Nashville’s Leadership Music Summit Coming in September

Leadership Music’s annual Digital Summit returns this fall with a new title, new direction, and a renewed focus on educating and connecting music industry and digital marketing leaders. The nine-year-old conference is being renamed and rebranded as the Leadership Music Summit, a move that will allow for the theme of the event to address and incorporate the hot-button issues of the moment from year-to-year. Slated for Tuesday, Sept. 10 at Nashville’s Marathon Music Works, the 2013 summit is subtitled “Digital Solutions Powered by the Entrepreneurial Spirit.” Co-chairs for this year’s event are Leadership Music alumni Heather McBee (“America’s Morning Show,” Cumulus Media) and Cameo Carlson (Borman Entertainment).

“Our goal with this year’s event is to introduce members of the music community to the growing number of digital marketing and platform opportunities that are being developed by entrepreneurs,” says McBee. The 2013 event is targeted to attendees and participants ranging from college students to movers-and-shakers of the entrepreneurial community across the Southeast to a variety of music industry leaders and decision-makers, including artist managers, record label staff and executives, attorneys, business managers and members of the media, marketing and publicity communities.

Planned panel topics include “Bringing Content to Fruition” and “Marketing & Engagement.” An anticipated highlight is “The Dream Projects,” a competition where content “owners” (i.e. record labels, managers, publishers, artists) can pre-submit a need that would benefit from digital ideas and initiatives. Three “finalists” will be chosen from the pool of submissions; each will be provided a 10-minute presentation opportunity at the Summit. A panel of judges will choose a “winner,” and assist that content owner in connecting with potential digital solution providers. An inverse opportunity will also be provided to digital start-ups – three “finalists” will be selected from a field of pre-submitted initiatives, each will be allowed to present their idea of a dream project and connections will be made with music industry entities who can utilize the “winning” concept. In addition to receiving a cash prize, the winning projects will be included in the feature news in MusicRow.