Today’s the day. The inaugural Music Week Tech Summit Together With O2 gets underway at The O2 in London at 9.30am this morning.
There will be a huge crowd of executives from both the music and technology sectors in attendance while, on stage, some of the biggest names in digital innovation will be speaking about the future of music technology.
They include the likes of Amazon’s Alex Luke, Kobalt’s Rian Liebenberg, Abbey Road’s Isabel Garvey, Live Nation’s Jackie Wilgar and Deviate Digital’s Sammy Andrews.
Andrews – a former head of digital at Cooking Vinyl and now CEO of her own digital consultancy – welcomed the arrival of the summit, which will bring together the music and technology sectors, as “hugely important”.
Even now, we’re only just starting to join the dots from the data that’s available from streaming and real world applications
Sammy Andrews, Deviate Digital
“To invite the industry into a specific Tech Summit is a win-win for everyone,” she said, speaking in the new issue of Music Week. “When I became a head of digital aged 19, no one even knew what that meant. When we were placing ads on MySpace, people couldn’t comprehend that they needed anything digital and now it’s the majority of what happens in every label and every company, everywhere. Everyone needs this knowledge; whatever job you’re doing within the industry now you need to have some understanding of innovations inside and outside of the industry.”
Andrews will be helping with that understanding via her new monthly Music Week column. And she warned that companies can’t afford to sit back and coast, just because streaming has returned the business to profit.
“Streaming is only the start,” she said. “Piracy was the horse that bolted from the music industry. Streaming legitimised and monetised that issue but, what no one thought of early on, was all the incredible things that come along with those data sets. Even now, we’re only just starting to join the dots from the data that’s available from streaming and real world applications. We’re only really at the very, very start of what’s possible.”
Andrews will speak as part of the Strategies For 2020 panel. For coverage, keep your eye on musicweek.com and our social media channels which will be updated throughout the event. Full details of the agenda are at musicweektechsummit.com.
For our pick of the panels, click here. For the full interview with Andrews, see this week’s print edition of Music Week or click here. To read preview interviews with other key panellists, click here. And to subscribe and never miss a vital music biz story, click here.
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