Music 4.5, 4th March 2010
Speakers
Feargal Sharkey, CEO, UK Music
Born in Derry, Northern Ireland, Feargal found fame as lead singer in The Undertones and later as a solo artist - enjoying some 12 years of world tours, hit albums, late nights and the finest transport cafe cuisine money can buy.
Hanging up his pop star boots, he successfully transferred to the business side of the industry; holding posts as A&R manager, record label MD, Member of the Radio Authority and Chair of the Live Music Forum.
In February 2008, Feargal was appointed CEO of British Music Rights. Eight months later, this role was expanded significantly with the creation of UK Music.
Headed by Feargal, UK Music is an umbrella organisation that represents the collective interests of the UK's commercial music industry - from artists, musicians, songwriters and composers, to record labels, music managers, music publishers, collecting societies and studio producers.
Steve Mullins, Brand-e.biz
Steve Mullins has been working in and around digital media for the past 12 years as both a journalist and consultant. He conceived and edited the successful industry magazine Converging Media, and last year launched brand-e.biz, an online publication covering marketing innovation. He recently rolled out brand-m.biz, a daily mag following developments in music marketing and marketing with music.
Vincent Ricordeau, Co-founder and CEO of Kisskissbankbank
Vincent has more than 10 years of International sales and business unit management experience especially in the sport and entertainment industries. Prior to founding Kisskissbankbank, Vincent was VP of development and acquisitions at Sportfive. Before he held various sales management positions at VNU Business Publications and RCI Condominium. In 1998, he founded R2 Communication a marketing and advertising company he still runs.
Brian Message, Acting Chairman, Music Managers Forum
Brian Message is the Acting Chairman of the MMF. He is also a partner at Courtyard Management, the management company for Radiohead and Supergrass.
Together with his partners, they are a majority shareholder in ATC, the management, investing and partnering operation that has a roster of artists including Boxer Rebellion, Chew Lips, Faithless, Kate Nash, Master Shortie, and The Rifles.
Paul Bedford, Investment Director, Ingenious Media
Paul oversees investment strategy for all Ingenious Media's VCT funds, and he has deep knowledge and relationships within both the music and live industries.
Paul joined Ingenious in 2000 and has spent over 20 years in the media sector, specialising particularly in music. Paul spent four years working as Finance Director for Simon Fuller's 19 Group, which culminated in its successful sale to CKX in June 2005. Paul spent ten years as Finance Director of the SPZ Group, which incorporates record, music publishing, music production and recording studio interests and had major success over the years with artists such as Seal and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
Jeremy Silver, Acting CEO, Featured Artists Coalition
Jeremy Silver, PhD, is the acting-CEO of the newly created Featured Artists Coalition, and a digital media thought-leader who has focussed on the music industry for the last fifteen years. He is currently providing advisory services to the UK Technology Strategy Board on its work with the creative industries and its Digital Britain Test Beds project, and he serves as Deputy Chairman of Futurelab - an education technology think-tank chaired by Lord David Puttnam.
Previously he was CEO of Sibelius Software (a music notation software company, which he led for five years and sold to Avid Technology in 2006. Prior to this, Silver was worldwide Vice President of New Media for EMI Music Group in London and relocated to Los Angeles. He went on to run the ground-breaking, playlistsharing music service, Uplister Inc, based in San Francisco.
Before this, Silver was Director of Media Affairs at Virgin Records where he worked closely with many artists including Genesis, Meat Loaf, Brian Eno, Massive Attack and the Future Sound of London.
Nikhil Shah, Co-founder, Mixcloud
Nikhil Shah is co-founder of Mixcloud, an online radio startup based in London. Cambridge University Mathematics graduate and former Brand Consultant, Nikhil has always had a passion for building brands and communities - from his first clubnight as a teenager to consulting in brand strategy for Sky, Sony and Unilever. Nikhil also runs successful London club brand Man Make Music, and as a DJ is proud to have played at some of the best clubs in the world alongside his musical heroes.
Chris Carey, Economist, PRS for Music
Chris Carey is an economist at PRS for Music, where he is responsible for analysing and interpreting market trends and providing economic insight to internal stakeholders and to external industry professionals.
Chris spent 2 years at HSBC before joining PRS for Music. His other research interests include the live music industry, the issues facing investment in emerging artists. His most recent publication, titled "An Introduction to Cost Disease" revisited a forty-year old theory which was used to justify state intervention in the arts.
