**Click here to view a printable version of the conference agenda**
Speakers on October 9, 2012
Philip AbramGeneral Motors, Chief Infotainment OfficerPhilip M. Abram, chief infotainment officer for General Motors, is responsible for setting and implementing a global infotainment strategy for Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, GMC, OnStar, Opel, Vauxhaul and Holden.
Abram joined GM in January, after serving as president and chief operating officer for Sonos, Inc., a wireless music system for homes. At Sonos, Abram headed up product management, worldwide sales and marketing, inventory, logistics and sales operations.Read More
From 1996 to 2007, Abram held a number of positions in business development, product management and engineering. From 2005 to 2007, he was vice president and senior general manager, marketing for Sony Electronics, responsible for Sony’s television business in the US. Prior to that, he held a number of positions at Sharp Electronics and Eastman Kodak.
Phil holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Gannon University and an MBA in finance from the University of Rochester. Abram has eight patents to his credit, everything from digital imaging to internet services.
Melissa AdairSpinlet, Director of Artist AssetsMelissa Adair specializes in Public Relations and Online Marketing in the music industry. Before joining Spinlet in 2010 Melissa founded her own company, Honeybee Publicity, working with clients such as Sony Music Unlimited, Gracenote, ALO and more. Through her work with Elevation Group, Melissa oversaw the publicity and marketing for The Neville Brothers, funky METERS, and The New Mastersounds. Melissa has worked in the music industry for over 10 years, including promotion development at KISS FM and Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars and JJ Cale at Rosebud Agency, and marketing and client relations’ at In Ticketing. Follow Melissa on Twitter: @spinlet
Nic AdlerThe Roxy, Adler IntegratedAfter years as a band manager, promoter, and restauranteur, Nic took the helm at The Roxy in 1998. An entrepreneur and community builder, Nic was drawn to the cutting edge concepts he found in the burgeoning field of social media. In 2007 he launched a blog that went on to win The VH-1 Rock Honors Award for Best Music Venue Website. Always an early adaptor, Nic began tweeting in 2008 and is now the #1 Music Venue on Twitter and Facebook in the world. Read More
Zachariah Alderson aka Mad ZacCustommidicontrollers.comMad Zach (born Zachariah Alderson) is a widely acknowledged innovator in the field of electronic music performance and controllerism. After studying Electronic Music at UC Santa Cruz, he founded custommidicontrollers.com, a venture designed to provide electronic musicians with custom control solutions. Although small, the site’s efforts received lots of attention for its innovative concept and unique style of controller development. Read More
Anna Anisin4sync, CEOAnna Anisin is chief executive officer of 4Sync, the fastest growing cloud storage provider in 2012. She most recently headed her own business development-consulting firm, advising a broad range of businesses, start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Launching her first start-up at the age of 23, Anisin, 28, holds a bachelor’s degree in business management from Dominican University of California and serves on the Board of several community non-profit organizations.Follow Anna on Twitter: @AnnaOnTheWeb
Kevin ArnoldSony Music Entertainment, EVP/Sr. Advisor, Global Digital BusinessKevin Arnold is Executive Vice President and Senior Advisor to the Global Digital Business group at Sony Music Entertainment, which he joined in 2012 after completing the sale of digital distribution company IODA to SME. Previously, as founder and CEO of IODA, Kevin grew the fledgling startup into one of the largest digital distributors of independent music in the world, combining his dedication to independents and unique understanding of the digital music landscape to benefit IODA’s global client base. Read More
Wearing another hat, Kevin also directs Noise Pop Industries, which produces San Francisco’s internationally renowned Noise Pop Festival, which he founded in 1993, as well as the Treasure Island Music Festival and other Bay Area cultural events. In 2012 NPI added the local events guide Do415 to its family, helping answer the question of what to do in San Francisco.
A terminal music fan and technology geek, Kevin first learned the mysteries of databases during a stint at Oracle during the 90’s Bay Area tech boom, then quickly jumped into the bubbling digital music sector at online music startup Listen.com. As Director of Data Services for Listen, Kevin was able to combine his love for music and technology by guiding the growth and development of Listen’s complex music metadata systems, data integration tools, and music royalty data warehouse for the Rhapsody digital music subscription service. Building upon this experience, Kevin founded IODA in 2003 to help independents find their way in the new world of digital music.
Thierry AscarezRadionomy, VP Business DevelopmentAscarez, who joined Radionomy in November 2010, leads marketing and business development initiatives in the U.S., including its U.S. launch and setting up operations at North American headquarters in San Francisco, CA.
Previously, Ascarez was marketing and communications director for Radionomy and its affiliated companies, Jamendo, a royalty-free music platform, and MusicMatic, an in-store multi-media company. In this role he managed global marketing initiatives, and participated in launching Radionomy in France, Spain and Germany.Read More
Ascarez started his career in music and digital content at EMI Music in Belgium, where he held roles as promotion manager, product manager and digital account manager. Prior to EMI, Ascarez worked for advertising agency, DDB Belgium.
A native of Brussels, Ascarez graduated in 2007 from ICHEC University with a Masters degree in Management. Prior education includes a BA in Communication Sciences in 2001 at Ihecs, and then completing his Cultural studies at KUL University in 2003. He is fluent in English, French and Dutch.
Follow Ascarez on Twitter: @ThierryAscarez
Aaron AxelsenLive 105, Music DirectorAaron Axelsen, Live 105 Music Director, San Francisco and founder of SF indie club institution popscene, has been DJing the local club and underground party circuit since the late ’90s. Read More
He also created and hosts one of the longest-running underground EDM shows on commercial radio in the country, SUBSONIC, which debuted on the Bay Area airwaves in 1997 and airs every Saturday night @ midnight on Live 105, as well as the popular new music and local band Sunday evening program SOUNDCHECK
popscene, San Francisco’s premier indie nightclub, Thursday’s at Rickshaw Stop, debuted back in 1996 and has introduced many bands to the Bay Area via its stage, including MUSE, KILLERS, PHOENIX, FOSTER THE PEOPLE, LA ROUX, AMY WINEHOUSE, CUT COPY, MUMFORD AND SONS, ELLIE GOULDING, TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB, CALVIN HARRIS and numerous others that have played this seminal club night
Aaron also produces and books the talent for storied Bay Area radio festivals like BFD, Not So Silent Night and is the architect behind Live 105’s annual Halloween Massive Spookfest.(this year at the Oakland Oracle Arena with Calvin Harris, Benny Benassi, Datsik and more)
Axelsen has spun at some of SF’s best venues like Mezzanine, Mighty, The Independent, 1015 Folsom, Bill Graham Civic and at local music festivals like Outside Lands, Noise Pop and Treasure Island.
Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronaxelsen
Karen BairIndiegogo, Head of Music GrowthBair is a product of the British music scene of the early 90’s where she got her start in promotions working on such acts as the Prodigy, Kylie Minogue and Sub Sub. During this time she discovered and help sign mulit-platinum selling artist Gabrielle. From there, Bair moved to New York to work in the promotions department of London/FFRR Records where she was instrumental in the success of Orbital, Portishead and All Saints.Read More
In August 2012, Bair joined the global crowd funding site indiegogo to head up their music growth department. Here, Bair is working on significantly raising the companies profile in the music world through acquisition of new campaigns, strategic marketing and ensuring the right type of customer support for musicians.
Darryl Ballantyne originally conceived LyricFind in 2000 with Mohamed Moutadayne and Chris Book at Ontario’s University of Waterloo to be the largest, most accurate destination for lyrics on the Internet. Officially launched in 2004, the company pioneered the licensed digital lyrics space, successfully negotiating the first-ever mass lyrics licensing deal with EMI Music Publishing in 2005. Since then, Darryl has grown LyricFind to be the largest legal, licensed lyrics database in the world, with millions of licensed tracks available representing thousands of publishers. LyricFind is also the first lyrics service to have true worldwide rights from all major music publishers (and many more). LyricFind has established licensing and content relationships with over 2,700 music publishers, Rovi, The Harry Fox Agency, The Echo Nest, and many more. The company now delivers services to over 1,000 web sites and mobile applications that want to enhance their music products with lyrics, including Microsoft’s Bing, Lyrics.com, Slacker, Shazam, SoundHound, LyricsMode, SongMeanings, Universal Music, and mSpot. In addition, LyricFind offers two direct to consumer mobile applications, Lyrics Lite and Lyrics Pro for the iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry Playbook platforms. As an authority on licensing and digital content, Darryl has spoken at industry events including SF Music Tech, Canadian Music Week, Music & Media Finland, Digital Music Forum East and West, New Music Seminar, and many more. Before launching LyricFind, Darryl was Manager of Digital Development & Distribution at EMI Music in Los Angeles, where he was involved in deals with companies such as MusicMatch, Napster, and iTunes. Darryl earned a Bachelor of Mathematics with a Business minor from the University of Waterloo. Follow on Twitter: @DBToronto Battelle is also an entrepreneur, author and journalist. Best known for his work creating media properties, Battelle was Chairman and CEO of Standard Media International (SMI), publisher of The Industry Standard and TheStandard.com. Prior to that, he was a co-founding editor of Wired magazine and Wired Ventures. Previously, Battelle occupied the Bloomberg chair in Business Journalism for the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an expert in the field of media and technology, and has appeared on national and international news channels including CBS, BBC, CNN, PBS, Discovery, and CNBC. Battelle was a founding Board member of the Online Publishers Association and currently sits on the board of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and was for nine years active on the Board of his children’s school. Battelle’s honors and awards include: “Global Leader for Tomorrow” and “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland; finalist rank in the “Entrepreneur of the Year” competition by Ernst & Young; “Innovator – One of Ten Best Marketers in the Business” by Advertising Age; and one of the “Most Important People on The Web” by PC World. Battelle holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a master’s degree in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2005 Battelle authored ‘The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture’ (Penguin/Portfolio), an international bestseller published in more than 25 languages. His new book entitled ‘What We Hath Wrought’ is due out in 2013. Follow John on Twitter: @JohnBattelle The gTar was launched at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC in May 2012, placing 2nd in the Startup Battlefield and receiving coverage and praise from Wired, Rolling Stone, Engadget, CNN Money, and more. Incident simultaneously launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the first batch of mass-production units, breaking through a $100k goal in just over 12 hours and eventually raising $353,000. The first batch of gTars are currently in production. Prior to founding Incident, Beck worked as a software developer at Microsoft working on consumer products. He received his BS and M.Eng in Electrical Computer Engineering from Cornell University. In his spare time, he writes electronic music and has had several songs reach the Beatport Top 100 Chart. He now resides in San Francisco with his girlfriend Stacey and their pet cat Indy. Follow Idan on Twitter: @idanbeck Jon was senior vice president, operations, IT and digital development at Concord, one of the fastest growing independent label groups in the world. In this role, he designed and managed a consolidated digital infrastructure to host and distribute the artist catalogs of the three combined companies: Concord Records, Fantasy Records and Telarc International. He also led the integration of all physical product operations and revamped all of the group’s online properties. Before joining CMG, Jon spent seven years with Universal Music Group, most recently as vice president, digital asset management and logistics. In this role, he served as team leader for building of the music industry’s first e-commerce distribution infrastructure, and converted production operations from physical assets to digital, savings millions annually. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Follow Jon on Twitter: @soundexchange Lyrics Born has gone about the creation of his latest effort, As U Were, in a less-than-conventional manner. One defining characteristic of his sound thus far has been that it can be described as unequivocally fun, and this remains true of As U Were. However, LB does routinely peel back the gregarious exterior to reveal a contemplative everyman, and it’s times like this that his true artistry is apparent. “It’s at the point in my career where I’ve been through a lot, fun and not so fun. I think I’m dealing with a lot issues that are more mature than the last few albums, from abandonment to betrayal to incredible joy”. He voices these sentiments prominently on the lead single “Lies x 3”, a driving, heartfelt plead for truth. While touching on newer subjects, he also reached out to artists that he felt removed himself from his comfort zone. “The new record is more synth-oriented. I made an effort to work with younger artists: Trackademicks, Francis and The Lights, and Sam Sparro, namely”. The bay-swagger is in full effect on “Funky Hit Records”, and while the new guests add a new dimension to the sound, Tom Shimura isn’t one to lose sight of his roots. Gift Of Gab drops a requisite, thought-provoking verse on the critical “Pills” and the classic Latyrx tag-team makes it look way too easy on “Pushed Aside, Pulled Apart”, one of the album’s standout cuts. As U Were may well be LB’s greatest achievement, but it’s been a long time coming. Lyrics Born had been a music obsessive since his youth, and in 1993 freestyles among a group of UC Davis classmates that occupied the same cramped radio quarters began to find their way onto paper, and suddenly LB had written “Send Them”. It became the first single on the newly minted Solesides Records, a collaborative venture between himself and his accomplices who would later go on to be known internationally as Blackalicious (comprised of MC Gift of Gab and producer Chief Xcel), DJ Shadow and Lateef The Truthspeaker, an East Oakland rapper with whom he found a shared affinity for the rapid-fire lyrical volleys that would define the next step. As Latyrx (a combination of their working names) the two MCs released The Album, in 1997. The LP would go on to become a certified classic, selling 100,000 copies, yet would prove to be the tip of an even larger iceberg. Solesides was re-imagined as Quannum Projects in 1999. As co-owner, LB used Quannum as a conduit through which he delivered his most realized project to date, 2003’s Later That Day. The album yielded his biggest commercial success to date, “Callin’ Out”, which charted nationally and was featured in several major motion pictures, EA Sports games as well as a Diet Coke spot featuring Adrian Brody. The remix LP, Same !