Indie-Con is coming to Australia

Australia has a new music industry conference.

The inaugural Indie-Con Australia will take place July 27-28 in Adelaide to coincide with the 11th edition of the AIR Awards, which rolls into the South Australian capital this year for the very first time.

An initiative of Australia’s independent music companies’ trade association AIR with support from the SA government, the new pow wow will focus on meeting the business needs of independent labels and self-releasing artists. The daytime programme promises to tackle the big – and the confusing – issues, from royalty distribution to blockchain, an anatomy on the rise of the artist-run label and much more.

The lineup of local and international guest speakers confirmed for the first outing includes Portia Sabin (Kill Rock Stars/Future of What), George Howard (Berklee/Forbes), Jen Cloher (Milk Records), Ben Godding (AWAL/Kobalt), Briggs (Bad Apples/A.B.Original), Chris Maund (Liberation), Richard James Burgess (A2IM) and Paul Pacifico (AIM), while Sebastian Chase, the MGM founder and 2016 ARIA Industry Icon Award winner, will deliver the keynote address.

“Indie-Con Australia will feature unrivaled networking opportunities, workshops, panels, presentations and interviews with key industry players,” comments conference programmer Stu Watters, the former CEO of AIR who spearheaded the trade body’s relocation from Brisbane to Melbourne. “One of the things that makes the independent sector truly appealing is that the business models are all quite diverse and they don’t fit a mould, they are cutting their own track along the way and this conference is all about sharing those stories.”

Indie-Con Australia is an offshoot of the U.K.’s Indie-Con, which is organized by the Association of Independent Music and is typically held in the first quarter. Recent editions of the U.K. event have gathered about 450 music industry professionals.

The new arrival should go some way to correcting a perceived dearth of regular educational gathering points outside of Brisbane’s Bigsound, Melbourne’s Face the Music and the ARIA Masterclasses. Sydney’s APRA Song Summit has been conspicuously absent since 2012, the same year Adelaide last hosted a Fuse Festival. Perth’s One Movement and Sydney’s AustralAsian Music Business Conference are long gone.

Indie-Con, however, will be hyper-focused on issues that specifically relate to the indie sector as a point of difference from larger, multi-pronged events, organizers tell TIO.

The summit will be held in Australia’s UNESCO City of Music each year until 2019. “We are beyond delighted to be hosting the Indie-Con conference and the AIR Awards in Adelaide for the next three years,” AIR general manager Maria Amato tells TIO.

For more information visit www.air.org.au/indie-con-australia.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.