Asia Electronic Music Conference Wired Music Week Expands Music Producer Network

By Music Press Asia Staff

21 March, 2019 5:08pm GMT+8 / MYT

• the conference and festival has built an audience from the ground up reinventing the DNA of a traditional conference heavily channeled to fostering creativity and creating direct label-and-producer relationship through its workshops and demodrop sessions.

• Program focus on trends in social media marketing, label-artists relationship, composition techniques, guide to working with a digital distributor, copyrights & licensing, and more…

Recent curations for electronic music at music festivals and clubs for prime time slots are beginning to spill over. What we really mean isn’t just for a growing interest to consume electronic music but also on being part of a larger and growing interest to succeed at being part of the ecosystem.

Like any new conference and festival, it is betting its focus on electronic music as its music interlocutor to attract attendees that are seeking to build new connection directly with recording labels, and attracted a large Asian-based crowd with panels and keynotes heavily focused on Asian trends and workshops ran by leading, regional DJs and Music Executives. Expanding from 50 speakers last year, WMW 2019 hosted over 80 speakers from Asia-Pacific and as far as Amsterdam.

Music Press Asia highlights Wired Music Week’s most trending discussions, brands and acts to look out for in the coming months. Let us know if you have your favourites too. For our recommendation, please click here.

LIVE MUSIC

Spread over four days and six official venues in Kuala Lumpur, WMW narrated just over 40 performances with 27 Malaysian DJs as hosts to contingents from Vietnam, Singapore, UK, Germany, Thailand, South Africa, The Netherlands and USA. Highlights include a full house performance by DR.PHUNK & Olly James at ZOUK Club which also saw Goldfish & Blink and 22Bullets on the deck. While KAKU & Friends performed to a cozier crowd at the Red Room, the festival line-up showcased some of Asia-Pacific favourites including DJ NAS, 22BULLETS, GOLDFISH & BLINK, SPUDS, BHAD BHABIE, JONNYVICIOUS, INQUISITIVE, and many more.

ARTISTS ON THE PANEL

“What’s the difference between launching a career now and 10 years ago?”, “Why collaboration is the way to grow as an artist?”, and the “Dos & Dont’s when it comes to sending in your demos to labels” are just some of the topics covered at WMW. Olly James, producer with Spinnin’ Records and Revealed Recordings, breaks down and demonstrated his recent hit track “Lion” to an audience of music producers and also discussed the secrets on how to get signed with other DJ artistes including Dr Phunk and 22Bullets in another panel.

MUSIC EXECUTIVES ON THE PANEL

Keynote and panel topics focus heavily on tapping trends from the Asia-Pacific region. Tinko from Kanjian Music [a digitai distribution company from Beijing, China], presented the importance of mobile music streaming in a vibrant and yet tough market in China.

Social media marketing continue to drive artists’ successes today and remained a popular topic at WMW. Remko De Jong founder of Moon Jelly having participated in marketing and branding efforts with remarkable international DJs including Nicky Romero, hosted “The Digital Heartbeat: Maintaining an Omnipresence to stay relevant in the digital realm” and “How to build equity for your intellectual property” panels, while his colleague from Moon Jelly, Melvin Van Der Waal “The Rookie Mistakes Artists make with online media” panel.

Niels Veen, Marketing Director from music label 2-Dutch Music Group shares direct-to-artist insights on how producers can protect their rights focused on the do’s and don’t’s when it comes to contracts and agreements.

Monica Tong, Editor-in-Chief of Music Press Asia moderated “The future of music distribution and promotion in Malaysia and SE Asia” panel with Ahmad Izham Omar (Primeworks Studios); Melvin Wong (WebTVAsia); and Tinko Georgiev (Kanjian Music) involving discussions from talent spotting and management in Asia; tips on how to win a distribution deal; talents’ advantage and vulnerability in a growing industry; to the mysteries of a hit track and breaking China.

Other notable panels include “Understanding thee music industry: artist managers and booking agents” by Nordin Cornelia [Ace Agency], Michael Tran [Ablists Artists], Mano Meijer [Dedicated Management], Rakesh Sharma [Anna Agency] and Roy Gerritsen [David Lewis Productions]; and “The infamous Barong family” by Tsunano, Thijs Van Gils & Andy Samin [Barong Family], RayRay and Sihk.