President of the Music Business Association Portia SabinHis career has spanned most corners of the music industry, including drumming under the stage name P-Girl in the punk power-pop band The Hissyfits in the late 1990s.
After studying for a doctorate in anthropology and education at Columbia University in the early 2000s, she worked intermittently for the indie label Kill Rock Stars (and married its founder Thin moon in 2004). At the time, he also founded Shotclock Management and in 2006 took over the reins of Kill Rock Stars when Moon left to work at Nonesuch Records. He led the label – home to Bikini Kill, The Decemberists, Sleater-Kinney and Elliott Smith – for 13 years while serving on the boards of both US label trade associations – the American Independent Music Association and the RIAA – and the Recording Capital Pacific Northwest Academy. “I made a lot of industry connections through them and have a good sense of the role trade associations play in the ecosystem, as well as insights into board management,” he says.
That experience has served Sabin well since she took over the Music Business Association, colloquially known as Music Biz, in 2019. Formerly called the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, the organization originally catered to retailers, wholesalers and label sales departments. But as the music industry limped through the age of Napster and digital downloading and eventually reinvented itself around streaming, Music Biz took on a much broader mandate. It acts as a forum where all sectors of the industry can come together to discuss mutual problems and explore new opportunities.
Despite this development, Sabin says, “I'll always have a soft spot for retailers because I've known them since I ran [Kill Rock Stars]. There were times when physical sales of Elliott Smith's records were literally what kept my family with food on our table. It was very, very difficult during those transition years of 2010 and 2011. There just wasn't a lot of money, other than physical.”
Ahead of next week's annual Music Biz convention (May 13-16) in Nashville, Sabin spoke to Advertising sign about how it has been developed and what attendees can expect.
How does this year's conference compare to 2023?
We had about 2,100 people last year and are now over 50% ahead in enrollment from last year at this point. I expect around 2,300. Our board wanted to increase international participation, so we have people from over 30 countries.
How many members does Music Biz have?
We currently have 369 member companies. When I came on board in 2019, we had individual memberships and student memberships. We have removed both of these categories. When we would have great high-level panels, there would be a hundred students there, and it didn't fit well. it just didn't work. We still have some individual members who are grandfathered in because there are people who are very critical of the music industry, who have always been very knowledgeable and helpful. They do a lot of moderation, but today, members participate mostly through company members. I think that's important because that's what we do — bring companies together at our meetings.
There seems to be a large international presence at this year's conference compared to previous gatherings.
This has really increased. This is part of the mandate given to us by our board. They really want us to increase international participation and we do. We have people from over 30 countries, which is exciting.
Artificial intelligence is a big topic this year.
Yes. AI is the big one everyone is talking about. We have TuneCore sponsoring our AI track and [TuneCore CEO Andreea Gleeson] is going to give a keynote speech with Meng Roo Kwok, the CEO and founder of BandLab, which is on the cutting edge of everything they want to talk about. Programming is crowdsourced. Our call for proposals or presentations will be published in September. and then everyone has until mid-December to get their proposals in. And then in January, we look at each proposal and get a real sense of what the industry is interested in learning more about. We choose the ones we think are the best. Every year is different. Two years ago, we had probably 30 proposals [non-fungible tokens]. This year, we had zero.
I see that the conference still hosts a piece of metadata.
I always say it's our least sexy but most popular piece. Its things people really need to know — critical knowledge. And there are many advances in this area, such as the combination of ISRC [International Standard Recording Code] and ISCW [International Standard Musical Work Code] in creation, with quick matching. There will certainly be many new things to learn.
Any other programs you want to highlight?
I love that we received so many submissions about social impact — doing good in the world. So we now have an entire track for this area. We of course have a streaming piece. We have a fraud part, and we still have a natural part. In total, we have 17 pieces.
The transformation from NARM to Music Biz happened before you took the helm. And while the conference still has a large physical business presence, overall the scope of the meeting is much larger.
when [NARM] It became the Music Business Association, it fell off my radar. and I didn't learn about it again until about 2017 when I went to the conference, and I was amazed. They were everyone you'd want to talk to and so many different parts of the industry in one place. They did that very well when they passed.
How do you grow the club and the conference?
We push it even further. expands [the organization and conference] and diversifying the types of companies that can be members. We're still really focused on our core of retailers, labels and distributors. We want to celebrate, support and preserve them. and we do it with our physical programming, which happens at the conference but also throughout the year.
In the past, the conference was a hotbed of business and private meetings between companies in hotel suites. Will this ingredient still be popular this year?
Planning is important to the Music Biz conference, but networking is just as important. We think these deals are still happening in the Music Biz because when we look at the participation, it's still like 27% of the C-suite participants. Many decision makers are at the conference, which makes a big difference. To accommodate private meetings, we've created an hour and a half break in the middle of the day where there's no scheduling, and that's for people to have lunch and network. Also, we used to start planning earlier and go until six in the afternoon, but we decided that by five everyone is ready to have a drink at the bar.
What is the relationship between your organization and the RIAA today?
I think it's great. I learned a lot from them when I was on their board for a few years. They are great people and I love what they do, which is very different from what we do. They do so much advocacy work and we really don't because we are a Swiss trade association, with so many [members] with competing positions on the various issues. So I try to do advocacy and cooperation and consensus from within. For example, see all of our recent fraud efforts. This is a topic where for a while it was very controversial and divisive in our industry. People would point fingers and say, “oh, it's not my problem. it's your problem.” And now, I think people are kind of saying, “you know, we've got to figure this out, because cheaters are going to make life difficult for everybody.” It's been really cool to see the industry come together around this issue.
The convention will go to Atlanta next year.
Yes, it will be fun. We bought the whole hotel. It will be only the musicians. I hope it feels like going to summer camp.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/music-biz-portia-sabin-interview-2024-conference-ai/
