Arriving at about 10am to the Midland Hotel we discover two things about the In The City music conference. Number one: 10am is not a busy time at a music conference, and number two: we seem to be the only delegates who haven’t got a red-eyed hang-dog look about them.
After the humiliation that is the procuring of our photo id cards we rush to the first of the days panels. The haste was unneccessary. The panel has been moved to later in the afternoon – presumably to allow the panelists to sober up, or get back to the hotel from what ever after gig party they have woken up at.
The second panel we try to attend is on time. ‘Break on through’ is a discussion about getting into the industry. The panel is an interesting cross section of agents, record company managers, Film & Tv people, agency heads of entertainment, and someone who made her money from prophylactics (another story). They are all very awake, and a little scary – the old question of money versus creativity is quickly despatched with some venom and a Medici reference. Interestingly they all have the same frustrations with job applicants that we hear from people in the marketing industry; poorly written C.Vs, bad grammar, and unrealistic salary expectations. It was good to see quite a few students in the audience, but only one university – where were the rest?
Returning to the hotel foyer we did our best to tout about for some work and contacts. Our showreel went down well – people seemed to be able to see by this stage in the day. The mix of people was fascinating; suits, artists, agents, all sorts – they look a little odd against the Midland’s grandeur.
Our second panel, which should have been our first, was about putting music in computer games. We were expecting the audience to be a geekfest, but not so. Games are obviously now huge. Artists now actively try to get their music on games, this is a change even from a couple of years ago. The panel covered a vast range of exciting technologies and subjects: cloud systems, sync rates, voice control interaction, almost too much for the hour – gaming is no longer the next big thing. It is the thing.
Next to a panel titled ‘No time to think – making the music video’. After our recent video production experiences it was reassuring to learn that the highs and lows we went through are fairly universal. The discussion raised some interesting points; some of the panel claimed that fear was killing creativity – the ‘man in the suit’ basically pre-programmed not to take risks. Again, a common theme in the creative industries. However, some panelists cited YouTube and the rise and rise of the viral in defence of the creative possibilities that are out there – a day and a video camera can make you world famous.
Unfortunately it was then time to get back to the studio and catch up on the day’s work. As we walked out of the Midland it felt as if the conference was really staring to warm up – Mark Ronson was about give a keynote interview, and the bar was really filling up.
We’d have liked to get a proper flavour of the conference, get to some of the hundreds of gigs, stay a little later, we only briefly scratched the surface. I have a feeling that most of the days’ real business takes place after midnight. As a quick summary here is a list of 8 things that were said lots of times by panelists, organisers and delegates:
Things are changing very, very fast
P2P and illegal downloading is a ‘centre of the sun’ hot potato
The music industry isn’t using social media as much as it should be
Interesting projects are about collaboration
The music industry isn’t glamorous
There is too much pitching for projects
People with money are now terrified – people who take risks are rare
The games industry is now the daddy