Cannes, France — Imagine you held a music conference and someone forgot the musicians.

It wasn't that bad here. But it's important to remember that Midem is not a showcase for artists, as you would find at Austin's SXSW or Berlin's Popkomm. There's plenty of dealmaking here, but the deals don't involve the artists so much as they do, say, business partners of artists.

Music publishing rights. Mechanical, sound recording and performance rights. You name the rights. The artists have representatives, and tables and chairs on the trade show floor are filled with rights being leased and sold.

Cannes, France — Paul McGuinness has been managing U2 since they were performing for audiences of 20 people. Like the band, he is a visionary. U2 owns all of its masters and most of its copyrights (Peter Gabriel made a similar claim in a later discussion; artists out there, take note). He's not afraid of technology. After all, McGuinness sat down in Steve Jobs' kitchen and worked out the deal for the U2 iPod, and as a result we all heard commercials beginning with "Uno! Dos! Tres! Catorce!" for several months.

Cannes, France — The entire two-day MidemNet conference here had one corporate sponsor; Qtrax, a would-be P2P service that claims to offer licensed music (ad-supported) for free. There are Qtrax banners all over the Palais des Festivals. Qtrax landed itself lots of media coverage, because they were supposed to debut yesterday (Monday). But on Sunday afternoon their CEO was sitting on a MidemNet panel with Ted Cohen and not all seemed right. Ted joked that the CEO was only there because he was the show's corporate sponsor, but he didn't laugh. Ted then said he knew Qtrax had said it had licensing deals with all of the major labels, something Qtrax itself had been saying.

Cannes, France — I mentioned in a previous post how despite the fact that Midem is a music conference, MidemNet panelists are almost wholly not from the music industry. All anyone talks about is the music industry, and reps for songwriters, recording artists and labels fill the room listening to them being discussed, but they're not up on stage.

Cannes, France — Forgive me if any time I hear the name "Terry Fisher" I fear for the rights of artists.

Cannes, France — Oh my.

I mean, seriously, what else
can you say after sitting through one of Stanford University Law
Professor Lawrence Lessig's presentations? The man is an oratorical
genius. I've seen variations on the "read-write culture" presentation
Lessig presented here at MidemNet on several occasions, and I never
fail to be impressed at his almost sorcery-like skills. Of course, the
mystery was hightened this time by the fact that he refused to tell the
Midem organizers in advance what he would be addressing, and he kept
the focus on his presentation, not any holes in his logic, by limiting
Q&A to one question before disappearing from the stage. He was
there and gone so fast it left one wondering if he had been there at
all.

Cannes, France — Here's something you don't see every day; a pirate site going legit without threat of court action.

At least Jonathan Benassaya, CEO of Deezer, didn't say it was legal fears that caused him to take his illegal pirate music site and take it legit, seeking out licenses from music rightsholders. Deezer is based in France, so the Grokster decision didn't reach him. I'm not sure how the French law works; I do know it's a nation that is sympathetic to rightsholders, and I know that on a MidemNet panel here Benassaya made no bones about the fact that his site originally was breaking the law.

Cannes, France – There's been a lot of digital ink spilled over the years regarding the impact of digital technology on the music industry. No one ever acknowledges how that industry has always been on the cutting edge of technology, not just in how music is produced but how it's enjoyed. Anyone out there remember how exciting it was to purchase a turntable that allowed you to stack singles on top of the spindle and the record player would drop them one at a time to play them? That was a great technology innovation (and funny how you didn't suddenly have music lovers insisting they had always had a fair use right to listen to singles consecutively without changing them manually, even though that technology had never existed before.)

Cannes, France — So I'm writing today from Midem, the 42nd version of what has to be one of the most impressive music industry shows of the year. Mind you, I'm partial to South by Southwest, particularly its Texas blues roots, but Midem draws much more of an international crowd (in a five-minute period this morning I met the cultural minister for Estonia followed by some artists from Finland, as well as a singer-songwriter from the Bahamas who I suspect will find a label to sign with here resulting from his sheer powers of self-promotion alone).

That not-so-nascent digital media market continues to grow.

CBS Pres.-CEO Les Moonves announced yesterday that its Last.fm service (acquired last year) will now offer on-demand free streaming from the complete libraries of the four major record labels as well as about 150,000 other labels and bands. Not only that, you get three full plays of any song or album to "try before you buy," and those trial songs can go into your own personalized radio stream at no cost.