New Music Strategies in Berlin

Saskia and Steve
Saskia and Steve dispensing wisdom at All2gethernow

Four out of the five of us made it to Berlin for All2gethernow this past week. In fact, Andrea was one of the event’s key organisers and she did an amazing job of pulling such a brilliant event together.

It was great to see NMS friends Ruth Daniel from Un-Convention, Jason Sigal from Free Music Archive, Martin Atkins of Tour Smart fame (and some bands you’ve heard of), Zoe Keating, Mike Masnick from Techdirt, Will Page from the PRS, Dave Haynes from Soundcloud, photographer Karola Riegler, Eliot van Buskirk from Wired, Martin Thörnkvist from Songs I Wish I Had Written, David Maher Roberts from The Filter, singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, Professor Nancy Baym (off the internet), Micki Krimmel from NeighborGoods and so many more amazing and interesting people.

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Unconvention Factory: all kinds of awesome

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Ian, Saskia and Andrea at the Unconvention venue as the bands set up

The New Music Strategies team was delighted to be invited to Unconvention Factory in Macclesfield this past weekend.

For a start, it looked like it was going to mean an opportunity for us all to be in the same city in the world again for only the second time. Unfortunately, as it turned out, we had to make do without Steve, who was otherwise engaged being a successful, gigging independent solo bass playing musician.

We did, however, have a very productive meeting on the day before the event – and as a result, we have some fantastic projects coming up in the near future. Watch this space.

But we also managed to get in and get our hands dirty at the event itself – participating in a panel, hosting a workshop and presenting a radio show… and in my case, having my face encased in plaster for an art project.

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