Surprisingly the panel was mostly about ringtones -- it turned out interesting nevertheless, even if the participants enthusiastically painted a picture of a brave new world that to me looked rather devastating.

Note: I forgot to write down the full list of participants. From memory: someone from Jamba, Record execs from both Indie and major labels, and someone who develops ringtones and was involved in the production of the crazy frog. Also note that we missed the start of the panel, so the first 30 mins or so are missing.

And I'm not sure if the participant who according to the info slide was from a company called "Nepster" wasn't actually representing Napster.

But the moderator was excellent. Knowledgeable, good voice, and actually mentioned the notion of the long tail -- interestingly everybody in the panel seemed to understand what he meant by that.

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Jamba replaces music TV for certain types of genres as a promotion medium
Jamba: "it's either a hit, or it's not" (no medium success)

Q: Do ring-tones harm the rest of the music Industry (the successful tracks are usually polished, generic)?
Wolfgang Boss (Mach I, crazy frog): there is no overlap between scenes, e.g. VIVA2-viewers don't get exposed to Jamba
Kurt Thielen (Zebralution) agrees

Kim Stephens, VP A&R Lava records-- "what the hell is credible music?" "amazing opportunity" to open up new channels.

Q: would it be true to say that Jamster is not exactly worried about upsetting people?
Jamba: as long as we see that we have a growth I don't think people are really upset about it

Kim Stephens-- there is no real ring-tone market in America yet.
crazy frog: originally from beverly hills cop(?)

Jamba sold ~ 1.2 million ring-tones in the UK

Q: Isn't this what the record industry needs, a new way to quickly test ideas?

Patrick Mushatsi-Kareba (Nepster) sure we need to have some things like crazy frog in our repertoire, we can't discriminate against ring-tones

Kim Stephens: myspace, purevolume are good resources to find new music and potentially sign new artists. finding new music is getting more and more convenient.

Q: has that changed the kind of music you look for? (long tail)
KS: (doesn't really answer the question)

...

-> opportunity: long tail in digital distribution

Q: what kind of artists sell better in digital than the original industry?
??: "world music", not the pop hits, but the music that never had a chance

downloads are replacing the singles market
the market is moving quicker
"slow burners" (nora jones) are usually a characteristic of the offline world

Moderator: the record industry is spending millions to find out if an artist can be successful -> ring-tones offer a better, cheaper way to do this

WB: this only works for a certain kind of market. James Blunt would never work that way. We still need other ways of testing.