Ian Hogarth, Co-founder & CEO, SongKick
Ian graduated from Cambridge University in 2005 with a first class degree in Engineering, specialising in Machine Learning. He then worked for Bain & Company in Asia and Silicon Valley specialising in technology strategy, before co-founding Songkick. Ian was recently listed in Billboards 30 under 30 list for 2009.
Songkick.com is a site for live music fans – providing personalized, local concert alerts for your fans’ favourite bands. Songkick has aggregated the largest database of concert information in the world with over 1.35 million concerts. Songkick is backed by Index Ventures (investors in Skype, MySQL, Last.fm) as well as angels from the technology and music industry.
Mike Butcher, TechCrunch Europe
As well as editing TechCrunch Europe, Mike is involved in a project to bring European technology entrepreneurs and investors together in a club environment called TechHub (@TechHub), in London initially.
A long time journalist, Mike has written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. He is a former editor of New Media Age magazine, the leading new media weekly in the UK, and the European edition of The Industry Standard magazine. Since 1996 he has launched or re-launched numerous media web sites and in 2000 he was nominated as NetMedia's European Internet Journalist of the Year. In 2004 he was voted 'One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade' by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. In July 2008 he was put at No. 47 out of the Top 100 people in London's creative industry by The Independent newspaper and The Hospital Club.
Joe Porn, Squadron Leader, Music Glue
Joe Porn has been 'Squadron Leader' at music technology company Music Glue for the past two years. His role allows him to work across the music industry spectrum, which includes dealing with new artists to established acts, regional and national promoters, indie and major labels, venues and Management teams. He played drums with Sufjan Stevens in New York for several years and currently runs an established 80's club night in Camden on a monthly basis. When not at work he enjoys nothing more than sitting down with a cup of tea and watching an episode of Being Human.
David Kaplan: Co-founder and CEO Pure Solo Ltd
Motivated by his entrepreneurial spirits and attempts at learning clarinet, piano and saxophone during his financial career, David set out to make music simpler for home and personal use, and co-founded Pure Solo with friend and renowned trumpeter John Thirkell.
Prior to founding and managing PureSolo, David was a partner of Goldman Sachs where he spent 22 years managing businesses in several product lines. In 1996 he was made a Managing Director, and in 1997 he moved to run European equities trading where his responsibilities involved capital allocation to traders, client relationships, proprietary trading and strategy surrounding the technological connectivity between trading and exchanges. David was made a partner in 2000 while in European Equities. In 2006, he left Goldman Sachs to join Fulcrum Asset Management, trading in their macro hedge fund and in January 2007 he began to work full time on Pure Solo.
David is also a trustee at the UK based charity the Priority Trust, an organization aimed at funding new equipment for the physically disabled.
Jemima Kiss, The Guardian
Jemima Kiss joined the Guardian's media and technology desk in 2006 as digital media reporter. Her work explores digital content and culture, examining technology trends and experimentation in startups as well the shift of traditional media companies towards digital publishing and distribution.
A graduate of Dartington College of Arts, Jemima has also written for the digital business blog paidContent.org, the industry news site
Robert Thomas, Music Producer, RjDj
Robert Thomas is a reactive music producer at RjDj, who make a revolutionary iPhone and Android application. It enables listeners to experience music which changes - in real time - with how you are moving, includes the sounds around you, and even where you are on earth or what time of day or night it is. Founded by Michael Breidenbrueker, one of the co-founders of Last.fm - RjDj transforms music into a new format for the 21st century: software. At RjDj Robert is exploring the unique possibilities of this format with many artists from Warner, Sony BMG, EMI and Universal as well as many independent labels.
Dan Cryan, Senior Analyst, Screen Digest
Dan joined Screen Digest in 2004 and played a key role in the development of the company's digital media coverage. As Head of Broadband he specialises in online content and the technical issues surrounding the distribution of digital entertainment. Dan also oversees all Screen Digest's music coverage, having been involved in the music business since 1997.
As part of Screen Digest's broadband team Dan led the development of the forecasting models used in the online Broadband Intelligence service including online movies, TV, music and user generated content. He has also been involved in a wide range of consultancy projects for clients including national broadcasters and the European Commission, and is a regular speaker about the online content business at international conferences.
