by Toni-Matti Karjalainen
Musexpo is an annual music industry event in West Hollywood, organized this year for the 6th time at the exquisite London West Hollywood hotel. The conference gathers together an impressive line-up of industry people (music industry executives, managers, label reps, marketing experts, game industry people, etc.) in the format of interactive panel discussions and key-note presentations. The expo, in addition to the annual sister event in London, is probably the best place to get an overview of the industry development and valuable insight shared by the industry leaders. Moreover, the atmosphere is extremely relaxed and inspiriting.
Even though the event is characterized by talks and more talks about the industry logic and trends, the music itself is really put to the forefront. Not only are music presentations included in the lunch pauses and between sessions but also is the tonal and visual pleasure offered by a number of showcase presentations by artists and bands from all over the world, taking place during the four evenings at the Viper Room and Whisky a Go Go. Also this year, the first but certainly not the last one for me, I met a bunch of open-minded people and managed to do lots of networking in the London hotel and nearby conference venues. This year’s event hosted some 30 artists from 14 countries and delegates from three dozen countries on five continents.
The origins of Musexpo, as explained by the organizers, stem from the roots of the A&R Network networking dinners in Los Angeles. These exclusive dinners were organized by A&R Network and A&R Worldwide architect Sat Bisla with the purpose of bringing together friends and like-minded relationships from the global radio, A&R, film/TV music supervision, publishing, new media and artist management communities to engage in creative dialogue and establish fresh business relationships. It was the positive culmination of these organic networking dinners that spawned the creation of the four-day event, still successfully hosted by Mr. Bisla himself.
The conference program started with a keynote panel, moderated by Nic Harcourt, a highly acknowledged music writer in the Los Angeles Times Magazine. The panel, one of the interesting ones in the event, consisted an impressive lineup of industry leading executives: David Glick (Edge, UK), George Ergatoudis (Head of Music, BBC Radio 1), Harvey Goldsmith (Harvey Goldsmith Presents), Jim Urie (Universal Music Group Distribution), Steve Schnur (EA Games), and Jim Hollingsworth (Gracenote). Impressing and interesting was also the Global Managers Forum that followed. From this discussion, we received insights from highly experienced music managers such as Jeff Jampol (e.g. The Doors), Jonathan Shalit (e.g. N-Dubz), Rob McDermott (e.g. Linkin Park), David “Beno” Benveniste (e.g. System of A Down, Alice In Chains), Robert Reynolds (e.g. The Killers), and Ted Chung (e.g. Snoop Dogg). After the nice lunch, served by Gordon Ramsay Restaurant at the top terrace of the London hotel, discussions continued with focus on music publishing and marketing.
The 2nd morning of the event, following the also interesting Global A&R Forum with the focus on the future of artist development, was highlighted by the interview (by Kevin Wall) of the industry’s living legend Harvey Goldsmith. He is really a person who has personally experienced the development of rock music industry from its early years to the present time. His stories with the likes of Led Zeppelin, Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd and Bruce Springsteed, to name a few, as well as organization of the Massive Live Aid and Live 8 concerts were truly fascinating to listen. During the following lunch break, Mr. Goldsmith was also acknowledged with an “International Music Person of the Year” award. As a personal note, it was quite nice to shake hands with this English gentleman.
Tuesday afternoon then consisted of more discussion panels on the topics of “connecting the virtual and reality worlds”, “music for the masses”, and “the future of music”. The tight morning of the last Musexpo day was packed – perhaps a bit too packed in fact – with discussions stressing the sponsorship issues in the “music in visual media & consumer brands” panel, insights on the selection of music in films and TV by the Chop Shop corporation, experiences about music and gaming by the EA music team, as well as examples of music integration ant the NBC Universal TV.
In overall, despite inspiriting talks about creativity and future possibilities in the music industry, a slight flavor of cynicism colored many discussions. And despite several reminders of the importance of “good” music in the core of all actions, Musexpo really stressed the business aspects and, at times, music itself and its integrity were left at the background. Which is of course understandable – this is a music industry event anyway. Nevertheless, the current focus on building super stars, mass market attention, and global recognition could be shifted onto other kind of realities as well. Super stardom becomes reality for a very few; there are thousands and thousands of artists with a smaller but often loyal fan base, perhaps a local one, which often is a good ground for a sustainable and long-term career. There are possibilities to make a satisfactory living out of music without breaking big time. And it might be more relevant for many participants to get ideas of how to build, nurture and manage such success stories cases through different media than to listen to per se amusing stories of star building. New distribution methods and technologies were also embraced with too little self-criticism. Social media, stream applications and new gadgets are yet cool, of course, but guess what, there are still genres and countries in which consistent albums, tangible CD’s with rich visual contents still make a big difference for the true music fans.
Altogether some thirty bands and artists played in the showcase evenings. I was able to check the most of them on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. There were many interesting presentations by very talented musicians – not many of them particularly targeted to my personal taste, but interesting indeed – as well as some less distinctive ones. In addition to the memorable shows by Sissy Wish, Laleh, Dúné, Ingrid Olava, The Boy Who Trapped The Sun, and others, I was personally moved by two presentations: The Australian Birds of Tokyo in the Whisky on Monday and Danish Mads Langer in the Viper Room on Wednesday. A specific impact was made by the Birds singer Ian Kenny who I was very surprised to see playing this band as well. Only few weeks ago was I knocked by his charisma as his better known band Karnivool played a killer show in Helsinki. It was also a pleasure to meet this nice guy personally after the show. All in all, I felt an additional rush of emotions during the gigs, particularly in the Whisky a Go Go, by the fact that many of my 70’s through 90’s heroes had really performed in this very place.
Home sweet home, for now, and certainly back to Musexpo L.A. next year.
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