all, it's one of the biggest music and media festivals in the world. So I had some grand plans, many which have failed so far.

Plan number one:

Live webcams looking at the Six Street club area, as well as looking at the convention center and Brush Square Park. We have the cameras; we secured places to locate them in the Courtyard hotel next to the convention center. Alas, we didn't expect a total failure of the hotel's ethernet network system. And our backup plan didn't expect the hotel's wireless system to become overloaded and crash multiple times a day.

In fact it's a good thing that I have a Sprint EVDO card to get wide area wireless access to the internet, or I'd have no internet connectivity at all. But even Sprint's EVDO network is getting overloaded during peak hours (e.g. 10am-midnight local time). Today, it took about 30 minutes to upload 30 photos, when it should have taken 2-3 minutes. Plan number two: Live "Austin Audio" from above Sixth Street. The street sounds here in Austin have to be heard to be believed. And I though it would be really cool to do a live broadcast of the sound of Austin from the hotel a block off Sixth street. So I brought a couple of portable streaming encoders with us, and some stereo microphones to mount on the balcony outside the hotel room. Except that there were no rooms at the hotel with a balcony, and worse yet, no opening windows in the room! So scratch that plan.

Plan number three:

Quickly edit the podcasts, interviews, and band recordings each night on the laptop and upload before morning. The problem here is that we normally use ProTools for doing all our editing and audio production, but since ProTools won't work on OSX 10.5, I couldn't run it on my laptop. (SomaFM has one dedicated "audio production" machine that runs ProTools and also has the master music library on it; but this machine has to run OSX 10.4.x for ProTools.) I ended up installing a copy of Logic, but since I haven't used it much, there has been a learning curve that I hoped would have been faster. Also, some of the audio processing plugins we use with ProTools weren't licensed for use on a laptop.

Plan number four:

Broadcast the Bay Area Takeover party on Thursday live. OK, this one might still happen but given the way things are going, I'm not expecting it to work. We are still going to try. I used to scoff at the NPR guys when they'd send a crew of 5 people to SXSW to report on it. There are 3 people from SomaFM here, but two of those people (Merin and Elise) are also here on behalf of their day jobs and have to give 2/3rds of their time to that. What we needed was an audio production person to do the first passes at editing all the material we're recording. Maybe next time we'll bring an intern. :-)

In retrospect, here's what I think would have made things work a lot better:

Get a couple EVDO to WiFi+Ethernet routers, so we don't have to rely on internet from the hotels or venues at all. And bring plenty of ethernet cabling, as you may not be able to rely on the wireless networks.

Bring at least one extra laptop for processing pictures and audio.

Bring extra batteries for the digital recorders!

Arrive a couple days early to test everything... arriving 24 hours before the event starts won't give you enough time to get everything ready.

Have one person who's job it to just provide production support - and who doesn't go to the panels and conference itself - someone whose only job is to get the stuff posted and edited.

I wonder how this list will change in the next few days... we're basically winging it at this point.

SXSW blogging has moved....

Rusty Hodge — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:36:00 +0000

SomaFM's SXSW Blog has moved to this new address.

The SXSW goodie bags

Rusty Hodge — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:30:00 +0000

When I arrived tonight for SXSW, I noticed the convention center was buzzing... So I went over to take some pictures - and happened to stumble upon the bag stuffing event. The SXSW bag is somewhat legendary. It includes all sorts of interesting stuff for the people registered for the conference tracks (Interactive, Film, Music). The Film and Music bags were mostly done when I got there, and they were working on the Interactive bags. This picture shows the 12,000 or so bags for music. Here's the assembly line to fill up all the bags, staffed by the volunteers who work the event in exchange for getting a pass to the show (and all the events around town). And this is the nice guy who got to put the SomaFM stickers in the bags: The bag stuffing event is pretty crazy: imagine that there are over 20,000 bags total, each one has probably 50-70 different items from CDs and DVDs to stickers to magazines to simple flyers.

