The conference focused on music, technology, networking, and marketing:
The SF MusicTech Summit brings together visionaries in the music/technology space, along with the best and brightest developers, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music/business/technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment.
One might ask: "what does this have to do with Java?" Well, if you look at Harold's notes, even though the word "Java" doesn't appear there, it's clear that mobile phones and smart phones are an increasingly significant, even critical, aspect of the music business. And, wherever phones are, Java is, increasingly.
A couple of examples from my own recent experience. My daughter damaged her phone -- a pretty basic one, actually, but one that had lots of music stored on it. She got a new phone (again, a basic model) from a friend who had upgraded to something fancier. But, she didn't want to part with the old phone, because as an MP3 player it still worked. So she now has two phones, one which she uses for phone calls and texting, the other being used as an MP3 player.
Another story about my daughter. She's a (currently part-time, hopes to be full-time ASAP) music professional. She's just produced her second CD, a live album consisting of recordings from her concerts this past summer. Normally, she is able to sell quite a few CDs when she performs at venues such as coffee houses and restaurants that are frequented by a mixed age crowd.
Yesterday, she performed at Central Connecticut State University, in a lunchtime performance. She set out her standard array of CDs, business cards, mailing list sign-up sheet, on a table near the stage. The audience was fairly sizeable, as students came in to grab a lunch or snack and relax after morning classes and before their first afternoon class.
So guess how many CDs she sold to this college audience? A single CD. And this isn't because the audience didn't appreciate her music. The appreciation was evident in terms of applause, etc. So, why did she sell only a single CD to a largish, appreciative audience? Because college students don't listen to music using CDs, in general. Music on hard media is fading as a means of distribution.
What was the biggest draw on the table of goodies set out for the students? The business card, which lists her primary web addresses and other information. The people who were interested enough in her music to walk up to the table took the card. Probably some other people who found her music interesting simply copied her name (which is prominently displayed on the back of her keyboard, facing the audience) into a notebook, or into their phone, or they went directly to her site as she played.
Most people in this particular audience who are interested in music don't need or want a CD. Rather, they find their music online, and they purchase any music they'd like to purchase as downloadable MP3 files. In many cases, they'll download the music to their phones -- just as my daughter herself did not want to part with a phone that could no longer make calls, but which held a still-viable library of music. As for CDs? Who wants them, or needs them, in this audience? Very few.
So, the business of music today is indeed becoming fused with mobile phone technology. See Harold's notes and the SF MusicTech Summit site for more details.
A long time ago, I suggested that one of Oracle's primary objectives in purchasing Sun was the importance of Java on mobile phones and other handheld devices. I suggested that Oracle perhaps saw the Sun acquisition as an opportunity to invest in and create new client applications and software and hardware that would interact with data centers running Oracle databases on Sun hardware -- enabling Oracle to span the spectrum from large to small -- which they can't do right now. At JavaOne, it was even hinted that Oracle/Sun might get into the mobile phone hardware business.
The traditional, hard-media-based music business is in decline. But that doesn't mean music itself is in decline. If anything, today's young people have more songs they own and can listen to than earlier generations did. The means of distribution has changed. The business model has changed. Mobile phones and hand-held devices are at the center of this change. Hence, Java's emerging importance as a critical technology within the music business.
It's been a while since we haven't mentioned Sang Shin's "Java Passion" classes. Sang is a tireless creator of material for training and hands-on labs (HOL) with detailed step-by-step instructions. The already very long list of hands-on labs now includes :
As mentioned in TOTD #113, this Tip Of The Day (TOTD) provides a working version of the JavaFX front-end for GlassFish v3 administration. Please click here to launch the JNLP or click here to a page that provides some introduction along with the link to JNLP. You may like to enable Java Console as explained in TOTD #114 for any log messages ...
I attended the SF MusicTech Summit. Here are my notes.
Sun Startup Essentials is a sponsor: http://www.sfmusictech.com/
FutureHit.DNA: You've got 7 seconds to impress your audience; Getting first impression is easy. Getting second impression is hard; Music is still created like it was 1999 ...
Jazoon 2010 is calling for papers, with a renewed website and
some surprises reserved for the ones accepted in the conference. Jazoon
is an international Java conference in the heart of Europe, for the ones
looking for the quality of the technical content and a comfortable
venue. You find better info in the conference website, but below you have the important shortcuts if you are a prospective Jazoon speaker...
Shadow copy of http://www.egjug.org/node/956. I would like to invite you to the Spring Integration session organized by EGJUG. We will talk also in quick about the upcoming JDC 2010 and may go to public restaurant to have light dinner after the SpringFramework night. Date: 15 December 2009Time: 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM ...
In the Forums, aliatis is working on issues relating to a Virtual Phone to place calls to land line. Configure Trixbox problem?: "Hi, guys. Thanks to jprovino, I can place calls in my LAN. Now, I have a problem: externals call. Here is my properties file: voicebridge.sip.port:5060 voicebridge.sip.gateways=192.168.1.5 My trixbox..."
ronenp is Porting a Java Project with JAXB to Maven: "Hi All, I am porting a project from Ant to Maven. this project is using JAXB and I want to create the source files as part of the build process. The Ant usage was: ..."
And nailuenlue is seeing a JAXB DTD <--> XML issue: "Hiho, I have an issue that i cant get rid of. In attached my schema and sample XML to this post. When i unmarshal the XML, i get the following error: DefaultValidationEventHandler: [FATAL_ERROR]: unexpected element..."
Our current Spotlight is parts 2 and 3 of the Chris Wright and James Weaver article series "What's New in JavaFX 1.2 Technology." Both articles were published in November on the Sun Developer Network. Part 2 covers RSS, Storage, and Charts. Part 3 covers JavaFX Charts in greater detail. Thanks to Janice Heiss for pointing us to the latest additions to this series.
Registered users can submit event listings for the java.net Events Page using our events submission form. All submissions go through an editorial review before being posted to the site.
Archives and Subscriptions: This blog is delivered weekdays as the Java Today RSS feed. Also, once this page is no longer featured as the front page of java.net it will be archived along with other past issues in the java.net Archive.
Previous Topic
