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Today is my 40’est bday. FOURTY!!

I must say that becoming 40 is completely different than being 30 for me.

When I became 30, I felt bit like my youth had passed. I had just become the CEO of Belgacom Skynet, which was fairly young to lead one of the leading internet companies in Belgium. I remember feeling that all turned around my job (which I loved), but it also felt like there was not much left for something else. And on top of that, I was the victim of a pretty aggressive carjacking at that moment. But I was proud to lead Skynet, and build of products that made people’s life better. Being on the frontline of innovation and with the internet becoming a driving force of change in the world was and is an amazing journey.

Becoming 40, it feels like my youth came back. Much has to do with the arrival of our little boy Charlie, who became 4 last week. It’s amazing to see how a little boy completely changes one’s perspective on life. Suddenly, I’m not the central person anymore in my own life, and the unconditional love is a feeling that is impossible to describe.

To share something personal: when I was 35 or so, I become Senior Vice President of the ProSiebenSat1 Media Group, and had just won some award for ‘European Media Personality’ together with some others. But I doubted if having a (hopefully) great corporate career was my path forward. On the one hand, I wanted to start something again myself, and create a different kind of difference. And since I doubted, I just asked some people I knew well and respect a lot. I met about 10 persons, ranging from ceo’s to a minister, a top sporter, … They had in common that they were all older than 50.

I don’t want to go into detail of the talks (which I still value a lot), but one similar point of most: when asked if they would have done something different, many answered that they totally regretted missing the early baby years of their kids. Many had young kids in their early 30’s, which for most was also the most busy period in their career, often involving constant international travel. There’s a peak between 30 and 40, on various levels, and unfortunately the careers (if it’s on business, sports or arts) coincide for many with father of motherhood. Summarizing a bit, they some had a view that once a kiddo becomes 6, he kind of starts a 9 to 5 life (school!). It was a really confronting series of conversations, of which I am very grateful to the openness of everyone.

So I decided to quit my corporate career at 36. I was Senior VP of ProSiebenSat 1 in Munich. I learned so much, but I told my boss (CEO of SBS) that this wasn’t for me. I left all my stock options, a huge salary, a driver and a job which made me travel every day as I was in charge of the activities in 12 or so countries. I wanted to become an entrepreneur again and spend a huge amount of time with Charlie & Femke. I also wanted to be abroad for some time again, and we fell for the combination California and Belgium.

I totally love the life of building & growing ideas I believe in. There’s a blurry line between my personal and professional career, but it’s the way I want to live. When I travel I take my family with me, I’m very proud that we started SonicAngel, that we’re rolling out FilmAngel.tv now and that we have some other ‘angels’ coming up. I did miss the ‘more corporate’ part somewhat, but being the chairman of IBBT changed that somewhat. IBBT is the strategic research center for technology and media in Belgium. And I agreed to being on another board of directors and advise on innovation/strategic matters.

But I love what our ‘Angel-platforms’ are doing: creating opportunities for talent by implementing technology platform to eliminate (part of) the inefficiency of an industry.

When I think of it: I think I could even dedicate my life to enabling opportunities for young talent, and to build and grow ideas I belief in. On the condition that I can hold my family close to me.

Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes. Facebook & other messages makes it feel that everyone is close in a way. It means a lot to me.
And now, I’m going to offer a drink to our team, and get a w-e away with femke & my little boy.

bart

Yep, we’re pretty happy & proud that MIDEM just selected SonicAngel as one of the global music industry innovators.

Happy for the nomination, proud of our team! Team means: the team working day to day, but certainly all the fans, all the artists and everyone involved. It will allow us to tell our story to the international music scene. Additionally, Tom Dice is also selected for the NRJ music awards that is held during the MIDEM conference – so we’re present twice, with our platform AND our music!

Crowdfunding is becoming a gamechanger in empowering talent across the world, even if I see crowdfunding as a start (and not the end) of creating a new creative ecosystem. More about that later.

For now: thanks. Very grateful. Short video below (don’t mind the quality – but it does tell our story).

bart

Paris: Official Press Release related to MIDEM – the global music conference (28-31 January 2012, Cannes/France)

Midemlab, the international pitching competition for ground-breaking start-ups and app developers across all sectors, today unveils the 30 finalists poised to be the innovators of tomorrow’s music industry. The finalists – chosen by UK digital consulting company Music Ally and French specialist open innovation consultancy, bluenove – will present their projects to a jury of leading international digital experts including potential business partners and leading investment firms.

The finalists will each outline their cutting-edge technical solutions that could offer new opportunities to industry executives, artists and brands to reach and engage with new audiences and generate revenues.

Previous editions have provided a launch pad for some of today’s major technological innovations, such as SoundCloud, The Echo Nest, Songkick and Root Music. The list of finalists for 2012 will herald the next generation of innovation.

