For those who don’t know, NARM is the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, the trade group for music retailers which is increasingly seeing membership from companies like iTunes, Amazon, and Rhapsody, as well as mobile carriers and a few of us rag tag startups such as Topspin. The NARM Connects Conference 2009 was held last week in San Diego and it was Topspin’s first visit to the gathering.
I participated by giving a keynote interview to Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk. NARM has posted the interview in its entirety at their Vimeo account. Dig:
NARM 2009 Keynote Interview With Ian Rogers from NARM on Vimeo.
But much better than my interview is Mike Masnick of Tech Dirt‘s incredible presentation from earlier in the day. Mike is very kind to Topspin in his presentation and you should discount my opinion accordingly but this is, IMHO, a must-see. Please take a run through and send to everyone you know who cares about the future of media. Mike’s words may be a little hard to swallow but they’re based in reality and he offers not just commentary but a suggested solution (CwF + RtB = $$$), something few have the balls to do these days:
NARM 2009 State Of The Industry: Michael Masnick from NARM on Vimeo.
We also had the good fortune of receiving an award at Wednesday night’s awards ceremony. Somewhere between Norman Lear, Transworld’s Bob Higgins, all around rad dude Don Van Cleave, Ashford and Simpson, and Hall and Oats, Topspin was awarded a Business Innovation award from NARM. We were very proud to be nearly the only startup in a field of award winners such as Universal, Warner, and EMI. Thanks to all involved. It was truly an honor.
There were a lot of awards at the end of the presentation and they were discouraging speeches, so instead I stumbled up and nervously stammered a few mildly coherent words. Not sure what I actually said, but this is what I was trying to say:
“We’re a young company, less than two years old, and we certainly haven’t done anything worthy of an honor from you all just yet, though we hope to. I think the reason we’ve had a lot of attention in the past year plus is because we are actually very optimistic about the future of the music business, or at least about profitability for artists, which is the most important thing in the entire business. Thank you sincerely for this award, it’s truly an honor to be in the business of music.”
Thanks for watching and reading. Please RT, tell a friend, all that good stuff. And have a happy Father’s Day.
