Sharing the Gig Love Interviews, How-Tos,and more

Last night I was invited to an event organized by SoundCtrl at the NYU Kimmel Center. This was a conversation with music mogul Clive Davis. SoundCtrl is a network of digital media professionals who are focused on advancing the music industry through the power of social web. In short, this is the only music + tech network I know of in New York City area. So when I heard the announcement of this event at the NY Tech Meetup the day before, from the SoundCtrl co-founder, Jesse Kirshbaum, I thought I needed to check it out. After all Gigsby is all about the music and tech scene.

I was really glad that I went. There were about 400 budding music business students, who attend NYU’s Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music and a good number of young music business entrepreneurs.

Clive Davis is a legend. Through Arista Records, he launched or helped catapult the careers of world renowned artists, including Whitney Houston, Barry Manilow, Patti Smith, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Babyface and Sean “Puffy” Combs. After four decades in the music business, he now serves as the Chief Creative Officer at Sony Music Entertainment.

Editor and Chief of Billboard magazine Bill Werde interviewed Mr. Davis and needless to say it was a very educational evening. There was quite a bit of focus on Davis’ ability to pick talent across multiple genres which I thought was amazing. I have yet to meet one person who is knowledgeable across all genres. Usually people specialize. And when they don’t specialize, they don’t achieve success. Whitney Houston’s career was discussed and I may have dosed off in those parts for a while.

Then it got really interesting during the Q&A session when students directed their questions, which all ended up getting translated from English to English by Bill Werde. I expected the DIY (do it yourself) question to come up and not surprisingly it did. A student wanted to see what Davis thought about artists promoting their own records instead of going through record companies. Davis brushed it off by saying “I don’t subscribe to the theory that you can do it by yourself” and followed up by mentioning he didn’t know of any successful mainstream artists who did DIY, except a handful. Probably Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead and I don’t know who else…

Another thing he had mentioned earlier which I thought was relevant from a Gigsby standpoint was when he said “Artists want a manager who is an expert, not a friend.“, emphasizing the importance of a serious manager investing in their artist’s career.

Congratulations to SoundCtrl for putting together this great event and as Team Gigsby we will be definitely attending their future music + tech events.

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Tags: clive davis, soundctrl