@#$ Different Day was released shortly after, showcasing the talents of his closest associates and as well as new material. Meanwhile, Lyrics Born began to explore different means of engaging listeners. He kept fans abreast of his work by peppering the internet with The Lyrics Born Variety Show mixtape series whoch he released himself through his website. The mixtapes, as well as ceaseless touring and the creation of his own internet media outlets Lyrics Born TV and LBFM, were elements of a new formula. Since the release of Later That Day, Lyrics Born has averaged over 150 shows a year, and his explosive live energy was captured on the disc Overnite Encore, a compilation of live performances with live musicians from the Australian leg of his 2006 world tour. He followed up in 2008 with Everywhere At Once, a varied studio disk that signaled a departure from the sample-based pieces he had become known for, supplementing the sound with a full band and a healthy does of synthesizers. Hence, he has arrived at well-rounded sound that is classic and yet futuristic. Tom Shimura hasn’t forgotten how he got here, but he’s never been afraid to look to the future, either. A “Jack of all trades” type, Colin is equally at home building a recommendation engine, consulting on business strategy, designing a intuitive interface for a web application, or discussing the sociological implications of Jimmy Hendrix’s performance of the Star Spangled Banner. Follow Colin on Twitter: @cbrumelle ArtistWorks is now the world’s leading provider of online music schools and it’s Video Exchange™ platform enables anyone to learn directly from the world’s foremost experts all from the comfort of their own home. ArtistWorks’ subscribers in over 58 countries have access to a library of 35,000 online music instruction videos and receive personalized video feedback from award-winning musicians. Their hand-selected online instructors include bassist Nathan East (Eric Clapton, Phil Collins), percussionist Luis Conte (Madonna, Santana), banjo player Tony Trischka (Paul McCartney, Bela Fleck), guitarist Bryan Sutton (Dixie Chicks, Taylor Swift) and drummer Billy Cobham (Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock) among others. The company has been featured in NPR, LA Times, BBC, Fox News, MSNBC, Boston Globe, Forbes, CNBC, Chicago Tribune and in a variety of media in music, education and technology. The company is based in the wine country of Napa, California. He drew upon his varied experiences and founded Label Management Systems in 2003 to help indie record labels succeed. To that end, he developed business solutions to achieve that goal, namely the Music Business Toolbox, originally released in 2008, but being updated for rerelease in 2012. His professional consulting clients have included Kanye West, MSN Entertainment, Ludacris, Monster Cable, SoundExchange and more. Bryan has a BBA in Finance from the University of Georgia and regularly speaks at music industry conferences and at universities about the music industry. He is a voting member of the Recording Academy and on the Board of Directors for the Future of Music Coalition. Follow Bryan on Twitter: @bryancalhoun A Berklee alumna, seasoned publishing professional, and music educator, Cavalier has produced and published many educational resources. A prolific author, Cavalier has penned more than one hundred music education publications and arrangements for Carl Fischer, First Act, Alfred Publishing, and Warner Bros. Publications. Cavalier graduated with honors from Berklee College of Music, holds a Master’s degree in Education from Cambridge College, and continues to further her studies in music, business, and distance learning. Cavalier is also the leader of the award-winning kids/family band, Debbie and Friends. This performing and recording band has received 20+ awards and critical accolades including Parents’ Choice and Nickelodeon Parents Pick for Debbie and Friends’ CDs and DVDs, their animated music videos have been featured on TV and OnDemand family channels in the US and internationally. Debbie and Friends had the great honor to be part of the 2011 Grammy Award-winning CD for Best Children’s Album with their song “Walk Away.” For more information, visit www.debbieandfriends.net Follow Debbie on Twitter: @DebbieFriends Prior to joining VEVO, Cerda was Vice President, Technology at Myspace, as a result of a sale of Threadbox (fka Cc:Betty), where he was co-founder and CEO. Cerda incubated the real-time messaging service as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Venrock. Cerda was Vice President of Sales and Business Development of web voice company Jajah (sold to Telefonica in 2010), following a three year effort as co-founder and CEO of social communications company Jangl (sold to Live Universe 2008). Prior to Jangl, Cerda co-founded consumer VoIP service and device company, Ooma, and served as the company’s original CEO. Cerda worked in management and key roles in several successful startups: Director of Business and Corporate Development at Trapeze Networks (sold to Belden 2008), Director of Corporate Development at Procket Networks (sold to Cisco 2004), Director of Sales at Redback Networks (IPO 1999), Regional Sales Manager at Lucent by way of the Livingston acquisition (sold in 1997) and Business Development at Farallon/Netopia (IPO 1995). A sought after speaker on the conference circuit, Cerda has held high profile speaking slots at Business Insider’s IGNITION, SXSW Interactive, Supernova, Red Herring, Etre in Europe, VON, Dow Jones Venturesummit, Guidewire Group Summit, Community Next, SF Newtech Meetup, GigaOm Mobilize, AlwaysOn 100. Follow Shelley on Twitter: @localmusicvibe The majority of their new music is released as singles posted to YouTube. These mostly take the form of “VideoSongs”, a medium they define with two rules: (1) What you see is what you hear. (No lip-syncing for instruments or voice) (2) If you hear it, at some point you see it. (No hidden sounds) Pomplamoose’s collection of VideoSongs are wildly popular with over 74 million views on YouTube. For example, the VideoSong for “Single Ladies” has garnered almost 9 million views, “Telephone” over 8 million views, and “Beat It” over 7 million views as of January 2012. Follow on Twitter:@pomplamoose Follow Jean on Twitter: @Janeblue As founder, Alex wears many hats at SongFreaks, being responsible for everything from mobile and web development to exploring promising partnerships.Read More Prior to starting SongFreaks, Alex has worked in many areas of technology, including banks, health care, and developing consumer Facebook and iPhone applications used by millions of people. He earned a Computer Engineering degree from the University of Toronto, and is currently pursuing an MBA at the Schulich School of Business in Toronto. Follow Alex on Twitter: @songfreaks Dahud is also the head of Business Development for Fame House, having helped launch the company in 2011 with CEO Michael Fiebach. Fame House is a Digital Strategy, Marketing, and Management company whose client roster includes DJ Shadow, Pretty Lights, Josh Wink, MiMOSA, and more with offices in both Philadelphia and San Francisco. Hisham’s love for the music business wouldn’t be complete without inducing a dosage of his own inner-creativity. A recording and performing drummer, Dahud is also a multi-instrumentalist music producer spanning across several genres, working with his own live band and synching his music to film and video. Follow Hisham on Twitter: @HishamDahud By 2003 Corey was Director of Online Marketing and A&R at What Are Records & published the label’s first online music sampler as a podcast while facilitating one of the first five direct deals between Apple and an independent record label. She moved to San Francisco in 2005 to work at IODA where she helped create and market IODA Promonet, a promotional distribution platform allowing member base of thousands of blogs, podcasts and online media outlets to access pre-cleared MP3s and marketing assets with the goal of generating hype and driving sales. With the help of a talented team, Corey produced the only not for profit Musician & Promoter Workshop Series in San Francisco, assisting local musicians with digital transitions. In 2009, Corey founded Not Shocking (Digital Music Strategy) where clients have included SoundExchange, Michael Tilson Thomas, Ning & Rdio. By 2012 Corey got “my dream job” working with Dick Huey and Toolshed to create and execute digital music strategy & marketing for a wide array of the best indie artists in the world including MNDR, Kate Bush, Cat Power, Ani DiFranco, John Wesley Harding, Peggy Sue, Martin Sexton, Redd Kross, Big Scary, Wax Tailor and many others. Corey is also a PT columnist for the SFappeal.com, San Francisco’s online newspaper. She has one patent, two cats and eight ipods. Prior to founding WillCall, Donnie worked as user experience lead with several tech startups. Earlier in his career he worked as a package designer consulting with brands such as T-Mobile, Starbucks, Microsoft and Nintendo. Follow Donnie on Twitter: @donnie Michael Drexler oversees BMI’s New Media business development and is managing BMI’s efforts to open up new revenue streams for writers and publishers in the digital world, ranging from broadband to mobile. He also serves on the contract negotiating team in the New Media group on all license agreements.Read More Follow Michael on Twitter: @drexmex Follow David on Twitter: @bandzoogle and @DavidDufresne Max currently lives in Los Angeles, and is an avid concert-goer, Lego blogger, and retro gaming fan. Follow Max on Twitter: @8bitkid “Music is sunshine,” says Michael Franti, one of the most positive and conscious artists in music today. “Like sunshine, music is a powerful force that can instantly and almost chemically change your entire mood. Music gives us new energy and a stronger sense of purpose.”Read More “Music is something you can’t hold in your hands, smell it, taste it or even see it, yet somehow just coming together and feeling these little vibrations that tickle our eardrums can somehow lift us all up out of our most difficult moments in life to unimaginable heights.” Ironically, often joyous and uplifting The Sound Of Sunshine actually came out of a darker and tougher personal experience for Franti. “Last August, my appendix ruptured suddenly in the middle of a tour and I ended up in the hospital for eight days while they figured out what was wrong with me,” recalls Franti. “I almost died and I wrote many of these songs coming out of that experience while I was in the hospital for another week or so after that. During that time, I really took a moment to prioritize what’s truly important in my life — and in the end, that’s really about the people who I love. Even in that hospital, I could laugh with the people I love, cry with them, and start to find the sun again.” Well aware that countless others face far worse problems than he did, Franti wants The Sound Of Sunshine to communicate a sense of hope and possibility for anybody who needs it. Franti’s singularly open spirit reflects his own eclectic and intriguing background. Michael was born to an Irish-German-French mother and an African American and American Indian father in Oakland, then adopted by a Finnish American couple who raised him along with their three biological children and another African American son. While studying at the University of San Francisco, Franti formed the punk band The Beatnigs, and later the far more hip hop-inflected The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. Through it all, Franti has crossed all sorts of musical and physical boundaries in order to make music for everybody. In the mid-Nineties, Franti first formed Spearhead, and increasingly in recent years, he’s found his own voice musically and his own organic brand of popular success. Franti and Spearhead’s last album, 2008’s All Rebel Rockers — recorded in Jamaica with legendary producers and players Sly & Robbie – became the biggest hit of Franti’s career, hitting the Top 40 on the Billboard 200, and yielded his biggest hit, the Top 20 “Say Hey (I Love You).” “I had a nice, long time to get ready for that first hit, and so I really appreciated it when it happened,” says Franti. “So when we were just mastering the new album, I was saying to my manager, “Boy, wouldn’t it be fun to have a sophomore hit?” He was like, “Sophomore hit? You’ve already been through grad school, man” So yes, I’ve paid some dues, and that’s made getting this far — and still being here — mean even more to me. The funny thing is that `Say Hey’ went into the Top Twenty right as I was being wheeled into surgery. I got the text, and I thought, `Wow, I’ve finally got a hit record, and I’m not even going to live to enjoy it.’ That put everything in perspective too.” Michael Franti is not a man to openly chase success – in fact; he’s not a man who even wears shoes(for the last ten years). Still, Franti has absolutely no problem hearing his music on the radio now. “When I was a kid, I used to listen to AM radio on family vacations in the car, and at family barbeques and my dad would leave the radio on. So songs that were the silly pop hits became a really meaningful part of my childhood – and of my adult life now. So when I think of the fact that there’s some family out there on the beach in the summer together listening to `Say Hey,’ it makes me feel really good. The truth is a good pop song that makes you feel good can be something of value and meaning to people.” Arguably the most cohesive, romantic and life-affirming album that Franti and Spearhead have ever made, The Sound Of Sunshine reflects the fact that, as Franti puts it, “With time, you get a better sense who you are and how to put together all your musical passions into your own sound. I feel like for a long time, I dabbled in other sounds. Like `Let’s do something with a reggae vibe here.’ Or `Let’s really rock here.’ But now, I write everything from the acoustic guitar up — which keeps you honest. Then Jay Bowman, my songwriting partner and I, take a lot of time figuring out what’s the best way to present this song and make every word of it come across and ring true.” Even the recording process for The Sound Of Sunshine reflects Franti’s desire to communicate directly with his audience. “We started in Jamaica actually recording a bunch of tracks with Sly and Robbie who are, of course, great, and we used some of those tracks. Then we got home and started mixing the record. Then I went to Bali and wrote some more songs, but we still didn’t have it finished. So we said let’s bring a portable studio on the road with us. We’d literally recorded the drums in the locker room of the Toronto Raptors or in the shower of some NHL team. Then we’d go right onstage and play the song and see how other people would react to it. We’d see what worked and go back and record it again the next day. So these songs have really been road tested in front of live bodies.” For Franti, “To play for people and share your songs with them is to make a real connection. That’s why we play outside our shows for those who can’t afford to come inside. They need the songs too – maybe more. That’s the reality. And as a musician I was on tour with put it recently, “Our fans didn’t come to us from a reality show. They came to us from reality.” And so, we mean something in their lives. We’re the music they put on when they drive their little kids to school, or hang out with the person they love at night. There’s no higher honor. So they have an investment in the music. And that means so much because this music is very personal to me too.” Lewis has over 15 years of experience founding, investing in and advising start-up ventures. Prior to Metamorphic Ventures, Lewis was the founder and CEO of Worldly Information Network (WIN), a publisher of digital financial information to both the retail and institutional markets founded in partnership with AOL. Lewis successfully raised angel and institutional venture capital, grew WIN into a profitable company and completed several acquisitions before its sale. Lewis graduated from San Diego State University with a BA in English & Political Science and later received his JD and Masters in Intellectual Property Law from the UNH School of Law. During the interim, Lewis was an accomplished athlete, competing in Ironman triathlons, marathons and ultra-marathons worldwide while writing freelance articles and working on computers to pay the bills. Lewis is a member of the bar of the State of New York and serves on many corporate and cause related boards. Follow Lewis on Twitter: @lewisgersh Follow Greg on Twitter: @G2Pyramind Gruber directed marketing for the largest urban divisions of four major cable television companies, and was the first head of marketing for FOXTEL, which became Australia’s dominant cable television company during his stay.Read More Gruber founded and led FORA.tv as it brought together over 100 premiere public forum content partners from The Aspen Ideas Festival and The Chautauqua Institution to The New York Public Library and the Commonwealth Club. Time magazine called it one of the web’s top 50 sites. He is now CEO of Half Moon Bay-based ShowGo.tv which is livestreaming concerts from the coolest places on Earth. Follow Gruber on Twitter: @thegrube As well as his work for SoundCloud, he is the organiser of the OpenMusicMedia and Music Hack Day events that take place across the world. He was listed as one of UK’s Young Music Entrepreneurs in 2010 and is a frequent speaker at various events from TEDxCardiff to SXSW. Follow Dave on Twitter: @haynes_dave Follow Jon on Twitter: @jcahealey Celia Hirschman founded the marketing consulting company, Downtown Marketing in 1999 and the video promotion company Vis-Ability in 1986. Clients for Downtown Marketing have included Bryan Adams, Martina McBride, Michael Bolton and Sonia Dada among others. As the founder of Vis-Ability, the video promotion company, Ms. Hirschman was under contract with most of the major and small labels in America and handled the video promotion for Madonna, aha, Talking Heads, Aimee Mann, 10,000 Maniacs, Depeche Mode, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Van Halen and many more. In between running these companies, Ms. Hirschman served as a label executive at several large labels in a marketing and managerial role. She was the General Manager of Chris Blackwell’s Palm label, overseeing the entire roster. Previously she held the position of VP of Marketing and Artist Development at Mercury Records, and she began her label experience at A&M Records, as the Executive Director of Marketing. She managed dozens of artists’ careers in this capacity as well as served as the marketing head for the Woodstock 94 recordings. Thomas HutchingsTuneIn, Vice President of EngineeringThomas is the Vice President of Engineering at TuneIn, where he oversees all technical development and operations. He has worked with the company for more than six years, growing a sophisticated audio management platform and a diverse array of consumer products. Prior to TuneIn, Thomas served as Enterprise Architect at Hotels.com/Expedia, launching the hotels.com brand and helping craft a world-class reservation system reaching millions of travelers every day.Read More Thomas studied trumpet performance at the Eastman School of Music and holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas. He regularly plays with the San Jose Wind Symphony and occasionally captures his thoughts on thinkingthomas.com. Follow Thomas on Twitter: @thinkingthomas Follow Aziz on Twitter: @arcadesunshine Follow Marc on Twitter: @marcjacobsonpc The 32-year-old Jain studied computer engineering at Purdue and founded Pure Gaming Network before dropping out after a year to launch Sparkart in 1999. The company he started running from his bedroom at his parents’ house now boasts more than 35 employees with operations in four countries worldwide. A passionate music fan, he was attending a A Perfect Circle show at the Warfield Theater, when he received a cassette for a new band called Linkin Park from a street team member. Reaching out to the group, he offered to do some spec work for their site, only to end up becoming the chief online strategist for the band running their web site, and fan club in partnership with Machine Shop Marketing. “I’m a big fan of music,” he says, naming Rage Against the Machine as his favorite. “I also love technology more than anything, and to be able to apply that passion to the music and entertainment industry is an amazing experience. That’s what drives me everyday.” Sparkart clients now include musical artists The Killers, Bon Jovi, Janet Jackson, Rascal Flatts, Jason Aldean, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Evanescence, Slipknot, music merchandiser Bravado, and leading MMA league Ultimate Fighting Championship. The record labels and entertainment companies he works with include Big Machine Records, Ultra Records and Redbox. Jain’s recent notable achievements include launching Storyteller, a developer platform for building websites with content from anywhere, and partnering with Redbox on the launch of Redbox Tickets. Follow Jain on Twitter: @Sparkart @naveenspark She is a founding partner and emeritus board member of Philanthro, a non-profit platform for increasing sustainable philanthropic activity within Generation Y. Anneke is passionate about the future of philanthropy, and she spoke about the topic on the main stage at the TED Conference in India in 2009. Additionally, she delights audiences as a performance storyteller and has performed at The Moth, TEDx, the National Storytelling Conference, and on the NPR show “Snap Judgment.” Anneke has an MBA from Stanford University and a BA in Economics and Government from Claremont McKenna College. Part tech-geek, part design-nerd, part startup-junkie, she shares her musings on her blog: www.annekejong.com. Follow Anneke on Twitter: @annekejong Born in Canada and classically trained from the age of eight, Zoë obtained a liberal art degree from Sarah Lawrence College and then spent her 20’s working in software while moonlighting as a cellist in rock bands. She eventually combined the cello and the computer, developing her signature style of live-layered music while improvising for late night crowds at her Francisco warehouse. Zoë’s grassroots, label-less approach has garnered her much public attention and press. She speaks regularly on artist-empowerment, sustainable careers and the concept of artist-as-entrepreneur, has been profiled on NPR’s All Things Considered, appointed a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and awarded a performing arts grant from the Creative Capital Foundation. She serves on the boards of the San Francisco chapter of the Recording Academy, the Magik Magik Orchestra and CASH Music, a nonprofit organization that builds open source digital tools for musicians and labels. For the last two years, Zoë has been slowly touring the world, young baby in tow, to support her latest album, “Into The Trees”, which spent 49 weeks on the Billboard classical charts, peaking at #7. She is working on a third album scheduled for release in 2013. Zoë has performed and recorded with a wide range of artists, including Imogen Heap, Amanda Palmer, Tears for Fears, DJ Shadow, John Vanderslice, Rasputina, Pomplamoose and Paolo Nutini. She has collaborated and performed with WNYC’s Radiolab and is also known for her work in film and dance. Commissions include music for the San Francisco MOMA and soundtracks for the films Ghost Bird, The Devil’s Chair and Frozen Angels. Her music has been used by countless entities, including the BBC, ITV, PBS, NPR, NBC, Intel, IBM, Apple, Patagonia, Specialized Bikes, the Alonzo King Lines Ballet, Alvin Ailey Dance, Parsons Dance and San Francisco’s ODC. Her cello playing can be heard on Mark Isham’s scores for The Conspirator, Warrior and The Secret Life of Bees. Zoë makes an effort to reach audiences wherever they are, performing on radio, television and webcasts, outdoors in the desert, in churches and concert halls, at universities, museums, technology conferences, airports, public spaces, executive brainstorming sessions, house concerts, bars and rock clubs across around the world. She is extremely fond of pancakes and likes to say yes to crazy things… Follow Zoë on Twitter: @zoecello Follow Bryan on Twitter: @freshbreakfast Since 2011, Christiane has been working with LexisNexis® as an Author for Lexis® Practice Advisor on Entertainment Transactions. Kinney also frequently speaks on music and entertainment law panels as well as various radio talk shows. As a strong supporter of education for independent artists, Kinney also writes a monthly legal column for CD Baby’s DIY Musician blog. CD Baby, the largest online distributor of independent music, recently recognized Kinney as #1 out of their list of the Top 10 Music Law Resources to follow on Twitter, noting that “her in-the-thick-of-it perspectives carry a lot of weight.” Kinney has also been recognized by Super Lawyers magazine, and has been featured in Glamour Magazine’s Woman of the Year issue for her charity work in bringing music and art programs to at-risk youth. Follow Christiane on Twitter: @musicalredhead He attended Dartmouth College, studying music under Jon Appleton and Christian Wolff. Naturally, he graduated with a degree in economics. Nearly a decade in Los Angeles came next: performing in bands, dabbling in film and TV scoring, and designing professional audio products. One was awarded Musician Magazine’s “Editor’s Pick” and another was nominated for Mix Magazine’s TEC award. Anu has been involved with the Internet music business since 1999. He was one of the primary architects of Rhapsody, and led the Rhapsody iPhone team. He worked on music services at Liquid Digital Media for Wal-Mart. At MOG, he was responsible for launching MOG’s Android and iPhone apps (winner, Billboard “Best Streaming App” award in 2010, chosen as one of TIME’s 50 essential apps of 2011) As a digital media consultant, he’s also made video games, designed virtual goods marketplaces for 3D avatars, and worked on integrating digital media platforms in virtual worlds. One of the first to participate in the Duke University Talent Identification Program when it launched in the early 1980s, Anu has taught “A History of 20th Century Music” several times – a multi-disciplinary course which covers composition, art, recording technology, and history. He also created a companion educational CD-ROM, “Switched-On Sound”. Anu is currently Director of Music Services for Sony Network Entertainment. Follow Anu on Twitter: @anukirk Kevin LewandowskiDiscogs, CEO Aaron Leese is a software engineer and founder of Stagecraft Software – a small San Francisco based code house focusing DJ related software products, including vinyl emulation plugins, iPad Apps, and plugins that bring Cloud computing into the desktop DAW. Our vision of the future is a more connected audio universe with a lower threshold for entry, where everyone is an engaged audio engineer, producer and DJ. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @Stagecraft_SW He previously was chief legal/business affairs executive for the international division of BMG Entertainment overseeing music, video, videogame and digital activities in 53 countries. Jeff negotiates complex rights agreements, acquisitions, joint ventures among multi-territorial companies and distribution agreements. He consults on copyright and trademark issues, including those relating to digital entertainment. Jeff is the Editor of “User-Generated Content: New Business Models and Legal Issues,” published by the IAEL. Follow Jeff on Twitter: @jliebenson Previously, he hosted USA Network’s Character Road Trip, a weekly series providing viewers with a peek into the greatest “characters” the country has to offer. Lowenstein was also a recording and touring artist with pop/rock band Evan and Jaron who scored three Top 40 hits, including the Top 10 song Crazy For This Girl. Follow Evan on Twitter: @stageit Her background includes roles at Universal Music Group Distribution where she was instrumental in launching the VEVO platform in late 2009 and Sony Music’s Global Digital Business group where she managed mobile accounts at the peak of the ringtone business. Liz has also held positions at Jive Records and TV Guide Network. Follow Ryan on Twitter: @RMac18 Prior to Walden, Larry was a digital media sell-side Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown where he lead the top performing IPOs of 1998 and 1999 (Terayon and CBS MarketWatch), as well as the IPOs of Maxis, Edmark, and Netflix (initial S-1 IPO filing) among other equity and debt financings (Broderbund, Sierra On-line, Excite@Home, Spectrum Holobyte, CBS Sportsline). Prior experience includes Robertson Stephens & Company, Digidesign and General Management in computer services retail. Education: Larry received a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley. Larry enjoys collecting vintage dead hardware, golfing and playing music. Hear him on Pandora by seeding a station with Megan Keely, Corinne Marcus or the Flying Other Brothers. See the music he loves at his Pandora profile here Larry has been a guest lecturer at Haas Graduate School of Business, Stanford Graduate School of Business and Harvard Business School. He has been a speaker and panelist at numerous conferences including Dealmaker Media’s Under the Radar, SF MusicTech, Billboard, AlwaysOn and Digital Hollywood among others. Follow Larry on Twitter: @cyberlar Mason began his career as a pirate radio and club DJ in London, going on to become founding Editor-in-Chief of the seminal music magazine RWD. In 2004, he was selected as one of the faces of Gordon Brown’s Start Talking Ideas campaign, and was presented the Prince’s Trust London Business of the Year Award by HRH Prince Charles. Mason has written and produced TV series, screenplays, comic strips, apps and records, not to mention award-winning, global advertising campaigns. His journalism has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, The Observer Music Monthly, Dazed & Confused, Adweek, VICE, Complex, Liberation and other publications in more than 20 countries. His short story Hard Times was published by Penguin as part of the We Tell Stories project, which won Best in Show at SXSW and was shown in the Talk To Me exhibition at the MOMA in New York City in 2011. Mason regularly speaks