Music Machinery

I took a tour through the many music 2.0 related panels for SXSW 2010.  Here’s my short list of favorites.

• Music Discovery Redux – Controlled Chaos – Continuing the fun debate from SXSW 2009 about music discovery – humans vs. machines, metrics
• Screw Music and Mobiles, I have my iPod! – Petar Djekic from Mufin looks at the mobile music business
• Practical Uses for Music Industry Technical Standards – Discussion of how OEM’s, music services, social networks, retailers are working together to create monetizable music services in the cloud
• Visual Music and Realtime Interactive Performance –  This panel explores how to engage audiences, foster collaboration, remix, mashup, create opportunities for dynamic improvisation, and prepare for tomorrow’s advances in live performance
• Online Tastemakers: Death or Rebirth of Music Curation – . A new breed of tastemakers are cropping up with innovative twists. Are they helping or hurting? Is online music curation dying or evolving?
• Set Your Data Free – a panel on copyrights and licenses
• Realtime Social Discovery – Using people to Find Content – Instead of using tags, genres or other slices, instead allow users to interact with your content, let users form relationships (the social graph) and then see their friend’s interactions with your site.
• The State of Music Blogs in 2010 – Just how important are music blogs to the industry today, is that prominence growing or fading, and how will new technologies and strategies impact the marketing mix in the coming year?
• Bands, Fans and Brands – Learning from past music industry hits and misses, this panel will evaluate the ways music and technology intersects, delighting fans while challenging labels.
• 10 Cool Audacity Tricks You (probably) Didn’t Know – the title says it all
• Remixing for the Masses – My totally self-serving recommendation.  In this panel we show how automatic music analysis and remix technology is making it easier for anyone to create their own music remixes, from simple alterations like adding more cowbell to your favorite song to complex manipulations that would be worthy of the next ‘Grey Album’.

The best way to make sure that a cool panel will be held is to go and vote for it.