Dance music panels and conferences are more important than ever

The words ‘conference centre’ hardly fill you with tense anticipation. If anything, they strike up images of businessmen in drab grey suits, tucking into an uninspiring pastry selection and some weak filter coffee before spending the next three hours listening to a talk on business projections for the next 12 months. It’s hardly Sunday at Space, or a week-long crack-on that starts on Friday and shows no sign of slowing down by the time you get to Wednesday. But over the past decade or so, electronic music conferences have become a key part of the dance music calendar. Of course, Miami’s Winter Music Conference started it all back in 1985, but as that’s descended into a race to see who can get into P Diddy’s house first, a whole host of new events have sprung up, becoming more crucial to dance music with each passing year.

Among the doomed start-ups (“It’s like Twitter, only for lighting engineers”; “It’s an app that analyses the BPM of a track and compares it to the heartbeats of your top connections on LinkedIn”), there is actually some worthwhile stuff going down.

“The real business of the year gets done at ADE,” says Ed Karney, Director of Grade Management which looks after Seth Troxler and B. Traits, among others.

“You can’t underestimate how important it is to us as a management company and probably everyone else who is doing serious business in electronic music. It’s a chance for us to meet with all the key promotors, labels and brands, look them in the eye and get things done.”

But while having key music industry figures in one place for five days has obvious benefits for those at the business end of dance music, it’s also an opportunity to take collective stock of where we’re going, and try to implement change too.

“Conferences set the agenda for change in our industry in this day and age,” explains Ben Turner, manager of Richie Hawtin and one of the founders of IMS. “It’s between good editorial content and well-curated conferences that thought and change can be stimulated in our industry.”

And while you might expect the guy who runs one of the world’s most renowned music conferences to highlight their importance, it’s hard to argue with the notion that they can potentially be a real catalyst for progress and change. Just take a glance at the jam-packed programme for this year’s ADE: among the countless label showcases and parties taking place across an astonishing 100+ venues, there’s a chance for students interested in getting involved in the dance music industry to learn more about a world that can often seem impenetrable from the outside, at ADE University. At IMS this year, Erick Morillo candidly opened up about his problems with drug addiction, an issue that can face many people in dance music but which gets overlooked in a world where excess is often considered the norm. The main reason he gave was that he wanted to warn the next generation of the potential pitfalls they might face in this industry.

While, as Ed Karney puts it, sitting in on a panel discussion “isn’t exactly going to reopen Fabric”, a few days of taking stock
of what’s happening in dance music and thinking about how we can make positive changes can only be a good thing.

“There’s a fine line between sitting on a panel and saying ‘Oh, isn’t it awful, I wish things would change” and actually doing something,” he explains. “But at IMS this year there was a panel where B.Traits met Fiona Measham (of charity The Loop, which promotes drug safety) and that’s what led to on-site drug testing at Secret Garden Party this year. That shows how these things can be a real catalyst for change.”

So if you’re heading to any conferences or summits in future, try and hit up the panels alongside the parties. Or just go clubbing for a week and watch them back on YouTube. It’s the thought that counts.

Sean Griffiths is Mixmag's Deputy Editor, follow him on Twitter

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