Conference “The Future of Music” held in Canada

    In October of this year, a very interesting conference “The Future of Music” was held in Montreal , which brought together more than 550 participants. The main topics were copyright, digital music licensing, DRM and the distribution of profits in the digital age. Separate specialized sessions were devoted to technical issues, including sound compression, P2P, recommendation engines, new promotion channels (metafilters, blogs, podcasts), etc.

    Now on the conference website are posted videos of almost all the speeches , as well as abstracts. Some of the reports are very, very interesting.

    One of the main topics of the conference was the upcoming legislative change.. For example, in the United States, there is a discussion of new licensing and content protection rules, which are transmitted via digital satellite radio. There is legal debate in the EU around DRM. One of the round tables at the conference was devoted to precisely these issues ( video ).

    The draconian copyright protection laws that have been in force for decades pose a number of problems for humanity. One of the problems is the preservation of musical heritage. In many cases, it is very difficult to digitize and save old rare recordings without violating copyright law ( video ).

    In general, in the current conditions, when the Internet becomes the main channel for the distribution of music, many have a reasonable question:Why do record companies need at all ? The cost of recording a music album is rapidly falling, and the cost of distribution via the Internet is approaching zero. According to experts, the situation here is changing very quickly. By the time you read this text, most likely another label will cease to exist. Record companies may die out like dinosaurs, along with CDs.

    Alternative distribution systems for audio and video content are being created now. For example, a conference talked about the unique Noank Media system, which begins work in China, Canada and several other countries. This system transmits unprotected content for free, and royalties for paying royalties are collected from Internet providers, universities and owners of other networks that broadcast content. Fees are paid in proportion to the number of views / plays. Soon, a more detailed article on the operation of this system will be published on Habrahabr.

    P2P networks are another content distribution system that has already proven effective. The only question is how to make them generate profit? Experiments are also conducted here ( video ).

    In addition, the conference “The Future of Music” discussed new mechanisms for distributing profits from the sale of digital music ( video), the disappearance of music orchestras as a class, the imperfection of DRM systems and many other topics (a complete archive of videos ).

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