Five years ago, any music industry conference would feature hours of discussion about how to get your compact disc into the hands of DJs on FM radio, or tips on how to press and package a CD that wouldn’t get buried on the desk of an A&R executive at some major label. A lot has happened in five years. On Saturday, June 13 and 14, Hillsborough Community College and The Artist and Writers Group hosted the Second Annual Homemade Music Symposium in Ybor City, and in the combined 18-plus hours of discussion, commercial FM radio was not mentioned one time.

Instead, Saturday’s daytime programming included panels and workshops like “Alternative Media Promotion,” “Marketing, Touring and Band Management” and “How to Get the Most Out of a Studio Session.” Panelists included bloggers (Bryan Childs, Ninebullets.net), social networking specialists (Julia Gorzka, Brand Tampa) and local media (Lee Courtney, WMNF; Curtis Ross, Tampa Tribune; Julie Garisto, St. Pete Times as well as Creative Loafing’s Leilani Polk). Mr. Courtney was the only radio personality in attendance. (Tampa’s 88.5 FM is a community station that still allows their DJs to play CDs – they even sometimes play records.).

The Homemade Music Symposium’s goal is to educate nascent and struggling musicians in the ways and means of the music business and industry trends. It also included out-of-town industry folk and special keynote speakers – this year, it was Tunecore’s Peter Wells and Tony Michaelides, a local author from Manchester, UK, who’s colleagues and contemporaries include Factory Records’ Tony Wilson, David Bowie, U2 and The Stone Roses.

Conference attendees were mostly solo singer-songwriter types, with a sprinkling of MCs, publishers and managers as well as other local bloggers and marketers looking to get involved in the music scene or learn about new media. There was a lot of talk (maybe too much) about Twitter and Facebook, and of course the familiar geographical gripe of how Florida is difficult to tour/break out of, because there are no surrounding states (The closest top 10 market is Atlanta). A good portion of the crowd was visibly older, some dressed in flowery shirts and flip flops, and plenty of eyes glazed over when the topics inevitably circled back to “Tweeting” and social networks.

Sorely missing from the panel of experts, especially on the panel labeled “Area Record Labels and Artist Managers,” were representatives from the handful of local Tampa imprints, namely ADD, New Granada and 24 Hour Service Station (Geri X, Win Win Winter and The Beauvilles). 24 Hour owner Marshall Dickson stated that he would definitely be involved next year, but that this time around he just had “too much on his plate.” The only current label owner in attendance was Ivan Pena, who runs Mohawk Bomb Records (Soulfound, Ascending to Avalon and Rise of Saturn). Pena seemed optimistic about the Tampa Bay music scene, and about the fast-changing online industry, but insisted that artists need to tour incessantly and start treating their band like a business or risk failure.

The “Music Critics” panel, unfortunately the last session of the day, seemed to be the most pessimistic. One girl in the crowd asked for suggestions on how to become a music writer. The entire panel discouraged her. It may be in fashion for music writers to be moody and begrudging, but one would think their passion for music could somehow keep their chins up, not to mention grateful that they still have jobs in the age of Rotten Tomatoes and aggregated, user-generated reviews at Amazon.com.

As with any conference, the nighttime showcases are the payoff – a chance for attendees to party and an opportunity for the out of town industry folks to see what musical talent the surrounding area has to offer.

On Saturday night, Tampa’s New World Brewery featured performances from Rebekah Pulley, Lorna Bracewell, The Skull and Bone Band and 10th Concession. Crowbar hosted a Mohawk Bomb showcase and The Roosevelt had planned a “green” concert featuring some area hip-hop favorites like Dynasty and powered by a generator that ran on vegetable oil. Early Saturday, word had gotten out that the generator had broken during a run-through and that the Roosevelt showcase was cancelled.

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Sunday’s activities were mainly centered around The Bunker in Ybor City, which is home to the Tre Amici coffeeshop, REAX Space, a few art galleries and the neighboring Ybor City Museum.

Some of Sunday’s workshops included “DIY Sound Recording Techniques” at REAX Space as well as “Tips on Promotional Photography” (hint: no brick walls or train tracks) and “The State of The Scene” discussion at Tre Amici.

This talk was moderated by event organizer T. Hampton Dohrman and featured Courtney, Joel Cook (REAX) and yours truly. It began as a polite enough re-cap of the weekend and what could be done differently in years to come and escalated into a microphone free-for-all on how Tampa needs to publicize itself to become the next Austin or Seattle.

