Midem–outside the entrance. |
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I arrived in Cannes about an hour ago after spending the past couple of days in Nice for the winter meeting of the International Association of Music Information Centres. There was barely any time to unpack my luggage at the hotel and head over to the Palais des Festivals: panel sessions at MIDEM, the world’s largest trade fair for music, have already begun. MIDEM is a hub for meetings between music industry professionals from around the world: record company execs, concert promoters, technology developers, etc. There are receptions and performance showcases presumably around the clock. I plan to get little sleep while I am here. Yet despite MIDEM’s significance, it is a mystery to most composers, which is why I am here. I’m not sure I’ll be able to figure it out completely during my first-ever time here, but I’ve already started plunging in.
MIDEM panel with screen full of live tweets (including an @fjoteri tweet) |
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I heard a panel with Vodaphone’s Lee Epting and Foursquare’s co-founder Naveen Selvadurai. Epting talked about needing to provide content for both mobile and desktop platforms going forward but acknowledged that subscription models are now preferable to the a la carte paradigm, which of course has significant consequences to those of us who create individual musical works. This is not really earth shattering news at this point, but having it be the first thing I walked in on here is something of a reality check, I suppose. Selvadurai talked about how Foursquare has transformed people’s lunch habits in New York City by offering pizza badges to folks who visit ten different pizzerias (which was somewhat surreal to hear about in France). But how can we use Foursquare’s badge system to increase people’s awareness of new and unusual music that is off the beaten path?
Francis Gurry of WIPO |
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Perhaps most interesting thus far, however, was the keynote address by Francis Gurry, the director general of WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, who used his time at the podium to advocate for an authoritative international music registry that would be a neutral platform for metadata on who holds rights for every piece of music in the world. While he admitted that such a database would be technologically much easier to make happen than it would be politically, he believes that such a database would be of immense value to composers, publishers, promoters, performers, and listeners alike–in fact, everyone. But how long will it take to get the whole world to cooperate on such a project?
Stay tuned for regular updates from MIDEM throughout the week on these pages, as well as periodic tweets from @FJOteri and others by searching #MIDEM.
