SF MusicTech Summit X

After years as a band manager, promoter, and restauranteur, Nic took the helm at The Roxy in 1998. An entrepreneur and community builder, Nic was drawn to the cutting edge concepts he found in the burgeoning field of social media. In 2007 he launched a blog that went on to win The VH-1 Rock Honors Award for Best Music Venue Website. Always an early adaptor, Nic began tweeting in 2008 and is now the #1 Music Venue on Twitter and Facebook in the world. As his social media program grew, Nic began to see the importance of being a part of the larger community of the Sunset Strip and the City of West Hollywood. Nic is co-producer of the Sunset Strip Music Festival, which draws over 30,000 music fans to the city every August and celebrates the Strip’s legacy as it highlights some of music’s newest talent. He is Vice President of the Sunset Strip Business Association and a regular at City Council meetings where he is leading efforts to bring the community together. Featured in the New York Times, Mashable,TechCrunch, Los Angeles Times, Fast Company, and cover stories in LABJ, Venues Today and Nightclub and Bar Magazine, Nic is reinventing his club, his street and eventually his city using the fundamental concepts of community building inherent in social media. Follow Nic on Twitter: @nicadler and @theroxy

Lisa Alter, Esq.
Partner, Alter & Kendrick, LLP, Attorneys at Law

Lisa A. Alter is a partner in the firm of Alter & Kendrick, LLP in New York City. Her practice is focused primarily in the area of copyright law, with a particular emphasis on domestic and international music copyright issues. She advises composers, authors, musical estates, and music publishers on a wide variety of transactional and licensing matters, conducts in-depth copyright due diligence in connection with the acquisition, sale and/or administration of copyright catalogues, and consults frequently on issues involving termination of grants, recapture of copyrights, and foreign reversionary rights. Her clients include well-known musical estates, as well as prominent contemporary songwriters and performing artists. Ms. Alter has lectured frequently at law schools and professional meetings on copyright matters, and has represented clients on legislative matters impacting their copyright interests. She is the author of “Protecting Your Musical Copyrights” which has recently been released in its second edition. Ms. Alter is a graduate of Wesleyan University and New York University School of Law.

Kevin Arnold
IODA, Founder & CEO
Noise Pop Industries, Founder & CEO

Founder and CEO of IODA, Kevin guides the growth of one
of the largest digital distributors of independent music in
the world, combining his dedication to independents and his
unique understanding of the digital music world to benefit
IODA’s global client base. Kevin also directs Noise Pop
Industries, which produces San Francisco’s internationally
renowned Noise Pop Festival, which he founded in 1993,
as well as the Treasure Island Music Festival and other Bay
Area cultural events.

Martin Atkins
Welcome to the Music Industry, You’re Fucked!

Martin Atkins is the definition of entrepreneurial activity in cultural arts endeavors. His three decades in the music business spans across genres, borders and industries. Having experience in nearly every aspect of record production and promotion has given Martin a unique perspective not only on where the music industry is currently, but where it is going in the future.

After playing drums in a variety of English bands, Martin auditioned for and subsequently joined Johnny Rotten’s Public Image Limited in 1979. His first contribution to the band was co‐writing and performing on the song “Bad Baby” for the revered Metal Box LP. After touring the world with P.i.L and contributing to several more studio albums Martin left the group in 1985. Over the next five years, he played with and managed Killing Joke and toured with Ministry. In 1990, while on tour with Ministry, he formed his own band, Pigface. He also worked with Nine Inch Nails, performing on the Grammy award winning “Wish” and appearing in the “Head like a Hole” video.

Martin began working on the business side of music in 1988 when he formed Invisible Records and then Mattress Factory Studios in 1996. Over two decades Invisible has released over 350 albums and has had placements spanning from the original Miami Vice to Showtime’s Queer as Folk to Robert Altman’s The Company.

Atkins wrote his book Tour:Smart in 2007 and has since spoken around the world at major industry conferences, recognized universities, and nonprofit organizations. His distinguished speaking resume includes: SXSW, Warped Tour, CMJ, New Music Seminar, Unconvention, NAMM, By:Larm, Dfest, USC, Drexel, Virginia Commonwealth University, Full Sail, Weiden + Kennedy, Chicago Cultural Center and many more.

