The FAC @ The Great Escape (Brighton) - Highlights
Last weekend, we all happily escaped to Brighton for some amazing live music, educational panels and networking. This year the FAC community were very much involved throughout the festival and would love to share some of our personal highlights with you.
For the first time ever, a huge portion of the Great Escape conference program was aimed at the artist entrepreneur. Our friends and partners at CMU hosted a brilliant track at TGE all about how to further your career as an independent artist. Our CEO Lucie Caswell represented the FAC on many of these educational panels. On one of the panels Lucie Caswell shared her views on subject about Direct vs Collective Licensing along with other industry experts - Heliene Lindvall (The Ivors Academy); Nigel Dewar Gibb (Lewis Silkin); Tom Frederikse (Clintons). On a different day, she joined Annabella Coldrick (MMF) and Cripin Hunt (The Ivors Academy) to discuss "The Case for the User Centric Model” as the streaming services pay ever increasing sums of money into the music industry each month. But is that money shared out in a fair way among the music community? When it comes to streaming our CEO Lucie Caswell says "there are competing theories as to who would benefit from ‘user centric model’ if streaming payments moved that way and it needs testing."
A More Inclusive Industry - The Music Industry Has To Do Better
Attitude is Everything Panel ‘’Breaking into “Normal Land” with panelists Blaine Harisson ( Mystery Jets); Laura Jones(DJ); Rich Le Gate(CHILDCARE & Attitude is Everything); Ruth Patterson(Holy Moly & The Crackers) Roxanne de Bastion(FAC Board member) discussed the world that artists with disability have to live in and presented survey findings which are unacceptable.
Attitude is Everything say:” The results of our artist survey show that there's a long way to go before artists with access requirements get an equal shot at a career in music.” Link to the survey results here. One of the most outrageous things we have ever heard was Ruth Patterson telling her story about how she was once mistakenly copied in an email conversation where the venue called her a 'fire hazard' as she is using a wheelchair due to her disability. Roxanne asked the panel how they see the industry could improve in making disabled artists life easier. The panel shared their stories from their past performances and experiences with various venues and/or attitudes from industry people. For example, they said they felt uncomfortable including their special accessibility requirements on a rider worried they will come across ‘’fussy’’ and scared to anger the promoter and risked not being invited to play the same place again. Panelists had many great ideas, from very simple to more complex. In reality, we hope we could soon get to a place where ‘’access requirements’’ field is a part of every single rider.
Julie’s Bicycle - Sustaining Creativity
Julie’s Bicycle is a London based charity that supports the creative community to act on climate change and environmental sustainability. We believe that the creative community is uniquely placed to transform the conversation around climate change and translate it into action. We provide the creative community with the skills to act, using their creativity to influence one another, audiences and the wider movement. We run a rich programme of events, free resources and public speaking engagements, which contribute to national and international climate change policy development. Julie's Bicycle representatives actively participated at TGE festival this year and we also popped in to catch up with them. The FAC is soon to help Julie's Bicycle to spread the word on how the Music Industry can do things in a more sustainable way, stay tuned!
A World Artists Love – the AWAL Takeover
On Friday, our partners AWAL hosted a four-hour takeover at one of the Jury’s In conference rooms. Including interviews with performers at this year’s festival and insightful panels from leading execs. Later that day, one of our Advocate Artist FEMME played AWAL's Happy Hour alongside BBC 1XTRA DJ and Future Bounce label owner, Jamz Supernova and Reprezent Radio’s Melle Brown.
Flash Funding for Vinyl – Live Decision Panel (PRSf, Key Production Group, in association with Metropolis Studios & Music Glue.
Speakers: Anton Newcombe (The Brian Jonestown Massacre) Julie Weir (Music or Nations/ Sony); Jamz Supernova (Presenter, BBC Radio 1Xtra); David Bianchi (Various Artists Management); Claire Alliot (Stellar Song Publishing/ TW9 Management)
A while back we shared this amazing opportunity with you in our Newsletter. A chance to win vinyl funding. During TGE for over an hour-and-a-half, panellists Anton Newcome (Brian Jonestown Massacre), Julie Weir (Music for Nations/Sony), Jamz Supanova (presenter, BBC Radio 1Xtra), Claire Alliot (Stellar Song Publishing, TW9 Management) discussed the shortlist before coming to a final decision on the winning four acts. An external advisor helped PRS Foundation whittle down 120 applications for the funding to a shortlist of eight. Bristol-based MC Gardna, London-based alt-pop artist Lauran Hibberd, Bristol’s grunge-pop three-piece Soeur and West Midlands indie group Hoopla Blue will all receive a vinyl release package.” Read more here.
Stewart Baxter and his band, Life, had a very successful festival with two packed gigs… (pics: J Moore @shootjmoore)
