Cantora’s Nick Panama Reacts to My Billboard Article ... and Shares My Overall Optimism for the Music Industry

I recently wrote a feature article in Billboard magazine laying out my overall bullishness on the music industry in this brave new digital world.  Yes, ’tis true that technology has disrupted the music industry’s “traditional” business model.  But, that same disruptive technology has opened up an even more potentially lucrative world with multi-pronged revenue streams under a newly-enabled “community”-based business model.  In other words, MORE -- not less -- opportunities exist for more musicians and the players who support them.

Nick Panama, Founder of Cantora -- a “must know” company that manages innovative indie band MGMT among others, and leads innovation in the music industry with support of cutting edge technologies -- offers his reaction to my Billboard article in this guest post.  I have come to know Nick over the past several months and absolutely respect not only what he has accomplished in his young years, but also how he has accomplished it -- and how he “thinks.”  Nick is an innovator.  He is a leading voice of the new music industry.  I respect him.  I listen to him (that’s why I asked him to speak on my recent music industry panel at the Consumer Electronics Show).  Think you should too.  Here are his thoughts, as he expressed them in his email to me after reading my article:

Peter - this grabbed me [from your Billboard article] -

"Universal broadband and the near-ubiquity of smart phones give
musicians -- for the first time -- the potential opportunity to reach
virtually anyone, anytime and anywhere, and build communities of
like-minded passionate fans around them. This unprecedented reach
fuels deeper ongoing engagement and new ways to monetize those
connected fans every step of the way."

I agree that the power is in community. For me it is less about
macro-communities connected through social media, mailing lists, and
the like, and instead about a return to micro-communities,
micro-connections and unique, one-of-a-kind experiences. I'm equating
this back to the days when music was at it's best in a live setting,
when the experience of consuming music was personal because what
happened on stage could only happen once - you either were a part of
that mini club or you missed it completely, never to be recreated
again. My imagination takes me back to Woodstock, the way Beatniks and
hippie cultures valued music.

I'm sensing a shift in our cultural ethos from the macro to micro,
personal, ephemeral experiences ( think SnapChat, Path, even
Instagram, privacy concerns, hacking). Maybe we're having a
renaissance, maybe the cycle of consumer behavior is re-setting in
response to about a decade of users putting their identities online
for everyone to see. I believe that trends point to people wanting to
feel that an experience is for them and them only. We want something
that isn't mass exploited, available for everyone. Where I see the
future music economy is in the live event experience because it is the
purest form of the music and 'undigitized'.

It is here where there is a huge amount of unexplored opportunity.
What excites me the most is when I start to think of the audience as a
micro-platform that is experiencing a moment of truth in (a unique
performance) together and how we can use technology to enhance and
monetize their passion and behavior in real time.