Members Febuary Update from Chief Exec: Welcome, Blockchain, Great Escape
It’s now just over a month since I joined MMF and have very much enjoyed meeting many of you and learning about your career, the artists you manage and how you benefit from your MMF membership. Thank you for being so welcoming. It’s really inspirational to see how managers create real value for their artists. On this note I’m pleased to see that Warners and Sony have heard our demands to share streaming equity revenues with their artists. This is a small but significant step forward and we hope Universal will soon follow. We’ll be keeping a close eye on how this is implemented in practice.
You will have hopefully read our report Dissecting the Digital Dollar (over 10k downloads to date) which explores the wider issues around streaming and we’re now hosting a series of Roundtables to hear industry and manager views on possible solutions ranging from voluntary industry commitments to regulatory action – more to follow. We’ve also submitted some ideas on the UK Government’s Digital Strategy encouraging the investment in music/tech hubs and the potential of Blockchain technology (if you’re interested see our guide Basics of Blockchain without the hype).
As well as speaking with the majors, we’re currently meeting many of our associates and potential partners such as YouTube, Spotify, UKTI, BT Sport, Music Glue and BBC Introducing to talk about launching events and seminars for our membership in 2016. We’re exploring the idea of a first annual Managers’ Summit and we’re launching Managers’ tribes in Liverpool, Newcastle. If you are able to help set one up please get in touch with charley@themmf.net.
As in previous year’s we’re also looking at plans for an MMF event at the Great Escape and hosting a Managers’ Brunch at SxXW with Kobalt (details to follow very soon). And hold the date for the next Artist and Managers’ Awards on get 17th Nov at the Troxy. We’ve now got over 470 members (a record for MMF), if you know of any managers who are not yet part of MMF please point them in our direction. It’s going to be a very busy and exciting year.
If we haven’t already met please drop me a line or come to one of our events or socials and I look forward to seeing you there.
Annabella