The Bandwidth Conference - Part 2

Over the past couple of days I've spent some time recapping the panel I hosted at the Bandwidth Conference. As I mentioned in my last post, I wasn't operating at full capacity, but I managed to slog through it and the result was quite positive.

Ansastasia Goodstein from Ypulse asked if I'd like to "guest post" on her blog and summarize my panel. Thanks to her, I actually sat down and spent some time jogging my clouded memory and fishing through my chicken scratch notes for the following... (I've included Anastasia's commentary and you can also view it HERE on her site.)

Ypulse Guest Post: How Youth Are Consuming Music

Today's Ypulse Guest Post is from Larry Weintraub, the CEO of Fanscape. Larry's 20 years of experience in the entertainment industry encompasses nearly every area, including marketing, sales, advertising, merchandising and event management. Fanscape is a leading emerging media marketing agency focused on reaching and activating the newest generation of web and mobile savvy consumers through online and wireless media.

Larry's recap of a panel he moderated on young people's music consumption is interesting given the survey summary we linked to on this topic in yesterday's Essentials. Perhaps this generation doesn't love music more than we did, they just have more ways to consume and interact with it. If you work in youth media and marketing, and would like to write a Ypulse Guest post, just email me!

How Youth Are Consuming Music

Last Thursday I flew to San Francisco to speak at the Bandwidth Conference. I was asked to moderate a panel titled, "Bellwethers." The sub-title of the panel stated "Fanscape's Larry Weintraub sits down with representatives of the leaders of the industry - music loving youth. A look at the way they discover, purchase (?), interact with, and are exposed to music."

Each semester we host a fantastic group of interns at Fanscape and I always seize the opportunity to ask them about their various consumption habits. With the Bandwidth panel, I tried something a little different. Rather than just relying on my own arsenal of questions, I tried a little social-networking and I sent a note to 500 of my LinkedIn contacts asking them if they could pose a question to a young person about how they consume music and entertainment, what would it be?

The response was overwhelming. Within a week almost 100 people had sent nearly 200 questions, affirming that old "careful what you wish for" adage. Just sorting through them all took several hours, but yielded some consistent thematic musings such as how did they discover music, was sound quality an issue, and was there any price that might inspire them to buy music instead of steal it. There were also requests to find out if radio mattered and whether subscription was even a consideration. All in all I had a plethora of great queries. On the morning of the conference, I grouped and sorted my notes and when I entered the green room, I was prepared and excited to meet my panelists.

There were four wonderful young adults each with very different backgrounds. These were not students from Stanford University or a Silicon Valley high school. Rather, these were very modest and "real" people from relatively small towns who had absolutely no ties to the music, entertainment, or technology industries.

The group consisted of Aubrey (19) from Reno, Nevada; Ratesh (20), also from Reno; Edward (23) from Stockton, California, and Camilla, (18) from Berkeley, California.

Before we hit the stage, I calmed their nerves by telling them they needn't worry about being judged or considered criminals. "Pretend we're just having a conversation in a coffee shop," I told them. "I just want to talk about what you like to do with your free time and how you like to listen to music." I let them know that I personally understood how and why music is considered free and that it was the direct result of an industry not listening to its consumer. I needed them to be open and aware that nothing they said would be used against them.

On the stage was a brown leather couch flanked by two matching leather lounge chairs. I grabbed the chair on the left, Edward, Camilla, and Aubrey took the couch next to me, and Ratesh rounded out our troop in the other lounger. I broke the ice by asking each of them what they were listening to now and the kinds of music they liked. Ratesh let everyone know that he was a huge fan of death metal, a musician himself, and his favorite band was, The Black Dahlia Murder. Aubrey, a fan of all kinds of music, loved watching movies, compliments of her friends' Netflix account. Camilla explained that she listened to everything, as well as what she called "Spanish music." While Edward let us know that he was a consumer of all forms of entertainment, focusing on quality versus quantity; sound quality that is, with the hopes of becoming a sound or studio engineer.

Youth Still Aren't Paying For Music...

All purchased very few of their songs and albums. All owned iPods. All loved music and considered it a significant part of their lives. Ratesh explained that the music was just the entry point when he became interested in a band. If he liked the music, he was definitely inclined to go to the show and buy the band's t-shirt. The only time he felt inclined to buy recorded music was a rare occurrence at a show when he knew the $5 - $10 would go directly into funding the band's future. When asked how he even discovered new bands he said much of it came from the peer-to-peer online networks. He found others that shared his taste in music when he monitored their virtual libraries to see what else they were listening to.

