Last Saturday (Feb. 27th) , folks gathered in San Francisco to attend a music conference called Industry Noise put on by the producers of the Noise Pop festival. The conference featured guest speakers from well known bands such as Devo and Magnetic Fields for their panels. The all day conference featured discussions dealing with social media, starting a label, career opportunities in the industry, and gaining an insight on producing music. Whether you were an artist, manager, label owner, or music lover, the Swedish American Hall was filled people you wanted to put in your little blackberry.

First to take the throne like chair was Josh Freese, featured speaker and drummer of many successful bands such as Weezer, Nine Inch Nails, and Devo. Out of all the guest panelists, Freesehad to be my favorite. Here was a guy who has been playing drums since he was twelve years old, recorded with Guns ‘n’ Roses and still didn’t take the music industry seriously. “You can sit in your room [or] you can get out there and do it…play with who ever.”  One of the most important advice any musician could receive.

After leaving a gig to play with Nine Inch Nails, Freese decided to release a solo album called Back in 1972. Freesedecided to make up packages that would come with the album at different prices, from as low $7 to a ridiculous price of $75,000. You could either get a digital download or an album written by him about your life, an idea he had to get a wider press coverage because he thought no one cared if he released something. Check out this youtubevideo he made for his Volvo, included in the $10,000 package. As for Freese use of social media sites, he described Myspace as a way to get him work from people who want him to play shows and Facebook as a way of catching up on anything he is missing.

There were about eight other panels, which I only made it to about four of them since some of them coincided with each other. Instead of going into details about each of the panels I attended, I’ll list or quote the top points made from each discussions.

Entourage- Careers in the music Industry

“[There is] nothing to declare you as a manager.”-Miles Hurwitz, MH Managment.

Never Trust Anyone Over 30- Looking at the music industry through those under thirty.

I wasn’t able to catch the whole discussion, since it was at the same time as Entourage, but Leon Russell pointed out that touring is down by thirty percent, pre-sale tickets and records aren’t selling so well either, “..going your own way, hustle the media and step-up your game…you have to develop a following.”

One of Gonson’s main advice was not to be afraid of asking questions, you learn from doing, and not to be worried about making mistakes. Also, for future reference, Gonson loves one page press releases.

Mogul- Starting your own record label.

The four guest speakers for this panel all had independent labels and started off as interns for either a radio station or record label.

“Believe in your artist, marketing and promotion is important.” Chris, Lookout Records

Viral-Social media and music.

GOOGLE ALERT. Use google alert to get to know who to publize to and know who is talking about you.

Gabe Benveniste, founder of SonicLiving, believes that creating new experiences and providing access/services to fans will keep them hooked to your band/music. He noted that people will miss a show of a band that they like because they had no one to go with, but will attend a show because their friend recommends it.

Understanding the music industry, that seems to be changing every few minutes, is something everyone would like figure out. That is why Noise Pop have been putting on these musical discussions since it’s start back in 2000. My first experience was a good one, I have some pros and some cons from it. I would have liked to have seen some more dialoguebetween the guest speakers and the attendees instead of folks rushing afterwards to get a few words with them, maybe something more of like a workshop instead of just discussions between the panels. Although there is still a lot to be discussed about the music industry, it was a nice insight to what goes on in the minds of the few that are in the business.