Melbourne welcomed musicians from all over Australia on November 17 & 18, for its annual Music Industry Summit, ‘Face the Music’.
This was Oxygen College’s 3rd consecutive year of being involved in the event, with students and graduates from music business, music performance and audio engineering all heading down to learn, network and immerse themselves in Melbourne’s Music Hub.
This year it was right in the guts of the CBD, based out of the State Library Victoria and was designed to line up with Melbourne Music week. The grass was adorned with musicians with guitars singing and writing, young and old conversing about the state of the industry, and music in general pulsing like a heartbeat over both jam-packed days. The steps leading up to the iconic building were almost comically blocked by a sleek, modern stage setup with some of Australia’s most current and best musicians serenading the whole of Swanston St. A stand out was double Grammy Award nominee Nai Palm (Hiatus Kaiyote), doing a solo set to welcome everyone to the second day of the conference.
The conference held talks on all areas of the music industry including touring, distribution, artist management, composition, producing, syncs and licensing, music streaming, publicity, music technology, publishing, music journalism and many other areas directly connected to the modern musician in Australia. A few of the special treats for those who came along were listening to Anthony Fantano aka ‘The Needle Drop’ talk through his unique approach to music knowledge and criticism, and Alex White, from the Next Big Sound, looking at analytics and statistics as a way of determining which acts from across the world are the next to have an impact. Both were on loan to us from America and were amazing to listen and chat to.
For aspiring musicians, managers, music writers, and basically anyone interested in carving out a career in the music industry the two days were an invaluable insight into what it takes to succeed, both creatively and from a business perspective. Every one of our students and staff were able to take something new and informative out of the event.
It is uplifting to be surrounded by so many likeminded creatives, who are all aspiring to bring more art to the world. Oxygen College had an awesome time and will back again in 2017.
