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CMU@TGE Top Ten Questions: How do you successfully launch new acts in new markets?

By | Published on Friday 12 May 2017

CMU@TGE Top Ten Questions: How do you successfully launch new acts in new markets?

In the run up to this year’s CMU Insights @ The Great Escape conference, we are going through the top ten questions we will be answering during this year’s programme. Today: How do you successfully launch new acts in new markets?

The Great Escape is all about helping artists go global – to ‘escape’ their home market – and launch themselves, as recording and touring artists, in new territories. And this year we have a whole Export Conference packed with practical tips on how to make that happen.

Of course, in the digital age, on one level artists are global as soon as they upload their music to SoundCloud and Spotify, and set up their social and direct-to-fan channels. But, while digital means artists can score surprise hits in surprising markets, achieving international success requires infrastructure, expertise and investment.

There is no single template way to build international success, but learning from the experience of others who took their artists into new markets very recently is a great starting point. And we’ll be doing just that by chatting to four independent managers and labels who have recently secured funding from the UK government-backed Music Export Growth Scheme.

We will hear from David Manders from Test Card Recordings discussing the export of Public Service Broadcasting, Julie Weir from Goremount on Fearless Vampire Killers, Phil Middleton from ATC on Temperance Movement and Samantha Smith from Fairsound Management on LoneLady.

Showcase festivals like The Great Escape play an important role here too, of course. Though just getting your act booked to play a showcase event won’t in itself deliver the goods, you need to work the showcase festival to your artist’s advantage. We’ll be digging deep to get tips aplenty on that too during The Export Conference.

Bhavesh Patel from the PRS Foundation will kick things off with some of the advice he offers to acts who get international funding from his organisation, while Gordon Masson from IQ magazine will discuss how to get more from a showcase festival with artist managers Umong Shah and Peter McGaughrin, Earth Agency’s Claire Courtney, [PIAS]’s Pip Newby and Marauder’s Rev Moose.

And finally, let’s ensure all this global expansion doesn’t result in artists getting stuck at the border. In amongst all this, we’ll be joined by Andy Corrigan from Viva La Visa to talk through his list of the top five mistakes music people make when securing visas.

The Export Conference is presented in partnership with BPI, and will be a fact-packed, tip-filled day of sessions.



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