Cannes, here we come!

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We’re at a point that our company is growing in various directions: multiple platforms and multiple countries. In order to achieve the ambitions of our company, we’ll start hiring some essential key profiles. I’d like to get some feedback on the job descriptions. So every day of the week, I’ll post one. Starting with our need for a CFO. All feedback is welcome ! (and see our other open positions here: Jobs.SonicAngel.com)

.A CFO for SonicAngel  (incl. our new initiatives FilmAngel & Angel.me)

SonicAngel was created with the vision to create an innovative platforms to find, finance & release a new generation of artists powered by the fans. Central in our approach is a crowdfunding model, which allows fans to invest in the bands. However, we have a relentless focus to create success stories, so we’re also further building platforms based on social media te detect but also to optimize the release of creative work.

After a start in Belgium, we are now extending in various genres, but we’re also rapidly expanding to the US, Germany & France. As a start.
On top of it, we’ve just released FilmAngel.TV. Same concept, different domain.

And there’s much more to come.

In order to achieve our ambitions, we are looking for a CFO.

We believe it’s essential that a CFO can drive the following statements:

1.     “It’s all in the details” - A professional accounting designation is the foundation. A few years ago it was all the rage to have MBAs in the top finance role. These days, an MBA does not begin to cover the accounting, process, and tax knowledge needed to steer a company’s finances.

2.     “Let’s make a deal” - The dream team CFO not only runs the deal process for fundraising, but should also bring deal flow into the company. They should have a track record of originating and closing equity deals, and should have a long list of potential financing sources that are willing to take their call. Also you want someone who can stretch your funding by knowing which expenses to cut without harming your business.

3.     “Time to get organized” - Your CFO should take a leading role in bringing operational excellence into your company. It means installing just the right amount of process, reporting and structure. Not so much that it slows you down, but enough so that you smoothly run and grow the engine.

4.     “What happens in the company stays in the company” – Your CFO should be a trusted advisor to the CEO and other executives. Running a company can be lonely. Your CFO will a key, objective source of advice and counsel as you make the big and the small decisions.

5.     “Jack of all trades” – Able to perform other duties (e.g., human resources, technology, legal, and information technology) as needed. It will be a long time before you have in-house counsel, and you can’t afford an outside law firm for every NDA or contract to sign. So, choose a CFO who is very comfortable with legal documents, as well as finance.

6.     “Been there, done that” - Building a software based company is much different than a manufacturing one, or services. The differences are just as apparent in the financials as they are in technology. You need someone who knows the ropes in your industry. And who wans to excel in it

7.      “I have a dream” - The startup road is guaranteed to be long and hard. Investors look for someone who loves the challenge, looks and sounds like he can weather the storm, will always see the bright side despite adversity, and never gives up.

The job of a startup CFO is very different from one at a “big” company. The latter is much more of a hands-off role focused on investor relations, deal making (financing, M & A), governance, reporting and other back office matters. In stark contrast, the startup CFO is much more hands-on and integrated into the day-to-day of the business.

If you feel ‘Yeah’ while reading above statements, and you’d like to work in Brussels, call me on +32 477 62 65 74 or mail me at bart.becks@sonicangel.com

It’s each time quite a stress, because ‘winning’ the opening for a major act is such a great moment for our young bands to show how good they really are, to gain experience and ofcourse to enjoy a full house in a great venue. MNM just announced that Newton will be opening for INXS at DeVooruit in Gent on December 12th.

This is the 5th time in a relatively short time that one of our band is selected to do a major opening.
1. Tom Dice for Taylor Swift @ Vorst (Brussels) & Ahoy (Rotterdam)
2. Barefoot & the Shoes for El Fish @ AB (Brussels)
3. Vienna for Avril Lavigne @ Forrest (Brussels)
4. Jerusalem Syndrome for While Lies @ Lotto Arena (Antwerp)
5. Newton for INXS @ Vooruit (Gent)

continue reading…

About 18 months after our launch, we’re now scaling in a couple of directions:

1. internationally, with currently a main focus on Germany & Switzerland, France & the US. Our homepage is customized depending on the country you surf from, so just go sonicangel.com . If you’re a band, best to start at our auditions platform: sonicangel.com/auditions
.

