Category: Technology

PERFORMER MAGAZINE – The 8th SF MusicTech Summit


SF MusicTech Summit | Performer Magazine — July 2011

The Brightest Minds in Music Technology Converge

The 8th SF MusicTech Summit, held on May 9, brought together musicians, computer developers and business professionals under one roof for a day of panels dedicated to brightening the future of the music industry.

“You can’t pirate intimacy,” opened Evan Lowenstein of StageIt, concisely summarizing the morning’s panel featuring guests Brandon Boyd and Mike Einziger of Incubus. The panelists focused on fan engagement and stressed that great concert experiences can’t be pirated. Boyd and Einziger offered their viewpoints as established artists, including Boyd’s professed shyness to self-promotion. Einziger commented on the shift with emerging technologies: “When we were young, we mailed out mailing lists and drove around to schools, but nowadays that’s a waste of money.”

The “Live Music Marketing” panel brought together founders from a number of top events promotions websites. Live Nation’s Aaron Siuda opened: “I’ve shifted 30% of my budget to online ads. You don’t need to do the shotgun approach.” Artists are now able to cost-effectively target demographics using metrics offered by platforms like Facebook. Julia Hartz, co-founder of Eventbrite, added, “Ticket buyers are ten times more likely to buy a ticket if they see a friend sharing it.” Songkick’s Ian Hogarth offered a reminder of the importance of simpler communications: “Text, phone and email still rank high on shares next to Facebook.”

In the afternoon, Mashable’s Jolie O’Dell quickly bypassed the obvious platforms of Facebook and Twitter in “Tools for Your Band.” The panel suggested services for artists like Topspin, SoundCloud, and Songtrust and SoundExchange for royalties. Perhaps the most celebrated tool of the Summit was RootMusic’s BandPages, a Facebook Page customization service. While such tech-centric recommendations were common throughout the day, the majority of the panelists still emphasized the fundamental importance of creating great content and engaging authentically with fans.

And to that, some things never change.

– Keane Li, photo by Kara Murphy

How my night went from Swagapalooza to the Kink.com Armory…

Through a referral from my friend Suki, I received a personal invitation to Swagapalooza from founder Alex Krupp. The event is described best by my lazily copying from their site:

Swagapalooza is an experiment in viral media. On April 12th, the world’s most-followed bloggers, tweeters, and digital influencers will gather in San Francisco to judge five-minute auditions from the creators of the latest, greatest, and most unexpected new products… And to connect with each other.

You deserve to be begged for your attention and your following. Your taste and discernment make you the perfect judge of these marketers who will come to cajole, beg and bribe you…

(with more free stuff than you can imagine.)

From this, we ended the night at The SF Armory, an old military fortress now housing alternative sex production company Kink.com (link goes to Wikipedia, don’t worry). Alex, apparently a fan of guided tours, arranged this free tour for all his Swagapalooza attendees.

So now I fill in the spaces in between, interspersing photos from Kink.com with descriptions of my favorite products from Swagapalooza. Because, let’s face it, photos of nerds are boring (sorry kids, this includes me) and you wouldn’t want me ruining the Kink tour for you with details.


From the moment we entered, we were handed complimentary loaves of bread from Sour Flour, an organization run by local baker Danny Gabriner. In an attempt to build a “community through bread,” he offers a number of baking courses and bread orders. From the taste of the loaf (did you cringe inside reading that too?), I highly recommend the classes if baking is in your line of interests.

Then, people started talking on stage, starting with Alex and Justin Kan of Justin.tv. I knew better than to sit down as my attention span can only withstand ten minutes of “preso” at a time… after which I start seeking more interesting subjects like the color of walls. That is not to say the presentations weren’t great. They were. I’d just highly recommend that future Swagapaloozas include a time limit for speakers.

The walls are black, by the way.

Several presentations really caught my attention. The first was by Will Hauser, co-founder of nutrition bar producer Two Degrees Food. For every bar you purchase, the company gives a malnourished child in a third-world country a nutrition packet. Not bad.

The second presentation I enjoyed was for the film Transcendent Man. A documentary on the “life and ideals” of author and futurist Ray Kurzweil, it touches upon a number of themes relevant to my existentialist need to define myself. Their PR rep offered me an invitation to their San Francisco premier this Thursday at the Palace of Fine Arts but unfortunately I can’t make it. (Update 4/15/11: Turns out there was a copy of the film in my swag bag. I promptly watched it and covered it here.)

An action-packed battle against Skynet is an appropriate segue for the final hot presenter: Stunner of the Month. I was more impressed by the presenter — fully in character as some strange amalgamation of Bill, Ted and an excellent adventure in Jersey — as he described the “stunna life” and “stun levels” (paraphrasing) while placing stunner after stunner on his head. Funny, and a nice break from the other presentations. The service itself is simple: you get a random stunner shade at the end of each month with an accompanied stunner story. For example, the swag shades I received included the following written on a notecard:

THE FUHGEDDABOWDITS: Cruisin to Dean & DeLucca’s (sic) in your Lincoln lookin for something wrong. You holler at the broad on the corner… fuhgeddabowdit.

Wow, that’s so ME. How did they know? According to their site, my match is based on an old KGB algorithm stolen from the Soviets.

No wonder they lost the Cold War.

Finally, my favorite piece of swag was also the most expensive and useful: a dress shirt from Sabà¸teur, a men’s clothing company that designs functional (some even waterproof) clothing. Not bulletproof like the Caballero suits from Columbia, but I suppose it would be pessimistic of me to expect gunfire in my everyday life…

Great event. Fun after-party. I had a great time. Thanks, Alex and team!