It’s no surprise that one of the biggest crowd-pullers on day 2 of the Face The Music summit today was YouTube music critic Anthony Fantano. Everyone in the music biz wants to achieve impressive social media figures and this guy knows how to get them better than most. His YouTube album review channel, The Needle Drop features over 2,000 videos and has accrued more than 800,000 subscribers. It’s successful because he really knows his stuff. He obviously gets to know an album and its artist back the front before he critiques. Anthony was involved in two sessions today, explaining the science of YouTube and the pitfalls and joys of social media, which the audience found extremely rewarding. It was both amusing and frightening to hear how he was mistaken for a terrorist and copped much social media abuse, just because he beared a likeness to the offender … a bald guy with glasses!
The always upbeat Mikey Cahill (Herald Sun) chaired a session on the world of Music Festivals before trekking down Swanston Street to join a chat on the relevance of music critics, featuring a mix of experienced and newbie writers. While there was disagreement on a number of issues, it’s always healthy to have an open mind and consider alternative opinions.
The lunchtime entertainment today was supplied by hip hop artist Nico Ghost and rock band Good Morning, both worthy of a listen.
Briggs moderated an intriguing session on ways and means to reduce or offset the environmental footprint. The Ecosystem of Independent Labels in Australia was equally as popular and featured numerous bright sparks from local independent record labels such as Ivy League, Remote Control, and NZ label Flying Nun.
Another seat-filler in the Queens Hall was the dissection of the recent Peking Duk tour, in which the band and management discussed how they made it happen so successfully.
However, the biggest news of the day was delivered in the afternoon from the library steps, where it was announced that the Federal Government had approved funding for the next four years to Sounds Australia. Things were looking dire for a while before hard work from the Sounds Australia team finally yielded this great result. Sounds Australia is a vital cog in taking Australian music to the world.
“Today’s news that the Department of Communications and the Arts is supporting SOUNDS AUSTRALIA for the next four years is exactly the result we’ve been hoping for,” said Millie Millgate, Executive producer of Sounds Australia. “It’s testament to the value of the national export platform and subsequent success Australian artists…”
As chaos reigns around the world, there was something comforting about The Meanies soundchecking in the afternoon sun for a performance later in the day, and with Sounds Australia securing funding for the next four years, the Face The Music conference in Melbourne, Australia seemed like a mighty fine place to be.
http://facethemusic.org.au/
Report and photos by Greg Phillips