We've arrived in Austin

Rusty Hodge — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:25:00 +0000

We've arrived in Austin for SXSW. The town is already starting to come to life. In this pic, 6th street (the big street for clubs) is running horizontally across the middle of the photo. If all goes well, we'll have the live view shot up tomorrow sometime. The real serious SXSW music action starts Wednesday. but SXSW Interactive starts tomorrow.

Countdown to SXSW (episode 1)

Rusty Hodge — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:44:00 +0000

Here's the first installation in our series about South by Southwest (SXSW), a music festival that takes place in Austin, TX every year. Leading up to SXSW, we'll be highlighting some artists who are performing at the Bay Area Takeover, a showcase of San Francisco Bay Area bands and artists happening at Beauty Bar in Austin, from noon until 6pm on Thursday, March 13th. (We will also be doing a live webcast from that event.)

Countdown to SXSW and the Bay Area Takeover: Meet the Blacks (download mp3)

Here's a little blurb about The Blacks:

The Blacks are a dark and dancy San Francisco three-piece known for their short, blistering stage shows and laser-beam intensity. With a stripped down instrumentation featuring guitar (Luisa Black), drums (Gavin Black) and wild-eyed tambourine player JDK Blacker, The Blacks serve up a hot, electric, garage noir sound that mixes the rawness of The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Stooges with the vocal elegance of Romeo Void. Their debut full-length "Nom de Guerre" will be released July 10 with a British tour following in September 2007.

Upcoming installments will feature "The Union Trade" and "Loquat", as well as interviews with some of the indie labels from San Francisco.

Nine years ago....

Rusty Hodge — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:11:00 +0000

Nine years ago, "Soma FM" appeared in the Shoutcast.com listings; it's when we turned on our first server (with thanks to Sam Habash who setup our first server at Best.com).

Here's how I described our first channel: ``a mix of ambient groove and electronica with obscure 70s music and the occasional drop in``.

Within a year, we'd have 3 channels: Groove Salad, Drone Zone and Secret Agent.

We didn't register SomaFM.com until Feb of 2000, and the website - more like a "web page" - appeared around March of 2000.

Internet Music Radio and Track Plays Chart 4.8 Billion Listening Hours in 2007

Rusty Hodge — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:28:00 +0000

According to AccuStream Research: online music radio (live streaming channels and streamed individual track plays) generated 4.85 billion total listening hours in 2007:

Total listening hours averaged 404.2 million hours per month (excluding downloaded music), compared to a 320.5 million hour average in 2006, including leading music subscription services such as Napster, Yahoo Music and Rhapsody.

In 2007, SomaFM averaged about 5 million listener hours a month. (We've been averaging 6.4 million per month since December 2007.) If those numbers are right, then 1.23% of all net radio listening is to SomaFM!

They go on to say:

The two leading subscription services combined captured approximately 4% of listening hour share in 2007.

The two leading subscription services is apparently includes Napster, Yahoo Music and Rhapsody.

Now I think these numbers are for US only listeners. If that's the case, our US numbers are only about 40% of our total listeners. Still that gives us about half a percent of all US radio listeners, and one can extrapolate that we have about 1/4th the audience that Napster, Yahoo Music and Rhapsody each have.

Frankly, I find that a bit hard to believe, unless you factor in that most people listen to us for much longer times than they listen to the subscription services, or else the subscription services don't have that many customers.

Regardless, it's very exciting to see that we've been able to make such a dent in net radio listening. I hope we can keep playing the music our listeners love, and hope we continue to find new listeners and grow.

via Yahoo Biz

San Francisco Music Tech Summit

Rusty Hodge — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:20:00 +0000

Here's the tentative schedule for the San Francisco Music Tech Summit next week.

If you haven't heard about the summit yet, here's a description from their site:

The SanFran MusicTech Summit will bring together digital thought leaders from the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as from all around the country to the region which currently leads the way in innovating (both socially, and technologically) new ways of interacting with both music, and musicians. We will be working long term to help enable a sustainable, ongoing, Northern California based music and related technology market.

It all happens at the Hotel Kabuki in Japantown, San Francisco, Monday, February 25, 2008. You can get tickets here.

