Conference
The music’s industry’s newest leadership and wellness conference, organized by jump.global, will return for its second year Nov. 17-20 in Los Angeles. Today (Oct. 17), the conference announced its final keynote speaker, Kei Henderson.
Henderson will deliver a featured interview on Nov. 19, sharing stories about music management, founding a label and also the importance of taking time off – in 2019, Henderson took a partial hiatus from the music industry to prioritize her mental health.
“Conferences like this are more than necessary for the music industry, and I feel incredibly honored for the opportunity to share my journey with like minds,” Henderson said in a statement to jump.global. “We need more spaces that are not just about the highlight reel, but the real.”
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Henderson joins a previously announced lineup of speakers including Michelle Jubelirer, former chair and CEO of Capitol Music Group, and Jacqueline Saturn, president of Virgin Music Group North America and evp of global artist relations. Jubelirer will speak with Bandier Program director, Bill Werde, while Saturn will speak with her sister Samantha, appearing together on stage for the first time.
Launched last year, the jump.global Annual Summit operates as an end-of-year personal and professional development conference and retreat for the music industry. The conference brings together coaches and professionals to lead workshops, keynotes and panels on topics such as financial wellness, mental health, effective leadership and more.
Most notably, the summit does not list any speakers or attendees with their titles or company names on-site, aligning with its guidelines and tagline that “your first and last name matter more than your job title.”
“The summit is [provides] the rare opportunity to focus on executive development, instead of artist development,” says jump.global Founder Nick Maiale. “We’re so excited to return for a second year and provide a safe space for everyone — whether you’re part of a music team, longtime friends from your internship days, a consultant growing your business, an HR professional, or someone seeking inspiration.”
Badges can be purchased here.
Singer/songwriter Lisa Loeb will keynote the Guild of Music Supervisors’ 10th annual State of Music in Media Conference, which will take place on Saturday, Aug. 17 at the West LA College campus in Culver City, Calif. People can also attend virtually, via a live stream on Zoom. The all-day conference encompasses the use of music in film, TV, video games, advertising and trailers.
Thirty years ago this month, Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories became the first artist to top the Billboard Hot 100 before being personally signed to a record label. She achieved the feat with her song “Stay (I Miss You),” which was heard in the film Reality Bites. It topped the chart for the first three weeks of August 1994.
Other speakers include director Doug Liman and music supervisors Julianne Jordan, Amanda Krieg Thomas, John Houlihan, Carolyn Owens, Steven Gizicki, Trygge Toven, Joel C. High, Thomas Golubić, Catherine Grieves and Burt Blackarach. In addition, Julia Michels, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Recording Academy, and Qiana Conley Akinro, senior executive director of the L.A. chapter, will speak.
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Programming highlights include:
Opening remarks from GMS president Lindsay Wolfington and GMS vp Heather Guibert
Celebrating the 2024 Primetime Emmy nominees for outstanding music supervision
AI: Challenges and Changes to the Industry and New Opportunities for Creatives
A conversation with music supervisor Julianne Jordan & director Doug Liman
Live listening session with music supervisors
Art Meets Commerce: What Makes Trailer Music Supervision Different
FALLOUT: From Game to Streaming Series
From Coordinator to Supervisor: Navigating the Leap
GMS is offering a one-on-one networking session for aspiring music supervisors to meet GMS members working in the field of music supervision. This opportunity is open to aspiring music supervisors only. Conference attendance and pre-event sign-up are required.
GMS’ first-ever music supervisor listening session will feature music supervisors giving live feedback on five songs selected from Friend of the Guild (“FOG”) submissions. Participants can learn how top music supervisors in TV, film, video games, ads and trailers respond to tracks when considering them for placement.
A conference ticket purchase comes with a complimentary “Friend of the Guild” subscription, granting access to future events and networking opportunities. To learn more and buy tickets, visit the GMS Media Conference site.
NASHVILLE – The Music Business Association conference kicked off successfully in Nashville this week, with the annual gathering bringing together more than 2,100 music industry professionals representing attendance from over 750 companies and more than 30 countries, the trade group’s president, Portia Sabin, announced on Tuesday (May 14) in her annual address on the state of the Music Biz organization.
