Music is a Platform

Hank Barry starts out his panel with an impassioned plea to contact your legislative representatives to fight the INDUCE act, which he says is moving forward in private negotiations under the leadership of Senator Hatch.

Panelists inlude Mike Caren of Atlantic Records, Eddy Cue of Apple, Danger Mouse - the "hottest hip-hop producer in the world", Michael Weiss of Morpheus

Mike -- my job is to find new music and new talent, and then developoing that talent. The Internet is now part of everything I do. I have to look in ever nook and crany which used to be scouts and local shows but is now also reading blogs and looking online for favorite play lists and individual reviews. On the developing talent side, we are recording almost 100% directly to digital which reduces costs and facilitates distributed collaboration.

Hank - can you give me an example of a band that has broken out on the Internet?

Mike - not a perfect example. The Internet has been useful as an indicator of say that a video will be a hit video. But I can't say that there was one artist that has truly been an Internet artist.

Eddy - I think this is going to happen in the next year, where there will be an artist that really emerges from the Internet. We have more and more artists that have direct deals with iTunes.

Danger Mouse - Talks about how he created the "Grey Album" background from his web site --

Danger Mouse raised the bar on hip hop experimentalism by dropping the infamous Grey Album, which used the full vocal content of Jay-Z's Black Album, recorded over new beats and production created using the Beatles White Album as it';s sole source material. The resulting record is a unique hybrid of work, a re-interpretation being touted as the one of greatest remix albums of all time. With one million downloads in a week and ensuing battle between major record companies, the media, Internet and copyright advocates, the release of the Grey Album has been nothing less than a watershed moment for music.

Michael - Neonet is the next generation of peer to peer search technology which is going to drive people crazy in the intellectual property business.

Interesting, though wandering conversation about intellectual property rights, the use of the Internet to promote vs. steal music... But nothing really new here.