NEW YORK -- The 600 music and computer professionals cramming the Plug.In '98 conference didn't come to Manhattan for the fancy webcasts -- they came to network. The Net may be a virtual world, but real deals only happen in the real world.
"It's very hard to get all these people together in one place," said Spencer Wicks, sales and marketing director of the London-based Nottingham Electronic Publishers. "I've met so many people that it would take me months of flying around to meet."
Given the fledgling state of online music distribution and sales -- the subject for this two-day event -- professional alliances are paramount. Vibe Publishing's president and CEO, Keith Clinkscales, drove that point home in his keynote today.
"We must make sure we find the right partners," Clinkscales said.
Vibe, which publishes Vibe and Spin magazines, will launch a third magazine called Blaze, he said. The magazine, due out 25 August, will be devoted to hip-hop music, and published 10 times a year.
Clinkscales said that the partnerships he is cultivating with Electric Village and Amazon.com (AMZN) are tying his publishing ventures to radio and ecommerce. Electric Village works with 100 radio stations nationwide and Amazon recently began selling music as well as books.
After watching Time-Warner (TWX) fumble with its Pathfinder site, Clinkscales said he had to step in to revitalize Vibe's Web site and build new relationships.
Not everyone drew inspiration from the speech.
"I thought it was full of platitudes and generalizations," said Wicks, adding that he wasn't particularly impressed by the bigwigs who seem too far removed from the nuts and bolts of music on the Web.
This morning's "Billboard Roundtable" included executives from Polygram Group Distribution, Platinum Entertainment, Giant Records, Atlantic Records, and Billboard Online, but offered little more than a rundown of each executive's business plans.
Wicks said that the execs at the top of the industry are evidently content to let the people who understand new media work out the details.
"They're trying to think big-term and strategically, but a lot of them are pretty scared."