What’s more, Sabin said proposals for programming at the conference, which is crowd-sourced from industry executives, saw a 30% increase this year, “reflective of everything our industry wants to discuss — from hot topics like AI, gaming, and social impact, to perennial favorites like synch, music and money, and marketing. And don’t worry, we still have the critical but non-sexy topics like metadata and neighboring rights.”
With a full-court press of panels and seminars on many of the industry’s challenges and opportunities, Sabin also reported that about 325 speakers/panelists are set to take part in this year’s conference. She additionally noted the the trade group’s membership has grown by 106 companies and organizations since last year’s gathering, with Deezer, Audiomack, Pirames International, SonoSuite, the NMPA (National Music Publisher’s Association) Louisiana Entertainment (a division of Louisiana Economic Development) and Toronto Metropolitan University joining the fold.
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Beyond the convention, Sabin reported that the organization continues to stage its Music Biz Roadshow event series in places like Dallas, Miami and Huntsville, Ala., with programs for local indie musicians that have included topics like “Tech Solutions in Music,” “The State of Independent Distribution” and “Where’s My Money and How Do I Get It?” Those events have featured companies like the Mechanical Licensing Collective, CD Baby, Bandcamp, TropiSounds, Songtrust, Symphonic Distribution, Syntax Creative, Switchchord and Music Audience Exchange. “If your company wants to be a part of a Roadshow this year, please let my team know – they are some of the most fun and inspirational events we do and we’d love to have you join us,” Sabin said.
Besides going on the road, the trade group has also created a new virtual series, Music Biz Passport, which explores a different international market each time. “These events are meant to connect music business executives from the U.S. with international trendsetters so they may both learn what does and doesn’t work in these communities, and build new partnerships that will ultimately make our industry stronger,” Sabin elaborated, adding that upcoming events will focus on local music industries in Finland, Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
On the good works front, Sabin reported that Music Biz has partnered with the Music Health Alliance to set up the MHA Mental Health Fund. Since its launch, backed by a $50,000 contribution from the SCARS Foundation — an organization created by Sully Erna and the band Godsmack to support mental health initiatives — the fund has grown to $355,000 and served more than 500 music industry professionals through 5,246 outpatient counseling and psychiatry visits.
Meanwhile, the organization’s scholarship foundation has raised $60,000 and given out 12 scholarships to deserving music business students to the tune of $5,000 each, Sabin reported, thanking the scholarship committee for their hard work as well as “Lisa Robinson and Aaron Tochini for going above and beyond.”
Finally, Sabin celebrated another big accomplishment the trade group achieved during the year: persuading Luminate to abandon its implemented plan to unweight physical sales data, thus changing the chart methodology. Following the initial change to unweight sales data, Sabin, the retail coalitions and other stakeholders pulled together to partner with Streetpulse to collect that data from indie stores. After indie music retailers began boycotting reporting to Luminate, Music Biz worked with the coalitions to negotiate a deal that brought indie store data back into the Luminate system. As a result of that effort, the number of stores reporting to Luminate has more than doubled to 315 stores, up from the 140 retailers that previously reported to Luminate before the imbroglio.
“I want to thank everyone who was invested and made their voices heard on this issue, from retail stores to labels to distributors to individual artists – and of course to Rob Jonas and Luminate for coming to the table and being good partners,” Sabin said. “Those who’ve been around since the NARM days know that physical retailers are the original heart of Music Biz, and this year’s Record Store Day was another off-the-charts success… proving yet again that physical is a vital part of our industry.”
Sabin closed by noting that the conference is moving to Atlanta next year and will take place May 12 to May 15 at the city’s Renaissance Waverly Hotel. “It’s a great property that’s close to The Battery and Braves Stadium; and we’re especially excited that we were able to buy out the entire hotel, meaning everyone there will be a Music Biz attendee,” she said. “Sounds like sleepaway camp, right?”
In 2020, amidst the pandemic, Nick Maiale started thinking about the music industry beyond titles and company affiliations. Having spent over a decade working in music, including at the Music Business Association and Music Biz Conference, he felt inspired to promote more than professional development — he wanted to advocate for personal growth, too.
