In day 1 (Tuesday) panel were representatives from Sony BMG, Real Networks, The Orchard, Music Choice, Ruckus Network and GoFish. The forum's topic can be described very well by the first question: What do you think about Steve Jobs' anti-DRM argument?"

Interesting question but the big absent of the Forum was Apple! Anyway the conversation goes around alternatives such as subscription and ad driven models. Also about variable pricing in tracks, a request of the industry from iTunes which Apple has declined many times. 

Day 1 coverage from AppScout

In day 2 (Wednesday) Jason Reidorp on behalf of Zune was in the panel among people from eMusic, MusicGremlin, Zing, Click and Buy, and Sonific. The discussion started with Device and Format Wars as topic. 

Reindorp said: "Microsoft still has two efforts. PlaysForSure hasn't gone away. At this point in the device stage there's a lot of opportunity for rapid innovation." Now I'm paraphrasing the rest of his comment: The standard open-platform thing works best, and we realized there's an opportunity to innovate around the basic music experience. The download-and-syncing process is "pretty stabilized" (arguable, to my mind). So the next step is adding community features and enhancing the community experience. But Microsoft needs to move rapidly to compete with Apple, who is very quick. They say they want to do stuff with podcasts, and six months later iTunes has a podcast aggregator.

[...]

"The other thing that's typically won is ad-supported models. One of the possible subscription or ad-supported models is the radio model, as opposed to the all-you-can-eat moel. The economics are challenging, but there are lots of ways you can innovate on that. But I don't want to seem anti-anti-DRM."

Day 2 coverage from AppScout

[Via ZuneSter] (David Caulton was also there)

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