Atkins currently teaches at Madison Media Institute leading courses on Touring, Advanced Entrepreneurship, Artist and Event Management, and Online Marketing. When he’s not teaching, you can find him on the road, consulting with artists and organizations, or working on his next book, Band:Smart. He is a father of four boys and lives with his wife, Katrina, in Chicago. Follow Martin on Twitter: @TourSmart & @MarteeeeN

Darryl Ballantyne
LyricFind, CEO & Founder

At LyricFind, Darryl is responsible for the overall strategy and direction of the company, including licensing and distribution. Darryl pioneered the digital lyrics space, successfully negotiating the first-ever mass lyrics licensing deal with EMI Music Publishing in 2005.

Darryl Ballantyne originally conceived LyricFind in 2000 with Mohamed Moutadayne and Chris Book at Ontario’s University of Waterloo to be the largest, most accurate destination for lyrics on the Internet. Officially launched in 2004, the company pioneered the licensed digital lyrics space, successfully negotiating the first-ever mass lyrics licensing deal with EMI Music Publishing in 2005. Since then, Darryl has grown LyricFind to be the largest legal, licensed lyrics database in the world, with millions of licensed tracks available and thousands of lyrics sublicensing clients.

LyricFind has established licensing and content relationships with over 2,000 music publishers, AMG, The Harry Fox Agency and Rovi. The company now delivers services to over 1,000 website and mobile applications that want to enhance their music products with lyrics, including Microsoft’s Bing, Rhapsody, Lyrics.com, Slacker, Shazam, Virgin Media UK, Cox Radio, and mSpot. In addition, LyricFind offers two direct to consumer mobile applications, LyricFind Lite and LyricFind Pro for the iPhone, iPad, and Android platforms.

As an authority on licensing and digital content, Darryl has spoken at industry events including SF Music Tech and Canadian Music Week. Before launching LyricFind, Darryl was Manager of Digital Development & Distribution at EMI Music in Los Angeles, where he was involved in deals with companies such as MusicMatch, Napster, and iTunes. Darryl earned a Bachelor of Mathematics with a Business minor from the University of Waterloo. Follow on Twitter: @DBToronto

John Perry Barlow
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Co-founder
Grateful Dead lyricist

John Perry Barlow is a former Wyoming rancher and Grateful Dead lyricist. He graduated in 1969 with High Honors in comparative religion from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.

More recently, he co-founded and still co-chairs the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He was the first to apply the term Cyberspace to the “place” it presently describes.

He has written for a diversity of publications, including Communications of the ACM, Mondo 2000, The New York Times, and Time. He has been on the masthead of Wired Magazine since it was founded. His piece on the future of copyright, “The Economy of Ideas” is taught in many law schools and his “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” is posted on thousands of web sites.

In 1997, he was a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and has been, since 1998, as a Berkman Fellow at the Harvard Law School.

He works actively with several consulting groups, including Diamond Technology Partners, Vanguard, and Global Business Network.

In June 1999, FutureBanker Magazine named him “One of the 25 Most Influential People in Financial Services”. He writes, speaks, and consults on a broad variety of subjects, particularly digital economy.

He lives in Wyoming, New York, San Francisco, On the Road, and in Cyberspace. He has three teenaged daughters and aspires to be a good ancestor.

Follow Barlow on Twitter: @JPBarlow

Eric Bieschke
Pandora, Director of Playlist Engineering

Eric Bieschke runs playlist engineering for Pandora. As one of Pandora’s first employees, he built the initial prototypes for the company’s playlist algorithms. As the service has grown, the algorithm is now deployed online, on mobile and via CE devices to more than 125 million registered users. To date, these millions of listeners have thumbed more than 11 billion songs while listening to billions of hours of music. Eric works daily on optimally combining content-based recommendations, collective intelligence, and human-machine cooperation in order to provide the best experience for listeners. Follow Eric on Twitter: @ericbke

Vernon Black
Guitarist / Producer

An accomplished guitarist and vocalist, Vernon Black spent most of the past 20 years touring, recording and film tracking with music legends like Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Chakka Kahn and Lionel Richie. More recently, he’s performed and recorded with contemporary artists including Ashanti, Mariah Carey, India.Arie, Busta Rhymes and Celine Dion.

