Get down to the essence of an idea with mentor Matthew Hawn at Sounds Digital London 2010. From journalist to record label executive, Matthew has a wealth of experience to share. He is feeling optimistic about the changes in the music industry and explores the simple things that record labels should be doing to take advantage of the changing times and add value to their artists and customers.
1. What is your history within digital music?
I started as a journalist in San Francisco in the early 90s, covering media and technology but in particular digital music. I worked for TV and magazines but eventually I moved into the record labels, first working for Universal Music in 1999 and then Sony Music starting in 2002. I helped establish the ecosystem that digitized and developed their assets for digital products and services. Lately, I’m working much more closely with product managers and international marketing teams to develop ‘direct-to-fan’ experiences, products and services that support artists and Sony Music’s great catalogue.
2. What’s exciting you in the digital music space right now?
I know that a lot of record label types are pre-occupied by how bad it is getting with the decline in sales but I’m really positive. While sales of music have gone down, the growth of music usage and discovery continues to grow at amazing rates. The breadth and depth of music discovery and acquisition is staggering right now and I think if we’re smart, we’ll realized that our new business is not only about selling music but that it starts with discovery and continues on with people using and sharing our products in a way where everyone gets paid.
If we reinvent ourselves to address that larger opportunity and start making new products and services that people want to pay for, what Kevin Kelly described as ‘better than free’ — the opportunities are fantastic. It’s a much bigger opportunity than the world of recorded music sales. This is a critical time for labels to reinvent themselves and to shift their investments in artists to these new opportunities. Very few other parts of the music business are in the position that we are. Shame on us if we can’t figure out how to rise up out of the ashes of the old record business .
3.What will be the focus of your Key Note presentation at Sounds Digital in London this year?
I’m going to talk about three deceptively simple things that labels should be doing to bring more value to their artists and to fans. The quality of fan-based relationships with artists and their music needs to go up and record labels must provide the platform for that change if they are to remain relevant. We can do better than we’re doing today.
4. What experiences and skills will you be sharing with your ‘Lab’ mentoring projects at Sounds Digital?
As a former journalist, I spend a lot of time trying to distill ideas down to their essence. This has been particularly useful as I work internationally. You have to design and build your products globally from their origin, gone are the days that you launch something in one country and then adapt it one market at a time, and that means you need to have simple, easy-to-understand consumer propositions that translate to global audiences. I hope I can help the teams I work with to focus their efforts on simple concepts that you can take to market quickly and develop over time. Iteration and evolution are the models here.
5. Favourite website or online experience that not enough people know about?
I love the Audio Scrobbler tool from Last.fm. I use it with iTunes and with Spotify to track what I play on my multiple iPods and on my multiple computers. Having a history or a ‘personal chart’ of what I’ve played and being able to see what my friends have played is a great source of music recommendations. I have services that post these stats and charts to my Tumblr blog, to Twitter and to Facebook. I wish more people did this so I could learn more about them and their music tastes.
Read Matthew’s full bio here.
Tags: digital, matthew hawn, sony
