This week I was invited to speak at the inaugural Beats Evolution conference. One of a few recent upstart events. BEC focusses on the Drum and Bass industry. Coming a few months after Beatport announced that drum and bass as a genre had recently moved four points to the fifth most popular genre on the download store just this year. It seemed really timely to be involved.
The panel consisted of Toby Howieson (Head of Music Operations, AEI Media), Mathias Busse (Label Manager / Believe Digital), and Jack Bridges
(Head of International Account Management, Label Relations / Beatport). Over the hour we discussed the future of downloads for DJs – will services like Spotify and Pulselocker increase in popularity for DJs, the challenges licensing mix content and the difference in ownership and consumption for streaming.
For the rest of the two day event masterclasses and meet the team sessions were interspersed by panels on the topic of getting signed, label vs no-label events and, on the final day, the use of music recognition technology.
The feeling of the panel was that the MRT technology is there but having the right database of tracks is key.