Conference review/ All About Music 2023

BY NARENDRA KUSNUR 

Event: All About Music 2023

Details: Grand Hyatt Mumbai, September 7 to 9

(Being a conference, rating not given, like in other blogs. Pictures taken from All About Music's Instagram page)

By the second morning, the staff at the beverages counter knew my taste. "Regular coffee with milk," they beamed. My problem began thereafter. The corridor was as packed as Platform 4 of Dadar railway station, making it difficult to walk in the din. I also didn't know which direction to head later, with so much happening simultaneously.

Welcome to All About Music 2023, held at the Grand Hyatt, Santa Cruz East, from September 7 to 9. The crowd seemed to be much larger than last year's event at the Taj Lands End, Bandra, and there was much more on the agenda. One thing stayed the same though. Many had come mainly to network, instead of sitting in the two ball-rooms attending sessions ranging from music marketing and artificial intelligence (AI) to live events and the growth of independent music.

So they crammed the claustrophobic corridors, displaying name tags mentioning whether they were curators, delegates, artistes or speakers. Of course. they preferred calling themselves influencers, homies, creators or 'woke'. The theme was transition and people came for gyan, either to give, receive or simply ignore.

Like the previous editions, there were some really enlightening discussions, informative workshops and data-packed brand stories. The only problem was that with panels, masterclasses, Connect Corner and business interactions clashing, one needed at least three pairs of legs to attend everything. More on that later.

Let's first talk of the positives. One welcome thing was that despite the sheer scale, the event was smoothly managed, without any hiccups. Barring a few short delays, one stuck to the daywise schedule. The session topics, and names and photographs of the speakers were properly displayed, which was a help for those who walked in late. Due credit to organisers Create & Collab there.

Given the time clashes, one missed out on many sessions. But among those one attended, the one on independent music, moderated by culture curator Shilpi Gupta, stood out for the way Rahul Ram of Indian Ocean and rapper Kr$na talked about issues faced by artistes, narrating a flurry of anecdotes. The one on 'Transition From Mainstream', moderated by entrepreneur Tarsame Mittal, was on how musicians Vishal Bharadwaj, Amit Trivedi, Salim Merchant and Shekhar Ravjiani moved from mainstream to work on independent projects.

Panels on music publishing, moderated by Atul Churamani of Turnkey Music, and artistes & repertoire (A&R), helmed by Soumini Sridhara Paul of Hungama Digital Media, had some valuable inputs. Journalist Anurag Tagat moderated a highly informative session on lost genres like folk, devotional, ghazal, qawwali, though the panelists felt it wasn't correct to call them lost genres in the first place.

It was interesting to see a sizeable number of fellow music journalists and media personalities either moderating or speaking. The list included Amit Gurbaxani, Nirmika Singh, Shephali Bhatt, RJ Rohini Ramnathan and (sorry for the self-plug) Yours Truly. It's always good to have neutral voices. If one is from the industry, one tends to toe the company line or focus on promoting one's interests. No harm in that but a balanced assortment of ideas is always welcome. Here, some brand-specific presentations even sounded like news bulletins and weather reports. Raises or promotions are guaranteed for those who cheered when their CEO's name was announced.

This blogger missed the workshops and masterclasses. But sessions on the role of music supervisors and editors in film, Coke Studio Bharat, The Dharavi Dream Project and submission of entries for the Grammy awards offered interesting nuggets. There were conversations with artistes Baba Sehgal, Lucky Ali, Daler Mehndi and Sunidhi Chauhan but they were either too crowded or clashed with other panel discussions.

That brings us to the need to schedule things more systematically. For instance, on day 1, the lost genres session was held alongside the electronic music discussion. While one may argue that they are two diverse forms of music, there have been many instances where ghazal or Sufi artistes have collaborated with electronica producers. Maybe some wanted to attend both.

Similarly, on the same day, the session on A&R (4.45-5.45 pm) clashed with one on live music hosted by event producer Nikhil Udupa (4-5 pm). Simultaneously, N.S. Padmanabhan hosted a workshop on Spotify for artistes (4-4.45 pm), and M.R. Sunny held a masterclass on AI (4.20-5.20 pm). Now, most musicians, specially youngsters, would be interested in all four topics - how to get chosen by labels, tips and challenges in live performance, how to make it on streaming platform playlists and the way AI is going to affect things. What's the point having all four sessions at the same time? I'm not even getting into Days 2 and 3. At least, it would be more effective to have only one panel discussion at a time. 

That major flaw apart, there were a lot of learnings, lot of insight. Conferences like these bring the industry and musicians together, even if they belong to competing organisations or differing mindsets, or have contrasting artistic approaches or belong to different genres. Hope something tangible is achieved from these sessions by the time we think of AAM 2024. Enough said. Time for regular coffee with milk - in a different environment.