What I said on stage was that technology has already democratized music production AND retail distribution. It’s cheaper than ever to make music and to put it up for sale; as a result, it’s harder than ever to get discovered because more people are competing for attention.

I believe the most exciting frontier for innovation in the music industry is for technology to also democratize the discovery/promotion process. This could enable more artists to pursue and realize their dreams and create enormous value.

The trend is already under way — simple tools like email or IM already result in “quality” content spreading rapidly from friend to friend. But there’s much room for innovation to accelerate discovery via social/viral spread (eg Myspace & Youtube facilitate viral spread), or via personalized recommendations (eg Pandora), or both.

iLike has some interesting features in this regard. For example, we help artists send messages and concert alerts to their existing fans via an iTunes plugin — an extremely simple concept in principle, yet one that opens up a wealth of new possibilities. Another example: if you click on one of our concert listings on Facebook, we facilitate inviting your friends by showing you a list of *your* friends in that city who like that artist. As a music-lover who was previously using email to tell my friends about concerts, I think this is a pretty kick-ass feature.

I define “discovery” fairly broadly, to include live music, or new releases from existing artists.

I think we (the industry) have only just begun exploring the ways that technology can facilitate discovery, and I think it’s way too early to write it off.

Lastly, I agree with the quote that people “don’t seek to discover music – it just happens.” That’s why a big part of iLike’s success has been to integrate inside Facebook, iTunes, and a dozen other places where people already spend their time.

regards,
Ali Partovi, CEO, iLike

Example: if you bought, say, Digitalism on iTunes, iTunes will put up similar artists on a dashboard, and make it really easy for you to preview these in no time.

With a combination of tight genre proximity and high degree of convenience, a submodel of this idea can work.

As a general business model? Nooo.

The only one that’s ever worked for me is Pandora. I think it allows me to have my cake and eat it too: I do listen to find new music, but I know I can just let it run in the background like a favorite radio station and just bring up the window when I’m “surprised” by something I hadn’t heard before.

Finally, though, the social networking process is crap. I obssessively track my habits on Last.Fm, but I don’t give two figs what my “neighbors” are listening to.

Now, on the other hand, if any VCs are reading this, please disregard my statement above, and give me a holler, I’d love to send you my deck.

I have experienced a hearty malaise over the “music discovery” issue lately. Between Peter Gabriel’s TheFIlter and every other content discovery site purporting to be able to show me things I’ll like based on the things I already know I like, I just don’t think it’s working.

Not to be totally self-serving, but we were just talking about a similar theme here- the issue of distilling your taste down to an algorithm.