dd:IMPACT Recap – Part II

by Francis Bea

This recap is part two of two. For part one, click here.

Design Panel

Moderating the design panel was Tim Nolan, Creative Director of BBH Labs NY. The panelists include Randy J. Hunt, Creative Director at Etsy, Jeremy Fischer, CEO of Wander, Alex Rainert, Head of Product at Foursquare, and Allan Yu, designer at SVPPLY.

There’s a trend that is taking root in the tech world. Jeremy revealed that his excitement was in social applications that will “tap into the nostalgia, memory and intimacy,” like Pair has done for couples.

The discussion dove into Instagram, to which Jeremy likened to being an “autotune” for photographs. But the platform is captivating and widely used because just about anyone can become a photographer. Despite moderating, Tim had interjected some of his own words of advice. “We’re building tools for everyone’s innate nature to create.” The consumers of this generation have evolved into content producers – and this is particularly evident with applications like Instagram – and encourages entrepreneurs to continue to develop tools for this purpose.

During the discussion, Wander revealed how the design of its site compels users to interact with the platform. Inspired by the LinkedIn-like progress bar, Wander designed a tree at the bottom of the page, which will grow for each item in Wander that the user “Likes.” Of course the platform has yet to be launched, and what this means remains to be seen.

Alex, at Foursquare, reminded us that in designing a product, you have to go with your gut, even if what you’re building may not necessarily exist just yet.

Allan of SVPPLY, ended the panel on the note that to keep your users content, one way of testing this is to “eat your own dog food.” In essence, if you’re building something, it better be something you’re willing to use yourself. As Allan put it, “if you design your own sneakers, you better run in them.”

Music Panel

The final panel of the day was the one that SoundCtrl had been waiting for. Moderating the panel was Douglas Smiley, CMO of RCRD LBL. The panelists were Mick Batyske, a.k.a DJ Mick Boogie, Gary Greenstein, a prominent lawyer at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Anthony Volodkin, founder of Hype Machine, Wesley Verhoeve, founder of Family Records, and Jesse Israel, Founder of Cantora Records and Cantora Labs.

Much of the discussion revolved around Gary’s knowledge on copyright laws. While having once represented the record labels, Gary has been a lawyer to the largest music-based platforms out there including Rdio, YouTube, Apple, and just about every music tech company you can think of. Not surprisingly, he found that copyright laws were not necessarily helpful for anyone. Rather, copyright laws were written for the interested parties – by people whose clients would benefit from the laws. Consequently, as we’ve seen time and time again, such laws were designed to entrench industries and not meant for innovating industries, and locks us in the past.

Jesse, who appeared to be representing Cantora Labs more so than his label, is breaking the barrier between technology and a traditional record label. It’s an interesting hybridization of both worlds to see in a package like Cantora Labs, which in fact invests in technology companies. Knowing that it’s an arduous process to have a start-up’s product break out into the market, Cantora Labs is fostering and investing in start-ups by applying the same principals of managing and putting money into bands. To put the relationship between a band and a start-up into perspective, “like a band has a demo, a start-up has a beta.” To sum up Cantora Labs, it’s an opportunity seeker, and is more than just another record label.

HypeM’s founder Anthony tackled the topic of music discovery. A great point that he made was that music is linear, and unfortunately you can’t listen to multiple music at once. The future of music discovery, as Anthony sees it, lies in start-ups like This Is My Jam. The next generation of music discovery apps will integrate features that enable people to feel emotionally connected to the music. In retrospect, as Anthony put it, “Facebook is designed to not make people feel. It creates utility to communicate, not a feeling on its own.”

Curation, according to Wesley Verhoeve, is very much an unsolved problem. There are two or three important magazines, and a plethora of radio stations, but today with social music discovery applications out there, there’s so much noise now. The question that consumers are wondering is what am I supposed to be listening to? This is what Wesley challenges future technology companies to tackle.

The panel momentarily became heated when on the topic of record labels and whether it’s a necessity for artists, Gary expressed his sentiment with the statement, “There is no such thing as free promotion from a major record label,” to which Wesley responded “That’s why they’re about to die.” Note that Wesley himself owns a record label, but understands the changing landscape of the music industry and music promotion.

Francis Bea is a New York City based writer, PR person, tech junkie, and the Marketing ‘Stache at Pop’stache. You can find him on Twitter @francisybea.