Through his work, Maiale was consistently meeting impressive and driven young professionals, but a throughline started to emerge. “After listening to [so many] stories of working in the industry and feeling the limitations [of it], I asked myself ‘How can I help add value to these people’s lives?’…Our business is so fast-paced and revenue driven that we don’t always get the opportunity to step back and get to know people for who they are — and this leaves us placing strong emphasis on job titles, company affiliation and status,” he says. “The answer was clear: build a company that helps my community navigate the industry.”
By the end of 2020, Maiale had launched jump.global, a “community-first” company that manages music business executives. And come November, it will host its first annual summit in Los Angeles. “I started to think about this around the same time I thought about starting the company as a whole,” says Maiale, who serves as founder/CEO. “ I thought it would take place somewhere like Wyoming with 30 people in a cabin — but here we are, about to welcome a much larger number than that to Los Angeles in just a month.”
Held Nov. 12-14 at The LINE Hotel, conversations will largely avoid hot topics like AI and streaming and instead center on stress management, burnout prevention, resilience in the music business and more. Speakers include J Erving (founder of Human Re Sources and executive vp at Sony Music), Moody Jones (GM of dance at EMPIRE), Fadia Kader (executive vp/GM at Venice Music) and Gwen Bethel Riley (senior vp of music/head of content partnerships at Peloton).
“The topics we are covering at the summit are necessary to work in any industry or simply just to exist: leadership, effective communication, stress management, pivoting, financial literacy,” says Maiale. “Imagine a music industry where more people are trained on different personality types, emotional intelligence, how to deal with conflict in the workplace, how to manage their money and how to really address and support mental health.”
Perhaps the best evidence of the need for such a summit is also the biggest challenge in launching it: “Getting people to focus on themselves, as opposed to their work,” says Maiale. “It’s going to take a lot of work, but we believe that as a community, we can all make the music business more human.”
Fittingly, attendee badges will solely list their first and last names, with no companies or titles to be found.
Registration and more information on the jump.global annual summit can be found here. The event kicks off Nov. 12 with a NO EGO Welcome Party.
The annual Music Tectonics Conference has unveiled the schedule for its 2023 edition, which is slated to take place in Santa Monica Oct. 24-26.
As always, this year’s sessions will explore a broad range of music business trends, including the most buzzworthy topic of all — artificial intelligence — with the panel “Music Meets AI: Navigating a Positive Future” featuring Angela Abbott of TIDAL, Con Raso of Tuned Global and Marina Guz of AI music and wellness company Endel. Additionally, attendees can take part in a so-called “AI music demo experience” titled “AI Isn’t Spooky (Unless You Want to be Scared).”
Other standouts this year include “The Explosion of Musical Creativity in Gaming & Esports” with Maria Egan of Riot Games, David Knox of Reactional Music and Sony Ventures’ Aadit Parikh; the fireside chat “Strength in Numbers: Growth of the Independent Artist and the Future of DIY” featuring Andreea Gleeson of TuneCore and Billboard‘s own Kristin Robinson; and “The State of Creativity in Music Tech” with Dani DiCiaccio of Splice and Daniel Rowland of LANDR, moderated by BandLab’s Dani Deahl.
Other topics covered by sessions and events at this year’s gathering include music tech investment, fan engagement, music data, distribution and streaming fraud. As in previous years, the conference will also feature Swimming with Narwhals, a startup pitch competition for music tech companies that will see five finalists present their pitches to an audience and a panel of music tech investors.
The full 2023 schedule can be found here.
“I named this event Music Tectonics because we explore the shifting trends that change the industry sometimes suddenly and sometimes incrementally, the way the earth’s tectonic plates cause quakes and make mountains,” said Music Tectonics director Dmitri Vietze in a statement. “Music tech founders, label execs, artist teams, investors, and industry stakeholders come back to Music Tectonics each year because they learn about what’s about to emerge as well as what the state of innovation is.”
Top-level supporters of this year’s conference include Kuack Media Group, LyricFind and MU:CON, while sponsors include Beatdapp, Innovation Norway, The MLC, Moises, Music Reports, Reactional Music, Revohloo, RoyFi, SESAC Music Group, TuneCore, TunedGlobal, Downtown Music Holdings and MAM bmat.
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