Perhaps the only thing more astounding than the continued existence of the music biz, even as the twin fangs of file sharing and the Great Recession dig ever deeper, is that the biz is thriving. Sort of. Put another way, even against an ultra-bleak horizon, people have continued to write, record, produce, release, and, most of all, innovate. The sum of that creative and entrepreneurial activity amounts to arguably the most kinetic era that the sound recording has ever known.
Enter the second annual SanFran MusicTech Summit held on May 18 at the Kabuki Hotel in Japantown (my thoughts from last year’s goings-on). Once again co-founders Brian and Shoshanna Zisk brought together a compelling cast of industry folks—from Chief Technology Officers, to bookers and managers, to musicians themselves—for a daylong ideological jam session. And while the conference doesn’t pack the entertainment punch of
The Internet, with its seemingly endless circuit of emerging technologies, might be the most important media advancement since Gutenberg’s press. Where is it all going? No one can say definitively at this early stage, but finding true north remains important for the Zisks and their well-curated conference. There is a comforting constant in all of this however: there will always be music and musicians to make it.