Dan is the author of a couple of books Introducing Logic (2002) and Introducing Capitalism (2009), which have been translated into several languages.
Grant Murgatroyd, Editor, Corporate Financier
Grant is an award-winning editor and journalist with more than 15 years’ experience writing about business and finance, specialising in venture capital private equity, M&A and corporate finance. After working in Hong Kong for six years, he moved to London in 1998 and joined Financial News, where he was the paper’s first dedicated private equity correspondent. In 1999 he was launch editor of Real Deals and over the next five years built it into Europe’s leading private equity and venture capital magazine. He is currently director of publishing services provider Heavens2 Media and editor of Corporate Financier, published by the ICAEW Corporate Finance Faculty.
Erik Nielsen, Founder, Wingnut Music
Erik Nielsen emigrated from the USA to the UK to launch and manage Marillion's first official website and online store in late 1997. After shaking off record company shackles in 2000 with the now much-copied and popular fan-funded pre-order concept, Marillion's website has grown from a simple information source into its own cottage industry, which includes private recording studios and offices, the online store Racket Records, and indie label Intact Records - the Direct-to-Consumer and 360-Degree business models 10 years before they were buzzwords.
Branching out in 2008, his Wingnut Music consultancy - which counts Elton John's Twenty First Artists management company and leading digital analysts Music Ally amongst his clients - works with artists and organisations on creative marketing and digital strategies, artist management, and keeping a step ahead of the changing music industry. Based in Oxford, he also manages breaking band A Genuine Freakshow in addition to his continued involvement with Marillion.
James Proud, Founder & CEO, GigLocator
James is the Founder and CEO of GigLocator.com. Prior to founding GigLocator, as a designer and developer he worked with companies such as Coca-Cola and Universal Music creating web presences for some of their live music events and artists. Beginning freelancing for companies and other start-ups, proved a natural progression into his start-up GigLocator.
Glenn Cornett, Founder & President, New Spectrum Foundation
Glenn Cornett, MD, PhD, is founder and President of the New Spectrum Foundation, an organization principally focused on the support of music by current composers and songwriters. The Foundation has a particular interest in new business models that enhance the viability of careers in new music.
He is also the CEO of Metastrat, a firm that provides deal-brokering, strategic-advisory and other services to science and technology-intensive companies.
Dr. Cornett has over a decade of work experience in life sciences and information technology with roles including: founder and CEO of Navitas Pharma; Head of Strategy at Razorfish: strategy and financial modelling for the >$100 million joint venture between Lilly and Icos for Cialis at Eli Lilly; strategy consultant at McKinsey and Company; policy analyst and consultant at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Glenn is an avid musician (guitar, piano, synthesizer, voice) and composer in a variety of genres.
Julia Shalet, Founder, The Digital Youth Project
Julia Shalet helps companies in the youth sector by engaging teenagers in innovative research formats to help them develop their offering and reduce wasted marketing and product development budgets whilst at the same time providing compelling and relevant enterprise learning experiences for young people. Her new Travelling Teen Panel is proving a great attraction at conferences and for businesses to bring in-house. Over fifteen years in the industry, she has worked with clients including T-Mobile, Weeworld.com, Hertfordshire Careers Services and many digital start ups. In 2007 she was named in Harper's Bazaar "Top 40 entrepreneurs under the age of 40"
Chris Coco, DJ
Chris Coco is a DJ, producer, broadcaster, critic, music junkie. He presented the Sunday edition of BBC Radio 1's after hours show The Blue Room from 2002-2006 and DJs everything from house and party bootlegs to indie rock 'n' roll and dub all over the world.
Chris also DJed for global megastar Robbie Williams and perfomed in his band at the MTV Europe awards (to an audience of about a billion people).
Nic Howell, New Media Age
Nic joined New Media Age, the UK's leading interactive marketing and business weekly, as a reporter in October 2005. He became the magazine's features editor six months later in April 2006 and deputy editor in January 2007.
He has been a business journalist specialising in new media since 2002, following a successful career in marketing within organisations such as Reed-Elsevier and Pearson.
Billy Grant, 2Point9
In 2003, Billy Grant formed 2Point9, a record label and management company, with Rob Stuart with the ambition to create the first international British-Asian pop icon.
They signed singer Jay Sean eventually forming Jayded Records as a joint venture with the artist. The resulting hit album "My Own way" was then licensed to Cash Money records in the States and the first single - 'Down' featuring lil Wayne - went triple platinum selling over 3 million units and peaking at No.1 in the US Billboard Top 100.