Singer-songwriter Emily Roff planted herself in front of the microphone and made a case for a large music festival that would draw thousands of people from all over the world. When some crowd members yelled, “What about [Tropical] Heatwave?” (referencing the annual music fest hosted by WMNF that typically features performers from the blues, folk, Americana and world beat genres), Roff shrugged. She’d never heard of it.

Beauvilles frontman Shawn Kyle made a spirited appearance at the discussion, only half-jokingly announcing his 2012 bid for city council and bemoaning the lack of attention the local media and concert promoters give to area college campuses (USF, UT, Eckerd, SPC, etc.).

What did come from the heated discussion was a summation of points that included the following:

1. The internet has replaced FM radio as a highly-coveted media outlet.

2. Musicians must treat their music as a business.

3. Musicians should treat Tampa and St. Petersburg as two separate markets to avoid saturation. (This point was argued)

4. Even though recording and distribution has become decentralized, quality recordings and the packaging and presentation of materials is still very important (maybe even more so).

5. Bands must tour out of market (once they have established themselves regionally).

6. With the decline in the sale of actual recorded music, musicians must learn to diversify their content/revenue streams to include audio, video, performances, merchandise, ringtones et. al. and utilize networks and messaging to stay in touch with fans and followers. (See the content model here).

7. Music criticism is dead. (This point was not argued).

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Here are some photos from the weekend:
Photos by Kelly Hickman | Photos by Denis Baldwin

“What a diff’rence a day makes” – María Méndez Grever

The music portion of SXSW has begun and Austin is infested with indie rockers, scenesters, hipsters and musicians from all over the world. The snarky t-shirts and iPhones of the interactive and film portion have been replaced with leather, tight pants and guitar cases. And they’re everywhere.

Try to imagine if every bar, club and art gallery in Tampa and St. Pete tented their parking lots and had full concert lineups on indoor and outdoor stages for 6 straight days. It’s a lot to take in. Not to mention, the stimulation of the local economy here – from stage and equipment rental to groceries and clothing – is staggering.

These Arms Are Snakes at Red Eye Fly. More photos after the jump.

There are many methods of navigating the music portion of “South by.” You can meticulously plot your path, you can wander from bar to bar (if you have a wristband or a badge) or you can do a combination of both. Modes of transport can include car (shout out to Monica Armendazzle), cab, bus, shuttle, bike (they ought to rent these), rickshaw, horse-and-buggy, and finally your own two feet. 

Ivan is in town now, as well as some folks from Creative Loafing Atlanta, so we’ve been coordinating via text. This has worked to avoid overlap and to catch wind of “secret” parties such as last night’s Playboy Party held in a warehouse on E. 12th in which Jane’s Addiction played a surprise hour-long set. Word on the street is that Metallica will be doing a similar stunt tonight to promote their new Guitar Hero game. We’ll see.

Wednesday was the day it all kicked off, and we started the day at Yard Dog Gallery around 2 p.m. for the Florida Bandango, a showcase hosted by BAAMO, that featured Tampa Bay acts Rebekah Pulley, The Beauvilles, Have Gun Will Travel, Damon Fowler and Mojo Gurus - interspersed with a sprinkling of national acts like Hoots and Hellmouth and Exene Cervenka to keep the crowd from wandering. No indie rockers here, mostly hippies and cowboys. A fine turnout and good banner placement ;-). Lone Star 16oz in a can, gator chili and being surrounded by your friends from home - a beautiful day. And a big congratulations to Dawn Morgan and Ronny Eliott on their recent engagement!

After that, began a 24-hour marathon of trying to see as many bands as possible. It’s become a saying here that “it’s a numbers game,” and we’ve fallen into a nice rhythm of catching two songs per band, having one drink and moving on. 

In the past 36 hours I’ve seen the following bands: Ivison at The Parish; White White Lights, Scorpion Child, Shunda K and Belaire at The Beauty Bar; The Monster Big Band at Elephant Room; Priestess and Dirty Projectors at Emo’s; Modern Skirts at Cedar Door; Past Lives and These Arms Are Snakes at Red Eye Fly; Mock Tigers at Apple Bar; 3 Kisses at Spill; Me Talk Pretty, The Vettes and Mother’s Anthem at Austin RockFest; Bob Schneider, The Fireants and The Dicks with David Yow at the Austin Music Awards. Not to mention visiting the legendary Waterloo Record Store and scoring a front row seat for Quincy Jones‘ two-and-a-half-hour keynote address. Definitely a busy two days.

Video will be forthcoming on the madness in the streets, footage of most of these bands actually performing and a rather intimate session with Quincy Jones. Mr. Jones actually cried at one point reflecting on a tender moment with his old friend Ray Charles.

