Last week was Midem Digital Edition! During this pandemic keeping us from gathering at the biggest music industry professional event, finding inspiration and get insights on the music business trends is even more important than ever. We tuned in a few conferences and connected with a global ecosystem online. The platform will be available until the end of August to keep making connections online. We also were a happy sponsor of the main Artist & Label Services Keynote. We’ll take you through what we saw from Midem Digital Edition 2020.
Midem’s insights for the future of the music industry
Without any surprise, the global pandemic was the main matter at hand. More specifically, a lot of discussions happening wondered about what will the music business will look like after the crisis will have passed. I would advise you to take a look at the session moderated by Paul Brindley from MusicAlly: The Impacts of Covid-19 on the Music Industry. A good way to get in the mood.
Throughout all discussions, the main idea is the fact that music professionals have been able to adapt pretty quickly in their work methods. With the silver lining pointing out the need to sustainable alternatives for live music and the revenues attached to it. To think about the future of the industry, the keynote The New Normal with Willard Ahdritz (Kobalt) had a lot major points we should take into consideration.
Midem focus on Artist & Label Services
As announced, Midem highlighted a new category for their participants of this digital edition: Artist & Labels Services. This new organization started with the main conference this year: Artist & Label Services by Fred Davis (The Raine Group), Justin Kalifowitz (Downtown Music) & Kerry Trainor (SoundCloud), moderated by Juliana Koranteng, international music business journalist. We are glad to be the sponsor of this session and I can only urge you to take a look at this conference!
Regarding the music industry’s artist & label services, one of the speakers, Fred Davis (Raine Group), said it best: “This area we’re talking about is absolutely the fastest growing segment in the entire music industry. It was nothing two or three years ago and you’re correct this year it will be as we estimate a $2 billion sector by 10% of the entire music industry growing at a 35-40% year over year”.
In other news at Midem Digital Edition…
A few other topics were covered on Midem Digital Edition this year. You can of course find all of them on their platform until end of August, and then on their YouTube channel. We even got to talk about a centralized data exchange system with the conference RDx & Data: Behind the Scenes of a Cross-industry Collaboration, a topic we also talked about at AIM Connected back in February!
But let’s not forget the focus Midem has put on Africa’s music ecosystem for a few years. You can find a few conferences with artists and professionals talking about the future of the industry, worldwide. For example, mixing artists’ and professionals’ points of view, the conference Reinventing monetization sources in East Africa was focusing on the very recent launch by Apple Music and the demand on the African continent. Feel free to wander around on the platform!
And finally, the Midemlab competition was held on the last day of this digital edition, for startups to pitch their solutions for the industry. Find out who won and how it went here.
All in all, the first digital edition went smoothly on the platform. Even if a few informations got lost along the way, efforts were made to get the taste of networking during Midem. The team still managed to recreate the event online in a record time, an important step in the current context.
Midem Digital Edition is still online on their own platform with networking options until the end of August. Every content will be available on their YouTube channel after that. Think of getting into the focus on Artist & Label Services and spot us!
