MUMBAI: Music business association NARM and digitalmusic.org, the home of NARM’s digital initiatives, are delving deep into the nuts and bolts that make digital music run with their first-ever Music Industry Metadata Summit, which will be held during Music Biz 2013 on May 6-7 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. Sponsored by Sony DADC, DDEX and SoundExchange, the event is designed to both inform newcomers about the importance of managing information through metadata, the “plumbing” that ensures digital tracks are labeled correctly in online music stores, and provide a forum for music-industry executives to discuss and hash out solutions to key issues in this area through a variety of workshop sessions.

“Maintaining accurate and standardized metadata isn’t necessarily the first thing that springs to mind when one thinks about the top issues currently facing the music industry, but it is one of the most critically important,” said Bill Wilson, Vice President of Digital Strategy & Business Development at NARM/digitalmusic.org. “If we want people to consume more music, we need to make it as simple as possible for them to find and discover what they want, and ensure accounting is accurate and expedient. Establishing and maintaining a proper information infrastructure is the only way to do that at scale.”

Admission to the Music Industry Metadata Summit is included with registration to Music Biz 2013. To register for the full conference, visit www.narm.com/events/musicbiz2013/rates-registration. Those who wish to attend the Metadata Summit only can visit http://musicmetadatasummit.eventbrite.com.

The preliminary agenda for the event can be found below and at the following link, with speakers being added as they are confirmed: http://digitalmusic.org/metadata-summit.

Monday, 6 May:

10 AM

Information Infrastructure: The Executive Business Case (Keynote)

? Michael Frey, Sony DADC New Media Solutions

10:45 AM

Acronym Salad I

Throughout the day, there will be short presentations by leaders of various initiatives.

? DDEX – Kirit Joshi, Sony Music

? ISRC – David Hughes, RIAA

? IMR – Jim Griffin, OneHouse, LLC

11 AM

Research Presentation

11:15 AM

Information Infrastructure: The Executive Business Case Panel

Moderator:

? Mike Jbara , WMG

Panelists:

? Jonathan Bender, SoundExchange

? Michael Drexler, BMI

? Barak Moffit, EMI

? Vinnie Freda, INgrooves Fontana

1 PM

Acronym Salad III

Throughout the day, there will be short, 5-minute presentations by leaders of various initiatives.

? CME – Michael Scherotter, Microsoft

? GRD – Ralph Peer, peermusic

? ISNI – Janifer Gatenby, OCLC

? MusicBrainz – Ian McEwen, MusicBrainz

2:15 – 4 PM

Digital Operations Workshop

Part 1: Artist Disambiguation

? Leader: Ron Ubaldo, Spotify

Part 2: Record Release Dates

? Leader: Adam Rabinovitz , Rdio

Part 3: Takedown and Other Rights Conflict Management Issues

? Leader: Chris Read, Sony DADC

4 PM

Classical, Jazz & Specialty Genre Metadata Working Session

Classical music presents very specific metadata challenges. This session is dedicated to issues regarding classical music.

? Jim Selby, Naxos USA

? Barry Smith, West 10 Entertainment

Tuesday, 7 May:

10 AM

Building Efficiency and Transparency in Royalty Reporting

Moderator:

? Mark Isherwood, Rightscomm

Panelists:

? Larry Miller, MediaNet

? Rob Weitzner, Consolidated Independent

? Daniel Susla, TouchTunes

11:15 AM

Managing Photographic & Video Archival Assets

With multiple-screen applications becoming more prevalent, operations and supply-chain teams are going to need to concern themselves with the tagging, sorting, and processing of artist and album images. This panel will discuss standards for building scalable, deployable rights-managed databases of image content.

Moderator:

? Josh Builder, The Orchard

Panelists:

? Jeff Sedlik, PLUS Coalition

? Vince Bannon, Getty Images

? Walter Gross, EMI

? Arpi Mardirossian, Tagasauris

1:30 PM

The Album Credit Ecosystem

From recording to “record store,” how do we build an authoritative source of information?

Moderator:

? Maureen Droney, The Recording Academy

Panelists:

? Alison Booth, Sony Nashville

? Ivy Skoff

? Shane Tobin, Echo Nest

? Kevin Wyatt, Rovi

2:30 PM

What the Music Business Can Learn from the News Industry

In order to drive traffic in a digital, attention-based economy, it’s necessary that artists and marketing staff syndicate their news in a timely manner. This panel will discuss content management and syndication methods for artists and labels.

Moderator:

? Paul Jessop, County Analytics

Panelists:

? J Sider, Bandpage

? Lee Hammond, Interscope

? Jason Feinberg, Epitaph