2. genres, with currently a main focus on:

• classic: see klarafestival.sonicangel.com
• flemish language based: see domino.sonicangel.com
• electronic & soon also dance: lektroland.sonicangel.com

3. domains, with currently a main focus on film & tv: FilmAngel.TV

–> Below some supplementary info, such as:
- a link to some international articles explaining our actions
- a photo with Oliver Stone at the same day we announced our FilmAngel.TV project
- the press release and the jury of our classic music initiative for young talent

Let’s go!

bart

- – - – - -

(1)

. SonicAngel detects talent based on facebook & twitter: http://www.whathifi.com/news/music-label-uses-facebook-and-twitter-to-find-and-fund-new-artists

. SonicAngel = kickstarter + label: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/09/sonicangel-creates-hybrid-crowdfunded-label.html
. SonicAngel artist Iris to represent Belgium at Eurovision: http://escdaily.com/articles/26125

(2)

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(3)
Flanders Festival and SonicAngel join forces on a project to support young, classical talent using a new model continue reading…

Hey all,

today we announced our partnership with Universal Music.

Not only will our physical distribution in Belgium & Luxemburg be handled by the world strongest distributor, but we will also collaborate in order to find new business models and other experiments, and apply our joint expertise into new digital launches to connect with fans. I’m a very strong believer that our model will be the best model for finding, financing and releasing talent – and one of the key elements remains having a strong distribution. That’s exactly what we’ll do together. I’m actually pretty impressed by the complementarity and the will to create innovative models. NL Press Release below.

It’s also very interesting to see that across Europe, 3 streaming services will launch at nearly the same time: spotify, deezer and we7. Unsure what the financial benefits will be, but it’s sure that part of fans are preferring access to ownership. I’ll share our results and tests on streaming regularly in this learning period. But if it is any like what I’ve seen in Scandinavia, it will be pretty impactfull and impressive.

bart.

PERSBERICHT: 8.nov.2011
Universal Music & SonicAngel verenigen de krachten

Universal Music, ’s werelds grootste platenmaatschappij met artiesten als Lady GaGa, U2, Rihanna en Metallica, gaat intensief samenwerken met SonicAngel, het bruisende label van boegbeelden Maurice Engelen en Bart Becks, dat muziek en technologie combineert.

Universal Music zal in België en Luxemburg exclusief de distributie verzorgen van de fysieke album en single releases van SonicAngel,  en krijgt de optie om voor bepaalde projecten de samenwerking uit te breiden naar een licentie. SonicAngel zal zelf haar eigen digitale exploitatie uitbaten en verder uitbouwen. De krachten worden ook op andere vlakken gebundeld. Zo zal er bij Universal Music een beroep gedaan kunnen worden op de expertise van SonicAngel wat digitale marketing betreft, en starten beide labels ook een gemeenschappelijk initiatief rond nieuwe modellen inzake muziekdistributie en –verkoop.

“Sinds de oprichting van SonicAngel in 2010, hebben we deze nieuwe speler op de markt nauwlettend gevolgd. Hun innoverende aanpak rond digitale marketing en sterke virale campagnes, zorgen voor een frisse wind in de muziekwereld, waar er vaak op een wat stereotype manier promotie wordt gevoerd. Naast de know-how van SonicAngel wat het digitale aspect betreft, hebben ze naturlijk ook een sterk artiestenbestand, met voorop Tom Dice, maar ook nieuw talent, zoals mastercab, Vienna, Airis, Barefoot & The Shoes, Mathieu & Guillaume en BAB. Dat de muziekindustrie het moeilijk heeft, dat weet iedereen, maar stilstaan is achteruitgaan en daarom gaan we ook samen met SonicAngel de strijd aan en zoeken naar nieuwe mogelijkheden om muziek op een legale manier aan de man te brengen”, aldus Patrick Busschots (Managing Director – Universal Music Belgium)

“We zijn verheugd met deze samenwerking en zien uit naar de strategische samenwerking op de verschillende domeinen. Universal Music is een onmiskenbare kracht in de muziekbusiness, en  er is een grote complementariteit tussen beide teams. Dat we voor de distributie van onze fysieke producten nu het brede netwerk van Universal Music ter beschikking hebben, is een heel belangrijke stap in de verdere ontwikkeling van ons label. We gaan voor een gezamenlijke toekomstwerking, waarbij experimenten en vernieuwing niet uit de weg zullen gegaan worden”, zo zeggen Bart Becks en Maurice Engelen (Oprichters SonicAngel).

De eerste projecten waarvoor beide labels de krachten zullen bundelen, zijn de album releases van SonicAngel artiesten mastercab en Tom Dice (respectievelijk najaar 2011 en voorjaar 2012), alsook de lokale lancering van nieuw werk van Universal artiesten Rihanna en Rammstein.

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NIET VOOR PUBLICATIE

Voor meer informatie:
Universal Music Belgium: Dirk Van der Auwera -dirk.van.der.auwera@umusic.com – GSM:0497/52.71.47
SonicAngel: Femke Mussels – femke@sonicangel.com– GSM: 0471/73.31.72

Last Monday (Nov 28) I attended (part of) the yearly conference about the future of Classical music.

