Category: Music

An Intimate Fireside Chat with Thomas Dolby and Kelli Richards

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This week’s Fireside Chat was with the Iconic ’80s electronic music and MTV pioneer, Thomas Dolby. I’m very fortunate to know Thomas personally and professionally, for almost 20 years. Best known for his hit, “She Blinded Me with Science,” Thomas Dolby is much more than a recording artist, he’s also a Producer and the Music Director for TED. In fact, he’s STILL leading the tech revolution with his interactive game, Floating City, which reacts to player contributions, eventually granting access to Thomas’ newest music.

This is digital technology meeting music at its best!

Kelli Richards,
CEO of The All Access Group, LLC

VIP Breakfast at Digital Music West – Redefining Social Media for the Music Industry


One of the best perks of being a speaker and a leader in the digital space for over two decades is that several times a year I get to take the stage at a variety of industry events and share the freshest ideas and tech advances with my peers and colleagues.

Digital Music Forum West, put together by Digital Media Wire, is a big favorite among these events. Recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top reads for digital media insiders, Digital Media Wire offers a free daily newsletter that curates the most important headlines impacting entertainment, media and digital technology. Twice a year, Ned and Tinzar Sherman, the heart and soul behind the scenes of DMW, gather some of the industry’s leading minds and put on the leading technology forum for all things music.

As the technology and issues surrounding digital music become more difficult to navigate, Digital Music Forum West (and east, in the spring) provides the stage for discourse, information and sometimes fierce disagreement. It offers great content, access to industry leaders and an introduction to fresh new faces on the music-tech scene, all gathered to socialize, share ideas, do deals and learn about digital technology and services in music.

This year, I’m fortunate to lead a complimentary VIP breakfast kicking off the start of Day 2.  This is an informal roundtable discussion focused on my newest eBook “Taking the Crowd to the Cloud – Social Media for the Music Industry” on Friday, October 7th, from 8:00-9:00am. The VIP Breakfast includes a vibrant discussion, great company, and a printed copy of my eBook, for the first 20 people who reserve their seat by Tuesday, October 4th (to do so, contact my team at sandy@allaccessgroup.com). The breakfast will coincide with the formal Amazon publication launch of my eBook on 11/11/11.

This is the second quarterly VIP breakfast I’ve put together to kick off an industry event. The first was an amazing gathering of new faces and thought leaders, led by me, at the Bandwidth Music / Tech Conference in August.  It included my own social media strategist, Mary Agnes Antonopoulos, Scott Perry from Music Tipsheet (friend to all undiscovered artists), Sibley Verbeck from The Electric Sheep Company / Steam Jam, Aaron Williams from SocialSamba.com (a branded social app that fans join to interact directly with the characters they’re fans TV), and over a dozen other industry leaders.

This VIP Breakfast should be just as exciting, with Digital Media West, setting the stage with 300+ of the most influential music and digital media leaders. Some of who are close personal friends and colleagues, like industry leaders Michael RobertsonJim Griffin and Ian Rogers, CEO of Topspin.

Ian is a rock star in the digital music world and was one of the first to define the way artists and labels promote and experience digital media.  Ian built many of the earliest promotional websites for the music and film industries and prior to joining Topspin Media as their CEO in 2008 and had been GM of music at Yahoo. He was one of the first guests on my streaming radio show Monday nights, which you can hear in its entirety on my website at https://allaccessgroup.com/articles-and-resources/blog-talk-radio

To save your seat at the upcoming VIP breakfast, please email my team at sandy@allaccessgroup.com and feel free to use code DMFW25 to save 25% off the registration fee at Digital Music Forum West.

Kelli Richards,
CEO of The All Access Group, LLC
https://allaccessgroup.com/articles-and-resources/events/

CEO of All Access Group Invited to be in Alan’s Gang

Expert in Music, Technology and Digital Distribution and CEO of All Access Group Invited to be in Alan’s Gang

 

Kelli Richards, a thought leader in digital music and entertainment, and one of only a few select members of Alan Weiss’ Master Mentor Program and Thought Leadership Summit, has recently been invited to participate both Weiss’ new Summit Global Network and also in the collaborative “Alan & the Gang.”