Panel Room Location	Sakura Room (Upstairs)		Spring Room (Downstairs)
8:00 am – 9:00 am	Registration & Breakfast
9:00 am – 9:10 am	Welcome and Opening Remarks by Brian Zisk
9:10 am – 9:20 am		How To Web 2.0 enable your Live Event David Spark, Spark Media Solutions
9:20 am – 10:20 am		R&D: Recommendations & Discovery Mike Troiano, matchmine - CEO Benjamin Massey, Double V3 Jason Herskowitz, Mystrands Paul Lamere, Sun Microsystems Sandy Pearlman, McGill University / Producer	Hot Topics in Music & Technology Law Tony Berman, Esq. - BEAT Law Matt Burrows, Esq. - Senior Counsel, Apple iTunes Division Cyndney Tune, Esq. - Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman Ann Chaitovitz, Esq. – Future of Music Coalition
10:20 am – 10:30 am		Break
10:30 am – 11:30 am		New Technology Presentations Lucas Gonze- Yahoo! Music Player Demo Paul Schreiber – Apple Demo Michael Robertson – New Technology Special Guest – If project launches in time for event!	Issues in Music - Tech Licensing Whitney Broussard, Esq. Selverne, Mandelbaum & Mintz Josh Wattles, Esq. – Bingham McCutchen Collette Vogele, Esq. – Vogele & Associates
11:45 am – 1:00 pm		Lunch

1:00 pm –1:55 pm

Conversation with Ann Chaitovitz

The Future of The Future of Music Coalition

Executive Director, Future of Music Coalition

1:00 – 1:20

Conversation with John Perry Barlow

The History of Everything

Grateful Dead Lyricist, Harvard Fellow, Electronic Frontier Foundation Co-Founder

1:20 – 1:40

The Distribution Revolution

Matt Lazluk, President, Iris Distribution

Raj Singh, ToneThis, Founder

Dave Kostiner, Co-Founder IODA / Davis Shapiro

1:55 pm – 2:45 pm

Streaming: The Future of Radio?

Kurt Hanson Video Presentation 1:40 – 1:55

Rusty Hodge, SomaFM

Bill Goldsmith, Radio Paradise

Tom Conrad, Pandora

Dave Benson, Program Director, KFOG 104.5

Kurt Hanson, RAIN

The Creator's Perspective

Kush Aroura, Innovative Artist & Producer / Surya Dub

Sharky Laguana, Creeper Lagoon / Mixpal / Bandago

Special Guest (To Be Announced)

2:45pm – 3:15

Break

3:15 pm – 4:15 pm

Artists, Copyrights & Technologies

Ted Cohen, TAG Strategic

Samantha Murphy, SmTV

Kevin Arnold, Founder, IODA

Rob Lord, Songbird

Katina Bishop, EFF

Sponsored by Digital Freedom Campaign

Promoting Music in Web 2.0

Brian Dear, Eventful, Founder & Chairman

Andy Gadiel, Jambase, Founder & President

Ariel Hyatt, Cyper PR, Founder

Maureen Herman, Fuzz, Sr. Dir. Business Development

Corey Denis, Rumblefish, Director of Marketing

4:15 pm – 5:00 pm	Social Networking & Music Glenn Otis Brown, YouTube Theda Sandiford, Marketing Guru Ali Partovi, iLike Michael Doernberg, Reverb Nation	Room closed to prepare for cocktail party.
5:00 pm – 5:15 pm	Break
5:15 pm – 6:00 pm	Show Me the Money! Business Models That Work Jeff Daniel, Rock River Music Jordan Ritter, True Believer Steve Weisz, Inticketing, CEO Andrew Stess, Music IP, CEO Michael Robertson, MP3 Tunes. Founder
6:00 cocktail party	Cocktail Party! Live Performance by Samantha Murphy - SMTV

SXSW Panel: The Trials and Tribulations of Using Music Online

Rusty Hodge — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:22:00 +0000

Be sure to come by the panel I'm on at SXSW: The Trials and Tribulations of Using Music Online.

