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BBC Future Music Conference 2016 – The End of Innovation in Digital Music
Is digital innovation dead? The question posed to myself, Sammy Andrews and Gregor Pryor last month at the BBC Future of Music Conference (previously BBC on the Beat). With Rorri Keflan-Jones hosting it was clear we were all supportive of supporting the digital music startup ecosystem. Offering up ideas that perhaps a variation in business…
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Working with OneFest – Introducing Young People to the Live Music Industry
It’s hard starting out in the music industry. In a “who you know” world, how do you get that first introduction? That first project? There are some really great organisations helping young people get a leg up in music. And it was through one (The Young Guns Network) that I heard of the other –…
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The Japanese Music Market and Tokyo Dance Music Event
This month I’ve been exploring Tokyo. The neon city is more different from London, New York or LA than I ever could have imagined. The language, the customs, the music industry. Wandering the streets of Shibuya in the west of the city I came across a glowing monument to CDs. Long since the preserve of…
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Moving On From Chew
It started back in 2011. I was sitting in the Google office, just off Tottenham Court Road, getting a briefing on the upcoming changes to YouTube. Searching through a bunch of names and URLs, I registered chew.fm — a broader name for eatbass.com – the site I started earlier that year to feed its users a “tasty…
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Where are the best places to live and work around the world? – 25 Years. 25 Cities.
Travel is the only expense that makes you richer. – Anonymous Travel is so often that wish. The delayed gratification. Something to wait for next year. Next summer. Over the last year I’ve been lucky enough to travel to some great cities building my company Chew. Because of the nature of my trips I’ve…
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Speaking at Next Radio Conference: How the Radio Audience Became Broadcasters
After I landed from my Chewhiker trip at the beginning of the year I sat down with Matt Deegan at Fix 126 – one of my favourite coffee shops to take time out of the office. We began talking about the NextRadio conference and I noted what I’d begun to notice while speaking to users…
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BEC Conference – Stream Work Makes the Dream Work
This week I was invited to speak at the inaugural Beats Evolution conference. One of a few recent upstart events. BEC focusses on the Drum and Bass industry. Coming a few months after Beatport announced that drum and bass as a genre had recently moved four points to the fifth most popular genre on the…
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Livelist Interview: Ben Bowler of Chew.TV
LiveList are an application that lets you subscribe to your favourite artists and see them perform live regardless of where that stream is hosted. Key shows on Chew have been showing up in the LiveList app and on the website for a month or two now so I spoke to Sam Jourdan about the origins…
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Lighthouse London Podcast: Building a 20,000-strong community in 1 year: The creation and rise of Chew.tv with Ben Bowler
A couple of weeks ago I spent a morning sitting down with Tom from Lighthouse London. The agency works with startups to bring their ideas into reality. Sitting down in the meeting room come studio I leaned quickly that Tom was also an established drum and bass DJ. I just had to invite him down…
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Guest Post on 3Beards: What I Learned Couch Surfing With My Users
This post is a slightly extended version of the post published by 3Beards this June. Please do read the 3Beards post and more about the Chewhiker trip. “Speak to you users!” – Every investor, mentor or startup blogger you’ve ever met. As inhabitants of the startup world we hear this time and time again. Investors…