One of the Australian music industry's biggest personalities, concert promoter Michael Chugg will deliver a well-rounded keynote address at this year's Turn Up! Conference on the Sunshine Coast.
As the head of Chugg Entertainment, Michael has been responsible for bringing some of the world's best live bands to Australia.
As the keynote speaker at the sixth annual Turn Up! event, he hopes to encourage and support a new crop of industry professionals. “I'm a great supporter of anything that gets young people more education and more knowledge of the music industry,” Michael says.
“Especially because people who go to these events are looking to get into the business, so it's really good to be able to steer them in the right direction.”
Michael also speaks very highly of the Turn Up! conference and the immense wealth of local, Sunshine Coast talent it represents. “The whole southern Queensland area has been a good nursery for young musicians and young industry people,” he says.
“They're trying really hard at it, and Turn Up is held in an area that can always use an event like this – it's not in a capital city. It's a good thing and I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who are still finding out about it who will really enjoy it.”
In his keynote address, Michael says he will be discussing a raft of issues and topics the music industry is facing – the challenges of digital distribution and making music profitable chief among them. “I'm sure there will be a lot of things happening in the next six months or so that will need to be addressed.
“Obviously I'll be talking about the new world of recorded music and all the players in that sort of world – the Spotifys, the Apples, the Googles and the YouTubes – and also about the organisations like APRA and AMCOS,” Michael explains.
“I'll also talk about the world of sync music, which is a very big part of a lot of successful bands, musicians and artists. Those music syncs are really important and you can get them all over the world once you get into it all.
“The digital world of recorded music is so different to everything else, so that will be a big part of it, and explaining how the income streams work and what the income streams are. A lot of young people in the industry don't understand a lot of that, so I'll be talking about that a lot.”
Also on the agenda in a keynote address covering a wide berth of topics will be the scourge of ticket re-sellers such as Viagogo as well as getting more local content onto radio station playlists.
“I'll be talking about bootleg ticketing and things like that, which people need to have knowledge about so they can help their friends and make sure people aren't getting ripped off,” Michael emphasises.
“Then there's the radio content, which is very visible at the moment, about how much Australian music the radio stations should be playing.
“A lot of them play old Australian music in their content when there's so much new music coming that doesn't see the light of day on radio. There's a lot of things we will touch on.”
A true veteran of Australian music, Michael says the key to survival is to adapt and never stop learning. “I started off as a roadie 50-odd years ago and one of the tricks in this business is doing as much as you can and learning about all the different areas of the industry,” he says.
“The best experience is getting experience.”