on creativity, disruptive innovation, copyright infringement and the promise of P2P technologies all over the world. He lives in San Francisco. Follow Matt Mason on Twitter: @mattmason Together with Adam Bryant and Bill Mitsakos, two other pro audio veterans, he intends to bring the same design elegance, market disruption and business ethics to Epigram Software, LLC while crafting revolutionary tools for music creators. Before co-founding Red Magnet Media, Rachel was the Vice President of Strategic Relationships at Ning. At Ning, Rachel managed over 300 branded social networks with partners like 50 Cent, Red Light Management, and Telepictures.Read More Prior to Ning, Rachel was the Associate Director of Strategic Relationships and Business Development at Warner Music Group. Rachel has also worked as an Associate at StarVest Partners, L.P., and as a television producer at Cablevision, Fox, and MTV Networks. Rachel holds a B.A. from Brandeis University, where she was named a University Scholar and graduated cum laude and with High Honors. Rachel also received a MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business. If you enjoy skiing fresh powder, live music, and travel, follow @masters212 on Twitter. Michael also serves as a Strategist with Hattery Labs, a San Francisco-based seed-stage venture fund and creative consultancy, working on high-level social and brand strategy. Previously, he worked with Silicon Valley startup TuneIn as their social brand ambassador and evangelist, as well as stints with two Presidential campaigns, and work with a leading California law firm specializing in political compliance and disclosure.Read More A Gloucester, Massachusetts native, he holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Tufts University, and resides with his wife, Sarah, in San Francisco. A winner of multiple “Best in Business” awards, as well as “Entrepreneur of the Year” in 2007, Mark is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist in the US and Europe for corporate functions as well as conferences on a variety of topics. Chris had his first big success when his inaugural company invented what would go on to become the industry standard for music loop arrangement. His software eventually evolved into today’s Sony ACID, and now all major music software products incorporate this loop arrangement technology into their workflow.Read More Chris’s achievements led him to the Silicon Valley where he spent 9 years as Senior Software Engineer and Product Designer at Apple. He dedicated his expertise toward creating audio innovations in Logic and Garageband and more recently, for the iOS version of iMovie. Chris’s latest endeavor, MixInto specializes in music software for mobile platforms. The company’s first App SoundBark brings sampling, mixing and mashups to a whole new audience. Chris also DJs in San Francisco under the name subOctave at the highly successful indie music video night “Fringe“. True to DIY hacker roots, he uses his own custom software to mix audio and video with his partner DJ BlondieK. Follow Chris on Twitter: @fringesf and @mixinto Sean’s consulting company, Music Allies, is recognized as a leader in strategy and promotion for concert festivals including the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, the Hangout Beach Music and Arts Festival, Camp Bisco, CounterPoint, Life is Good, and Lights All Nights. Music Allies has also consulted musicians like Ani DiFranco, Aimee Mann, G Love, Joan Osborne, Justin Timberlake and Jack Johnson on marketing, radio promotion and operating independent labels. Sean O’Connell has devoted a lifetime to promoting creative people. Sean’s deep background in the music industry includes artist management, concert promotion, label marketing, radio and tour booking. Follow Sean on Twitter: @seantheally Prior to Recombinant, Dave was a 15 year music industry veteran of artist management, talent acquisition, and music publishing. In addition to being an early champion of Korn and Papa Roach, Dave discovered and signed the Grammy Award-winning group Deftones. Follow Dave on Twitter: @recombinantinc Jeff is also co-founder and was GM / President of the New York based independent record label spinART records for nineteen years – his label was in strategic relationships with Sony, Warner Bros., Sire, Polygram Music Publishing and others.Read More spinART records was the first record label in the music industry to offer its catalog of releases via paid download as mp3s. From 2004 to Present, Jeff contributed to the founding charter and organization of The American Association of Independent Music (AAIM) – a non profit non-governmental trade organization representing the interests of its independent label members. From 1997 – 2001 Jeff Price worked with EMusic serving first as a consultant, next as interim VP of Content Acquisition and finally as the Senior Director of Music/Business Development. He contributed towards the creation of EMusic’s initial business model, played an active internal team role in EMusic’s successfully completed $30MM private placement in March 1999 and $90MM second round financing in September 1999 and created and implement the first subscription-based music sales and distribution structure. Mr. Price has has appeared on numerous panels including CMJ, In The City, WebNYC, ECMA, Midem, Winter Music Conference, New Music Seminar, Billboard Music and Money Symposium, Independent Music Festival, Music Biz 2005, Audio Soft, MP3 Summit, South By South West, Digital Distribution and the Music Industry and countless others as well as teaches occasionally at New York University, Pace University, Berklee College of Music and more. In addition, he has appeared on Nightline, CNBC, ABC News, CNN, MSNBC, CW11, and has been interviewed and quoted in publications ranging from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Billboard, Fortune, Spin, Crain’s, London Daily Mirror, NPR, National Geographic, Wired News, Business Week, The Industry Standard, Boston Globe, Stereophile, to Salon.com, ON24.com, ZDnet, and CNET to many others. At the request of a congressional panel, he supplied a written deposition in the SEC investigation of Time Warner’s failed acquisition bid of EMI and has provided a witness statement for the SoundExchange arbitration relating to the royalty rate for webcasting. Follow Jeff on Twitter: @TuneCoreJeff Follow Tim on Twitter: @tbquirk Neeta has been a speaker at numerous music and film industry events around the country and abroad. She has spoken at such conferences as MIDEM, SXSW, CMJ, Billboard Latin Awards and Conference, American Bar Association’s Forum on Entertainment and Sports Law Annual Meetings and Symposiums, Billboard Dance Summit, International Folk Alliance, Future of Music Policy Summit, Latin Alternative Music Conference, RockrGirl, Billboard R&B Hip Hop Awards and Conference, Austin Film Festival, Americana Music Conference, International Bluegrass Music Association Conference, Canadian Music Week, Barbados Music Conference and numerous Recording Academy chapters’ “In the Mix” programs. Follow Neeta on Twitter: @NeetaR Shaun has seventeen years of experience in the telecommunications and data center industry, holding roles in both operations and sales over his career. Shaun entered the telecommunications field during the CLEC boom of the mid-nineties, overseeing construction for portions of MFS Communications’ (later WorldCom’s), fiber optic networks on both coasts. Read More Shaun holds a bachelor’s degree from Drexel University in Philadelphia, where he majored in Civil Engineering. Award winner of Midem Hack Day’s developers competition and the “AT&T Mobile App Hackathon” competition with her platform named All.be.Tuned. Follow Taynah on Twitter: @taynahreis TicketMob’s unique verticals of ticketing brands in comedy (LaughStub), live music (TuneStub), and electronic dance music/nightlife (ElectroStub) are all designed and targeted toward a specific community, utilizing the power of social media marketing and custom tools to help event promoters better understand and reach their customers and fans. Follow Scot on Twitter: @tunestub, @electrostub, @ticketmob While at ION, Roberts produced the recording industry’s first enhanced audio CD titles, including David Bowie’s “Jump” and “Headcandy” from Brian Eno. He was the company’s lead technologist and innovator in adding multimedia content to traditional audio CDs. ION was also widely recognized as a leading provider of enhanced CD production tools utilized by recording and multimedia development companies. In September 1993, Bertlesmann Music Group created the first interactive record label after acquiring a 50 percent interest in ION. Prior to founding ION, Roberts was a founder and senior manager of LightSource, a software development company that produced multimedia and graphics editing software. Previously, he was a senior engineer at Pixar, where he created several award-winning, Apple-based music applications including “Studio Session” and “Jam Session.” Roberts is Gracenote’s representative to the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), an organization that is chartered with establishing standards for digital music and music playing devices. Roberts is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist at digital media, entertainment, high technology and business events around the world. Follow Ty on Twitter: @rocknty Now spreading its wings internationally, PledgeMusic has become the leading international direct-to-fan company with innovation and interactivity at its core. PledgeMusic allows artists and fans to share in the music-making experience in unique and direct ways. In addition, by offering its artists label services, publishing, and management options (all guided by a team of music industry veterans), the global operation has created a new music business model. He has been lead litigation counsel in numerous complex cases of first impression in the internet and high technology sectors often working with large legal teams nationally and globally. Rothken has handled complex cases as lead litigation counsel against major entities such as the RIAA, MPAA, Apple, Microsoft, and the United States. He is currently Megaupload’s global lead defense counsel. Follow Ira on Twitter: @rothken Marc sits on the Boards and Advisory Boards of numerous internet and technology start-ups in Silicon Valley as well as being on the BoD of the San Francisco Film Society. He started his career in A&R at EMI Records. Marc has a BA from Hamilton College and an MBA from Columbia Business School, and lives in San Francisco with his wife and three children. Marc blogs about music and film at www.snoozebutton.com and the Huffington Post. Follow Marc on Twitter: @ruxputin Theda joined Island Def Jam in sales, but quickly moved to fill a void in the new media department just as Napster was starting to take off. Nicknamed Theda.com by rapper Ja Rule, Theda developed a reputation for creating groundbreaking work. She received kudos for expanding into mobile content sales early. She also lead the incubator team that developed and launched GlobalGrind.Read More After one of many SXSW trips, Theda decided to make the move to Austin to work with a social game start up and build her consulting business. During this time she became a certified sommelier by the International Wine Guild. In March 2012, Theda returned to NYC, as VP Digital Marketing at Universal RepublicRecords, to drive online, mobile and app strategy for a roster of 130+ artists including; Gotye, Florence & The Machine, Owl City, Of Monsters And Men, Nelly and Kelly Roland. Follow Theda on Twitter:@bondgyrl Prior to Chromatik, Matt was a professional saxophonist and held A&R/Programming roles at KROQ 106.7FM and Capitol Records. Matt received a BA in Music Performance from UCLA, and was named a CA Distinguished Arts Scholar by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Follow Matt on Twitter: @mattdsandler Scherf has since been the driving force behind nearly every fundamental Gracenote technology, cementing his position as one of the main pioneers of media recognition. Scherf personally designed and built the lion’s share of the current incarnation of the Gracenote service, a modular system that is extremely flexible, scalable and massively redundant, and is capable of easily incorporating new services as the need arises. He architected, designed, and developed the technology behind many Gracenote products. His pioneering work in media recognition also forms the basis of Gracenote’s embedded offerings. Prior to co-founding Gracenote, Scherf worked as Unix kernel developer for such companies as Altos Computer Systems, Acer America and Stratus Computer, delving into file systems, I/O performance, SCSI subsystems, networking and fault tolerance. Scherf graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1988 with a B.A. in Math and Biology. The name SKILLS is synonymous with the best electronic music events in Northern California since 1997. Focusing on Arena style dance events, Skills brings quality world-class performers with a state of the art production experience for its attendees and has hosted many of the leading dance musicians in the world. Read More In 1997, Jason started Skills Productions and quickly became one of the largest EDM event promoters in California. Later in ’99, Jason opened the record store Skills Dj Workshop “A Little Bit More Than A Record Store”, on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California. Skills the record store housed the largest selection of Electronic Dance Music in the Bay Area and was one of the last remaining record stores dedicated to electronic music. In the summer of 2009, Skills the record store closed after 10 years of business to focus solely on its events, mainly the ELECTRO TECHNO DISCO SERIES, “POP THE DREAM: AND “POP NYE”. ~ Follow Jason on Twitter: @skills Follow Chris on Twitter: @ctholen Follow Matthew on Twitter: @bodhi_sf Mehul has worked in mobile development since 2006, both in core embedded technologies during his tenure at Apple as well as full stack app development for a number of digital music projects. He holds two fundamental truths in mobile: 1.) HTML5 is a four letter word, and 2.) great mobile apps are simple by design but powerful by context. Mehul believes apps that harness the capabilities of mobile (identity, location, interests, social graph, etc) to minimize user effort while maximizing user value will be the driving force behind the transition from today’s web-enabled phones into true smartphones. Follow Mehul on Twitter: @mehuligan “KC is a spark plug in the little acoustic singer songwriter scene.” – Joel Selvin “KC Turner is everything needed in a concert promoter: he’s enthusiastic about what he’s doing, hardworking, completely trustworthy, and knows his music. Guys like KC are what keep the live music world turning, he just gets it 100%.” – Peter Case Read More “KC Turner might be the next Bill Graham.” – Tom Freund “I never did get to go to a speakeasy or a rent party. But, the tradition is alive and well here in San Francisco thanks to KC Turner. He’s keeping that ball rolling, bringing people together to take in live music in Residing in San Francisco, CA KC Turner keeps busy by heading “KC Turner Presents” which consists of presenting live music throughout the San Francisco Bay Area; billing shows at venues, producing his own house concert series, hosting an open mic at Red Devil Lounge, representing singer/songwriter Megan Slankard, booking a few small venues, helping connect people to new local talent and strumming his own songs from time to time. Turner focuses