Nodus Labs presented two talks at a2n music conference (took place September 16-18 2009 in Berlin). Our main message was that music is not a commodity, but an experience. And that music labels should change the way they approach their product in order to survive in the world where everyone is compelled to share everything through their networks.

We started from giving a talk on various software tools that can be used by musicians to promote their music and making money on it. The main idea was that the focus should shift from making the money from music tracks themselves to selling experiences around that music. A successful example of the legendary German band Einstuerzende Neubauten was presented, who created an online supporter community to support the creation of their new album in the beginning of 2000s and managed to raise more than €100 000 euro like that. For a small fee of €30 the supporters would get access to the band’s unreleased material, be able to participate in rehearsals via an online chat, get exclusive copies of DVDs, and be invited to special “supporter” events that the band would organize. This is very similar to the successful strategy that was implemented later by Kickstarter (among others) for online campaigning.

During all presentations we used our online mnemonic network platform ThisIsLike as a presentation tool in order to present all the content in its entirety and show how different topics relate to each other. We also interviewed some main stage speakers before their presentations briefly in order to create a support network that was projected during their presentation to show how the concepts they mentioned related to the concepts mentioned by other speakers at the conference.