Youth Discover New Music Through Social Media...Or Friends' Libraries

Aubrey agreed and said that she discovered bands via MySpace. She found new artists that were "friends" on the MySpace pages of her acquaintances and favorite musicians. Though they all had viewed many websites, the real discovery came back to implied endorsements from their friends and people with whom they shared similar tastes. A possibly frustrating revelation to the music-based websites trying to take a piece of MySpace's pie, but a shout out to the musicians of the world that BitTorrent is actually a discovery zone and not a pirate's chest.

What about getting caught, was a question asked by a member of the audience. Both Camilla and Aubrey explained that their schools warned that all music downloaders would be punished, but that after a while the panic died down once everyone realized that nothing would actually happen.

Album Covers Still Matter

When asked about the importance of artwork, they all agreed that artwork was important. Ratesh even claimed to like vinyl. He didn't own a turntable to play vinyl, but liked the artwork and would probably hang it on a wall rather than try to play it; providing some interesting insight into the recent resurgence of the demand for album vinyl. They all agreed that lyrics also played an important role. "It is the main thing I look for in the bands I listen to," explained Ratesh. "That's why I listen to the kind of music that I do." The overall agreement was that if they liked a band, they would dig deeper and explore the artwork and the lyrics.

When an audience member asked if they ever checked a band's website for information and joined the email list, most responded, no. The only information they craved were tour dates. They didn't have a need for most of the other information being showcased and felt that most of the time emails were just geared to sell them something.

Concerts Are Cool, When They're Cheap

With respect to concerts, Ratesh and Aubrey wanted to see more bands but were frustrated that few come to Reno. They often checked out local bands but wished more of the big ones would come to their city. They found themselves traveling to Sacramento or the Bay Area to see the bands they really wanted to see. Before the panel, Aubrey and Ratesh shared with me frustrations from their recent experience at the Vans Warped Tour in Sacramento. They had numerous complaints and found the ticket price exorbitantly high. I explained to them that I had first-hand knowledge that the tour's creator, Kevin Lyman, made a tremendous effort to keep the ticket price below $30.

Unfortunately, Aubrey and Ratesh found themselves paying over $40 due to the Ticketmaster charges and what Aubrey called the mysterious "facility fee." Aubrey told me, "I will never go to the Warped Tour again." She said that between the facility fee, the outrageous $4 bottle of water, the ridiculously expensive food prices, the insulting nerve of the food staff to actually feature a tip jar, and the 100+ degree temperatures, it was a rip-off. She added, "At least they should give out sunscreen." Point being, most often the band, tour or festival producer does not control the food prices, the extra ticketing fees, and definitely not the weather. The consumer, however, basis their experience on all of these factors, and accredits them all to the tour or the band.

Music Isn't Mobile...Yet. Little Interest In Terrestrial Radio

I turned the topic to mobile. I asked if they did anything on their phones besides making phone calls and texting. The general consensus was no, save for Ratesh who had the pre-3G iPhone and was a big fan of the Pandora radio application that he'd recently downloaded. Which then raised the question, was radio important? There was little interest for terrestrial radio, though Camilla did say she liked listening from time to time. Aubrey said she used to love Yahoo! radio and that Pandora is a new favorite. Opting for a satellite radio discussion here would have been futile seeing as a monetary exchange for radio was obviously not in the cards.

Subscription Models Might Work

The panel only lasted an hour and we needed two more to get through all of my questions. But I asked one more before we were yanked from the stage. "If you could have all your media - music, movies, and television available to you at all times and portable on your iPod through a subscription service, what monthly fee would you be willing to pay?" Ratesh was intrigued, but paying for media wasn't of much interest. Aubrey, however, was excited. "Everything?" she asked. "Movies too? Wow, probably like $40 or $50 for that." Camilla was equally excited and felt that $20 a month was the right price. Edward, the elder member of the group, questioned the reality of the concept and stressed $10 to $20 a month, but noted that the sound quality needed to be great.

With that, we were ushered from the stage to make room for the next session. The takeaway is that these young people have grown up in a generation where recorded music is traded, downloaded, and consumed with very little monetary exchange, and it is all they have ever known. The members of my panel did not grow up going to record stores, spending hours perusing the aisles hoping to find the next great band. Instead any physical music buying would have taken place in a Best Buy or a Walmart between washing machines and toilet paper. Their experience of consuming music has been one of web-based social networks and the burned mix CD. But understand this, they love music. They consume more music than previous generations. Their influencers are each other and they have instant access to their friends' audio collections. If they discover something they must have, they'll download it, memorize the lyrics, buy the t-shirt and the concert ticket, and maybe even a nice piece of collectible artwork to hang on their wall. Not a groundbreaking revelation, just the way it is... today.