on one simple goal when producing his events, showcasing great music. The idea is to establish the name/brand, “KC Turner Presents”, so that live music fans know they can trust and expect high quality music well worth the ticket price. He produces concerts that consistently sell out respected San Francisco venues such as Cafe Du Nord, Swedish American Hall and Bottom Of The Hill. He has partnered with San Francisco AAA radio station KFOG to put on a series of house concerts to help raise money for “Music in Schools Today”, a local organization that focuses on funding music education in public schools. The San Francisco Apple Store and KC Turner Presents have merged to produce a series of in store concerts featuring local bands. It is a great opportunity for the bands to attract new fans and get attention from Most folks associate KC Turner with his House Concert series, which has featured such artists as: Matt Nathanson, Bob Schneider, Ben Kweller, Steve Poltz, Griffin House, Sean Hayes, The Mother Hips, Peter Case, Hot Buttered Rum, John Vanderslice, Matt The Electrician, Glen Phillips, Jon Dee Graham, Chuck Prophet, Garrison Starr, Nicki Bluhm, Adam Levy, Tom Freund, David Berkeley, Vienna Teng, Alex Wong, Amber Rubarth, Billy Harvey, Danny Schmidt, Jerry Hannan, John Craigie, Megan Slankard, Heather Combs, Natalia Zukerman, Adrianne Gonzalez and many more. KC spoke on a panel about house concerts at the 2012 SXSW Music Conference in Austin Texas and produced 2 showcases that featured over 40 artists. Turner travels to Austin every year during SXSW to meet other promoters and musicians from all over the country, keeping his ear to the ground to find new hot acts that may be touring to San Francisco. Finally as mentioned above, KC Turner is also a singer/songwriter. You might find him performing from time to time at a bar, small cafe or street corner. For fun, he tours from San Francisco to Chicago every Winter. If you love live music then don’t miss the next KC Turner Presents production! Keep your eye on KC’s calendar at http://kcturnerpresents.com/ Follow KC on Twitter: @kcturnermusic Follow Matt on Twitter: @artistgrowth, @matturmy Ghostly International was started from a dorm room in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1999 and has developed into a cultural curator, and an aesthetic community fulfilling the roles of record label, design retailer, music-publishing company and technology developer.Read More In 2009, Ghostly launched the successful Ghostly Discovery iPhone app, a top ten music app, and in 2010, The Ghostly Store launched online as a unique design and art boutique, centered around the In 2012, Valenti and co-founder Miguel Senquiz launched drip.fm a subscription platform for independent creators. Follow Heidi on Twitter: @heidyv On weekends, Brett is a happily fumbling guitarist and loves to listening to everything from The Beatles to Deadmau5. Follow Brett on Twitter: @brettw Follow Tim on Twitter: @pandora_radio and @timwestergren He then got much more into the business side of things working two summers at Universal Records, running the production company at Northwestern University (booking and producing acts like Counting Crows, Kanye West, Flight of the Conchords, Ok Go, Girl Talk etc.)Read More Next Big Sound went through Techstars in 2009 and raised a seed round that fall. The company has grown to 10 people, 2 global major label deals, and with two charts licensed to Billboard Magazine. In 2011 Next Big Sound was awarded most innovative B2B startup at Midem, hottest tech company at Canadian Music Week, finalist at the sxsw music accelerator. In 2010 Billboard named the company one of 10 Startups To Watch and Alex White to their 30 Under 30 list. In 2011 Alex and his co-founders David Hoffman and Samir Rayani were named to Bloomberg Businessweek’s 25 under 25 and Alex was named to Fortune’s 30 under 30 music list. In January of 2012 Next Big Sound announced a $6.5m Series A fundraise from IA Ventures, Foundry Group. The syndicate also included Jeff Clavier’s SofttechVC angels like Techstar’s David Cohen, Intelliquet’s Peter Zandan, Compete.com founder David Cancel and Northwestern entrepreneurship professor Troy Henikoff. Follow Alex on Twitter: @shalek Before joining Gracenote, White was the vice president of development for streaming music start-up Echo.com, which was one of the first companies to combine group content streaming and community features. Prior to Echo.com, White was a senior director and executive producer for CKS, a media consultancy based in Silicon Valley. He began his career as a reporter and writer. As CEO and President of Songbird, Eric is responsible for driving the strategy, vision and creation of a next generation social music experience. He’s blessed to be working with an exceptionally talented team who have decades of experience building successful products. He works tirelessly to ensure great product experiences and businesses are created and does whatever it takes to keep the team inspired so that they can continue create the next great thing. Read More Growing up in Silicon Valley, Eric was exposed many new technologies at an early age which fueled his passion for building products. His early entrepreneurial spirit started at age seven when he began delivering three newspaper routes (doing so through a revenue share with a 14 year old neighbor because he was legally too young) and learned early on to always strive to create great experiences for his customers. His official career in technology began right after high school when he joined an intriguing startup called Macromedia. The biggest attraction to Macromedia was not only the innovative products but also the company’s tagline, “Experience Matters”, which mirrored his product development philosophy. With 20 years of tech experience under his belt, Eric has been involved in creating some of the industries most groundbreaking products including Director (the standard for multimedia CD-ROM development), Shockwave (the first multimedia technology for the web), Dreamweaver (de facto standard for WYSIWYG HTML editing) and Flash. Flash was the most significant experience for Eric where he led the business and product strategy and took an acquired animation technology (FutureSplash) and turned it into the de facto standard for rich experiences on the web which amassed a base of over 3 million developers, install base of over 2 billion computers and devices and inspired the development of HTML 5. Follow Eric on Twitter: @ewittman Prior to Winamp, Geno led the development of market-leading new products for AOL, including AOL Tickets – an aggregated ticket marketplace and UnCut Video – an early contender in the UGC video race. Prior to AOL, Mr. Yoham spent 10 years at Ticketmaster leading design and product teams that built standout user features that helped drive the online ticketing migration. Follow Geno on Twitter: @genoyoham Follow Brian on Twitter: @zisk Music Kickup™is your label in the cloud. Building tools for global business connections and marketing intelligence – a unique smart layer empowering musicians, managers and the professional industry to create, collaborate and support their art. To commercially publish anything they create – while retaining all rights and royalties. With diligent research and development the Liquipel™ team of scientists created and perfected our proprietary process. With unbelievable advancement in this sector Liquipel™ is proud to be the first and only company in the world to offer this technology to consumers. Furthermore, the Liquipel™ technology is applicable to many of today’s consumer product and will soon be touching many areas of our lives. Since 1997, ABB Recordshas been globally recognized as a leading voice and key player in the independent music community. In 2008, ABB launched 710Digital, a turn-key content representation and rights management service that sources and identifies funding, sponsorship and other commerce solutions for artists, labels and content partners. Their use of technology, distribution, data management, marketing and good old- fashioned A&R across a broad range of retail, mobile, social and promotional platforms empowers artists, labels and content partners to actively participate in near-term, long-term and sustainable revenue streams realized from their business activities.
Darryl BallantyneLyricFind, CEO & FounderAt LyricFind, Darryl is responsible for the overall strategy and direction of the company, including licensing and distribution. Darryl pioneered the digital lyrics space, successfully negotiating the first-ever mass lyrics licensing deal with EMI Music Publishing in 2005.Read More
John BattelleFederated Media Publishing, Founder and Executive ChairmanJohn Battelle founded and currently serves as Executive Chairman of Federated Media Publishing, which now ranks as one of the top properties on the Web. Battelle was also the co-founder, Executive Producer and Program Chair of the Web 2 Summit. Battelle maintains Searchblog, an ongoing daily site, which covers the intersection of media, technology, and culture at www.battellemedia.com.Read More
Idan BeckIncident, CEO and FounderIdan Beck is the CEO and founder of Incident, a music technology company focused on creating fun, interactive music hardware and software that is approachable to anyone, regardless of experience. In 2009, Beck began hacking away in his parents’ Cupertino garage on a new kind of guitar that would fuse his love of electronic music production with the instrument he had spent more than half his life playing. As the technology progressed from an idea into a product, the gTar was born and he founded Incident to bring it to market.Read More
Jonathan BenderCOO, SoundExchangeJon brings more than 20 years of music industry business and management expertise to his position at SoundExchange. Over the years, Jon has served in senior operational roles at Concord Music Group, Universal Music Group, and EMI Music.Read More
Lyrics BornAmongst the dusty records of UC Davis’ KDVS college radio station, Tom Shimura, who currently makes records as Lyrics Born, found too much to love. Sandwiched between gatefold LPs, 12-inch singles, dub versions and white-labels was a reservoir of inspiration that he would draw on for the following decades. That was then. This is now. Read More
Adam BoydenConduit, PresidentPresident of Conduit, Adam Boyden is responsible for strategic direction, marketing and business development. Previously, Boyden was an executive at Xfire (acquired by MTVN for $110 million), cofounder/former CEO of Autodaq, now OpenLane (acquired by KAR for $210 million), and founder of China Consultancy, an advisory firm to companies entering the Chinese market. Read More
John BoyleInsomniac, Chief Growth Officer & Interim Chief Financial Officer
Colin BrumelleTwitter, Senior Software EngineerColin is currently working as a software engineer at Twitter, building new advertising products Previously, Colin was a professional musician, touring for over 10 years in barely road worthy vehicles.Read More
Josh BuilderThe Orchard, CTOAs CTO, Josh oversees product strategy and technology design, engineering, content management and delivery systems for The Orchard. Josh first started to build the Product Development team in 2009 and orchestrated a new structure for The Orchard’s development methodologies and engineering tactics. Prior to The Orchard, Josh managed North East Product Management at T-Mobile, and served as developer at Cingular Wireless, where he was an integral part in developing their engineering dashboards. Follow Josh on Twitter: @JBuildIt
David ButlerArtistWorks, CEO & Co-Founder Prior to co-founding ArtistWorks, David was a pioneering technologist at Quantum Computer Services, which became AOL. Leading a small group of programmers, David and his team wrote the original AOL1.0 software for the subscription-based online business. In 2001 AOL, which had become the first blue chip company of the Internet, was acquired by Time Warner for $164 billion. Read More
Charles CaldasMerlin, CEOWith 20 years of experience within the music and digital media industries, Charles Caldas moved to London in 2007 to assume the role of CEO of Merlin, the global rights agency for the independent label sector. Representing the most commercially significant basket of music rights outside of those held by the major labels, Merlin’s remit is to help its member companies ensure that they are able to participate in the ever-changing world of emerging technology and distribution in the healthiest, fairest and strongest manner possible.Read More
Bryan CalhounThe Blueprint Group, Digital Strategy and Business DevelopmentBryan has worked in the music industry in various capacities including A&R, marketing, digital licensing, radio promotions, business development and concert promotions for over 20 years including time at Relativity Records, RED Distribution, Warlock Records, Serchlite Music, as COO of Kanye West’s GOOD Music and most recently as VP of New Media and External Affairs for SoundExchange. Read More
Debbie CavalierBerkleemusic.com at Berklee College of Music, CEODebbie Cavalier is the CEO of Berkleemusic, the online continuing education division of Berklee College of Music. In that capacity, Cavalier oversees some of Berklee’s most innovative initiatives that expand the reach of the college and provide music education opportunities to a global community of musicians. These initiatives include: the college’s online extension school Berkleemusic, the world’s largest online music school serving 12k students per year in more than 150 countries around the world; Berklee Shares, a site that hosts free online music lessons developed by Berklee faculty making a broad selection of Berklee’s curriculum free and universally available online; and, Berklee Press the publishing arm of the college. Read More
Michael CerdaVEVO, Senior Vice President, Product DevelopmentMichael Cerda has a long career in breaking new ground for startups and bringing larger companies through major inflections. He is currently Senior Vice President, Product Development for VEVO, the world’s leading all-premium music video and entertainment platform. Read More
Cerda earned his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Technology/Management from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. He is currently based in New York and enjoys playing music in El Desayuno. Follow Michael on Twitter: @VEVO
Shelley ChampineLocal Music Vibe, Founder & Community OrganizerAfter 20 years managing live theatre productions (Beach Blanket Babylon) and corporate events (Windows XP Launch), Shelley shifted her focus to live music. In 2009, she co-founded Local Music Vibe with her husband Dave. Combining Shelley’s knowledge of event production and social networking with Dave’s background in scalable technology and product design, they have created a resource for promoting local music scenes worldwide.Read More
Josh ConstineTechCrunch, WriterJosh Constine is a writer for TechCrunch who specializes in analysis of social products and music technology. Previously, he was the lead writer for Inside Facebook and earned a master’s degree in Cybersociology from Stanford. Josh is a life long music fan who’s been to 8 straight Coachellas, played in several bands, and maintains a curated concert calendar for his friends in San Francisco. Follow Josh on Twitter: @JoshConstine
Jack Conte and Nataly DawnPomplamoose, Multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, filmmaker; Pomplamoose, Composer & Lead Vocalist
Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn form the recording duo “Pomplamoose.” 
