Music Industry optimistic again

MLOVE & Reeperbahn Festival present a brand new event format:

Mobile x Music, September 20, 2012, Hamburg

Holger Christoph, Vice President Digital Sales, Universal Music GmbH

MLOVE: Do you feel social media and other music sharing tools help to promote an artist’s success?

Holger Christoph: Social Media is not so much about awareness or breaking artists but about relationship management with the fans. It plays a very important role in todays marketing and promotion mix.

MLOVE: How important are cooperations between artists, labels, marketers, brands in the 21st century?

Holger Christoph: Brands profit from the image transfer while artists can profit from the media power of such coops. If it fits it can be a great tool and business too.

More choices do not always mean more freedom.

MLOVE: Does Mobile technology give artists more independence?

Holger Christoph: First of all I would say that it gets increasingly difficult to manage all channels and media types. Artists want to create so they need partners like us to help them to focus on what they love most and we take care about the business and marketing parts.

MLOVE: In your opinion, what is the main source of income for artists today?

Holger Christoph: It is a split of a variety of income sources: recorded, publishing, live, merch, performance, sponsorships, synch, etc.. The main source can be very different depending on the artist, genre and level of the artist’s career.

Future

MLOVE: What is your vision for the Future of the Music Industry?

Holger Christoph: I think we have all the reasons to finally be optimistic again because we have established a healthy legal music landscape with services which are or soon will be better than piracy and with customers who are willing to pay. The whole ecosystem with services and connected devices holds so much opportunities for our future. Imagine what will happen if all services are on the TV and in the car!

I think we have all the reasons to finally be optimistic again

MLOVE: Is there any kind of Mobile service you think should be used more popularly in the music industry?

Holger Christoph: Personally I am a big fan of last.fm who could have been in a spotify like position but took a different path after CBS acquired them a couple of years ago. I also love swarm.fm which is a spotify app and uses last.fm and echonest metadata.

Streaming, Mobile Radio

MLOVE: How is your music library or collection typically stored, displayed or shared?

Holger Christoph: I have a couple of thousand CDs, 25k MP3 files stored in iTunes and backed up on an external hard disk, with iTunes Match and Carbonite but most of the times I stream from spotify via my Sonos. I do rate a lot and build playlists like the Digster “Best Songs of 2012” playlist. I also try to scrobble everything to get the best possible recommendations back.

MLOVE: Do you watch music videos? Have your music video preferences changed from back in the days when they were available on MTV to currently, where we find video clips mostly on platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, Tape, etc?

Holger Christoph: Sometimes but as a consumer I don’t like the ads. It is a commercial necessity and we generate good revenues but there must be more creative ways to monetize. Tape.tv and VEVO are innovators in this field.

There must be more creative ways to monetize

MLOVE: How do you consume music from your mobile device? Buying, listening to, recommending through social media platforms…

Holger Christoph: I listen to spotify and use my mobile as a controller for sonos while at home.