Besides the fact that I’m a classical music lover, we’re also launching the SonicAngel – Festival van Vlaanderen partnership to enable young classical talent to get discovered, earn a record deal and have huge exposure at 2 major classical music events. I’m quite a fan actually, and even though I took my wife (girlfriend then) to a 4 hour Wagner opera as our first classical music concert, she still joins me often. For the anecdote, I still remember that Wagner evening though:
During the break after 90 minutes…

. She: “I’m glad it’s over, didn’t like it’
. Me: “It’s not over, it’s the first break”
. She: “The first?”
. Me: “Yep, it’s gonna be 2h30 more !”

That said, besides the content and meeting people full of passion, I also heard about the new music note that the government will hopefully approve this week. It unites all music related organisations, in a strong and forward looking plan that will benefit the entire industry. From preserving and promoting access to practicing music, to guiding in management and a lot of incentives on the evolution of distribution and connection (digital) and financial support. It can be the enabler of a strong turnaround of the sector, if all work united. Kudos to Stef Coninx (Chief Muziekcentrum Vlaanderen) & his team for taking the time to explain me the background and potential impact. I was also impressed to hear Philippe de Coene, a parliament member, who came forward to highlight the legislative counters of this reuniting note.

Guess we’ll hear a lot about it. Let’s do all we can to build an industry based on new principles, where the artist, the fan and all other players work together to find and break amazing talent, embrace the connection with the fans, and use technology as a means where it can solve the inefficiency of the sector. Maybe some entrepreneurs will step in again, in an industry that has mainly known downsizing, restructurings and more negative news. And believe me, more companies will go out of business, but I think we’re at a pivotal moment in time during which a new reality is being created.

Let’s go
bart

Moving out and into a new home is cruel.
But we now finally moved out completely from the old, and moved into our new one. It’s kinda the dream home of my wife, and we were very fortunate to buy it at a reasonable price about 2 years ago.

It has been quite a change of stuff lately.
- moved into a new apartment
- found a new school for my little dude
- moving into another home in the US

Often, you see people changing it all – personally and professionally.
Not me though.
I’m keeping my wife forever (I hope!), and I’m into SonicAngel more than ever.
I don’t think I ever had so many job interesting job offers as in the past 2 months. For the ones i really love, I sometimes end up in their board or as an advisor. That is: if I like the business, the company, the team – and I think that I can actually add something and that it actually matters. And if they’ll have me, ofcourse.

Truth is: I actually love to be part of the advising team. I gives me a great scope, and it especially gives me a great feeling and sense of ‘payback’ when I’m able to help an entrepreneur grow his venture or an innovator design and implement his plans.
I’ll give you some examples in later posts.

All my other time is divided between SonicAngel and my family. More than ever.
It has been for the past 2 years, and it will be for the coming years – if health, business and global situation allows.

Over the last 2 and a half year, I’ve been completely into building my own startup. Even if I already had built 2 during my school period, I had to get back into it. There’s a huge difference between being an intrapreneur in a larger group, and an entrepreneur starting his own dream. I’m not saying one is better than the other. Just that it’s really different.

And when I’m having a bad day, I do notice myself listening to Steve’s speech or reading Michael’s post.
Since Steve Jobs has passed away this week, and Michael Arrington is starting over, so it feel appropriate to share both of them right here! They are both very different, and even if Steve’s talk goes much deeper and about life in general, Mike’s post helps in the entrepreneurial pride during a tough day.

Michael Arrinton’s: ‘Are you a pirate?’

Steve Job’s: ‘Stanford speech’

Enjoy. Dream.
bart

Mathieu & Guillaume leggen in ‘mensentaal’ uit wat fanfunding of ‘crowdfunding’ nu eigenlijk is.

Nu heb je de kans om hen mee te ondersteunen, en alles vanop de eerste rij mee te maken.
Op deze site vind je alle info: M&G

Duidelijk uitgelegd, niet ?

bart

Ter info:
M&G hebben ondertussen reeds 3 top10 hits in de vlaamse top10 gehad, ganse Vlaanderen overtuigd van hoe goed ze live wel zijn, Nederland de eerste keer leren kennismaken, en ook Wallonië komt in zicht.

Here a great slideshow from our friends at InSites. It gives quite some data about the awareness, usage and expectations of social networks.

Some interesting observations:
- 93% intend to stay ‘in’ their current social network, 60% does not need a new social network, implying that the big ones will continue to gain marketshare
- 600mio people use social networks on a daily basis
- brands and companies have a huge area of opportunities (awareness, conversations, conversions) and members are open for it if done correctly
- Location Based Services and Augmented reality are additional possibilities to the increasing mobile usage, but still have a low awareness

Slidedeck below, contact @steven_insites or @joeri_insites for more info.