Maybe you’ve heard about the revival of MIDEM, after its cancellation after a violent pandemic hitting our industry. Good news: it’s coming back, with a new team in charge. First stop: a pre-MIDEM in January to pave the way for the real comeback in 2024.
So how did it go? Is it back? I went to the event as a founder for the new MIDEM, and I am ready to tell you all about it.
Rebuilding MIDEM
This January, I joined a community of professionals connected to the music industry to workshop the next version of MIDEM. As CEO of Reprtoir, I was part of the founders and got to participate in the event. We went over the main trends in music business nowadays, but I also took part in workshops to define the main goals for the new global meetup for music. Lots of discussions started out during these two days!
First things first: the conference was well organized. Hats off to the team because everything went smoothly in the Palais des Festival. It did feel emptier than usual but I’m confident it will get back to normal pretty soon! We were a little shy of a hundred founders and associates on site, representing several profiles from DSP to the Live sector, or even Artist&Label Services.
But really what struck me the most was how much professionals were inclined to talk about practical innovations they wanted to see represented at MIDEM. I especially took note that a few demands were made in regards to digital solutions for music business content management for instance. Real needs were expressed, making the discussion very interesting for musictech to evolve as a strong sector in the future, connected to the event. In my opinion, this is great news.
What we talked about at MIDEM
A lot of conferences were somehow connected to the topic of NFT or the metaverse. But streamlining these two days, a few key points caught my attention. If I had to summarize my main takeaways:
Working on making NFTs durable
To me, projecting into NFT models for music has always been a bit difficult. Blockchain is so fluctuant, so difficult to anticipate and in the end so new, that is varies too much to rely on it The fact that Pianity worked on a deal with Sacem to insure copyrights and follow up on speculation after the sales opened a new way to think about the future of NFT in music. It’s always good to remind ourselves of the necessary alliance we have to build between music and technology.
Spatial audio in live performances
One of the most impressive innovations I saw at MIDEM was spatial audio. Jean-Michel Jarre gave an immersive performance in 3D Audio for participants. If you ever had the chance to be part of the audience of such an experience, you know it’s quite impressive. I honestly feel like we’re there technologically speaking, able to perform these shows in spatial audio. We’re not talking about experiments anymore, we’re now looking at replicable live shows.
How sound is slowly surrounding us differently
Music and Tech, maybe paradoxically, aren’t just about the music industry. New ways to listen to music and, more generally speaking, to apprehend sound, were also a topic for MIDEM conferences. In the continuity of 3D Audio, the technology able to extract sounds, re-manage them is essential. I do feel that a lot is happening in that area as well. This could be used to convert tracks from stereo to 3D Audio, or to even rethink sound systems in cars, transports… Without a doubt, these solutions will change the game of listening at all levels. And I’m glad we got to talk about music to this extent as well!
My conclusions: I’m optimistic about the discussions we had during the event. Music industry players are here to talk about Innovation, elevate the debate on a very practical basis. There will be other meetings during the year, so we will meet back up in March!
