Nashville Film Festival... a review

Now that I am on the broadcast kick, I am looking at all sorts of venues to expound upon the virtues of Classical music in film (specifically my classical music). In this process, I sponsored and attended the Nashville Film Festival, a local festival that has been given quite a bit of noteriety on the national scene. My experiences and comments are as follows: * This is a great festival! The showings are organized and with only one venue, the schedule easy to plan around. I have learned tons about the indy film world in only a short week.

* Opening night featuring William H Macy! need I say more? Bill was in attendance to preview his great indy film, "The Deal". This may have been an indy produced film, but nothing about it seemed independent. There was a stellar cast of characters including Meg Ryan, Elliot Gould and LL Cool J along with Mr. Macy. The plotline was fantastic and I laughed so hard my gut hurt. There was a meet and greet opening party at BMI afterwards where we all rubbed elbows, waxed poetic on the state of the film industry and vied to meet Mr. Macy. I succeeded!

* The panels were provocative, yet predictable. The Music Supervisors panel (of prime interest to me) featured a handful of heavy hitters from Hollywood. While most of what the talked about was interesting, it was not the first time I had heard it. It seems that there is still a real issue with filmmakers' willingness to pay for quality music for their projects. It seems that unless you have a hit song, you are a bit dead in the water... this is disheartening. Other panels I attended included a panel on film financing and another about the process of taking an independent film into distribution. Not really compelling for a music guy, but interesting nonetheless.

* The closing party and film featured the Wrecking Crew, the background band famous for many of the fantastic recordings of the 60's and 70's and who were notoriously Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound." Elbow rubbing and hububbing aside, the evening was a nice closure for the event. Many new friends had a chance to convene and reflect on the past eight days' events. The Cannery Ballroom was hopping and there were good times had by all.

Three things I learned at the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) Convention

Just returning from NAB in Vegas, my mind is ripe with new and reinforced ideas about the broadcast industry. In my short two days attending functions and working my way through scores of exhibits, I came away with a few ideas about what is going on in this industry as it pertains to Music Licensing and the Music providers in the field. 1. IP TV is king The hot topic around the exhibit floor was IP TV. According to Wikipedia, IPTV (IP Television) is a system where a digital television service is delivered using Internet Protocol over a network infrastructure, which may include delivery by a broadband connection. A general definition of IPTV is television content that, instead of being delivered through traditional broadcast and cable formats, is received by the viewer through the technologies used for computer networks. There were loads of various back-end providers peddling their wares. As a general rule of thumb, more access is better for everyone. I dont believe that the proliferation of IPTV will actually bring more music revenues, but it does offer more people the chance to experience the production...

2. Music Library Competition is STIFF In the realm of production music there is some stiff competition. Production libraries and falling prices continue to make my job more difficult as a licensing agent. This combined with the fact that major labels and publishers are now buying their way into the game with the purchases of companies like NonStop Music and others makes it ever so important that the independents learn to compete in this market. (Two of the most disturbing things I saw were companies named Gratis Music , and of course Royalty Free Music . com)... Disgusted.

We are going to have to start playing the game their way in order to compete (unfortunately). One great thing we have going for us is the fact that our music is actually performed by musicians, rather than midi keyboard and it appears that there is little competition in the Classical field. So this ought to be an interesting year as we embark on bringing in more content revenue competing with a mass market of inexpensive alternatives.

3. The NAB is an event to hit every year and to prepare for on the backend. For us, that means laying tons of infrastructure groundwork to create a real product to take to that market. It is no longer going to be acceptable to simply roll in saying "we've got a crapload of music". The customer today wants to hear that music. They want to search that music and experience that music. That is where the good companies are separated from the greats in the industry. The same applies to anyone in the broadcast field... not just music libraries. This show is FOR REAL. It is the closest thing I have found to CES size-wise. I am looking forward to putting my gameface on and rolling into town with my guns-a-blazin next year.