David Porter, pluriactivity, music and technology

Simplemente una breve introducción a la historia de David Porter, escrita por Carla Feely a raíz de una entrevista que le hicimos a David durante una visita a Barcelona.

David Porter (conocido también  como D.P.) es persona de sonrisa amplia, actividad a destajo, compañerismo y buen humor. Y extraordinaria inteligencia.  Habla rápido, piensa deprisa. Se mueve con dinamismo. Y está enfocado a su pasión: la música en la era digital. Aprendamos de él, tiene mucho que enseñarnos

There are few industries that have been impacted by technology more than the music industry.  The way we find new music, buy music and listen to music have been revolutionized by technology.  Furthermore, none of us believe that where we have landed today is permanent – the technology that we use for our relationship with music will remain eternally fluid.  Even an iPod from a few years ago inspires flashes of a large and clunky tape recorder.  It is therefore fascinating to speak with one of the people on the forefront of this constant evolution: David Porter.

David’s passion for music has enabled him to thrive in the music technology industry today where the only constant is change.  He consistently reacts to, and often leads, the way people use the internet to find and listen to music.

After completing his MBA at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, David began his internet music career at Live365, the radio network that provides streaming music, talk and other audio to millions of listeners worldwide.  Live365 has 260+ genres of music produced by 5,000+ broadcasters and music tastemakers from over 150 countries.   At the time that David started at Live365, most people did not have the word ‘streaming’ in their vocabulary.  Now streaming has become mainstream – even my 95-year-old grandmother has a streaming radio because she gets less interference.    David spent 3 years in business development and 3 years in general management before leaving to launch his own project.

David launched 8tracks on 8/8/08 (who could resist?).  8tracks is a simple way for people to create (and thus share) or listen to a online mix, a short playlist containing at least 30 minutes – or roughly 8 tracks – of music.

David is also acting CFO of YourMusicOn, a mobile music company established by South Ventures in 2008, which allows users to access their favorite music, discover new tunes and artists based on their tastes and moods, and share music with their friends via smart phones.

Lastly, David is acting CFO of Music Intelligence Solutions, Inc. (www.uPlaya.com), which uses patent-approved technology to help artists expose their music, so that no great song goes unheard again. uPlaya offers services such as Hit Song Science and Music Universe to enable proprietary discovery, automated programming, commercial market prediction, and community networking capabilities.

Does he sound busy?  To the layman, it may sound as if David has bitten off more than he can chew – but if you look closely you will see that the mission of these companies is the same, but with different end users in mind.

David is thinking as a consumer wanting to discover new music, a music fan wanting to share favorite new songs with friends, a musician wanting to share new music with the world and as all of us wanting to use our new can’t-live-without gadgets to listen to music.

Arancha had the opportunity to chat with David about “Branding and Tweets” and thought that he had tremendous insight.  Here is a bit of Arancha’s interview with David:

Arancha: You have explained to me the difference between Facebook (a social network) and Twitter (an open network), can you expand further on this?

David:  That’s right – anyone can access any other user’s Twitter page and, as such, it’s an open network (like Myspace, in fact).  Facebook profiles are only accessible if a «friendship» has been established (one person seeks to «friend» another, and the other responds in the affirmative); such relationships are bi-directional vs Twitter’s uni-directional friendships (one person «follows» another, and the other does NOT have to respond).

Arancha:  So you see Twitter as a mainstream concept, not a selected club.

David: Yes, although Facebook is certainly mainstream (in fact larger than Twitter) also.  The main difference is that Twitter is completely open whereas Facebook’s communications are restricted only to those you know («friend»).

Arancha:   After the community concept of communications, are we returning to a one-way message, because there are still some things that must not be answered (but if someone wants, he can)?

David: Community is a broad term that I’d argue applies to both.  You can have your «community» of friends on Facebook; you can also have a «community» around a particular user (person or company/brand) on Twitter.  But the main point is right – there’s more a sense of people «broadcasting» their knowledge, actions, opinions with Twitter, and others following what’s being broadcasted because they care about what that broadcaster has to say (for example: opinion leader, celebrity, pundit, friend, relative, etc).

Arancha: Which platform do you think is better for building brand awareness?

David:  I personally think Twitteris better for brand awareness — because Facebook is meant to be about friendships — but clearly many companies are now setting up Facebook pages and FB has set up the notion of a «Fan» (rather than friend), which is really more analogous to Twitter because it is uni-directional friending.

Arancha: So you see Twitteras better for friends rather than for commerical entities?

David:  Yes, I think Facebook lends itself to advertising more so than Twitter.  Facebook has a enormously successful (and rapidly growing) ad program that allows an advertiser to target an ad (text + small image) by attributes of the individual (geography, age/gender, keywords on profile page).

Thinking about it, it’s sort of like Twitteris a great tool in and of itself for a brand (just like email is), primarily used for maintaining a relationship with fans/users (i.e. customer retention) but Facebook is a great medium for advertising (i.e. customer acquisition).

His company 8 tracks

His Linkedin´s profile