Here is some stuff I did in September 2022…

Italy is the lead country partner of next year’s Great Escape, so obviously I need to pop over there and check out what’s going down – that’s justified right? Good news is, the brilliant Linecheck is coming up in Milan in November, so that’s the perfect opportunity. I’ll be doing some on-stage stuff within the Linecheck conference too. Info here.

So, alas, I’m old enough that I was already writing about the music business the first time Napster was newsworthy. Is it about to become all kinds of newsworthy again? Hmm, we’ll see I guess. But, you know, there’s definitely some news. On the upside, I’m not old enough to have been writing about the music business when the Music Managers Forum was formed back in 1992. So I’m now heading over to the MMF’s 30th anniversary celebrations in order to remember how youthful I am!

Writing some CMU Daily news stories requires knowledge about music copyright and music licensing. Or maybe copyright infringement, and the ins and outs of song theft or music piracy or the safe harbour. Sometimes knowledge about how record deals work and streaming services are licensed and the latest digital music trends can be useful. And last week I needed to know the basics about how the Ethereum blockchain works. But today how to access the Holmes Chapel viaduct without walking down the A535 constituted expert insight!

Turns out if you don’t own a TV, don’t watch live TV and don’t check the home pages of UK news media very often, it’s actually quite easy to be oblivious of the nation mourning. Does that mean I fail at being British? Though I have become slightly obsessed by the good old queue map. At one point it had queue distance and estimated queue time, but they never seemed to be in sync – so shorter queues had longer wait times. I’ll leave that mystery to the scientists. I’m busy currently trying to think if there is anything – like ANYTHING – for which I’d queue for fourteen hours. So far, no. I really hate queuing. Does that mean I fail at being British?

When I used to do my corporate communications seminars with the Taylor Bennett Foundation back in the day one thing we usually discussed was how the British media would respond to the Queen’s death. Which is why on Thursday evening I became a one-man media monitor and can report that all BBC radio stations switched to a single news broadcast, as did all Global-owned stations, while each Bauer-owned station did something different. Valuable information I think we can all agree – I definitely wasn’t wasting my time as the nation mourned!

Today Fredensborg Palace, home of the Danish Royal Family! All my chatter about digital licensing and the ever evolving streaming market actually happened in a very fine hotel next door to the Palace, but I’m sure the Queen would have popped by if she’d known how good the diagrams were. Many thanks to MPA Denmark for hosting me, it was great to meet so many people from the Danish music industry.

Different water this morning. Well, I guess technically the same water – I mean it’s all one ocean really. I’m at Venice Production Bridge. That’s Venice over there. There’s actually no bridge to it from the island where I’m staying, but I eventually figured out how the water buses work after arriving at midnight last night, so I didn’t have to swim out here in the end.

Great day at Vill Vill Vest in Bergen – thanks to everyone who checked out our CMU sessions. And thanks to my wonderful panellists of course! Here are my second set of guests just off stage after sharing lots of brilliant tips about making and pushing out great video content on a budget. Including: Find and respect your creative collaborators; know what platforms work for you; identify interesting and fun creative concepts; get a good iPhone!