Last week, Getty Images VP, Entertainment Partnerships and Business Development Vince Bannon spoke at Midem, the annual international B2B event dedicated to the new music ecosystem.
And what did he say to the music makers, creators of cutting-edge technologies and taste-makers who were there? Look at the evolution. Embrace the convergence of digital content.
This ability to be unafraid of disruption is at our core at Getty Images, so naturally, we always welcome the opportunity to talk about it. But when we weren’t getting all fired up about digital content, our crew got to check out some other cool stuff. Here are some of the highlights that blew our heads back:
- Seeing the technologies that will take images and video and automatically combine to make a great new, cool digital products;
- Discovering the appetite for visual content from many (if not all) of the music services out there; and
- The importance of YouTube – musically and visually for breaking a band.
We also checked out the Midem Hack Day, during which 30 developers, designers and hackers from around the globe had 48 hours to conceptualize, collaborate and build a brand-new generation of applications.
You can learn about all the hacks in the video below, including a clever creation from Oscar Celma (of the innovative Gracenote) which would allow Bandcamp users to rate songs by giving the screen appropriate (or inappropriate!) hand gestures via webcam.
But — much like in Vince’s talk — embracing the convergence of digital content was a common theme. Audio, visual, social… discovery, data, curation — this is a time when there is just so much happening, and we are thrilled to be a part of the conversation.
Chinese Classical Pianist Lang Lang might have summed it up best when he talked about how talent, technology and brand partnerships have contributed in exposing his music to a broad community while disrupting the classical music world.
‘The power of technology is limitless, much like the power of music,” he said. “Perhaps this is why they are such good partners.”
We couldn’t agree more.