It’s 8 p.m. now and Ivan is anxious to get back in the streets. Stay tuned.

@jorantampa

Sunday. Laid low today. Resting up for the long week ahead. Took another nice long walk this morning to HEB (Texas’ answer to bad grocery stores).

Definitely no iPhones at HEB. Actually, there was a Cricket and Boost Mobile kiosk in the entryway next to the Coke and holographic sticker machines.

Spent most of the day cutting together footage from day one.

Here it is:

UPDATE: Davey (one of the guys I’m staying with) just returned from DJ’ing what he described as a “Rat Pack-themed interactive after-party.” He said the party was totally lame, but that he played for an hour and got paid $300. Travis (his roommate) lamented on how last night, his band played a three-hour gig, two hours away, got paid $100 and had to split it four ways – less the gas money. Seems like half of us are always in the wrong business.

It’s 40 degrees outside, drizzling non-stop and Austin has just become ground zero for every hipster with an iPhone.

It’s 10 a.m. and registration at the Austin Convention Center has just begun. Already the lines are starting to form down the surrounding hallways and escalators and the entire building is buzzing with people camped on the floor in clusters around the power outlets, charging their laptops and digging through their goodie bags.

The South by Southwest Conference kicks off today with the Interactive portion of the workshops. With sessions titled “User-Generated Content: A State of the Union,” and “Championing Social Media to the Man,” these first few days have drawn the new media elite, journalists, programmers, game developers and authors. In short, I am surrounded by every living geek in the world, all chomping at the bit to learn something new about content management, the new killer app (other than Twitter) and how to finally put the term “Web 2.0″ to rest.

I’m seated next to Jemima Kiss of the Guardian UK, as the UGC workshop begins. Before moderator Chris Tolles can even introduce the panel, someone interrupts him, saying, “Can you please let us know the hash tag you’d like us to use for Twittering this workshop?”

There is some laughter, but everyone seems to take it very seriously, shouting, “UGC!”

“No. SXSW UGC!”

“No! SXSW colon UGC!”

“UGC” is finally decided on and discussion begins on how to deal with quality control issues, how to monetize user content (YouTube, IMDB, America’s Funniest Home Videos) and how to best harness “mob mentality.” Questions are then taken from the audience, but when it’s over, there is an overwhelming sense from the crowd that the hour-long conversation didn’t even begin to define what “user-generated” really means.

It’s 3 p.m. and my hearing is still affected from the flight (still hearing nothing on the right hand side) and my equilibrium is off. My lower back is out from schlepping around a laptop, video camera and three tote bags full of magazines, bottle openers, chewing gum and condoms (ah, the glory of a Platinum badge), so I catch a cab back to the East Side and decide to call it a day.

Tomorrow’s 9 a.m. yoga session on the 4th floor of the center is sounding pretty good right about now.

We’ll see if my iPhone wakes me in time.

And for those wanting to follow the daily, hot Twitter action: @jorantampa

Finding a new and profitable business model has eluded major record labels since the decline of recorded music sales began as MP3s took hold. In his presentation at MidemNet — one of the most elite music business event in the World — Techdirt’s Mike Masnick profiled Trent Reznor’s recent successes selling his music without the help of a major record label and condensed it into a simple formula. Masnick ventures to say that Reznor made over $1.6 million from his latest release alone. That notion definitely got my attention.

Although Masnick quickly mentions that this model can work for both big and small bands, there is a big advantage that former major label bands have over indies and unsigned bands: long-time fans and starting capital. Trent and NIN have been famous for almost 20 years (Pretty Hate Machine came out in 1989) and have built a huge and solid worldwide following. The model explains Trent’s process and highlight that the key to his success was a $300 limited edition signed box set of the new album. For an independent band, it’s tough enough to sell a $10 CD at a gig that is sold to you by the band itself. I bet you people would pay $1,000 to buy a CD from Trent at a show.

Despite the “established artist” lean of the potential of this new model, Trent does connect more than not and he has found a way to keep his business rolling. I am sure fans of all bands would rather transact this way. It also worked for Radiohead. Kudos to Trent for making it work and even bigger kudos to his fans for responding.

The formula is:

Connect With Fans (CwF) + Reason To Buy (RtB)
= The Business Model ($$$$)

About Ivan
Ivan Pena has an Advertising degree from UF, 8+ years in corporate and consumer marketing, 10+ years in graphic design and promotions. Ivan is also the leader of the group Soulfound and runs his own independent record label, Mohawk Bomb. In 2008, Ivan was named one of the Top 30 Under 30 by the Tampa Bay Business Journal. Check Ivan out on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ivanpena