NDSA:John Spencer

John Spencer, BMS/Chace

Biography:
BMS/Chace President and co-founder John Spencer has widespread experience and visibility both in the music industry and in the fields of archival preservation and enterprise class information technology. Since 1978, he has been involved in the R&D, sales and marketing of high-technology professional audio and video.
Previously Vice-President of Sales and Marketing for Otari Corp., Mr. Spencer was fortunate to participate with the initial partners in the development of next generation enterprise-class IT data tape storage (LTO).
Mr. Spencer co-authored the NARAS Commercial Deliverables Best Practices document, bringing the “enterprise-class” mindset to the committee, and his continued efforts to create standardized multi-track metadata led to a 3-year partnership with the Library of Congress NDIIPP program, strategically focused on the collection of structured metadata for the commercial recording industry, currently in beta and to be released in the 2nd Quarter of this year.

Professional Associations:
The Recording Academy P&E Wing National Advisory Council, Nashville
hapter Advisory Council , Deliverables Committee

The Recording Academy P&E Wing National Advisory Council, Nashville
Chapter Advisory Council , Deliverables Committee
AES (Audio Engineering Society) Studio Practices/ Production Technical
Committee and the Digital Libraries Technical Committee
AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists) Digital Issues Committee
ARSC (Association of Recorded Sound Collections) Technical Committee
NRPB (National Recording Preservation Board) Digital Audio Preservation and Standards Task Force

Interest in serving on the Coordinating Committee:
As President of BMS/Chace, a service provider to commercial archives, during the last 9 years I have gained an invaluable insight into the issues related to the long-term viability of born-digital recordings, both audio and visual. While the commercial industry as well as independent artists and labels continues to create this content at an exponential level, until our work, funded in great part by the NDIIPP PCA program, there had been no attempt to create an environment to collect technical, descriptive, and participant metadata for those within the creative community. Our company is constantly faced with preservation and metadata issues that relate both to the best practices as laid out by those institutions that have graciously provided staff and infrastructure to create them, while mindful of the daily pressure to create standards within the commercial industry which is faced with the daily changes to output product releases for their artist roster. These standards must incorporate not only the best practices as outlined above, but also be mindful of the myriad of issues related to ownership, rights management, archival management, and ultimately the appropriate payment infrastructure to address the burgeoning creative community. For these reasons, I believe I could contribute to the Coordinating Committee in providing a pragmatic and standards-based workflow for the commercial content industry.

Communities Represented:
Commercial, artists, recorded sound

Length of Term:
One year (ending December 31, 2011)