Alan & the Gang is an online destination where both aspiring and veteran entrepreneurs and business people can access thought leaders from around the globe. Kelli Richards joins a limited group of elite international experts in both process and content who contribute their intellectual property and expertise. Gang members are a unique group of consultants and industry thought leaders who offer forward-thinking content to one another and to the world at large, including 320 videos, 426 audios and over 60 articles. These experts are recognized leaders and experts in their fields, offering impressive track records of success to their clients. The Summit Global Network is a network of top boutique consulting and advisory firms. Members are invited only after careful criteria have been met and existing members become familiar with the quality of the candidate firm’s work and client base.  Members share resources, best practices, personnel, and expertise. It’s not unusual for a firm in Australia to provide expertise to a firm in Canada, or one in Maine to one in the United Kingdom. The current membership resides in seven countries and four continents. The combined intellectual property of the member firms comprises over 70 commercially published books, a thousand published articles, and thousands of audio, video, and public speaking appearances.

Alan Weiss is an Inductee in the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame®, a Recipient of the American Press Institute Lifetime Achievement Award and the New England Institute of Management Consultants Lifetime Contribution Award, and is one of the most highly respected independent consultants in the country, according to The New York Post.

Kelli Richards is a true trailblazer in the digital music, entertainment and technology worlds with more than twenty years of senior-level leadership experience.  With a unique talent for connecting innovators in technology with creative leaders in entertainment, Richards is a highly sought-after consultant, mentor, speaker, producer, coach and author, As the CEO of The All Access Group, Richards and her team facilitate powerful strategic business opportunities in digital distribution between technology companies, established artists and celebrities, film studios, record labels, and consumer brand companies to foster new revenue streams and deliver compelling consumer experiences.

Prior to founding The All Access Group, Kelli served in senior roles at Fortune 100 entertainment and technology companies, including Apple Inc., where she launched Apple’s earliest focus on music and drove all music initiatives during her 10 years with the market leader. She also served in senior-level leadership capacities at EMI Music as an A&R exec, and at Silicon Graphics (SGI) where she helped launch Silicon Studio, the company’s entertainment division. She developed PatroNet, the first Internet-based artist subscription service with rocker partner Todd Rundgren in the mid-90s – and helped to launch the entire digital music revolution.

A frequent speaker and panel moderator at digital music and entertainment industry conferences globally, Kelli has also been an acclaimed talent producer of a wide range of award shows, epic concerts, and celebrity fundraiser events for over 25 years.  She co-produced a celebrity fundraiser event to support the UN’s “Adopt-A-Minefield” initiative featuring Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Stephen Stills and hosted by Jay Leno. Additionally, she was a 20-year talent producer behind the BAMMIES, and remains a long-time talent executive and co-producer of the annual Pollstar Concert Industry Awards.

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Kelli Richards has co-authored two books, including the critically acclaimed “The Art of Digital Music:  56 Artists, Visionaries & Insiders Reveal Their Creative Secrets.”  And her next book, “You Say You Want a Revolution – An Artist’s Manifesto for Success in the Digital Age,” is due out 11-11-11. A true renaissance woman, Kelli is also a Certified Integrative Life Coach trained under best-selling authors and coaches Debbie Ford and Alan Cohen.  She lives in Cupertino, CA in the heart of the Silicon Valley.

 

 


 

 

 

Chatting with Brenden Mulligan, Founder of OneSheet, the One Stop Solution for Artists


A few weeks ago, I was very fortunate to interview creative disruptor, Brenden Mulligan, the CEO of OneSheet. For those of you who don’t know, OneSheet is a completely free website which allows musicians to connect their existing social networks and services, creating a basic and graphically exciting site that includes music, videos, photos, concert dates, social streams, mailing list signups and online stores.  Although it literally JUST moved out of beta, Onesheet already has more than 10,000 recording artists signed up, including major label artists like Paramore , Mat Kearny and Owl City.

OneSheet has the added feature of working with many of the most-used musician’s online services, including Tunes, Beatport, Topspin, Bandcamp, YouTube, Tumblr, Songkick, FanBridge and SoundCloud.  It’s also compatible with ArtistData, a popular syndication tool for musicians to post information across the web, which was also started by founder Brenden Mulligan.

Brenden Mulligan:  For a long time now, artists have been asked to create profiles on all of these different services, and one problem I felt was there was that there wasn’t necessarily an easy way to weave these together.  What I wanted to do was make it incredibly easy for an artist to create a maintenance free web presence, something that would take them only a few minutes to do and be totally affordable. 

OneSheet isn’t only a one-stop-shop solution for artists, it’s also been very collaborative. Founder Brenden Mulligan has made many adjustments based on the feedback of artists.  For instance, users can remove the Onesheet header, customize the navigation bar and rename concerts to tour, live, appearances, events or shows, etc. Most importantly, Onesheets can be assigned a custom domain name, which is a great asset in today’s world of uber branding.

