Wednesday, April 29th, 2015

The MusicNext Forum Track

3:50 PM – 5:00 PM, Poolside Tent I

Music Apps, Social Media and Technology:  The Explosive World of Music Engagement

Brad Sphar, Vice President, Sony Music

Madeline Nelson, CEO/Managing Member, Heads Music

Heiko Schmidt, CEO, Parasongs

Rami Perlman, VP Music Talent & Influencers, theAudience

Anthony Shannon, Cofounder & CEO, TuneStars

Ian Roberts, Cofounder & CEO, Hive

Damian Hagger, co-founder and Marketing Director, SixString.com

Nick DeMartino, Principal, ND Consulting, Moderator

 the day-to-day operations of hit-makers Teddy Riley and R&B super group BlackStreet.  During her tenure at New Jack/Interscope, Madeline worked with other great talents such as Gwen Stefani, Snoop Dog and Pharrell Williams. Through the years, Madeline has amassed a wealth of knowledge and experience from her time spent working in the television, fashion, music and marketing industries. Prior to joining Sony Music, Nelson worked for Donna Karan’s organization, where she served as Vice President of Foundation Operations. Previous to Donna Karan’s organization, she was Executive Director of Mary J. Blige’s foundation and also served as a Project Manager at Steve Stoute’s marketing company, Translation, LLC.  While at Translation, Madeline coordinated campaigns for high profile personalities such as Ray Allen, Ray Lewis, Denzel Washington, LeBron James, Faith Hill and Rihanna.

Heiko Schmidt, CEO, Parasongs; Heiko is a seasoned music industry executive and serial entrepreneur, combining 21 years of music and technology education with 25 years of professional experience. As one of just a few music rights specialists with a deep knowledge of multiple, domestic and international markets, he pioneered various new strategies and innovations within the industry (www.parasongs.com).  Heiko has founded, developed, managed, and sold music production, music publishing, music/media- marketing, artist management companies, and record labels in the United States, Germany, Japan, and Australia. Besides running Parasongs music publishing companies in multiple countries, Heiko is Founder and CEO of Gideen, a Los Angeles based Technology Firm focused to optimize financial performance and value of music recordings and music copyrights. Gideen crowdsources marketing and content exploitation by enabling influential gatekeepers, professional music users, or even fans to buy into one-third of the future income of a song for as little as $19 to $49/year. As vested partners, they are now financially motivated to deploy or promote a song for opportunities they control or influence within their own networks, the worldwide first 3.0 Shared Economy Model, aligning economic interests between Music Creatives, Music Marketers and Music Users. Gideen partners with Content Owners of underperforming music records and related music copyrights, matches music with more than 100 million daily monetization opportunities globally and uses sophisticated algorithms and its aggregation power to optimize results. Since public beta in July 2014, Gideen has already improved the financial value of co-owned music assets by 12,700% (in average). Gideen is the winner of the Music/Tech in San Francisco in May 2014.

Rami Perlman is VP of Talent and Influencers at theAudience in Los Angeles, CA. theAudience is one of the world's largest multi-channel publisher of social and digital content for brands.  theAudience enables brands to participate in popular culture at massive scale, syndicating content to over a billion consumers globally through it's influencer network.  Rami has been instrumental in building theAudience's talent network which includes some of the world's top social media influencers, music artists and celebrities.  Rami also produces influencer events for brands, leveraging theAudience's network to amplify the social reach of these events in real time. Prior to joining theAudience, Rami spent three years at Digisynd, a Disney owned social media company, where he ran the YouTube promotions department.

Anthony W. Shannon, Founder CEO, TuneStars; I make links between people and disruptive technology.  My goal is to work on game changing niche-specific software projects that have the potential to solve worldwide problems. At TuneStars, I focus on executing for both long and short term objectives in development, growth, business development/sales, financing, and HR.I am driven by change; and always enthusiastic about discovering new technologies with potential for disruption.  The intersection between social media and music fascinates me. There are companies that have came in and pushed the ball forward in everything from Audio, to production & mixing, to wearables in the music industry. One of the key trends that I see is the facility for anyone to be more independent than ever with their craft: i.e. simply with a laptop and software being able to create top quality content and distribute to the top networks it online for free. The need for typical distribution channels, labels, will continue to go down as new technologies arise. We're at a place now where if you're creating top of the line content, chances are the world will spread faster than ever you will get discovered. I see this trend growing over the next few years, and I think we will see lots of technologies which used to only be available on desktop going towards mobile, and wearables. Tech will play a more integral part in day to day for everything, but especially in music. Opportunity is great for early adopters, and I think quality will always rise to the top.

Damian Hagger, Co-Founder & Director of Marketing, SixString: The Social Network App for Guitarists. SixString is a mobile social-networking application for guitar players and was a featured Social Networking App in the "New and Noteworthy" section of iTunes. Prior to starting SixString, Mr. Hagger was Co-Founder & Vice President of Content and Community at VMIX Media, Inc. an online media management and white label platform for community and video for third party sites. He helped raise series A and B of venture capital for the company before leaving to start SixString. Earlier in his career Mr. Hagger was Director of Digital Marketing for Twentieth Century Fox Filmed Entertainment. He managed the online campaigns for tent pole movie releases including iRobot, AVP, Garfield, Mr & Mrs Smith and numerous high grossing films. Additionally he has worked at MP3.com as Senior Director of Content and Community where he managed a community of over 350,000 artists and 2.5 million songs. He previously held positions at Virgin Records America and BMG Entertainment. Mr. Hagger has presented and spoken at many Digital Media conferences including iMediaConnection, IFTV, SXSW and OMMA. He is actively available for speaking engagements. Damian received his Bachelor's Degree in Music from Berklee College of Music and is an active musician in his limited spare time.

Ian Roberts, co-founder and CEO, Hive: Hive is a Y Combinator backed startup that is taking the artist-fan relationship to the next level. Hive captures thousands of data points every time a fan interacts online, analyses them, and gives artists and their teams the ability to run laser-targeted email, facebook, and SMS campaigns to any segment of fans.   Hive gives artists the tools to expand their reach quickly and then interpret fan data in meaningful ways. Hive knows which of your fans spend the most on your shows, who’s certain to share your next ticket giveaway on Twitter, and how many engaged fans you have in Seattle. Ian now has a team of eight working to provide artists with even deeper insights.

Nick DeMartino launched a strategic consulting practice in media & technology after a 20 year career at the American Film Institute. He is an expert on new forms of storytelling, multiplatform digital content, online video innovations, and strategic marketing initiatives and partnerships. His clients include start-ups, technology companies, content producers, creatives and educators.  "Reinventing Hollywood" is his new column, which will appear in June as part of the relaunch of ACM's "Computers in Entertainment" online magazine.  As AFI's SVP for Media and Technology, DeMartino created programs at the frontier of digital production, interactive media & new forms of storytelling, including the AFI Digital Content Lab, the AFI-Apple Computer Center, the AFI Computer Media Salons. The award-winning AFI.com website was the first to stream Hollywood content on the web (1996), first to share a library of clips from the top 100 movies of all times (1997), clips from AFI's own television productions and events, among other innovations.  Prior to AFI DeMartino was a journalist, publisher, independent filmmaker, advertising and marketing executive, chronicler of public television, indie filmmaking. He is the author of KEEPING PACE WITH THE NEW TELEVISION and the principal staff writer of A PUBLIC TRUST: THE REPORT OF THE CARNEGIE COMMISSION ON THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC BROADCASTING.