Face the Music conference review

22 November 2010

by Greg Phillips

The album as a format is dying. To tour the USA or Europe, a band needs a three year plan. Most music journalists prefer a physical copy of a promo album rather than a digital one. The band Lamb of God is banned from playing the LA Forum, now owned by a church, but Slipknot can play there. Simply Red's Mick Hucknall is a dickhead.

These are just some of the disparate but insightful and entertaining bytes of information attendees gained from Face The Music this year.

Now in its third year, Face The Music is a conference and music industry summit organised by the Victorian youth music organisation The Push, held at Melbourne's Arts Centre over a two day period.

This year, Face the Music shared the Arts Centre facilities with the Australasian World Music Expo, and in doing so, not only gave the event an international flavour, but also elevated the conference to a new level. The two events co-existed harmoniously, allowing a sharing of speakers and performances and at the end of each day, delegates were able to network together discovering much synergy, and more importantly opportunity.

Face the Music kicked off with a keynote interview of label manager, management consultant and all-round industry achiever Michael Parisi by Music Victoria's Patrick Donovan. A run through Parisi's career painted a colourful picture of where the music industry has come from, where it's at now and offered a peek into the future.

Two of the sessions presented by the AWME, 'Festivals of the World' and 'Marketing & Touring North America and Europe' gave delegates an international perspective on the the industry. While representatives from the Glastonbury, Oslo, Ottawa and Fuji music festivals offered fresh opinions and anecdotes, it quickly became apparent that the issues facing artists trying to make an impact in other parts of the world are universal.

Half way through FTM's final day, General Manager of The Push Peter Chellew was ecstatic at the way the event had unfolded, particularly the association with the AWME.

"It was a leap of faith for the two organisations.," said Chellew. "It was only when we got here and looked at the two lists, we saw that they were networking together. There was an exchange of presenters across both programs, yet we were both able to retain our own entities."

More to the point, the attendees were happy too. "It's not very often you get put in front of so many influential people. You can read books on this stuff, but Face The Music is giving you a current view of what the industry is looking for," offered Stephen Bowtell, a local indie musician.