Social Fresh Nashville: We’re Talking Music With Marketers

2010 is already off to a busy start here, and we’re excited to continue the momentum by speaking at Social Fresh Nasville, the second in a new series of social media conferences for marketers.

Sang Kim, our CEO, spoke last fall at the inaugural Charlotte Social Fresh event, which was attended by over 200 marketing professionals from companies including Walmart, Best Buy, Lowe’s, Duke Energy, Bank of America, Family Dollar, Ruby Tuesday, IBM, Rubbermaid, and the Humane Society.  We were thrilled to be invited to speak at both Nashville and Tampa, and have been monitoring the buzz about the upcoming events on Twitter, the Social Fresh Community and through our RSS feeds ever since.

Nashville’s complete lineup can be found here, and we’re speaking as part of the “Social Media in the Music Industry” panel in the 10:15-11:00am slot.

Our fellow panelists include Tessa Horehled, Senior Strategist – Social Media at THINK Interactive, Ben Bennett, Online Promotions and Mobile Marketing Manager at the Country Music Association (CMA) and Justin McIntosh, Manager of Web Services and Marketing at Big Machine Records.

In advance of the panel, here are some interesting music-related statistics (full report):

• Digital platforms now account for around 20% of recorded music sales, up from 15% in 2007
• Single track downloads, up 24% in 2008 to 1.4 billion units globally, continue to drive the online market, but digital albums are also growing steadily (up 37%).

Hypebot recently posted a short article about George Howard, taken from his 9GiantSteps blog.

“The first moment of leveling occurred with the advent of ProTools. No longer did one need to collateralize their creativity in exchange for funds from a record label to create a competitive recording.

The second moment of leveling arose via firms like TuneCore. No longer did one have to be signed to a label to have distribution.

The third moment of leveling revolved around the emergence of social media. While not completely obviating the need for traditional promotion, the rise of social media certainly shifted the power away from people like publicists and into the hands of the creator.We now arrive at a place where musicians/artists are comparable to chefs. All chefs, within reason, have access to the same ingredients. Certainly, geography plays a role for access to ingredients, in a similar manner as geography plays a role for musicians/artists – if you don’t like your geography/feel it’s a competitive disadvantage, move.”

For further thought on the subject, check out Ian Rogers, CEO of Topspin Media being interviewed by Wired.  It’s a long(ish) video, but worth the watch.

NARM 2009 Keynote Interview With Ian Rogers from NARM on Vimeo.

We’ll be keeping these points in mind as we head to Nashville, and are looking forward to discussing how social media has/is impacting the music industry on Monday with our fellow panelists.

What do you think?

We’d love to hear your questions, and you can either leave them in the comments or submit them directly to the panelists on the Social Fresh Community.