Earlier this week, I spent a most enjoyable day at the SF MusicTech Summit, the Bay Area’s top Internet music event put on by the digital impressario Brian Zisk. The highpoint for me of the summit was interviewing Brandon Boyd and Mike Einziger from the chart topping rock band Incubus.
From Einziger’s limousine jokes to Boyd’s confession on “feeling dirty” about self-promotion to both musicians’ sense of “being kicked in the balls” when their soon-to-be-released If Not Now, When? new album got leaked onto the Internet, both musicians were refreshingly honest about both the challenges and opportunities of today’s digital economy. Most of all, though, Boyd and the Harvard educated Eingizer are refreshingly smart guys unwilling to take any bullshit from facile interviewers like myself.
This is the first of a series of interviews with music entrepreneurs and technologists that I recorded at the summit. Please check back over the next few days as we run interviews with music entrepreneurs and technologists including MOG CEO David Hyman, StageIt CEO Evan Lowenstein, record producer Matt Serletic and Lady Gaga marketing adviser Jaunique Sealey.
We’d like to thank Jeff LaPenna and Zachary Ryan at BAMM.tv for providing the cameras, lighting and production assistance.