Vernon’s work can be heard in films like “The Bodyguard,” “License to Kill,” and “Beverly Hills Cop II;” in advertising jingles for Jaguar, Chevrolet, Toyota, Nissan, Mattel and Levi’s; and in songs and sound effects on video games for Sony Play Station, Nintendo, Sega and EA Sports (Electronic Arts). And at the Jimi Hendrix Festival at Bumbershoot Stadium in Seattle Washington he was the co-music director and opened the show with the legendary “Experience” (Jimi’s Hendrix’s original band) – Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding.

Vernon is also a producer, composer and music director. Credits include; The Spice Girls (music director), Regina Belle (composer), Phillip Bailey (composer) and his 1st solo record “Sneak Previews” (composer, producer) {guest artists including Herbie Hancock, Steve Smith, Tom Coster, Phillip Bailey} and for multiple artists on his “Ice Black Productions” production company / independent record label.

Also an innovator of musical instrument design, Vernon designs his own electric guitars. He is the co-designer of the MP2 digital guitar preamp, which won the award for best guitar processor of 1993. He also received an award from the DVD Association for co-designing the DVD on CD (multi layered enhanced cd) in 2000.

In the year 2004, Vernon took a break from the “guitarist for hire” market to create a situation that would allow him to pursue and develop his own producing and writing career as well as being a solo artist. Equally so, he was motivated to create a place that gave artists a more fair and friendly (artist based business) environment. This led to the creation of his production company / independent record label “Ice Black Productions.”

Gary Brotman
Qualcomm Atheros, Director, Product Marketing

Gary Brotman is a marketing veteran with more than 15 years of experience designing and marketing media software, hardware and services that push the boundaries of technology. The majority of his career has been dedicated to helping consumers, artists and companies discover, experience, promote and distribute media online. Brotman is currently Director of Product Marketing for Qualcomm Atheros (QCA), a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, which develops wireless technologies for the connected home. Brotman is currently responsible for leading strategic marketing and business efforts for QCA’s connected home media services, including the Skifta media platform. He has also led marketing teams for Qualcomm Labs and Qualcomm’s Global Market Development group.

Prior to joining Qualcomm, Brotman was the head of Artist Services and Marketing for Santa Monica-based Topspin Media, where he lead a team responsible for marketing the Topspin software platform and providing strategic guidance to artists, managers, labels and Topspin marketing ecosystem partners on developing and managing direct-to-fan businesses. While at Topspin, he designed direct-to-consumer record release campaigns and businesses for a host of major-label and indie artists including Eminem, David Byrne, Peter Gabriel, Adam Freeland, Van Hunt, and many others.

Prior to joining Topspin, Brotman was the head of product marketing at Yahoo! Music, where he was responsible for developing marketing strategies in support of the division’s ad-supported and paid music services.

Before becoming part of the Yahoo! Music team, Brotman served as Director of Ecommerce and Corporate Communications Director for Musicmatch, makers of the Musicmatch Jukebox. The lion’s share of his time at Musicmatch was dedicated to developing marketing and communications strategies and driving customer acquisition and retention efforts in support of the company’s premium software, music downloads and premium music subscription products.

Prior to joining Musicmatch, Brotman was an account supervisor in the Los Angeles office of international PR firm, Golin/Harris. While with the firm, Brotman built a practice focused solely on the digital music space, providing communications counsel and developing product launch strategies for a client roster that included Amazon.com, Creative Labs, Texas Instruments, Musicmatch, and Forrester Research, among others. This digital music practice was credited as the first of its kind within a major PR firm. Follow Gary on Twitter: @GaryZero

Bob Brown
Avid, Collaboration Architect

Bob Brown is a software architect at Avid, focusing on collaboration technologies. He helps lead the product and technology direction of Pro Tools, Media Composer, and other Avid products. He spends his time researching and prototyping various tools to help media creators work better together. Various technology interests include real time media streaming, asset management, cloud solutions, and user experience design.