Jean CookMusician / Future of Music Coalition, Director of ProgramsJean Cook is a musician, producer and Director of Programs for Future of Music Coalition (FMC), a national nonprofit that works to improve the lives of musicians through research, education and advocacy on policy issues that directly impact the ability of artists to make a living and reach audiences. She is a founder of Anti-Social Music, a New York-based new music collective, and currently records and tours with Ida/Elizabeth Mitchell, Jon Langford, and Beauty Pill. Her background includes producing and hosting radio programs for 89.9 WKCR-FM, New York, working for DC-based multidisciplinary presenter Washington Performing ArtsSociety, and producing dozens of new music performance projects.Read More
Alex CureleaSongFreaks, FounderAlex founded SongFreaks in late 2011, as the best social alternative to existing music sites and mobile apps. SongFreaks was officially launched at SXSW in March 2012 to great reviews, and is currently enjoying a 4.5-star rating in the App Store.
Hisham DahudHypebot.com, Senior Analyst / Fame House, LLC,
Business DevelopmentHisham Dahud is a music business professional and musician at the epicenter of music technology, digital marketing, and music production and live performance; carrying a uniquely wide perspective of today’s music industry.Read More
Corey DenisToolshed, VP Digital Strategy & Marketing; SoundExchange, Consultant to SX CommunicationsCorey Denis has been pioneering digital music marketing for fifteen years using everything from early ListServs & phpbb forums to social networks and MMORPGs. She started playing violin at age nine, but got her music industry start a little later at What Are Records? where she built and leveraged online street teams to increase sales and connect with fan bases for Frank Black, Figurine, Stephen Lynch, Maceo Parker, The Samples, The Innocence Mission, March Records & many others.Read More
Donnie DinchFounder & CEO, WillCallDonnie Dinch is the co-founder and CEO of WillCall, a mobile app that makes it easier than ever to see live shows. Built on the idea ticketing shouldn’t be a hurdle, WillCall seamlessly couples the transaction into event discovery on mobile devices.Read More
Michael Drexler
Executive Director of Business Development, BMI New Media & Strategic DevelopmentBroadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), a global leader in music rights management, collects license fees on behalf of the more than 500,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers it represents and distributes those fees as royalties to members whose works have been publicly performed.
Michael received his MBA from Baruch College, Zicklin School of Business in New York, holds an M.A. in Music Production from the Hochschule für Musik Detmold (Germany) and a Professional Diploma in Jazz Piano Performance from Berklee College of Music in Boston. He is also an accomplished keyboardist, music producer and audio engineer with two Grammy nominations to his name.
David DufresneBandzoogle, CEODavid Dufresne is CEO at Bandzoogle, the most powerful platform for musicians to build their website, engage their fans, and sell their music and merchandise directly. Bandzoogle works with tens of thousands of bands and musicians to help them create a strong base for their online strategy. Read More
Max Engel Buzzmedia, Director of Music ProductMax Engel is the Director of Product for SPIN, which is part of the Buzzmedia family. For SPIN, Max is responsible for shepherding the site, apps, mobile, and other key initiatives. Before recently joining Buzzmedia, Max was at the BBC, where he was the Senior Product Manager on the Digital Entertainment and Games team, working on properties like Doctor Who and Top Gear. Read More
Rick FarmanSuperfly Presents, Co-Founder & PartnerRick Farman began promoting concerts at the age of 17 at small clubs in New York City. While attending Tulane University, he was Promotions Manager at Tipitina’s, New Orleans’ legendary nightclub. In 1996, he left Tipitina’s to form Superfly Presents with fellow music enthusiasts Jonathan Mayers, Richard Goodstone and Kerry Black. Overseeing the company’s operations, talent booking, comedy programming, artist management, publicity and company development, Farman, along with the Superfly partners, has been a prime force in the creation of some of the country’s most groundbreaking festivals, including the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, which Rolling Stone praised as “one of the 50 moments to change the history of rock and roll;” Outside Lands, the first major ticketed event in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park; and Superfly During Jazz Fest, the company’s inaugural concert series now in its 15th year.
Michael Franti Michael Franti & SpearheadThe Sound Of Sunshine — the inspired and inspiring new album by Michael Franti & Spearhead — is a kind of musical sun shower, a bright, beautiful and often buoyant song cycle created to bring all kinds of listeners a sense of hope during rough and rainy times for so many in our world.
Lewis GershMetamorphic Ventures, Managing PartnerLewis Gersh is a Managing Partner at Metamorphic Ventures. MV invests in seed and early stage digital media and digital commerce technology companies as a focus on Transactional Media, including desktop web, mobile and brick and mortar applications.Read More
Alexis GilesDJZ, Biz Dev
Ean GoldenDJ Tech Tools, FounderEan Golden is the leading innovator in a new age of djing that is sweeping the world. In 2007, He founded the first site focused on digital djs and controllers: DjTechTools.com. This global hub is now the community center for millions of djs that are learning to perform and become artists with dj software. Not just an innovator online, he has designed some of the most popular dj hardware in the last 3 years and created the controllerism movement, a modern twist on turntablism. Follow Ean on Twitter: @djtechtools
Greg GordonPyramind, Founder and CEOGregory J. Gordon is a digital media entrepreneur, music producer, audio engineer, educator and the founder and CEO of Pyramind Inc., an internationally recognized production and training company based in the heart of San Francisco’s creative/tech community (www.pyramind.com). The award winning studio division of Pyramind has produced music and sound for a significant collection of “A-list” clients including: Microsoft Game Studios (Halo, Disney), SEGA (Iron Man II), 343 Industries (Halo Waypoint), Ubisoft (RockSmith), LucasArts (Lego Indiana Jones), 2K Games (Bioshock II), and Sony Computer Entertainment America (God Of War). In 2003, Greg expanded Pyramind Studios to create a world-class music-production training center, Pyramind Training, and has further expanded the ground campus experience into online eLearning
Alexandra GreenbergMSO PR, Vice PresidentSince coming to MSO (Mitch Schneider Organization) – one of North America’s top music PR houses – in 2001, Vice President Alexandra Greenberg has broadened the company’s music/lifestyle client roster by expanding its electronic division, while at the same time working with artists in rock and alternative fields. She’s been an integral part of many of MSO’s top campaigns for artist, DVD and soundtrack releases, festivals, events and venues like The Smashing Pumpkins, KORN, Motley Crue, The Offspring, Perry Farrell, deadmau5, Paul van Dyk, The Crystal Method, Steve Aoki, Plastikman, David Lynch, Cut Chemist, Junkie XL, Coachella, Ultra Music Festival, Sunset Strip Music Festival, Lollapalooza International, HARD, IDentity Festival, The Roxy, GIANT’s annual downtown Los Angeles New Years Eve celebrations, Re:Generation, all of the Underworld franchise soundtracks and much more.Read More
Gary GreensteinWilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Of-Counsel
Gary Greenstein is an attorney with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. He specializes in intellectual property, licensing, mergers and acquisitions, and commercial transactions, with specialized expertise in the digital exploitation of intellectual property. He represents a wide range of technology companies in licensing transactions with copyright owners in the music, film, and television industries. He previously served as the first general counsel of SoundExchange and vice president of business and legal affairs at RIAA.
Brian GruberShowGo.tv, Founder and CEOBrian Gruber is a thirty year new media veteran. He was the first head of marketing for C-SPAN, where he launched C-SPAN II, with the largest subscriber base ever for a cable network at the time.
Dave HaynesSoundCloud, VP Business DevelopmentDave Haynes is VP Business Development for SoundCloud, the leading audio platform that allows anyone to capture, record and share their sounds over the web. With over a decade’s experience in the music industry, Dave currently works at the forefront of the latest trends in digital music.Read More
Jon HealeyLos Angeles Times, Editorial writer and bloggerJon Healey is a member of the editorial board at the Los Angeles Times, which means he is one of a nameless, faceless group writing screeds that, technically speaking, reflect the views of the publisher (whoever that happens to be at the time). His main contributions to the editorial page are pieces about intellectual property, technology, the economy, regulation, and general business issues. He also writes for The Times’ Opinion L.A. and Tech Now blogs.
Celia HirschmanDowntown Marketing, PresidentFrom 2003 to 2010, Ms. Hirschman simultaneously ran UK based independent label, One Little Indian for North America, overseeing the marketing for numerous recording artists including Bjork, The Twilight Singers and Lloyd Cole. During the same time period, Ms. Hirschman was also a regular weekly commentator on the music business on KCRW, hosting the show she created, “On The Beat”. “On The Beat” covered the convergence of the music business with the digital age.Read More
Aziz IshamreKiosk, CEOAziz Isham is the CEO and co-founder of the direct-to-fan, viral distribution site reKiosk, where musicians and writers can open their own digital kiosks and sell directly to their fans, friends and followers, and have their audience sell for them. Before launching reKiosk, he was president of Arcade Sunshine Media, one of the country’s top digital publishing firms, and spent a decade as an TV executive and producer, where he created and produced documentary series for National Geographic, History Channel, Discovery and others. Read More
Marc JacobsonMarc Jacobson P.C.Selected by Chambers USA every year since 2005 and by Super Lawyers since 2008 as one of the top Entertainment Lawyers in NYC, Jacobson built his unique practice by focusing on his two passions: music and film. He represented the estates of George & Ira Gershwin, Elvis Presley and Duke Ellington and important songwriters such as Jimmy Webb, Shakira and Annie Roboff. He handled films like “Conviction” with Hilary Swank & Sam Rockwell, represented Oscar Nominee Rip Torn and is now Executive Producer of Dennis Hopper’s final film. Read More
Naveen JainSparkart, CEOThe San Francisco-born Jain is the founder and CEO of Sparkart Group Inc., an award winning technology and creative firm that services top entertainment and consumer brand clients. Jain is a renowned angel investor, and technologist with a reputation for consistently delivering highly innovative digital marketing strategies and systems.Read More
Steve JangSchematic Labs, Co-Founder and CEOSteve is the co-founder and CEO of Schematic Labs. Schematic Labs is a San Francisco-based venture-backed startup and is the maker of SoundTracking, the fastest growing music social network on iPhone and Android. The AppStore recently named SoundTracking “Best iPhone Music App of 2011”.Read More
Anneke JongBread, Vice President of Business DevelopmentAnneke Jong is the Vice President of Business Development for Bread, a digital ad network with proprietary technology to help support musicians and other online influencers. She is also a tech columnist and journalist, and her work has been published by Forbes, The Daily Muse, The Huffington Post, and CBSnews.com. In 2011, Femmeonomics named her one of the Top 50 Women to Watch in Tech.Read More
Brewster KahleInternet Archive, Digital LibrarianBrewster Kahle is the founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive in 1996. An entrepreneur and Internet pioneer, Brewster invented the first Internet publishing system and helped put newspapers and publishers online in the 1990′s. Keywords: MIT, Thinking Machines, WAIS, AOL, Alexa Internet, Amazon.com, Internet Archive, Wayback Machine, Open Content Alliance, European Archive, EFF, Public Knowledge, AAAS, NAE.
