We were at the Asian music industry powwow Music Matters in Singapore in May this year. We’ve been a little critical of MM in the past, but in 2012, the team stepped it up many notches. The keynotes were mostly great, there were fantastic additions like mentoring sessions for local musicians and the live component was massively improved. We still wish there would be less of the selling on stage (Facebook, Youtube, we’re looking at you with your boring, scripted monologues) and we still believe that the panel format is a hopelessly inefficient format that gives little to the audience – I mean 7 people chatting Asia live music for 50 minutes – nothing of interest there – but overall, it was a very fulfilling few days.
The highlight for us was Cindy Gallop – former chair of the advertising agency BBH, she now runs a start up called IfWeRanTheWorld, which focuses on microactions to help brands make a statement while making the world a better place. The video of her speech is below – we urge you to take 10 minutes to watch it.