Since joining Digidesign (a division of Avid) in 1999, Bob has worked on every Pro Tools release since version 5.0 and various Media Composer releases. In 2010, he took a break from developing software at Avid to join one of Yahoo’s mobile software engineering teams to develop applications for Android and iOS. At Yahoo, he worked on the Yahoo Daily Digest and Livestand products. He rejoined Avid as a software architect focusing on collaboration technologies in early 2011. Follow Bob on Twitter: @BobBrownAvid

Antony Bruno
DigitalMusic.org, Community Manager

Bill Silva Entertainment, Manager

Ryan Chisholm joined Bill Silva Entertainment in 2006, assisting on all sides of the company (management, concert promotion, touring) while finishing up his undergraduate degree at UCLA. As the newest tech-savvy addition to the team, Ryan oversaw the New Media division for all management clients and Bill Silva Presents shows.

Ryan grew up with a passion for artist management, shadowing his father Kevin Chisholm, who worked as Santana’s Manager/Tour Director for over 20 years. Over time, Ryan transitioned into the role of personal manager for James Morrison in North America. In 2010, Ryan and Tom Gates signed indie/folk trio Good Old War and singer/songwriter Christina Perri. Under their guidance, Perri’s song “Jar of Hearts” was featured on Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance, thrusting her into the iTunes Top 15 chart and launching her career. The song has since sold nearly 3 million singles and led to the recording of her Atlantic Records debut album “lovestrong,” which has sold roughly 300,000 copies.

In 2011, Ryan was named one of Billboard’s 30 under 30 “Young Execs You Need To Watch” and one of IQ Magazine’s top 10 “New Bosses” of 2011.

Bill Silva Management guides the careers of GRAMMY Award-winning artist Jason Mraz; Atlantic Records recording artist Christina Perri; indie/folk trio Good Old War; indie/singer-songwriter Robert Francis and rising young talent Tom Andrews.

Steve Churchill
SonicLiving, Director of Technology & Co-Founder

Steve Churchill is the Director of Technology & Co-Founder of SonicLiving.

Calling San Francisco home, Steve Churchill has got 10+ years in working with startups, architecting platforms, integrating systems, writing code, and acting
as a team lead. He graduated with a BS in Computer Science from University of California, San Diego.

Steve is a music lover and musician — playing saxaphone and accordion with local musicians. Follow Steve on Twitter: @lazyevil

Bram Cohen
BitTorrent, Founder and Chief Scientist

Bram Cohen is Chief Scientist and co-founder of BitTorrent, Inc., and the inventor of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution protocol.

Cohen is also the co-founder of CodeCon. Prior to the creation of BitTorrent, Bram worked at MojoNation. MojoNation allowed people to break up confidential files into encrypted chunks and distribute those pieces to other computers running MojoNations software. This concept served as the inspiration for Bram’s development of BitTorrent.

Before MojoNation, Cohen was a quintessential dot-commer, working for several
Internet companies through the mid-to-late 90s.

Cohen grew up in New York City, graduated from Stuyvesant High School and attended the University of Buffalo.

Dan Cohen

Sonos, Global VP Product Management

Dan Cohen’s experience ranges from founding and serving as CEO of startups to developing and leading technology businesses and product teams in large companies. Cohen is currently the VP of Product Management for Sonos, where he has global responsibility for the Sonos product line. Cohen is also a cofounder of mySpoonful, a service that delivers free new indie music to busy fans.

Previously, Cohen was CEO of Pageflakes, the social personalized start page. Under his leadership, the site grew rapidly from a European beta site into an award-winning Web 2.0 product a worldwide audience. Cohen also built the company’s management team and US operations, formulated product and go-to-market strategy, created media buzz to drive user growth, raised additional venture funding and improved engineering output and product quality. He also established key media and distribution partnerships, and later directed the company’s acquisition by LiveUniverse.

