2007 saw Silicon Valley firms release innovative and highly-engaging widgets that reached broadly across multiple open platforms. As a result, an astonishing portion of the internet audience as a whole visited and interacted with these widgets on a daily basis. Aside from social networks, nowhere have widgets taken a stronger hold than in music. Visit official websites for Chris Brown, Radiohead, Dashboard Confessional, and scores of other artists and you’ll find embedded chat rooms, music players, slideshows, video players, concert listings, artist avatars, polls, and many similar viral web applications. Last year and continuing into 2008, widget companies and record labels are working together to test new products, reach larger audiences and experiment with monetization. The business models for monetizing these audiences are only beginning to form. Can widgets help grow audiences for labels online? Can those audiences be monetized? This session will examine what’s working, what’s failing and what’s to come - from a technical product perspective, as well as a business perspective, debated by internet and music industry leaders who are in the thick of things.

Moderator: Liz Gannes , GigaOmniMedia