Follow Brewster on Twitter: @brewster_kahle
Ethan KaplanLive Nation Labs, VP of ProductEthan Kaplan is the VP of Product for LiveNation. He is a co-founder of LiveNation Labs, a division of the company responsible for “disruption from within” and creating new mobile and web experiences for users and customers. Prior to LiveNation, he was the SVP of Technology for Warner Music Group and Warner Bros. Records.Read More
Robert KayeMusicBrainz, Mayhem & Chaos Coordinator
Robert is the founder and lead developer for MusicBrainz, and President and Executive Director of the MetaBrainz Foundation, the non-profit organization that pays the bills for MusicBrainz. After studying Computer Engineering at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo he joined Xing Technology where he was part of the MP3 team and served as the development manager for the AudioCatalyst project. While at EMusic, Robert worked on the Zinf (formerly FreeAmp) and Obsequeiuem projects, in addition to working on MusicBrainz.Read More
Zoë KeatingComposer/PerformerZoë Keating is a one-woman orchestra. She uses a cello and a foot-controlled laptop to record layer upon layer of cello, creating intricate, haunting and compelling music. Zoë is known for both her use of technology – which she uses to sample her cello onstage – and for her DIY ethic which has resulted in the sale of over 50,000 copies of her self-released albums and a devoted social media following.Read More
Pat KenealyIDG Ventures USA, Managing Director
Pat Kenealy has been evaluating and explaining computer and media technology companies for 35 years as an editor, publisher, media exec and venture capitalist. For 26 of those years, Pat has worked at IDG, the global I.T. media conglomerate, where he was variously President of DIGITAL NEWS, CEO of PC WORLD, CEO of IDG itself, and a General Partner at various IDG venture capital funds. Now a Managing Director at IDG Ventures USA in San Francisco, Pat is an active investor in early-stage I.T. companies, and in consumer-facing Internet content, service and commerce companies.Read More
Bryan KimTracksby, Director of Business DevelopmentBryan works at tech startups involving music, and yet he’s still optimistic. Bryan is currently the Director of Business Development at Tracksby / Hipset. Previously, he was on the founding team of Ustream, where he produced record breaking live broadcasts for Lil Wayne, Taylor Swift and Snoop Dogg. Read More
Christiane Cargill KinneyLeClairRyan LLP, PartnerChristiane Cargill Kinney is a partner at LeClairRyan, and Chair of the Firm’s Entertainment Industry Team. Spearheading the entertainment division in the Los Angeles office, Kinney’s entertainment practice is focused on the representation of talent primarily in the areas of music, film, and television. She also specializes in branding and cross-promotional opportunities for corporations and artists. Kinney is a musician herself, and a voting member of the Recording Academy. Read More
Anu KirkSony Network Entertainment, Director, Music ServiceAnu Kirk is interested in media and technology. A musician since grade school, his early years were shaped by the Apple ][ computer, synthesizers, and rock music.Read More
Ayal KleinmanWarner Bros. Records, Vice President, New Media 
Sahil LavingiaGumroad, Founder/CEOSahil is the designer/founder/CEO of Gumroad. Previously, he was early at Pinterest and maker of turntable for iPhone.
Follow Sahil on Twitter: @shl
Damon LavrincWired, Transportation EditorDamon is the Transportation Editor for Wired, heading up the publication’s automotive, autonomous vehicle, infotainment, and in-car mobile connectivity coverage. With nearly a decade of experience in the automotive world, Damon’s goal is to bring the same level of enthusiasm and excitement – normally reserved for the latest Ferrari or the newest iPhone – to the world of connected vehicles. Follow Damon on Twitter: @damonlavrinc
Aaron LeeseStagecraft Software, Founder
Duke LetoCASH Music, Free + Open Source CitizenJonathan “Duke” Leto has been contributing to open source software for over 15 years. As a developer on the CASH Music project, he is helping build a free and open platform that’s available to all artists, designed in partnership with artists and labels. Follow Duke on Twitter: @dukeleto
Jeff LiebensonLiebenson Law, PrincipalJeff Liebenson is President of the International Association of Entertainment Lawyers. He concentrates his practice in the music industry, digital entertainment and intellectual property law at Liebenson Law in New York City. Jeff represented EMI in the first iTunes negotiations with Apple, Sony in establishing its Pressplay online service with Universal, and Gracenote in obtaining digital lyric licensing rights from the music publishing industry. Read More
Evan LowensteinStageit, Founder & CEOEvan Lowenstein relies on his nearly 20 years of experience in the music industry to oversee all aspects of Stageit. With experience as a recording artist, award-winning writer and executive, Lowenstein’s goal for Stageit was to create an online video platform that would allow artists to stream and monetize concert-like live performances while interacting with their fans in real time. Stageit officially launched at the SXSW Music Festival in March 2011.Read More
Liz LowryIsolation Network, Inc., Sr. Director, Corporate DevelopmentLiz Lowry is Sr. Director of Corporate Development at Isolation Network, Inc. the parent company of INgrooves Fontana. In this newly formed group, Liz is leading the company’s efforts to explore and develop new retail and strategic partnerships as well as focus on business strategy and product development. Liz previously supervised the Digital Sales team at INgrooves Fontana managing a team of Account Leads calling on digital retailers both in the US and abroad.Read More
Ryan MacForbes Magazine, ReporterRyan Mac is a San Francisco-based staff reporter for Forbes Magazine. As a member of Forbes’ wealth team, he spends a great deal of time tracking the business deals and personal fortunes of some of the world’s wealthiest individuals. He’s combined his interests in business and music to help create Forbes’ first-ever rankings of the globe’s top-earning DJs, which was published last August. Read More
Larry MarcusWalden Venture Capital, Managing DirectorLarry’s focus is digital media and consumer services. He was named to the 2012 Billboard Power 100 and Twitter 140. Larry was a founding investor in Pandora (NYSE: P) in early 2004 when Walden
led the rebirth round to focus the company on launching a consumer-facing
service and was a Director from 2004 through it’s IPO. Read More
Chris MartinPandora, VP of EngineeringChris joined Pandora in late 2004. Since joining the company, he has managed the engineering function at Pandora. Today, Chris oversees a team of more than 50 people who are tackling a range of engineering projects, from perfecting playlists to in-car development and advertising integration. Other projects under his management include software development, quality assurance, customer support, device development, device certification and production support. Read More
Mike MasnickFloor64, CEO/ Techdirt, FounderMike is the visionary behind Floor64, building up the core idea into reality and recruiting the management team. In addition to providing the strategic direction for the company, Mike oversees all editorial aspects of the Floor64’s public and customer sites. Mike’s insight into the realms of business and technology are the basis for his frequent posts to the award winning Techdirt blog. The widely followed, often quoted blog was launched in 1997 and remains one of the top destinations online for discussions on the future of media, business models and policy. Mike is a sought after conference keynote speaker, and regular does executive briefings with C-level execs.Read More
Matt MasonBitTorrentMatt Mason currently serves as Executive Director of Marketing at BitTorrent, a creator of advanced, innovative technologies designed to efficiently deliver large files across the Internet. BitTorrent currently boasts over 150 million active monthly users, and moves 20-40% of all Internet traffic on a daily basis.Read More
Steven MasseyEpigram Software, LLC, Co-founderSteven Massey is a music and audio geek who has been involved in the professional audio industry for over a decade. He got his start at Digidesign tinkering on code for the Pro Tools audio recording platform.Read More
Rachel MastersRed Magnet Media, Partner and Co-FounderRachel Masters is a partner and co-founder of Red Magnet Media. She is also on the Board of Advisors of RootMusic, the #1 music application on Facebook, and is an Advisor to NARM’s Digital Think Tank which serves as a forum for the discussion of next generation music products and services including streaming, downloads, games, apps, and direct-to-fan distribution companies.
Michael McGearyEngine Advocacy, Co-founder & Chief Political StrategistMichael McGeary is the co-founder and Chief Political Strategist of Engine Advocacy, a working group of people in the entrepreneurial sector, based in San Francisco, working to connect those leaders with government to effect change on issues important to high-growth entrepreneurial tech businesses.
Erin McKeownMusician, Writer, & ProducerErin McKeown is an internationally known musician, writer, and producer. With 8 full length albums, 3 EPs, and numerous soundtracks to her credit, she has spent the last 10 years crafting a reputation as an original musical voice and compelling live performer. Lately, she has added mentor and activist to her list of accomplishments. Read More
Eddie MeehanGround(ctrl), Co Founder & COOEddie Meehan is a co-founder and Vice President of ground(ctrl), an industry leader in providing world class experiences for music fans and the artists they love. Clients of ground(ctrl) include some of the biggest and brightest names in music today, such as Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj, My Morning Jacket, Guns N Roses, Matchbox Twenty, Backstreet Boys and more. Eddie brings nearly 15 years of professional experience to the Sacramento, CA based company.Read More
Mark MontgomeryFLO {thinkery}, FounderMark Montgomery is a pioneer in the e-commerce and business to consumer marketing space. Over the past 15 years, he has worked with hundreds of entertainment and corporate clients, including names like Sony, Kanye West, Keith Urban, RIM/Blackberry, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Bon Jovi, Pearl Jam, Best Buy, Gnarls Barkley, Rascal Flatts, and General Motors to name a few.Read More
He recently founded FLO {a thinkery}, and maintains his role as the Entrepreneur in Residence for Claritas Capital, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. Along with his EIR role, he holds several board seats in the profit and not for profit companies. In addition, he maintains a small list of consulting clients focused on overall strategy, business development, branding, and technology initiatives.
Follow Mark on Twitter: @hellomarko
Chris Mouliosmixin.to, Founder
The moment Chris Moulios realized he could hack his Commodore 64 and turn it into a music sequencer, he knew what his lifelong pursuit would be – creating innovative ways to combine music and software.
Lars MurrayColumbia Records, VP Digital Marketing
With over 15 years experience in digital marketing, Lars Murray has worked for Columbia Records since 2006, developing and executing online, mobile, and interactive marketing initiatives with a variety of third party media and technology partners. At Columbia and previously at Virgin Records, he has run digital campaigns for a roster of established and emerging artists including Jack White, the Avett Brothers, Coheed and Cambria, the Offspring, Slayer, Calvin Harris, Gorillaz, KT Tunstall, Lenny Kravitz, Pearl Jam and others. Prior to that, he was Rykodisc’s first Director of New Media, building the label’s industry-leading online presence from the ground up and spearheading groundbreaking digital distribution deals for the label. Follow Lars on Twitter: @larsmurray22
Hany NadaGGV Capital, Co-founder and partnerHany Nada is co-founder of GGV Capital and has worked as a long-term partner with more than 150 companies over the past decade to build companies that can succeed in today’s global marketplace. He is a trusted resource to public and private company CEOs and management teams on global market development, customer introductions and M&A/IPO guidance across US and Asian markets. Read More
Sean O’ConnellCreative Allies, CEO and FounderCreative Allies showcases designers and illustrators from around the world. Emerging designers from around the world can enter design contests on Creative Allies to create art and merchandise for bands, films and festivals. The best illustrators win more than a prize.Read More
Dave ParkRecombinant, CEODave is CEO at Recombinant, who are dedicated to pioneering the study of music as a language and developing interactive technologies that put the fan in the band. Read More
Stephen PhillipsWe Are Hunted, Founder & CEOWe Are Hunted is a New York City based software company that has developed proprietary search technology which continuously scans the Internet to identify the hottest new music in the world. Hunted is regarded by music industry insiders and indie music fans as one of the best places in the world to discover new music. Stephen Phillips is the founder and leader of We Are Hunted.Read More
Sean PorterTicketfly, CTOSean Porter oversees the technology group at Ticketfly, where his team works to provide the best marketing and ticketing tools for live event promoters. Prior to Ticketfly’s acquisition of Gigbot, he built Gigbot Pro, the first integrated marketing and ticketing system for live music. Sean’s been developing Internet software since 1995, most recently as the Product Manager of Enterprise Web Publishing Solutions at Quark and engineering stints at Qwest, Broadband Associates, and Silicon Graphics.Read More
Jeff PriceTuneCore, FounderOn January 26th, 2006, Jeff Price launched TuneCore, the world’s largest music distribution and publishing administration entity in the world.
Tim QuirkGoogle, Head of Global Content ProgrammingTim Quirk is head of global content programming at Google, where he leads the team responsible for music, books, apps and video merchandising. Prior to Google, he was VP of Music Programming for Rhapsody. Tim spent much of the ’80s and ’90s as the singer and lyricist for the punk-pop band Too Much Joy, before politely easing his way into music journalism and the digital music business.Read More
Neeta RagoowansiTuneSat, VP of Business Development and Legal AffairsNeeta is the Vice President of Business Development and Legal Affairs for TuneSat, a leading music/audio monitoring service that employs its exclusive audio fingerprint technology to deftly detect music use on television broadcasts and the Internet, and guide creators and copyright owners to additional revenue streams as well as provide them with business and marketing insight. TuneSat’s unique audio fingerprint technology monitors hundreds of TV channels and millions of websites around the world, helping rights holders collect millions of dollars that would otherwise have been lost.Read More
Rob ReidAuthorRob Reid is a high technology entrepreneur and author based in Los Angeles. He was the founder, CEO, and Chairman of Listen.com, the online music company that developed the Rhapsody music service. Listen was the first online music company to secure full-catalog licenses from all of the major labels. Rob sold Listen to RealNetworks in the summer of 2003, and became RealNetworks’ Vice President of Strategic Development – a position that he remained in until 2005. Viacom’s MTV Networks division later bought half of Rhapsody, and in March of 2010 it was spun out as an independent company. Rhapsody now has over a million paying subscribers.Read More
Shaun ReidDigital Realty, Sales Manager – Western Region ColocationShaun Reid is the Sales Manager – Western Region Colocation of Digital Realty (NYSE:DLR) and is responsible for management of Digital Realty’s colocation sales efforts for the Western Region of the US.
