My session was entitled “COMING TO A SCREEN NEAR YOU – How visuals are changing artist marketing and artist development”.

I vividly remember a moment five or six years ago that changed my perception of the explosion of video screens on our culture, and ultimately its effect on music. I was driving in Los Angeles and I pulled up next to a family in an SUV. It was one of those big hunks of metal, tricked out with a big screen in every seat. I watched as the family was driving along next to me watching a movie together (something we see in every minivan commercial now…). Something about that really effected me and a voice in my head said “this is wrong”. The car was meant to be driven while listening to music, not watching TV! The fact a generation of kids were going to be driving around watching movies instead of listening to music made me mad! Some of my favorite music moments were driving along with my favorite tune, while my mind explored the terrain around me!

But my natural curiosity kicked in and I’ve been spending a lot of time at Warner Bros trying to understand the new world of visuals. What does it mean for music when there are screens everywhere, in all the devices we listen to music with? Is the future of music apps? You Tube? Lyric Videos? Or is it something we haven’t seen or discovered yet? Artists are starting to ask the same questions and it’s getting exciting!

My goal at Bandwidth was was to have a conceptual talk about all this, share data from projects I am working on, and get into some specific tactics on how to harness a new visual world to market and develop artist careers. The original presentation was 80 slides! But to everyones benefit, it was a discussion, not a one way presentation and we let the conversation guide us.

Here is the part of my keynote presentation I covered. You can read some highlights and play by play on Digital Music News. Theres is also a lot I didn’t get to that I will post later. Thanks to Eric Garland and Lisa Lum for helping with stats, and pulling it all together!

My talk is entitled “Coming to a Screen Near You: How the influence of visuals is affecting music marketing and artist development”. Now I need your input to make it complete.

What’s your favorite music based you tube clip? Best artist taking advantage of visuals in a new visual world? The worst artist on you tube? I’d love some of your links to include in my presentation, and ill give you a shoutout and maybe some great music. Hope to see you there!

Jeremy Welt, SVP, New Media, Warner Bros. Records
Topic: “Coming to a Screen Near You: How the influence of visuals is affecting music marketing and artist development”

Here is a close up! And it will work from this page so try it out – (links too http://wmg.jp/artist/devo)

Its an exciting promotion with a few twists – first off, the single is not out yet. You wont be able to hear “The Catalyst” until sometime in August. Very cool – your starting with a clean slate, and a real chance to influence the music.
Second – it appears if LP will be putting some version of the winning one on their album! Not juts on their myspace page (cop out for all you bands out there).

I’ve downloaded the stems, and this is NOT a remix contest. You get some beautiful drums, vocals, keyboards, piano, that allow you to create a great music bed, and then add your OWN parts.

Contest aside, the music so far sounds beautiful. Download below.