If there was to be a conference about success in the music industries, what sort of thing would you like to see featured at such an event? Who would the presenters be? What topics would be covered? What other workshops / events / performances and seminars would you find interesting, compelling or useful?

I've mentioned this a few times, but I'll reiterate here.

I would like to see some serious discussion on how to promote and build a fan base without playing live or touring. I realize that it becomes many times more difficult, but surely there are a few options here and there.

How about a panel discussion on "When Touring Is Not an Option"?

Sorry for sounding like a broken record. Nice site you have here, though. :) Thanks!

Well, I just attended SxSW (but that's easy for me, I live in Austin).

Speaking personally, the following people struck a chord with me over the past 4 years.

- Jeff Price - TuneCore
- Martin Atkins - Tour Smart
- David Byrne - who pitched the same 6 new business models in Wired, some months later

Basically, they are all challenging the Status Quo and encouraging people to take on the DIY attitude. I would love to see more of this. Much more!

In closing, I should also mention that I attended my first barcamp 3 weeks ago. I also think that it would be interesting to apply the "Open Space" format to a Music Conference. Most musicians are already familiar with "Open Mic" nights, this would not be a big leap to use the same model for a Conference.

What would I like to see? Or what do musicians need?

Tough geek boot camps where we take their instruments away and make them nerdly enough to survive the new music industry.

No back chat! I've seen prettier Meta tags on geocities! What is your home page, a PR1???

Now drop and give me 20 backlinks with keyword anchor text!!! NOW!!!

probloggers and blackhats ftw

The music conferences I attend entice for me at least one of three reasons.

1. Will I learn something useful?
2. Will I meet someone who will open up no opportunities for my music work? (either new or old contact)
3. Is it reasonably priced and easy to get to?

I left out a 4th reason (do they want me to be a panelist) b/c that usually makes all 3 answers come out in the affirmative. But it does raise an interesting point... will I be able to build upon my expertise and feel like I am an active participant rather than an audience member.

SXSW is excellent for point #2. The answers to the other questions are usually up to me. To make it affordable, I no longer buy a badge for that event, and always stay at the cheapest hotel I can find within walking distance of downtown. Unless you are a panelist, I d say the feeling of active participation is limited to who you can meet and what they can tell you.

I am a big fan of music conferences, but I think this site also has the potential to do what conferences do without the significant expense of travel: bring together expert ideas on the state of the industry and determine how to move forward within it.

I'm liking Darren's idea "When Touring Is Not An Option".

I would guess that a talk like that would be based heavily in the world of the internet marketers. I find things like Stompernet and Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula etc. useful but they tend to be quite expensive. Something along those lines would be a winner for me.

My interest set runs almost entirely in the direction of alternatives to tradtional distribution, including more open source intellectual property approaches to distribution. I'd attend a music conference with a substantial component of netlabelism and Creative Commons discussion.

@Matt Haha! What a great idea. All guitars into the corner, right now! Take that computer apart and put it back together, snap, snap!

I would be all over a muso-to-geek conversion camp.

@Andrew The last thing musicians need are conferences about music. More beneficial might be conferences on photoshop, adobe illustrator, blogging, social networking, fitness, marketing, visas, accounting, excel, style counsel, how to incorporate, etc.

Musicians are good at music, and if they aren't than no amount of internet promo skills will help them sell a dime. The reason many musicians linger in obscurity is not because their music isn't good enough to satisfy a potential fan base, but because too many of us lack the non-musical skills necessary to carry one's music into the world successfully. I reckon a great way to start a conference would be to create a list of every possible activity musicians come into contact with, cross out all skills that are music-related, prohibit the use of words such as "paradigm", "model" and "shift", and create a "music conference" with all remaining items. Practical skills are the most useful thing any musician can learn.

In short, academic notions about the music business are fascinating and absolutely relevant in an information society, but a solid 1 hour demonstration on how to achieve common album cover effects in photoshop, will create more potential value and revenue than many round table talks. If I could design my dream conference, I would return to Matt's joke about a camp: if a conference was planned like an academic seminar than screw it - not interested, if a conference was like a camp with morning talks, lunch discussions, and afternoon practical sessions, I would be much more interested.

Not to knock anything anyone here is doing, by the way! I'm an academic myself (philosophy post-grad! ha), just being honest here about my personal preferences. Conferences need to be more like guitar festivals: Lectures, concerts, group lessons, master-classes and individual lessons. Most conferences I read about are focused on the first two. The last two, being the ones I care about.