Prior to Pageflakes, Cohen was Head of My Yahoo!, the most popular personalized start page in the world, with over 60 million unique visitors. Before Yahoo!, Cohen was Group Product Manager of Personalized Products at Google, including iGoogle and Google Reader.

Cohen was previously the CEO and cofounder of Personity, a provider of presence server infrastructure and consumer applications for mobile operators, later acquired by Openwave. Follow Cohen on Twitter now: @IamDanCohen

Ted Cohen
TAG Strategic, Managing Partner

Integrating his widespread digital authority in music, mobile, IPTV and product & service development, Ted Cohen is the Managing Partner of TAG Strategic.

In an industry that’s been slow to embrace change, Cohen is the exception to the stereotypical music-exec rule. Of course, when you start a career on the road with Alice Cooper and Van Halen, you’re more primed for the unexpected.

Known throughout the technology and music industries as being “part ambassador and part evangelist,” Cohen was instrumental in crafting the licensing agreements upon which the Rhapsody subscription service and the iTunes Music Store were built.

In his previous role as Senior Vice President of Digital Development & Distribution for EMI Music (home of artists including Coldplay and the Rolling Stones), Cohen led next-generation digital business development worldwide for this “big four” record company, which includes labels such as Capitol, Virgin, Angel/Blue Note, Parlophone and Chrysalis. During that time, EMI led the industry by embracing and exploiting new technologies and business models such as digital downloads and online music subscriptions, custom compilations, wireless services, high-definition audio and Internet radio.

In addition to seeking out, evaluating and executing business opportunities for the company on a global basis, Cohen served as both a strategist and key decision-maker for EMI’s global new media and anti-piracy efforts. He worked to establish company-wide digital policies, which have provided EMI’s artists and labels a substantial advantage in the digital music arena.

Prior to his role at EMI, Cohen served as Executive Vice President of Digital Music Network Inc., where he co-founded and served as Chairman of the groundbreaking Webnoize conferences.

Cohen also led two highly successful new media consulting operations, DMN Consulting and Consulting Adults, attracting clients such as Amazon.com, Microsoft, Universal Studios, DreamWorks Records, Liquid Audio, Wherehouse Records/Checkout.com and various other entertainment, technology and new media organizations. Cohen also held senior management positions at both Warner Bros. Records and Philips Media.

A 30-year industry veteran, Cohen currently chairs MidemNet, an international music/technology conference convened in Cannes each year. Cohen also serves on the NARAS (Grammy) Los Angeles chapter Board of Governors as well as the national Trustee Board, the Board of Directors for the Neil Bogart Memorial Fund, co-chairs the new media arm of the T.J. Martell Foundation, and lends his time and talents to music & technology education efforts such as the Grammy In The Schools Program. Cohen served two terms as the Chairman of the Mobile Entertainment Forum Americas.

Matt Conn
RootMusic, Doctor of Pages

Matt Conn is the Doctor of Pages at RootMusic, creator of BandPage, the #1 music application on Facebook. BandPage represents over a quarter of a million bands and 25 million+ fans every month. Matt is a member of the founding team and helps guide platform direction and best practices of the system. As Doctor of Pages, Matt works with some of the largest artists on Facebook like Rihanna, Bon Jovi, and Green Day – Matt is focused solely on tools and practices to make sure users get the best possible engagement and most value out of what has become many artists’ largest online property. Follow Matt on Twitter: @mattdotconn

Josh Constine
TechCrunch, Writer

Josh Constine is a writer for TechCrunch who specializes in analysis of social products and music technology. Previously, he was the lead writer for Inside Facebook and earned a master’s degree in Cybersociology from Stanford. Josh is a life long music fan who’s been to 8 straight Coachellas, played in several bands, and maintains a curated concert calendar for his friends in San Francisco. Follow Josh on Twitter: @JoshConstine

Jack Conte

Pomplamoose, Multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, filmaker

Nataly Dawn

Pomplamoose, Composer & Lead Vocalist

Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn form the recording duo “Pomplamoose.” The majority of their new music is released as singles posted to YouTube. These mostly take the form of “VideoSongs”, a medium they define with two rules:

(1) What you see is what you hear. (No lip-syncing for instruments or voice)

(2) If you hear it, at some point you see it. (No hidden sounds)

Pomplamoose’s collection of VideoSongs are wildly popular with over 74 million views on YouTube. For example, the VideoSong for “Single Ladies” has garnered almost 9 million views, “Telephone” over 8 million views, and “Beat It” over 7 million views as of January 2012. Follow on Twitter:@pomplamoose

Jan D’Alessandro

Yahoo!, Head of Business Development, Yahoo! Sports, Entertainment and Lifestyles

Jan leads the team at Yahoo responsible for crafting and negotiating strategic partnerships for the Sports, Entertainment, Games and Lifestyles properties. She has extensive digital media experience, having held leadership positions at Topspin Media, The Find and AOL. At Topspin, she managed partnerships with labels, distributors, technology, marketing, management companies, brand advertisers and anyone else interested in helping artists and fans find each other in the digital world. She was responsible for developing AOL’s music strategy, including the acquisitions of Spinner and Nullsoft, leading many content, commerce and technology deals, and launching the philanthropy portal, networkforgood.org Follow Jan on Twitter: @jandaless

John Donham
TuneIn, CEO

John Donham is the CEO behind the world’s fastest-growing music and listening service, TuneIn. John co-founded his previous start-up, social gaming company Metaplace, which was acquired by gaming giant Playdom in 2010. Playdom subsequently sold to Disney and soon after John was promoted to co-COO of Playdom, overseeing product and technology. John has a long-standing track record in consumer internet, entertainment and gaming.

He was previously a Vice President of Development for Sony Online Entertainment where he led the development of dozens of popular titles including the EverQuest franchise and Star Wars Galaxies.

When he’s not obsessing over product, you can find John building high-quality custom speakers. Some of his creations now pump out the sounds of favorite employee shows and stations through the TuneIn offices. John’s favorite stations and shows on TuneIn include ESPN, KFOG, Hot 97, WSB, KQED, and Radio Paradise.

Michael Drexler
BMI New Media & Strategic Development, Executive Director, Business Development

Michael Drexler oversees BMIs New Media business development and is managing BMI’s efforts to open up new revenue streams for writers and publishers in the digital world, ranging from broadband to mobile. He also serves on the contract negotiating team in the New Media group on all license agreements.
In his previous roles as Senior Director of Business Development, Corporate Development and Strategy at Sony Music and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Drexler led the evaluation of new business opportunities, investments and JVs and negotiated content and equity agreements in new digital environments.
Drexler is also an accomplished keyboardist, music producer and audio engineer with hundreds of credits and two Grammy nominations to his name. Follow Drexler on Twitter: @drexmex

David Dufresne
Bandzoogle, CEO

David Dufresne is CEO at Bandzoogle, the most powerful platform for musicians to build their website, engage their fans, and sell their music and merchandise directly. Bandzoogle works with many thousands of bands and musicians to help them create a strong base for their online strategy. David is a reformed venture capitalist, having spent 8 years placing bets on software, web, and video game startups. He’s an obsessive music fan and occasional DJ. David is also the founder of Backfed, a conspiracy to rewire the music economy (to launch later in 2012). Follow David on Twitter: @bandzoogle and @DavidDufresne

Eric Ferraro, Esq.
LeClairRyan, Shareholder
Iris Distribution, Co-Founder

Eric Ferraro is a shareholder at LeClairRyan where he leads the firm’s corporate and venture capital practices in San Francisco. Eric focuses his practice on the representation of entrepreneurs, companies and investors in the mobile/wireless, consumer web, digital media and music technology industries. Eric counsels his clients in matters relating to entity formation and founder arrangements, corporate governance, venture capital, intellectual property, technology and media licensing, mergers and acquisitions and public offerings.

Eric is also a founder of IRIS, an independent digital media distributor, and has deep expertise in music and content licensing, publishing and syndication, copyright and royalty administration, and regulatory issues relating to e-commerce and online advertising.