Tayna ReisGlobal Digital Impact, CEOVice President of The New Frontiers of Cooperation Institute (www.infc.org.br), coordinating technological social projects such as Rede Brasil Rural (www.redebrasilrural.mda.gov.br), a social network made for rural families, in association with the Brazilian government.
Steve RennieRen Management, Personal Manager, INCUBUSMr. Rennie has worked in the music business for over 30 years. He has a broad range of experience as a concert promoter, record executive, internet entrepreneur, and artist manager. He has also been deeply involved in the intersection of music and technology since the earliest days of the internet. Mr. Rennie has been the personal manager for multi-platinum rock band Incubus for the last 13 years and has guided them from the day they got signed to a record deal to being a hugely successful worldwide record selling and concert attraction. Read More
Scot RichardsonTicketMob, Founder/CEOScot Richardson brings more than a decade of experience producing and marketing live events to his role as Founder/CEO of TicketMob, a technology company he founded in 2009 and went live with in 2010. He is responsible for setting the overall direction and strategy for the forward-thinking ticketing platform for venues, artists and promoters, overseeing product, operations, sales, business development and partnerships.Read More
Prior to TicketMob, Scot spent 10 years in the live comedy arena, where he was President/CEO of one of the largest live comedy producers in the country ComedyJuice, a writer for various well-known comedy websites, and as Executive Producer/Head Writer for “The Gleib Show” on the National Lampoon College Network. Scot graduated with a B.S. degree in Management Science from the University of California, San Diego.
Ty RobertsGracenote, Co-founder, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology OfficerRecognized as one of the inventors of enhanced CD technology and credited with producing the industry’s first enhanced CDs, Ty Roberts can be considered one of the fathers of modern digital entertainment. He joined Gracenote in November of 1998 and helped found the company after it acquired ION, a multimedia and music technology venture he founded in 1993. Roberts serves as Gracenote’s chief technology strategist, providing technology direction and overseeing the creation of products and services that leverage the power of the Gracenote database to deliver information services.Read More
Benji RogersPledgeMusic, Founder and CEOPledgeMusic founder and CEO Benji Rogers was literally born into music—his mother, father, and stepfather were all artist managers. Prepared by a childhood spent sleeping on a tour bus to hauling flight cases, Rogers’ indie career spanned 13 years and 5 albums. Along the way, Rogers learned how to make albums under intense financial hardships. PledgeMusic is the result of that journey. Read More
Ian RogersTopspin Media, CEOIan Rogers, Chief Executive Officer of Topspin, is a music and technology industry veteran with roots in defining the way artists and consumers promote & experience digital media online. Rogers has been building digital media applications since 1992. He created one of the first music-related Web sites and built many of the original promotional sites for the music and movie industries. Read More
Ira P. RothkenRothken Law Firm, FounderIra P. Rothken, founder of the Rothken Law Firm, is a leading advisor and legal counsel to companies in the social network, entertainment, internet, cloud services, and videogame industries. Rothken is a lawyer based in Northern California with a Computer Science and Medical Research background and has been in practice for 20 years.Read More
Todd RufoSan Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, DirectorTodd Rufo is the Director of the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development. As Director, Todd oversees Business Attraction and Retention, Small Business, Film, International Trade and Commerce, Workforce Development, and the Neighborhood Development divisions. Todd was previously the Deputy Director for the Department, where he lead has lead the City’s business attraction and retention efforts, with a focus on key business sectors including technology, biotech, cleantech, financial and professional services and manufacturing.Read More
Marc RuxinTastemakerX, CEO and FounderMarc is the founder and CEO of TastemakerX, a social game for music discovery. The platform allows users to express tastes and preferences by building virtual portfolios of the artists they love, and connect with like-minded music fans. TastemakerX launched in June 2012 and has become the one of the first platforms to leverage a game mechanic to surface real time musical trends.Read More
Julie SamuelsElectronic Frontier Foundation, Staff AttorneyJulie is a Staff Attorney at EFF, where she focuses on intellectual property issues. Before joining EFF, Julie litigated IP and entertainment cases in Chicago at Loeb & Loeb and Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Julie spent time as a legislative assistant at the Media Coalition in New York and as an assistant editor at the National Journal Group in D.C. Julie earned her JD from Vanderbilt University and her B.S. in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Follow Julie on Twitter: @juliepsamuels
Theda SandifordUniversal Republic Records, VP Digital MarketingTheda Sandiford’s varied career spans radio where she was the first black programmer of a major market country station WYNY to Billboard magazine where she wrote the influential Hot 100 Singles Spotlight column.
Matt SandlerChromatik, Co-Founder and CEOMatt Sandler is the co-founder and CEO of Chromatik. Named one of Entrepreneur Magazine’s “Top 100 Brilliant Companies of 2012,” Chromatik is an education technology company redefining how people practice, perform, and teach music. Its web and iPad products are used by American Idol, UCLA, the Los Angeles Unified School District, and over 200 K12 programs in Southern California. As CEO, Matt leads the business development and product teams, and has raised over $2M in venture funding from Learn Capital, Kapor Capital, 500 Startups, and strategic angel investors.Read More
Steve ScherfCo-founder, Chief Architect and FellowSteve Scherf and business partner Ti Kan created the CDDB compact disc recognition service as a hobby in 1995 in order to get personal computers to display information about the CDs they were playing. To their surprise, the service became overwhelmingly popular, prompting them to found CDDB LLC in 1998. Later that year the company was acquired by Escient LLC, and the name was changed to Gracenote.Read More
J SiderBandPage, CEO & FounderJ is the Founder & CEO of BandPage, which is the leading service for musicians to manage their presence across the web. He was recently named to both Forbes and Billboard’s 30 Under 30 in 2011. J is a veteran in the business of managing bands and venues around the country. This experience opened his eyes to the practical needs of the music community in the digital era, and the lack of a solution. Out of this realization J founded BandPage to provide an honest, social tool to help musicians navigate the web. Follow J on Twitter: @JSider and @BandPage
Jason SperlingSkills Events, CEO & FounderJason Sperling handles talent buying, marketing and production design for Skills Events.
The Future of Skills is NOW.
Todd Tate Live365, Inc., Artist Radio ManagerAs the Community Architect for the SF MusicTech Summit, Todd has cultivated sponsors, attendees and panelists since the inaugural Summit. Todd has just recently joined Live365 as the new Artist Radio Manager and is heading up new efforts in artist radio product and business development. Todd is a Web music tech product & business development professional, growing the business of music by building partnerships, products, and websites for bands and music brands.Read More
Timothy Terriberry MozillaTimothy Terriberry has been contributing to codecs produced by the Xiph.Org Foundation for about a decade. In addition to leading the Theora project and helping maintain the other Xiph codecs, he was one of the authors of Opus and assisted in its standardization. He currently works for Mozilla, where he maintains their codec implementations and tries to solve the problem of royalty-free media formats for the web.
Chris TholenBandPage, CTO & VP, EngineeringChris has a unique perspective of building a technology company from scratch, learning to plan for massive scale early on, and how the availability of high quality APIs have changed the software business to allow companies to specialize much further than before. Just as important, he has significant experience in how to scale an engineering team and culture.Read More
Matthew TomaszewiczThrillcall, Co-FounderMatthew leads product marketing and business development initiatives at Thrillcall. Matthew most recently worked with Quantcast on their go-to-market strategy, developing their flagship Marketer product. Prior to this, Matthew led R&D efforts for online customer acquisition shop Adteractive and was general manager of their largest business line.Read More
Mehul TrevediNoiseToys, Co-founder and CEOMehul Trivedi is the Co-founder and CEO of NoiseToys, a mobile music startup in San Francisco. Prior to starting NoiseToys, Mehul was part of the original iPhone team at Apple and the chief architect of the OpenAL audio framework, working on the audio engine used by streaming music services such as Pandora as well as 90% of iOS mobile games. He has also consulted for renowned design firm EGG HAUS on mobile architecture and development for apps such as AOL PLAY and Cabulous. At NoiseToys, he handle mobile client and server side development for Playground, a playlist recommendation service personalized based on music taste. Mehul has a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s in Music, Science, and Technology from Stanford University.Read More
KC TurnerKC Turner Presents, CEO“If you don’t know the name KC Turner, you don’t know the Bay Area music
scene.” – John Craigie
informal settings.” – Chuck Prophet
iTunes. What was once a platform for only high profile bands, the San Francisco Apple Store is now open to local talent thanks to KC Turner.
Matt UrmyArtist Growth, CEOMatt Urmy brings a diverse background to his role as CEO of Artist Growth. In 2007 his first book of poetry was published, and in 2008 he earned his Master’s Degree in English (all while performing 80-100 shows a year). From 2009-2010 he coordinated clinical research trials in Cancer and Infectious Disease for the NIH and HCA, building and managing databases (all while performing 80-100 shows a year).Read More
Sam Valenti IVGhostly International, Founder / drip.fm, Co-FounderSam Valenti IV is the founder of the music and art brand, Ghostly International and co-founder of subscription music platform, drip.fm.
Ghostly brand carrying an international array of limited and exclusive products.
Heidy Vaquerano, EsqLaPolt Law, P.C., AttorneyHeidy Vaquerano has been with LaPolt Law for ten years where she become very experienced in drafting and negotiating producer agreements, work for hire agreements, recording agreements, management agreements, licensing agreements for film, TV and video games, mechanical licensing and copyright analysis. She has focused her attention on the areas of music, copyright, book publishing, film, TV, merchandising, endorsements, sponsorships and agreements pertaining to touring and concert promotion. Read More
Dana VetterYouTube, Music Marketing Program Manager
Brett WelchSwitchcam, CEO/Co-founderBrett Welch is the CEO/Co-founder of Switchcam, the interactive video platform that turns the world into your camera crew. Switchcam is backed by billionaire Mark Cuban, 500 Startups and Turner Broadcasting’s Media Camp. In a previous life he created eCommerce platform GoodBarry, which was acquired by Adobe in 2009.Read More
Tim WestergrenPandora, Founder & Chief Strategy OfficerPandora Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Tim Westergren started the popular personalized radio service in 2000 with the Music Genome Project. Tim is an award-winning composer and accomplished musician with 20 years of experience in the music industry – spanning production, audio engineering, film scoring and live performance. Trained as a jazz pianist, his musical background spans such genres as rock, blues, jazz and classical music.Read More
Alex WhiteNext Big Sound, CEOAlex White has been around music his whole life. His dad is a professional cellist and he grew up playing cello, guitar, piano, and bass fronting a band in high school and working at a local recording studio.
Stephen WhiteGracenote, PresidentSince joining Gracenote more than a decade ago, Stephen White has played a critical role in growing the company from a small start-up, focusing on music technologies and information, into a digital entertainment leader that now touches millions of music and movie fans around the globe. In his role as president, White oversees all company strategy and operations, and is responsible for growing Gracenote’s core business.Read More
Michael WingerThe Recording Academy – San Francisco Chapter, Executive DirectorMichael Winger is the Executive Director of The Recording Academy San Francisco Chapter. In other incarnations of his life in the music industry, he has worked as a producer, engineer, touring artist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He has recorded major label and independent artists including Beth Waters, Kronos Quartet, Tim Bluhm, Feist, The Shins and Matt Nathanson.Read More
Eric WittmanSongbird, CEO and PresidentEric Wittman has worked in the technology industry for over 20 years satisfying his hunger to create products that are loved by everyone. When people are passionate about the products they use, companies are successful and the teams that build those products are proud of their accomplishments.
Geno YohamWinamp, General ManagerAs General Manager of Winamp, Geno is responsible for leading the product strategy and business for one of the world’s most popular and iconic media managers. Winamp was an early leader in the digital music revolution and is still a top choice by users to manage and entrust their music libraries. Winamp for Android is the most popular free 3rd party music managers for Android mobile devices and now can be customize with add-ons for high quality audio, album art and lyrics.Read more
Ayumi YuAyumi is a proud resident of San Francisco and the local startup scene. She has worked for Expensify and Causes and is currently democratizing music creation with Sonic. Favorite genres: anything electronic from 90-180 BPM. Follow Ayumi on Twitter: @colour
Brian ZiskSF MusicTech Summit, Executive ProducerBrian Zisk is a serial entrepreneur specializing in digital media, web broadcasting and distribution technologies. He is a founder of BuzzMakers, Inc., which produces the SF MusicTech Summit and the Future of Money & Technology Summit. He is a co-founder of the SF MusicTech Fund. Read more
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