This panel will discuss the usage of music for various online formats, including (but not limited to) podcasting, blog MP3 postings, internet radio, and vlogs (or other video). This session will address the different copyrights, licensing, and royalties associated with different types of use. Learn how and why you need to get copyright and/or licensing clearance for the music you use, and which clearances you need for which uses in order to operate legally. We will also discuss copyright royalties, royalty payments, and royalty collectors, including SoundExchange, ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC.

Should be fun. If you've never met Richard Bengloff (who heads up A2IM and is on the SoundExchange board and will be on this panel), he's a great guy who is amazingly knowledgeable about the music business, and genuinely cares about artists and content creators. Rich and I don't always agree, but I learn something every time I talk to him.

I can't wait. The other folks on the panel are all great as well (Brian Zisk and Chris MacDonald) as well as our moderator Elise Nordling (who besides programming and hosting Indie Pop Rocks works for IODA, an online music licensing company).

Room 10
Tuesday, March 11th
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
South by Southwest, Austin, TX

SXSW "Scene"

Rusty Hodge — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:23:00 +0000

The Friday night Sixth Street scene in Austin, Tx, during South by Southwest last year. Just so you can get an idea of what it will be like.

Click To Play

Bay Area Takeover at SXSW

Rusty Hodge — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:51:00 +0000

Going to be at SXSW? Be sure to come to the Bay Area Takeover Party which is being sponsored by SomaFM and other San Francisco bay area friends showcasing the Bay Area's best independent record labels.

Thursday, March 13th, 2008, from 12-6pm
Beauty Bar,
Austin, Texas

RSVP Here!

These events can be super crowded, so RSVP to make sure you're on the priority admission list.

Elise and I will be handing out SomaFM stickers and giving away some Tshirts, so keep an eye out for us.

Performances by:

Two Gallants, Film School, Scissors for Lefty, Von Iva, Loquat, 60 Watt Kid, The Blacks, Social Studies, Birds and Batteries, The Union Trade, Scrabbel, Music For Animals, Form and Fate, D.W. Holiday, Aim Low Kid, DJ Omar (Popscene)

Complete Bay Area Takeover performance schedule

Band	Start Time	Stage
Aim Low Kid	12:00	Outdoor Stage
Form and Fate	12:15	Indoor Stage
D.W. Holiday	12:45	Outdoor Stage
Social Studies	1:00	Indoor Stage
Birds and Batteries	1:30	Outdoor Stage
The Union Trade	1:45	Indoor Stage
Film School	2:15	Outdoor Stage
Music For Animals	2:30	Indoor Stage
60 Watt Kid	3:15	Indoor Stage
Scrabbel	3:30	Outdoor Stage
The Blacks	4:00	Indoor Stage
Loquat	4:15	Outdoor Stage
Von Iva	4:45	Indoor Stage
Scissors for Lefty	5:00	Outdoor Stage
Two Gallants	5:30	Indoor Stage

Event Sponsors

CRB Update

Rusty Hodge — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:44:00 +0000

Just a quick update on the CRB / Royalty issue:

SoundExchange and small (and large) broadcasters continue to hold discussions on the royalty situation. SoundExchange has made an offer to small webcasters that has some problems, but the base rate is acceptable. (What's not acceptable is the proposed limitations on listeners and revenue caps).

We've verbally agreed to continue paying at the 2006 rates while the discussions continue. I don't think SoundExchange wants to shut down most webcasters; and I've been told by several SoundExchange board members that they think highly of what SomaFM is doing.

One other thing: it looks like the Copyright Act is getting a substantial re-write due around 2010 and will treat analog and digital systems the same. We learned this meeting with members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees this summer.

So that's it: not much of an update, but that's what we know now.

EMI scraps about 20 per cent of CDs produced, at an annual cost of £25m

Rusty Hodge — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:37:00 +0000

Financial Times has a crazy factoid in this article about revamping EMI:

The record business - in which 85 per cent of artists are lossmaking and EMI pays £25m a year to scrap unsold CDs - "is stuck with a model designed for a world that has changed and gone forever", he says.

Good to know that they're realizing that digital distribution is going reduce waste and expenses like this.