Eric has been recognized as a Northern California Super Lawyer on numerous occasions. He chairs the annual MobiTechFest investor conference and is an advisor to SF New Tech, Founders Space and other entrepreneur-focused organizations and events. He serves as general counsel to and sits on the board of directors of Artists for Literacy and is a panel attorney for California Lawyers for the Arts. Follow Eric on Twitter: @ericferraro

Jay Frank

CEO of DigSin

Jay Frank is the Owner and CEO of DigSin, a new singles-focused music company that allows subscribing fans to obtain music for free. DigSin signs new artists to deals that leverage new platforms, social networks and analytics that expose music to a wider audience, building popularity outside of traditional platforms.

Frank is also the author of two books. His first book, Futurehit.DNA, is a #1 Songwriting book on Amazon and part of the college curriculum at a number of colleges and universities. The book explores how digital technology has changed the way people discover music and examines what an artist needs to make their song more hitworthy in the digital age. Frank’s second book, Hack Your Hit, is a how-to guide for musicians filled with free and cheap marketing tips. The book is scheduled for release in January 2012.

Prior to forming DigSin, Frank was the Senior Vice President of Music Strategy for CMT, an MTV Network. Under Frank’s leadership, music video ratings reached all-time highs thanks to an aggressive multi-platform promotional strategy. Frank was also Vice President of Music Programming and Label Relations for Yahoo! Music, responsible for all the company’s music programming. He was instrumental in the exponential growth of Yahoo’s audience bringing in approximately 25 million people a month. He was also senior music director at The Box Music Network, worked in marketing and A&R for Ignition Records, managed a live music venue, programmed broadcast radio stations and created two local music video shows.

Frank holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY and sits on the Board of Directors of the Academy of Country Music, The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee and Leadership Music. Frank also serves on the Tennessee Film, Entertainement and Music Commission, is a co-chair of Leadership Music Digital Summit, and is a consultant at FLO (Thinkery). A respected leader in the music and digital communities, Frank has spoken at such conferences as MIDEM, South By Southwest, Canadian Music Week, ASCAP Expo, MusExpo, Digital Music Forum, CMJ, SF Music Tech Summit, New Music Seminar and Mobile Entertainment Summit, among others.

Frank resides in Nashville with his wife and daughter. Follow Frank on Twitter: @futurehitdna

Ronald Gertz

Music Reports, Chairman and Founder

Ronald Gertz is an internationally recognized authority in copyright law and music licensing, specializing in private and governmental regulation and royalty administration. Under his leadership, Music Reports has grown to become the entertainment industry’s leading music rights administration service at the forefront of solutions to issues presented by the development of digital transmission technologies.

Mr. Gertz oversees all strategic planning efforts for Music Reports’ New Media clients. In doing so, he counsels clients on emerging new media licensing issues such as on demand streaming and downloading through wired and wireless networks, digital broadcasting and distribution. Mr. Gertz champions relationships with all music industry stakeholders, including artists, managers, composers, publishers, performing rights societies and record labels.

As Chairman, Mr. Gertz is Music Reports’ lead strategist in regulatory proceedings and legislative initiatives to preserve competition in collection and distribution of royalties for digital distribution of intellectual property. Mr. Gertz has participated in groundbreaking rate setting proceedings under the ASCAP and BMI consent decrees, before the Copyright Royalty Board, and rulemaking proceedings before the Register of Copyrights.

Mr. Gertz is a frequent speaker and lecturer on copyright related issues in new media and is a former chair of the Intellectual Property Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association and past president of the California Copyright Conference. He has been a director of the Broadcast Cable Financial Managers Association (BCFM) and the National Academy of Songwriters and a member of the Interactive Multimedia Association’s Intellectual Property Task Force. Trained as a classical vocalist and guitarist, Mr. Gertz has performed professionally and is a member of ASCAP and The Society of Composers and Lyricists.

