Dave Haynes

I originally posted this at http://blog.soundcloud.com/2009/01/22/yes-we-cannes/

Earlier this week 8,000 members of the international music industry descended upon Cannes for the Midem conference and it’s digitally-focused sister event MidemNet. The clouds hung heavy over the conference hall for the first few days. But despite rumours of lower attendances this year the overall vibe was of a positive more forward-thinking music industry that is ready to leverage all the tools and opportunities at its disposal.

For our part, SoundCloud was selected to pitch at the MusicAlly / MidemNet New Business Showcase. The showcase, now in its second year, aims to “highlight the most enterprising, innovative and inspiring business ideas to help to create value and move the music industry forwards in the 21st century”. That might be a bit of a mouthful but we were thrilled to be taking part. And even more excited to be announced as winners after a great pitch on stage by Alex.

Amongst all the buzz we were busy spreading the word face-to-face with a steady stream of labels, publishers, artists, A&R’s and other partners. Expect to see some interesting new users, integrations and activities on the Cloud in the very near future. By night we were busy hustling, drinking and catching up with familiar faces at the many events, meetups and dinners going on in and around Cannes.  A big thanks to Topspin, Warp and Tru Thoughts for providing some of our highlights.

Overall, the one thing that’s clear from talking to everyone is that it’s going to be a very exciting 2009!

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Every January I love to look back at the year just gone. 2008 was pretty awesome. I became a dad, I started working with the amazing team at SoundCloud and I founded OpenMusicMedia. It was a year of hard work but rewarding beyond my expectations.

I also love to look ahead to the year to come. Set myself some goals. Re-focus on the things that are important to me. This post is about one of those things and it comes in the form of one of my New Year’s Resolutions.

On 1st January I resolved to help raise more for charity than I earn myself during the year. I’m not exactly sure what drove me to this resolution. Perhaps the introduction of my son into the world made me wonder how I could help make it a better place? Perhaps I felt like I needed a new challenge away from my work life? Perhaps subconciously there are also some selfish reasons for doing it? If I think about it, it’s probably a mix of all of these things to a greater or lesser extent.

So the challenge is on. And to further quantify the challenge I’d like to make it a round £50,000 (I’m not really sure how much I’ll earn in a year). That might be setting the bar a little high but if I just resolved to raise ’some’ money for good causes then I’m less likely to rise to the challenge. I’m not too afraid of failing, if the end result was only making a quarter or a tenth of this figure then it’s still a net positive. Also, I’m cheating a little bit - all money that I ‘help’ to raise counts. It doesn’t have to come direct from my own pocket or directly to me, as long as I’ve helped create that fundraising activitiy or project. I’m hoping to do a lot of the fundraising using mainly online tools.

It occurred to me recently that so much of my time is spent using so-called social media tools. These tools have helped me achieve a lot in 2008 and I’ve really seen the power of them in action. But what really interests me is how the power of these tools can be fully harnessed for good causes, rather than for a stream of ego-driven displays of what music I’m listening to, what news I discovered first, what cool people I’m hanging out with or how many contacts I have. Let’s face it a lot of people seemed to be totally consumed by massaging their ‘twegos’ on Twitter. I have no ideas how things will pan out but it’s hopefully gonna be a lot of fun finding out. And I can’t do it without you! You can make a large impact by doing small things.

The first project of the year comes in the shape of Twestival.fm which a digital music bolt-on to the amazing work already being done worldwide for Twestival. I’ll be explaining more later this week…

Remember domain name parking? - when someone registers a useful domain, sits on it but frustratingly isn’t even using it.  Or when someone registers a domain that they think someone else will find useful in the hope of selling it to the highest bidder or making money from affiliate links. It’s annoying, but it’s become quite a norm, making it almost impossible to register a domain name using normal english dictionary words.  Domain names are valuable. One of the first things I did in my recent week of paternity leave was to register my son’s domain name. He’ll thank me for it one day!

Now there is a new phenomenon, Twitter Parking. I need a Twitter account for a few charity projects that I’m involved with this year. I resolved to lookup the names and register them as soon as possible and finally got around to it this morning. I wasn’t surprised however to find that all of them were taken… parked! Most had no activity updates at all and none were in regular use. The example below was even totally upfront about holding their username.

And unlike domains you don’t even need to get the credit card out to park your username.  All you need is the ability to setup a new email address for it. It looks like Twitter is more than aware of this of course and it looks like they have quite a progressive attitude towards the issue (although not without controversy). It is possible to claim inactive usernames as your own if the account has remained inactive for nine months and I’m sure we’ve seen some cases of celebs claiming fake accounts back as their own though I haven’t got any specific examples as I type this (please link up in the comments if you have).

So what are the lessons here? Twitter is crossing over to the mainstream. Your username is valuable. If you have a band, artist name, company, brand, meetup, idea, team, nickname… make sure you register the Twitter username. Before somebody else does!

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I’ve been going to sunny Cannes for Midem since the first ever MidemNet back in 2001. This first trip was with my brother (whom I had just started a record label with) and our music lawyer who recommended the trip in the first place. I was still at University and thought that MidemNet would be the perfect place to get some quotes for the dissertation I was writing at the time on MP3 and the Music Industry.  Funnily enough, the dissertation ended up getting quite a bad mark. My tutor at the time said that MP3’s would never take off commercially!

I clearly remember my first dinner in Cannes, sitting round the table with the head of Vital (now PIAS Distribution), Russell Coultart and Tony from Recordstore.co.uk (now Digitalstores), the guys from New State, our lawyer and the label boss of Platipus Records (who’s name escapes me). I felt a little out of place but very excited and determined to make my own mark in the music industry. I also remember sharing some free beers with Frukt Music’s Dom Hodge (who I’ve recently been working with) on an overly-lavish yacht which had been laid on by AIM.  Maybe that was the following year… but my point is I’ve had some great experiences, met some great people and look forward to going every year.

But this year as part of a new startup, SoundCloud, I wasn’t 100% sure if we’d be able to make it out. Tickets are expensive and the budget can be hard to justify sometimes. Luckily however, we found out several weeks ago that SoundCloud was one of the winners put forward for the MidemNet/MusicAlly new business showcase. The showcase, now in its second year, “focuses on the most enterprising, innovative and inspiring business ideas which will help create value and move the music industry forward in the 21st century.” We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to present SoundClound to the gathered industry delegates and it means we’ll get a free ticket and hotel room for a night. We’ll be in Cannes from Saturday morning until Tuesday evening.

We’ll still be keeping a tight eye on the budget though! We have just one pass so I’ll be doing Midem guerilla-style and hanging out in Cafe Roma over the road from the Palais which specialises in slightly aggressive waiters. It’s a departure from the free champagne and concierge of the Penthouse Riviera Suites I’ve somehow managed to find myself in for the last two Midems but to be honest I think that’s a good thing! I can’t wait to get back to the hustle and bustle of meeting familiar faces with an overpriced beer or two. And I’m also excited to hear that Topspin will be putting on an informal, no thrills, start-up friendly ‘meetup’ on the Saturday night. If you’re going to Midem make sure you come by and say hello! Or if you want to talk shop then feel free to drop me a msg and arrange a meeting.