Open Music Initiative: The Future of Music

This is a special mid-month meetup because our friends George Howard of Open Music Initiative (OMI) and Erik Beijnoff of Spotify are in town, and are delighted to speak. We will cap it off with Berlin's own Peter Harris of Resonate.

Talk 1

Speaker: George Howard

Bio:George Howard is an Associate Professor of Management at Berklee College of Music and Brown University, and a member of the Open Music Initiative (http://open-music.org/)'s Steering Committee. He is the founder of GHS, a strategic consulting firm which advises a wide-range of clients on how to integrate technology with strategy in order to increase brand awareness and revenue through innovation, social media, digital platforms, and strategic partnerships. A partial list of clients includes: Intel, National Public Radio, CVS/pharmacy, Alticor/Amway, Brown University, Paste Magazine, Landmark School, SingFit, BigchainDB, Wolfgang’s Vault, and The Townsend Group. Additionally, George is the co-founder of Music Audience Exchange (http://www.musicaudienceexchange.com/), which is comprised of a team of digital marketers, engineers, and music lovers, using technology to redefine the fundamental structure of brand-artist relationships. George is the former president of Rykodisc (the world’s largest independent record label), and co-founder of TuneCore (the world’s largest independent digital music distributor). George is a columnist for Forbes, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times and numerous other publications. He is a JD/MBA.

Talk 2

Speaker: Erik Beijnoff

Bio: Erik Beijnoff is working at Spotify (https://www.spotify.com/) with strategy and long term solutions for rights management in the music industry. Spotify is a member of the Open Music Initiative and as part of Eriks role he has been actively engaged in OMI since the formation last year. Before joining Spotify Erik was the founder and CEO of a consultancy firm, Devant. Devant had a central role in the creation of a company, Tunigo, that was the very first company that was acquired by Spotify. Tunigo was internalised into the Spotify services and renamed Browse, which is one of the services that until this day has had the most impact on the evolution of Spotify. Erik is furthermore specialised in blockchain technologies and is actively engaged in pushing for adoption of decentralised solutions built on these technologies in different industries and areas of society.

Talk 3

Speaker: Peter Harris

Bio:As a web developer since the 90’s, Peter Harris has built hundreds of sites, working with numerous musicians from struggling artists to mid-level bands and platinum-selling superstars. Simultaneous to his day job as web developer, Peter experimented as a DJ and electronica producer. Finding many web and music publishing platforms lacking, this combination of background and insight is what led to the fundamental features being offered via Resonate (https://resonate.is/), a music streaming coop.

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