Larry Goldberg

TuneWiki, CEO and President

Larry is an executive and entrepreneur with over 25 years’ experience in the entertainment and digital media industries. Immediately before joining TuneWiki, Larry acted as a consultant for numerous video game companies and devoted significant time to helping launch several new businesses, including E-Line Media, a publisher of game-based learning products, and The Rundown, a daily subscription lifestyle e-mail for professionals. He also served on the Board of Directors of Emergent Game Technologies. Before becoming a consultant and entrepreneur, Larry spent almost ten years as an executive officer of Activision, where he served as EVP Worldwide Studios, Chief Corporate Officer and General Counsel, and played a major role in turning the company into the world’s largest video game publisher. Follow Larry on Twitter: @TuneWikiLarry

Ean Golden

DJ Tech Tools, Founder

Ean Golden is the leading innovator in a new age of djing that is sweeping the world. In 2007, He founded the first site focused on digital djs and controllers: DjTechTools.com. This global hub is now the community center for millions of djs that are learning to perform and become artists with dj software. Not just an innovator online, he has designed some of the most popular dj hardware in the last 3 years and created the controllerism movement, a modern twist on turntablism. Follow Ean on Twitter: @djtechtools

Lucas Gonze
Official.fm, CTO

Lucas Gonze is the CTO of Official.fm. Lucas makes music tech, including the Yahoo Web Player used by Pitchfork and many others, connected device products at MOG, open source playlists with XSPF, and the Webjay playlist community acquired
by Yahoo. Follow Lucas on Twitter: @lucas_gonze

Gary Greenstein
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Of-Counsel

Gary Greenstein is an attorney with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. He specializes in intellectual property, licensing, mergers and acquisitions, and commercial transactions, with specialized expertise in the digital exploitation of intellectual property. He represents a wide range of technology companies in licensing transactions with copyright owners in the music, film, and television industries. He previously served as the first general counsel of SoundExchange and vice president of business and legal affairs at RIAA.

David Hazan
Mobile Backstage, Chief Marketing Officer

Mobile Backstage Chief Marketing Officer David Hazan was previously CMO at UGC Ltd, creators of theBizmo and HitorNot.

Hornblow Group USA, Inc., President / Lawyer

Jamie Lincoln Kitman is a lawyer and the President of the Hornblow Group USA, Inc., managers of OK Go, They Might Be Giants, Mike Doughty and Mike Viola. Clients have included Violent Femmes, Yo La Tengo, The La’s, The Beautiful South, Pere Ubu and Meat Puppets. In my copious spare time, I am the New York Bureau Chief for Automobile Magazine, car writer for GQ and NPR’s Car Talk, winner of the National Magazine for Commentary and the IRE Medal for Investigative Magazine Reporting. Follow Jamie on Twitter: @jamiekitman

David Kostiner, Esq.
Counsel LLP, Founding Partner

David Kostiner is a founding partner of Counsel LLP, a boutique entertainment law firm based in San Francisco, an Adjunct Professor of Entertainment Law at the University of California Hastings College of Law, and co-Founder of First Global Micro-consultants, a digital media metadata translation company. David began his career as a professional musician drumming in jazz clubs, later joining Dreamworks artist Creeper Lagoon and recording with Matt Nathanson and Patrick Park, among many others. He later co-founded the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA), was the sponsorship director for the Noise Pop Music Festival, managed internationally-known artist Rogue Wave and was an associate in the San Francisco office of Davis Shapiro Lewit and Hayes, LLP.

In addition to his law practice representing, artists, labels, festivals, writers, publishers, investors, managers, producers and executives, David consults for the government of the Philippines and for various multinational projects. David frequently appears as a panelist and public speaker, and has been published by the Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal and the Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal. David’s education includes a J.D. from Hastings College of Law, a B.A. in Psychology from Tufts University and studies at the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute and the Interlochen Arts Academy.

Mary Ku
PayPal, Director of Product Management, Digital Goods

Mary Ku has been at PayPal for over seven years, managing products in a variety of different areas, including PayPal’s marketplaces business, international business, partnerships, and most recently digital goods. She holds a BA in Computer Science from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Stanford University.

Paul Lamere

The Echo Nest, Director of Developer Platform
SF Music Hack Day