Brenden Mulligan plans to add a premium paid service will add additional features and customization. “Mobile optimization is another feature we may charge for. What kind of artists use Onesheet and how they use it, will drive what we do next.”

To hear my entire interview with entrepreneur and CEO, Brenden Mulligan, go to https://bit.ly/BrendenMulligan  

Kelli Richards Hosts a VIP Breakfast at the Bandwidth Music | Technology Conference

On Tuesday, August 16th, at 8am, industry thought-leaders, Kelli Richards, CEO of the All Access Group, will host an intimate breakfast and discussion to kick off day two of the annual Bandwidth Music | Technology Conference.  The focus of this “breakfast club” will be Kelli Richards’ newest eBook “Taking the Crowd to the Cloud – Social Media for the Music Industry.” VIP Breakfast and a printed copy of the eBook (valued at $37) will be available to the first 20 people who respond. Please RVSP to reserve your VIP seat at the event.  sandy@allaccessgroup.com

The Bandwidth Music | Technology Conference is for music and technology professionals and focuses on the evolving musical experience. Topics focus on marketing, fan behavior, trends and future forecasts, and an examination of the ways people discover, purchase, interact with, and are exposed to music.


Please RVSP to reserve your VIP seat at the event. sandy@allaccessgroup.com

Taking the Crowd to the Cloud – Social Media for the Music Industry

After 25+ years in the digital space, it’s hard to ignore that the music industry has turned into a very complicated space — and believe me, marketing was NEVER easy to begin with.

My new eBook, Taking the Crowd to the Cloud – Social Media for the Music Industry, is an insider’s view on how it all comes together.  It raises the bar and demystifies social media marketing, helping musicians, agents and anyone in our industry THRIVE – it empowers and transforms the marketing mindset.

Featuring TEN top social networks for musicians, this eBook maximizes your social media to build (and keep) your audience. It holds the key to eMail Marketing, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and several hot secrets in Social Media. (It even covers how to port your MySpace contents to Facebook Music.) For $37 this is easily the million dollar choice.

Go to https://allaccessgroup.com/products/taking-the-crowd-to-the-cloud to get your copy and find out more.

To your success!

Kelli Richards,
CEO of All Access Group

Spotify ….Finally

Well, after all this time, what’s left to be said???   Except let’s give credit to the artist.  Tallulah by Tobias Norberg

 

Best Practices for the New World of Live Music

In my ebook on Social Media for the music industry (Take the Crowd to the Cloud), I begin with the following statement:  The landscape of how audiences are built has completely, thoroughly changed in the last decade – in fact, it has redefined itself more than once.  Being malleable enough to “grow” with the flow can mean the difference between big successes or devastating failures in the music and digital arenas.  All of us, whether we’re artists or authors or thought leaders, must recognize that, in order to succeed, we must also think and act like CEOs and marketing mavens.

That idea, however, of becoming marketing mavens, must be tempered by a deep understanding of where your fan base is – not only insofar as location, but also where they’re at economically.  Of course, this specifically refers to live music, digital music and digital distribution are a different issue, and one that I address often.

If your next live gig is in Los Angeles or New York, then have at it, your ticket buyers are at least in a city that has jobs to offer, giving them a fighting chance at a healthy ticket price.  But if you’re playing in Rhode Island or Flint, Michigan, you have to seriously consider what the market can bear.  A lower ticket price doesn’t have to mean you’re eating PB&J for a week either, it means you have to get creative, so that those who want more contact or have more expendable income, can choose to participate on a higher level.  Consider a paid meet & greet before you go onstage, or an after party with some free merch to go with the separate ticket price.

Whatever you do, you have to do what Bob Lefsetz recently shared in his newsletter, the Lefsetz Letter: You have to align yourself with your fans.

Kelli Richards
CEO of The All Access Group

You can sign up for an advance copy of my ebook at https://allaccessgroup.com/services/ (just click ebooks when you get the confirmation).

 

Connectivity – A Vision of the Future


Sometimes I have to remind conference attendees, groups that I speak with, or even clients that digital content and digital distribution are a lot more than just music.  When we consider the amazing growth around music, however, it is easy to get stuck there.

But we shouldn’t. Digital goes far beyond songs and iTunes and singles and lockers, it goes past movies and downloadable books and content, it’s way bigger than anything we could have imagined five years ago, and I have no doubt that five years from now will showcase something else that’s beyond what we might imagine today.

