Exclusive: FastForward conference to make Australian debut

FastForward, the future-focused music business conference, makes its debut in Sydney on April Thursday 12 and Friday 13.

It’s the first time that it will be held outside Europe, where it first started in Amsterdam two years ago.

“The concept of an event focussed on the future really connected with a new generation of music leaders,” the conference’s founder Chris Carey tells TMN.

“So that essence of building a future together and shaping that future today really connected with this generation who want to start leading now.

“It’s worked because the audience is made up of people who are hungry and don’t want to wait for things to happen but to go out and lead.”

For the first event at Amsterdam in 2016, when Carey had just three months to target a crowd, he branded it as an under-35 event.

“But it’s never been about an age limit, it was a guide, a proxy for attracting forward-thinking people, and that expands to all ages.”

An entrepreneur, strategist and data expert Carey founded FastForward in 2015. He was previously Global Insight Director at Universal Music Group and at EMI, and Senior Economist at PRS for Music (the UK equivalent of APRA AMCOS).

A frequent visitor to Australia, Carey says FastForward is not about competing with conferences here but to complement the debates being held.

FastForward: Sydney will be deliberately small, with 175 delegates in total, making it much easier to meet new people and to reconnect with existing contacts. Within the 175 attendees, 50 or so will speak over the two days, including a handful of international executives.

The fast-paced panels will cover a variety of key industry topics, including “The Future of Releasing Music”, “The Future of Building Artist Audiences” and “The Future of Search and Discovering Music”, the latter of which would focus on the changes that chatbots and voice-activated search will bring to music consumption habits.

In a keynote presentation, virtual reality pioneer David Francis (Zappar Technologies) will share his insights on the roles that AR & VR can play in the music industry, and building interactive audiences around them.

In another keynote, Live Nation Australasia CEO Roger Field will share his perspective on the future of the live music industry in Australia.

FastForward also brings their own style of FastFifteens, solo presentations on specialist topics. The FastFifteen sessions run in parallel, allowing the delegates a choice of topics, and allowing speakers to dive straight into the best bits, not the basics, to an engaged audience, in a very short period of time.

There will be no live showcases, with FastForward’s focusing on networking and sharing ideas from different worlds with friends and new contacts, so everyone can move forward together.

He talks about the strong sense of camaraderie at the European meets and how everyone checks their egos at the door.

“One of the personal highlights was the manner in which everyone was open to talking to anybody. There were partnerships struck across industries and many new friendships formed.”

The Sydney conference is supported by music rights management association APRA AMCOS, digital agency Comes With Fries, Live Nation Entertainment, The Music Network and international creative agency Sherry Design.

In the first round of speakers are:

David Francis, Head of APAC, Zappar Technologies

Roger Field, CEO, Live Nation Australasia

Chris Carey, CEO, Media Insight Consulting (United Kingdom)

Dean Ormston, Head of Member Services, APRA AMCOS

Eddie Robb, CEO, Make It Social (United Kingdom)

Emily Scoggins, Head of Marketing, The O2 (United Kingdom)

Emma Graham, Senior Talent Manager, Click Management

Jake Challenor, CEO, Jaden Social

Michael Carmody, Manager, Legacy Esports

Poppy Reid, Managing Editor, Seventh Street Media

Takayuki Suzuki, President / EnterTech Accelerator, ParadeALL (Japan)

Vanessa Picken, Director, Comes With Fries

One of the most talked about panels from Amsterdam in February this year was learning from the gaming industry.

“Both industries started out as shiny discs which then went online, and now make significant income from live events” Carey points out, referring to the booming eSports industry.

“The key differences between gaming and the structures around recorded music is that they facilitate customers who will spend a fortune on in-game purchases. There’s no limit to what that person can spend, and opportunities to purchase are regular and often, rather than few and far between. Music could do with harnessing that impatient, need it now ”

If a new generation of music biz entrepreneurs have no rearview mirrors, is it time to throw away the whole rule book and declare Year Zero?

“It’s not about throwing out the rule book because a lot of things have worked for a while. It’s how you use the new, to optimise the old.

“Music has always been hard to market because it’s such a personal thing that it’s hard to predict what will work for a certain person. So many factors come into it.

“We’re now getting a lot more feedback, whether it be from social media or streaming demographics, so it’s a case of keep doing what works but use the new information to increase the opportunities.”

Early Bird delegate passes are on sale now and available here.