[Web 2.0 Summit] Yesterday, I attended the conversation on the future of music with Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace, Edgar Bronfman Jr, CEO of Warner Music Group and John Battelle, founder of Federated Media and co-host of the Web 2.0 Summit.
Chris told John that he is still interviewing people to lead MySpace Music and that it is difficult to find the right person for the job. He stated that MySpace is not a competitor of iTunes because it is a place to discover music and be part of a community while the Apple online store is just a distribution platform. In addition, DeWolfe said that his company wanted to pay music companies and artists and give the public access to music so people are not tempted “to steal it”. Since the launch of MySpace Music last month, 80 million playlists have been created, billion of streams have been served and 5 million bands have registered.
Then John asked if at some point MySpace would create a music device, and Chris answered that the next step is to create discovery tools online and offline (like events). When John insisted specifically about a device, Chris hinted that it could be a possibility.
After making the audience laugh about the hypothetical merge of Apple and Facebook, John Battelle stated that Facebook eclipsed MySpace in April 2008. “Incorrect” replied Chris DeWolfe. MySpace has still more traffic than Facebook in the US with 75 million unique visitors vs 40 million for Facebook (ComScore), and 70% of Facebook users have a MySpace account – (Edito’rs note) Well ok, Chris, but Facebook is beating your site Worldwide, read this article on CNet – Chris stated that his company has created a “real business” with a 17% revenue growth and a strong sales infrastructure of about 550 people. – Is this a response to the silence of Mark Zuckerberg earlier at the Summit when he was grilled by Battelle about his monetization?
MySpace’s CEO is not worried about a potential Facebook Music because its rival does not have the business model and the critical mass (5 million bands) to build it from scratch. He compared Facebook as a good address book and described MySpace as a self-expression and discovery tool to find friends and culture.During this conversation, Edgar Bronfman gave his insight mostly about the changing music business and the impact on his industry. Focusing on innovation is the right approach to monetize the music. Digital music represents 20% of Warner’s revenues, before it was only 6 or 7 %. Battelle asked him for his honest opinion about Apple, he said that “Apple did an amazing job”, they came with an incredibly sexy device and no one did this before and no one did better since. He stated that in a perfect world, he would like to have DRM, but as media became social media, this world does not exist. According to Bronfman, having people pay each time they want to use a song on a specific platform does not make any sense, the industry needs to find a way to avoid this to build a better monetization model.
I was at the session and so was Dean Takahashi. Read more on his article on Venture Beat
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