Love your thinking, Mark. This confirms a lot of what I had suspected but had not really seen from the music industry conferences I had attended or presented at.

I'm concerned about how much overlap there may (or may not) be between where musicians lack skills and knowledge, and where their interests begin and end. An artist may NEED marketing skills, but if they have a complete interest vacuum when people start talking about how marketing works, then that's probably not going to be what gets them to a conference.

In other words, how do you get around the fact that people like what they're good at, and they're good at what they like?

And I think BarCamp, rather than BootCamp might be a good model for a music conference... what do you think?

Hey Andrew, honestly I'm probably not the right person to address the question of a possible interest vacuum. Truth be told, I am now at the point where I am so committed to spending my life with music that I am just fascinated by everything that touches on a musical life, including anything from standards compliant xhtml/css coding and purple cows to medieval numerology in 16th century motets.

To reiterate, I think the key to get me (and perhaps others as well?) to a music conference would be to offer skills-based discussions and workshops. Ie. not another lecture on why artists in the 21st century need design skills, but a discussion of fundamental design principles. In other words, show me a color wheel, not a graph outlining the rise in digital advertisements.

I can only speak from experience, but the people I meet in my local musical community _who are serious about their music_ are into everything under the sun that is creative. There are people who are content to rock out once or twice a week and get decent local press coverage, but most people I meet are more than just thoroughbred musicians; they are a young internet-literate, design conscious group of musicians to whom the world looks a lot less intimidating than it did to their parents' generation.

I'm not sure, in other words, that I really experience a pronounced interest vacuum amongst my peers. If anything, I experience an occasional skill vacuum that most people are aware of, as well as eager to remedy, if someone could only teach them the requisite fundamentals to do better.

The number one theme to emerge from every local industry workshop and panel I've ever attended is "making a living in music is shit-hard". Ha. That has got to stop, because it's entirely misleading as to the causes of it being hard. People point to the "industry" as being some unified club which you either belong to or not. This intimidates people with an image of an irrational and petty cigar-smoking Godzilla that is out to squash creativity. This is total rubbish.

"The industry" (at least as I've experienced it locally in New Zealand) are mainly people who have solid skills and trade these skills with others. The people making money are those with the most skills and qualifications who are also confident about their skills, and hence talk about them, share them, and put themselves out there. Music is a tough business, but it's tough not because its impenetrable, but because it takes many diverse skills to succeed. And to have an interest vacuum about non-musical skills in this day and age is just another way of having an interest vacuum about being a professional musician.

The main challenge might be making people aware of what it means to be a working musician, what skills a DIY fanatic has to learn, but at some point people actually have to start organizing the means and ways of _acquiring_ those skills step by step. Most conferences let people know just how much there is to learn and then commence a sort Q&A and then thank their sponsors. Give me a conference that assumes people can use google and aren't adverse to reading, and that goes about building skill sets. That is what I am always looking for.

Ha. Sorry for rambling. But I find this a rather interesting question, and in trying to answer it I'm still trying to find my own mental footing on this subject.

Also, this isn't the best place to mention it, but while I'm in a writing mood:

This site is great but lacks two vital features, in my opinion:

1) the ability edit one's posts, and
2) comment RSS!

All the best,
Mark (www.theenrighthouse.com)

Ha. Also, sorry to be spammy here, but I just stumbled over a great quote by Derek that cautions against my arguments. Despite being in favor of acquiring a diverse range of skills, Derek is spot on about the following:

"I’ve met too many people who got into music because they loved playing drums, but well-meaning people tell them they need to read some huge book about the business of music and negotiating contracts, cross-collateralization, and points on the agreement. Feeling guilty, they try to go through it but find it boring. Then they start copyrighting all of their songs and trademark their name and set up an LLC. Someone else says they need to have a website, so they try to learn HTML, but someone else says they need to have flash on the site. Then they try to learn flash. The truth is that while all of those things are important, nothing is more important than maintaining your full excitement for what you are doing. If you lose your enthusiasm along the way, things will fail no matter how flashy your site is or if your band name is trademarked. Pay close attention to the compass in your gut. Do the work that’s most exciting to you, because that’s what you will do best"

No doubt, a fine line to walk.

Reading Derek's quote raised a smile here and I was about to reply but it go too long, so I wrote it up on my own blog here - What did you use this year?

That quote got me thinking about ALL the activities I got up to on my machine.