Doin’ the ‘amster Dance

Spinnin’ Head of Marketing and Digital Strategist Meindert Kennis, gave a keynote speech at the ADE about the challenges faced by labels and artists in the 21st century. He was also part of ‘The Acceptance of Artificial Intelligence’ panel which discussed AI software like IBM’s Watson Beat and Popgun. Kennis championed a message that may prove hard to swallow for more purist musicians: ‘Accept AI and work with it’.

From Spinnin’s new offices in Hilversum, a stone’s throw from Amsterdam, Kennis elaborated a little on the ADE, his keynote speech on the future of the music industry: “The ADE is the most important yearly conference during which the entire electronic dance music industry gets together. For our entire organisation the month of October is about the ADE, and everyone is busy with all aspects of business: networking, meetings with many parties from abroad, doing deals, and so on.

“At the same time there is also the musical aspect, keeping our fingers on the pulse of new trends and the tech aspect. From a technological perspective dance music is always a little bit ahead, and ADE really plugs into this, with conferences on block chain technology, AI, predictive analyses and so on. Dance music is very flexible and adapts really quickly and easily to these new developments, and we then talk about how we handle that as an industry.”

Returning to the business of running labels, Kennis remarked, “If you zoom out very far and look at what happened, the music industry has gone from an ownership model to an access model. In the old days you had vinyl, and then CDs, and after that your collection of downloads, whereas now you have access to all the music in the world. This transition obviously has had growing pains, with illegal downloads, Pirate Bay, torrents, where everyone in the industry lost out. However, now with companies like Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon you see the market has grown up and is getting more healthy. I think that’s good for everybody, and you also now see great potential in the music markets in South-America and Asia. I see the future very positively.”

As for the Warner take-over, Kennis only sees upsides, “We’ll continue to work as an independent unit within Warner, doing what we have always done, spot talent, for example via our Talent Pool web site, and promote their recordings the best we can. Now we can make use of the worldwide Warner network, with all the associated advantages. We’re very enthusiastic about that and suddenly having many new colleagues. It also fits in that we have never tried to be an underground label, but instead have always tried to go for the highest achievable, which is to have a worldwide radio hit.”