Over the past three years, Australian Music Week (AMW) – which is held in Sydney – has grown to become Australia's most accessible grassroots music industry conference.
AMW Director Geoff Trio says he and his team have been working to make sure there are more opportunities on offer than ever before at the 2018 instalment next month. “We've been enhancing our networking capabilities and finding new ways to connect delegates with artists and bands,” Geoff says.
“We're always looking out for interesting ways to do that: we trialled a breakfast showcase last year, which was really successful so we're back doing that; we're engaging with lunchtime parties and the response from artists and delegates is overwhelming.
“That's where we feel we all need to be working, in improving that area all the time, and keep that fresh because trying to get new connections is the primary purpose of Australian Music Week, and getting everyone doing more business.”
Being Australia's most accessible music industry conference means covering a wide berth of topics that provide meaningful conversations for attendees from across the spectrums of skill and experience. “We try and tackle everything that people keep asking us for during the year and we try to get a lot of subjects covered,” Geoff says.
“Radio is something that everybody is talking about, commercial radio, so we're going to tackle that a little bit. There's a new technology that has been developed, which we'll be showcasing for the first time for people with high disabilities and how they can use this new technology to compose music just using their eye movement, so we're really excited about that.”
Geoff says that as well as curating interesting panels and workshops, the delegates invited to AMW are just as important for providing a valuable conference programme. “We make sure that the industry people we're inviting are coming along and engaging, are happy to engage with the artists, and are happy to talk to the artists and give advice,” he says.
“You can go to some conferences and some delegates feel they're too busy or that they're not there to talk to grassroots people. We find that everyone [at AMW] is just having a good time and indulging in everything music.”
Of course, though, the real highlight of AMW is the live showcases that feature performances from over 100 emerging musicians and artists on a line-up selected by Geoff himself. “We had quite a few hundred applications this year, so it's taken me some time to go through it all,” Geoff says.
“I narrowed it down to about 300 artists and then went through those to get down to about 105 showcasing artists over the 3 days. We like to do many genres and we take an even amount from each genre.
“On the Friday, we have a dedicated showcase to country and then on the Wednesday it's a dedicated showcase to hip hop. There's so many bands we've had over the years at AMW that are now forging careers. It's a great place to find your next favourite band.”
