AIR announces Seb Chase keynote and full program for inaugural Indie-Con
The Australian Independent Record Labels Association (AIR) this morning announced details of its inaugural Indie-Con.
It is scheduled forThursday July 27 and Friday July 28 at Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institutein Adelaide, as part of its deal with the South Australian Government, to stage the 11th AIR awards in that city for three years.
Indie-Con will offer insights into the latest innovations and tech advances, and at the challenges facing the Australian indie sector.
It also offers networking and business performance skills, which are key elements of the conference, as well as workshops, panels, presentations and interviews with key industry players.
Subject matters include ‘Where’s My F*cking Money?’ and ‘What The Hell Is Block Chain?’ while ‘State of The Nations’ looks at copyright tangles here and abroad.
’The Rise Of The Artist-Run Label’ will study case histories of the ones that lasted and the ones which fell over.
The first keynote speaker announced is the visionary godfather of the Australian independent sector, Sebastian Chase, co-founder of Sydney-based MGM Distribution.
Chase, who set up his first label in the early ‘70s, worked out 40 years ago that there’d be a time when indies would equal the majors in power, and ten years ago set up acts like John Butler, The Whitlams and The Waifs as self-contained companies who made more royalties than most acts on the major labels.
Ten other speakers are Portia Sabin (Kill Rock Stars/Future of What), Richard James Burgess (A2IM), Paul Pacifico (AIM), George Howard (Berklee/Forbes), Mishal Varma (Know What’s Loved), Amy Dietz (InGrooves), Joanna Syme (Pieater/Hotel Motel Records), Joe Alexander (Bedroom Suck), Jane Slingo (Young Strangers), and Matt Rogers (UNFD).
More on the list are Matt Bird (Whitesky), Ashley Gay (Xelon), Tom Harris (Whitesky), Henry Compton (The Orchard), Karl Richter (Level 2/Disco), Kate Mills (Native Tongue), Tyler McLoughlin (The Soundpound), Ben Godding (AWAL/Kobalt), Jay Mogis (QUT/Nightlife) and Lynne Small (PPCA),
The remaining names are John Ferris (TMRW), Andy Hayden (Poison City Records), Nick O’Byrne (Lookout Kid), Katie Besgrove (Barley Dressed Records), Jen Cloher (Milk Records), Briggs (Bad Apples/A.B.Original), Susan Cotchin (IRR Music), Chris Maund (Liberation), Tim Kelly (Inertia), Merida Sussex (Stolen Recordings/Paradse Motel), Natalie Waller (ABC), James Limon (ABC), Maya Janeska (UNFD) and Ben Martin (Golden Era Records).
The conference is primarily for AIR members but a limited run of tickets is for non-members go on sale from July 6 at www.air.org.au/indie-con-australia.
AIR has also partnered with The Appointment Group and Peppers Waymouth (Mantra) giving guests and attendees the opportunity to take advantage of discounted travel offers directly with the Appointment Group. For more on this, email TAG at[email protected]
TMN caught up with Indie-Con programmer Stu Watters to get a peek behind the scenes and find out what the massive event will offer.
TMN: When you were putting the list of possible speakers together, was it painfully obvious how incredibly diverse the Australian indie scene is?
SW:Absolutely! The biggest problem I had was that being the first year of the conference I needed to balance out the availability of time in the program measured against the available budget and factoring in the fact that our people, both as artists and industry practitioners, are in very high demand.
Right now, what are the two biggest issues facing the Australian indie sector, and how have you set up the different panels and workshops to address these?
It’s pretty fair to say that the value gap created by safe harbour provisions is THE hot topic for the industry, albeit the independent sector.
We have an enormous opportunity at present that can begin to establish clearer and fairer parameters for non-music related industries to engage with us on a fair and equitable playing field.
We have an entire session devoted to exploring what evolutions are taking place in the copyright world across borders called State of the Nations that will give conference goers a real insight and overview of the key issues across the board.
The next one is around blockchain. I wouldn’t necessarily say it is one of the two biggest issues but its importance is certainly growing exponentially as the industry struggles to grapple with transparency and micropayments across multiple use cases.
We have a presentation lined up that will support our conference delegates to improve their fluency on this subject so they can a) make an informed choice on how / if they want to engage and b) if they do want to engage then they can leave with three simple steps towards moving in the right direction.
Where would Breaking It Globally rank in the list of priorities for the indie sector?
It is always the enchilada – no doubt. However, if you cannot break it locally and manage your business in a smaller scale business environment then you will be pushing the proverbial shit uphill.
Merlin’s statsshow that indies abroad are gaining a lot of sales and profile traction from the digital space. Are Australian indies using the digital space as well as they could?
I have no doubt in my mind that the Australian indies are performing exceedingly well in the digital space and continue to punch well above our weight globally and also locally.
Anecdotally, we are collectively well represented in digital parlance.
Havingpioneer of independent music Sebastian Chase deliver the first keynote makes total sense. Have you any idea what he’s going to talk about?
Yes, as it’s the precursor to the “What is Independence?” panel. So we will be talking about Seb’s journey in the industry and how it has shaped his views on what is independent and why it is so important to him philosophically.
I’m very keen to draw out of Seb some of the grains of gold he can impart[to] people who have had the pleasure of sharing a coffee with him on Pitt St or a great bottle of red over dinner.
Beyond just being an industry pioneer and founding member of AIR, he is an extraordinary human being whose views on politics, the environment, humans, animals and so on are truly inspiring.
I have always thought that deep down inside, Seb is our first true punk – his irreverence for the system is often on display.
What do you ideally hope would be an outcome of Indie-Con?
That every participant in the conference, those both on the stage and off, are gaining insights into information that enables them to do better business with better people all with a shared agenda of promoting and supporting the ethos and culture that makes the indie scene so amazing!