London Electronic Music Event Diary

Sunday 8:30

Another early morning start for us here at LEME. Even Transport For London’s painstakingly coordinated campaign of engineering works can’t thwart us. Matt Colton from Alchemy Mastering is setting up his gear for a live mastering session later in the day. He’s already managed to spill a coffee over himself and his equipment, but we’re assured he’ll have woken up properly by the time his session starts.

10:45

Music biz veteran Dennis Collopy‘s in the main room dropping knowledge about how important it is for artists at every level to take the business side of their work just as seriously as the music. “See yourself as running a business from the very beginning – if you don’t you’ll never earn real money.”

Having worked with sample-happy acts like Coldcut, The Orb and the KLF, Dennis’s view on sample clearance is simple: “If you want to make money, clear your samples.”

Does all this experience of the music business guarantee success? Not always. “I paid $45,000 for a remix from Armand Van Helden once,” says Dennis. “It went absolutely nowhere. Even labels like R&S get it wrong sometimes…”

World’s biggest mixer window? Marc Adamo hooks Logic up to the cinema projector for his EQ masterclass

Even labels like R&S get it wrong sometimes.

11:30

Two very popular sessions in the cinema screens this morning. Marc Adamo’s EQ masterclass has covered the basics of what you can do with EQs and filters and moved onto explaining what EQ can’t do. What do you do when you can’t boost the clicky transient of a kick drum or the high end of a bassline? Transient designers and harmonic generators are Marc’s answers.

Sharooz’s techno drum programming and processing session upstairs is explaining everything from hi-hat placement to bus processing. Sharooz’s golden rule for multi-band compression? “No more than 3 or 4 dB of gain reduction per band…”

Sharooz gets serious for his techno drum programming session

12:30

Ex-Beatport Berlin manager Daniel Cole and wordandsound CEO Kai Fraeger discussing music sales and distribution in the main room. Interesting thoughts on the trend for limited-edition vinyl from Kai: “How does the customer even know it’s vinyl-only? You have to put a sticker on it to tell people! We always say: ‘Limited edition? We’ll limit it to the amount we can sell!'”

Daniel Cole and Kai Fraeger discuss the art of selling records

14:00

Lots of crowd questions for Andrew Rafter of Harder Blogger Faster, Tom Lovett of Sofar Sounds and Polydor A&R Jamila Scott. Jamila explains how online presence can lead to major label interest: “People assume that electronic music isn’t necessarily a major label thing, but if I see an artist who’s generated 5,000 YouTube plays I’ll bring that up in an A&R meeting.” Is online presence essential? “Nowadays even if you’re as good as Prince you’re probably not going to get signed if you only have one fan on your Facebook page.”

What about Burial? Andrew chimes in: “Burial’s a unique case. There are probably 15,000 other Burials out there who nobody’s ever heard of… When you see that other people are interested it naturally makes you more interested.”

15:30

Good turnout for Dennis Collopy’s second business Q&A of the day. Lots of people skipping lunch to grill Dennis on legal matters, contracts, publishing and sample clearance.

Matt Colton in the first of two sessions devoted to the black art of mastering

16:15

A big crowd in the main room for the Rekids showcase. Radio Slave and James Masters explaining the reality of running the label. “A lot of people don’t realise that it’s a battle. It’s hard to deal with all these things like cash flow. A lot of record companies are run almost as hobbies but we want to keep this going for a long time.”

James on Nina Kraviz: “Nina can earn more in a month from DJing than she ever could from releasing albums.” Doesn’t success as a DJ cross over to record sales? “Unfortunately not.”

16:30

Good discussion of the relative merits of singles and albums. James: “The life span of singles is so short now. Chances are that if your track doesn’t hit the Beatport top 100 in the first week it’ll be gone the next week…”

Interesting point about how easy it is to release records now, and the problems that can cause: “The barriers to entry of releasing records are now so low that quality control’s gone out of the window.”

16:45

“Never sign the first deal anyone offers you… Unless you’re signing to us!”

17:00

“Don’t rush into anything. Always think about everything before you do it. If you’re going to do it you’ve got to commit. You’ve got to put your money where your mouth is before anyone’ll take you seriously.”

Never sign the first deal anyone offers you... Unless you're signing to us!

17:30

Any questions from the audience for Matt and James? Yes – dozens of them! Don’t be surprised to see a few new labels popping up over the coming months.

18:00

Lukas from SM spinning some slow-mo house in the bar as we prepare for the final session of the weekend. Chance to grab a beer and start to relax. The final session is a group panel discussing the value of music in 2013. Where are we now and where do we go from here?

18:30

Fascinating discussion on the value of music with Hal Ritson, Dennis Collopy, Daniel Cole and Sharooz. Hal on the question of whether the increased revenue from live performance and DJing offsets decreasing revenue from sales: “People say you can make money from playing live, but if you’re a new act in London what are your options? Playing with six other bands at the Camden Falcon for £40? And when you ask why the fee’s so low they say it’ll boost your record sales…”

18:45

Dan on the price of tracks via online distributors: “A lot of colleagues and friends of mine argued that tracks are too expensive on Beatport. How much do you value music? You can go to iTunes and buy it for less, but it’ll sound like crap at 256 kbps. 25% of the sales at Beatport came from higher quality file formats.”

18:55

Dennis: “Value doesn’t always lie where you think it lies. If often lies in unexpected places.” Dennis explains that the Rickrolling phenomenon had a phenomenal effect on sync and licensing revenue for Rick Astley’s long-forgotten single ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’.

19:15

Hal: “If you have the rights to something and invest in it over a long period of time, something will always come up!”

19:40

Sharooz: “The amazing thing about SoundCloud in comparison to something like Beatport is that there’s no barrier put up by merchandising. It’s a totally level playing field.”

20:00

Sharooz: “The dancefloor is still the best market research you can do.”

20:05

Hal: “The value of music isn’t necessarily making a profit. It’s about the soul. Friends coming together, the experience of art and the creativity…”

The dancefloor is still the best market research you can do.

20:10

Bruce: “It’s not about the money. It’s about what we bring to the world.”

20:20

Hal: “By the time kids leave school these days they’ve spent half their lives using Logic on their laptop, using professional-level equipment. And I think that’s a really positive thing.”

It's not about the money. It's about what we bring to the world.

20:30

And on that positive note it’s time to hit the bar. A truly inspirational weekend of workshops, discussions and a huge amount of fun to be involved with. Big thanks to everyone who came down this weekend. We’ll see you next year.