From the outset, 2Point9 took an innovative approach to artist development, building an impressive fan base in the UK by targeting the previously untapped British-Asian youth market, then exporting the artists to music fans around the world. Billy quickly established the company as No.1 for contemporary crossover Asian-Western music with artists touring in over 100 cities in 4 continents around the world.
Prior to 2Point9, from 1994, Billy worked at Telstar Records on compilations where he championed the trend for mass marketing 'niche' compilations and was responsible for string of best-sellers. Billy's successful steering of the careers of Craig David & Mis Teeq in A&R and promotion made his mark on the music industry.
The Guardian's 'Power List' selected Billy as one of the Top 30 most important ethnic minority figures in the media industry.
Shamal Ranasinghe, Topspin
Shamal Ranasinghe is a Co-Founder of Topspin. Previously he was involved in data mining efforts at Yahoo! Music and headed up product management at Musicmatch before starting Topspin in 2007. Topspin is a technology platform for artists to create their own retail channels, effectively promote their music and connect directly with their fans. Topspin gives artists the tools to generate demand for their music, manage their catalog and their fans, and gather insights to improve performance. Since coming out of stealth mode in June 2008, a number of artists have chosen the Topspin platform to market music directly to their fans, including Paul McCartney, Beastie Boys, David Byrne & Brian Eno, Arcade Fire, Eminem, Carly Simon, Metric and Fanfarlo.
Laura Scott, One Bird Records
When she is not running One Bird Records, Laura Scott is a digital consultant at a leading PR agency, where she develops social media campaigns and strategies for major global brands including MySpace, Adidas, Bassett's and Molson Coors Brewers. In her spare time she works as a freelance music journalist, writing reviews and features for the Londonist, Popjunkietv.com, My Chemical Toilet, and Buzzin' Music. Before moving to London from Toronto to complete her masters at Goldsmiths, she worked in radio and curated and promoted gigs. She was recently invited back to Goldsmiths as a guest lecturer on Surveillance and Social Networking, and also blogs on art and sub-cultural theory.
Chris Jenkins, Wittdo
Chris is an entrepreneur with experience in both start-ups and business development. Whilst studying at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth in 1999 he launched the National Student Music Awards working with BBC, MTV and NUS, later licencing the NSMA brand to companies in the UK and Ireland. As a concert promoter he has worked with artists including Snow Patrol and Reef before joining the Bournemouth International Centre in 2003.
During his 5 years with the BIC he was an active member of industry forums including the National Arena Association and British Resorts and Destinations Association. He left the BIC in 2008, when he founded the Dorset Music Forum and launched his social enterprise 'Wittdo', for which he received the Best Start-up Award from Dorset Business, and most promising new business from British Chamber of Commerce and was shortlisted as a Future 100 social entrepreneur. Chris is the CMO of the media company MRC working public and private sector in tourism, leisure and music, he is relaunching the National Student Music Awards and 'Wittdo' is being rolled out nationwide later this year.
Wittdo's 'Live Music Study' is the first initiative of its kind. An unique analysis of customer and ticketing data gathered from across the music industry, to gain insights into customer behaviour, observe demand trends, and identify how to make more effective use of data in marketing.
Anthony Price, Square Enix Europe
Anthony Price was Group Legal Director for the legendary Bartle Bogle Hegarty advertising agency before moving into the video games industry to work with a different breed of creative over ten years ago. Since then he has been part of seminal 'Britsoft' games businesses at Codemasters, SCi Games and Eidos and following their acquisition of Eidos last year is now General Counsel for Square Enix Europe, part of a major Tokyo based global video game publisher with a portfolio including Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Hitman and Championship Manager.
Anthony has dealt with licensing music for both advertising and videogames and has seen the attitude of the music business towards music in games evolve from initial suspicion and mistrust to today's appreciation of games as a potentially lucrative new distribution channel. He's also been involved in the ongoing evolution of the games business from boxed products to digital distribution models and the growth of new approaches to monetizing games content.