Recently, at the 2011 MRC European e-Commerce Payments and Risk Conference, Mitsue Venture and Neolabels.com offered up some mind blowing statistics and projections that anyone in the digital space should be aware of.  I’ll include their video here, which is featured on their website itself and on YouTube.  (It’s 7 and a half minutes long, but stick with it if you can, it goes fast.)  Below the video, I’ll highlight some of the more amazing statistics and projections that they offered.  My personal favorite bears special attention however, simply in regard to web users, traffic and connectivity.  It’s this:  Web traffic generated by only 20 homes in 2015 will be greater than the total traffic of the Internet way back in 1995.

Please enjoy the video, and as always, if you have any feedback, your comments are most welcome.

 

(Source: Mitsue Venture and Neolabels.com)

More consumers will access the Internet by mobile devices than by desktop or laptop by 2014.

2015 forecast of annual global mobile data traffic (75 exabytes) is equal to 19.000 million DVDs https://digitallife.neolabels.com.

Mobile-only Internet population will grow 56-fold up to 788 million by the end of 2015.

In 2015 mobile devices will exceed the home PC base installed.

500 million mobile using mobile health Apps in 2015.

In 2015 revenue mobile Apps will be an amount near to $40 million.

Social Networks revenues will grow more than 4-fold from 2010 to 2015.”

It is expected that in 2015 it will exist 2,5 Internet connected devices per inhabitants worldwide.

Yes, the bottom line is that digital is the brave new world, and we are the forefathers of what it becomes. Whether we’re in the music industry or any industry, we need to be ready for the digital revolution to completely renovate how we do business and how we meet our customers’ demands.

To your success.

Kelli Richards, CEO, The All Access Group, LLC

Source:  Mitsue Venture and Neolabels.com https://digitallife.neolabels.com

 

Cloudy Weather at Apple, Then and Now



It will come as no surprise to anyone that Apple’s stock will rise the moment Steve Jobs takes the stage later today.  By any estimate, Apple is worth billions – with or without Steve Jobs – but like it or not, Apple is not a democracy.  It is an autocracy.  It is a company carrying out the vision and changing the world, all according to the dictates of its leader, Steve Jobs.

I know something about this personally, albeit from a distance.  I worked for Apple for over ten years.  And yes, my claim to fame is that I worked in music.  In fact, I launched the focus on music that led the Music and Entertainment initiatives during my 10 year tenure there. The tragedy of that story, for me, is that it was during what I call the “dark days” at Apple, when Jobs was not sitting on the throne, lobbing ideas faster than the technology could keep up with him.  It was when the helm was run (and run into the ground) by others, with the phrase, “Et tu Brute,” hanging in the air.

I can remember saying to anyone who would listen that the only hope for us was somehow if Steve Jobs came back to Apple.  Nobody believed he would, of course.  He was running not one, but two companies by that time.  Surprising everyone, however, he did come back. Sadly, one of his first moves was to trim off as much as he could; to focus on the fundamentals in order to turn the company around, and my department was part of those cuts.  But turn it around he did.  Even though it meant a big career shift for me, I’d have to say that almost every single project Steve Jobs created, once back at Apple, was the right thing at the right time.  Quite simply, he has a passion and keen sense for what the consumer wants.  In my opinion as an insider AND an outsider, it never would have worked without him.

Here’s the coin flip on that one.  He’s built a Martha Stewart or Oprah type of empire, one that may not work without him on the throne.  Let’s look at the biggest example to date. The iPad.  When the iPad came out, Steve Jobs literally, single handedly changed a lot more than how people used computers or exchanged information.  He literally changed the economic structure of the publishing industry overnight, by his own design, just as he had previously done with music, film and TV – and nobody got a vote.  The technology is in place …and the consumer will now drive what comes next. Publishing companies will either get on the bandwagon, or run the risk of being left behind. It’s just that simple.

And with all of the controversy around clouds and lockers, especially in the music industry, Jobs has again stepped into the ring with a technology that consumers will trust.  Yes, some would say that he’s behind the curve – that lockers and clouds are already available, but it is the trusted brand of Apple that will bring clouds out of the status of rebel and into the accepted mainstream.  With Steve Jobs carving out legitimacy for a niche in the digital industry that is long overdue, perhaps music will finally stop bleeding revenue.   And Apple?   Well, as any good cloud knows, the sky’s the limit.

 

Kelli Richards, CEO of All Access Group

 

 

 

 

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