Seth Jackson, Indie Mobile and [PIAS] Entertainment Group
With a background in mobile going back to 1999 Seth Jackson worked with club promoters and brands to explore the early uses of SMS marketing to youth audiences and the potential that arose with the birth of the ring-tone phenomenon. He has spent the last 10 years working within the emerging mobile music business starting his own company, Indie Mobile in 2005. Indie Mobile worked with the cream of UK independent labels developing innovative award winning mobile campaigns for artists such as Oasis and Dizzee Rascal and distributing mobile music to over 400 retail outlets worldwide. In 2008 [PIAS] Entertainment Group took a stake in the company adding over 400 labels and a truly global reach to Indie Mobile's offering. In 2009 Indie Mobile was fully integrated into the larger company and Seth now works for [PIAS] Entertainment Group overseeing the overall mobile strategy and heading up the agency arm [PIAS] Mobile.
Brittney Bean, Green House Group
Brittney Bean is the co-founder of Green House Group, a collective of artists, designers, developers and marketeers who's clients include The Secret Garden Party, Blissfields Festival, Chess Club Records, The Flowerpot and Haiti Earthquake Fundraiser. Green House Group has also released Track In The Box, a daily music newsletter, and RecordDrop, a vinyl and mp3 bundle shop, as well as co-organising The River Rat Pack Tour. She is also a co-founder of Made With Chopsticks, the web app development firm responsible for Nimbu and Tktdrop.
Darshan Sanghrajka, The House London
Darshan is the Co-Founder and Strategy Director for The House London - a design, digital and branding agency. What he really enjoys doing is making online communities thrive, through a combination of fun and behavioural economics (sounds half fun, half geeky – but it works). From a music perspective, Darshan has advised Mixcloud.com and bands such as up and coming duo - Muchuu. His background has been as varied as working at PricewaterhouseCoopers, to most recently, as Head of Content & Commissioning at Bragster.com - working with clients such as BBC Three, Cadburys, Lionsgate Films and Tango and where his Christmas credit card projection stunt campaign received publicity in over 10 different countries. When not thinking for clients, Darshan enjoys performing stand-up comedy, painting and generally drinking lots of tea.
Leon Alexander, Hope Music Group
Leon Alexander is Co Director of the Hope Music Group a long running independent management company that also has three label offshoots and a stand alone publishing company. He recently started the company Music Industry Education Ltd. with a dedicated team of Music Business professionals who are delivering up to the minute Music Business information as seminars and evening courses to Professionals, Music Students and Teachers alike. He is also on the board of the South West Music Forum and the Bristol Music Foundation.
Ben Drury, 7Digital
Ben Drury began his career in 1996 as a founder of dotmusic.com, an internal venture at United News and Media. Dotmusic quickly became a leading online music destination attracting over 1.8m unique users per month (in 1999). In 2000 Ben was headhunted by BT Group to head up the broadband music efforts at their ISP BT Openworld. As Head of Music at BT, Ben successfully launched a major music channel before leading the acquisition of his old company dotmusic in 2002. At BT, Ben pioneered music and video downloads on dotmusic with the UK's first unlimited subscription offer. Following the partnership between BT and Yahoo! to form BT Yahoo! in 2003, Ben engineered the sale of dotmusic to Yahoo! for approx. £3.3m. Ben then founded 7digital with James Kane in 2004 with the vision of creating a digital media marketplace. Tapping into the burgeoning demand for digital media, 7digital operates services that bring together suppliers and consumers of digital media. In September 2008 7digital.com was the first company in Europe to launch DRM-free MP3 downloads with all four major record labels.Marc Bridgen, GigJunkie
Marc Bridgen was part of the core team that grew Randall Lyons from a £500k to £5.5m p.a. software and services company before being acquired by Capita Plc in 2005. After working for the massive corporate for a while he followed his passion for live music and new challenges and started GigJunkie.net in 2007
Susie Moore, BrandRock
Susie Moore has 16 years of brand, marketing and sponsorship experience, both agency and client side. She was a key player in the launch of o2 in 2002, and then became Head of Brand and Marketing where she oversaw all marketing communications including advertising, sponsorships, digital, retail and brand experience. She was instrumental in the partnership with AEG on The o2 as well as the music and customer experience strategy for o2 since launch. She has now formed 'BrandRock' with Artist manager, record label owner and music consultant, Zak Biddu to bring their brand and music experience together to work for both brands and artists.>/p>
Helen Sims, Strata Creative Agency
For any questions relating to the content, speakers and programme, please contact Rassami Hok Ljungberg on rassami (at) 2pears (dot) com.