20 MusicWeek 13.04.12 FEATURE SOUNDCITY TALENT ’POOL
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S
ound City has transformed from a showcase at SXSW to a global network of conferences, expos and gigs featuring new
artists and established stars. Founder Dave Pichilingi (below) provides an exhaustive update ahead of the Liverpool leg next month that remains the brand’s centerpiece...
Can you give us a refresher on the background of Sound City?
For many years I worked with Tony Wilson on In The City. And that was the industry event in the UK if not Europe for quite a while. But I guess at the back of my mind I always wanted to
create something centred around Liverpool. In 1999 we actually took In The City to
Liverpool and the idea was to flip flop it between Liverpool and Manchester. At the time, though, whilst it had the history and the credibility and the vibrancy, what Liverpool didn’t have was great hotels, great restaurants and the kind of infrastructure needed to welcome an international business audience, so it didn’t really work. But then six or seven years ago I was over in
SXSW and I noticed that the Scottish were doing events, the Welsh were doing events and the English were doing events. But being from Liverpool, being from the North-West, we don’t feel particularly English sometimes. We’re very proud of our region and very proud of our cities, so I came
ABOVE All the young: Sound City is a major attraction for teenage music fans in Liverpool
up with the idea of doing Liverpool Sound City at SXSW, which was an event to showcase the best of the music and the businesses coming out of the north west. We couldn’t call it the ‘North-West’ because the
Americans would have had no idea – plus it was taking place at something called South by South West – so it had to be either Liverpool or Manchester and we went with Liverpool, partly because we thought it would be the best global attack brand we could choose and partly because that’s where I’m from!
And the initial plan was always to be a strand within SXSW? That was it, yeah. It was going to give a leg-up to artists and businesses within our region through the vehicle of SXSW. In 2008, which was Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture, I was approached by Kevin McManus, from Merseyside ACME, to put on a small musical event that would lead up to the McCartney concert. I said: “That’s great, but why not take elements
of what we do at SXSW and make something that has a legacy.” So we decided to create the UK leg of Liverpool Sound City and launched in May 2008. That first year we had just under 200 delegates
and put on about 220 bands in total. It got the train out of the station and gave us the confidence to make it annual.
How much was the original idea to promote local bands and businesses on a high profile platform - and how much was it about drawing in talent from around the world? Both those things. It’s vitally important that we
promote Liverpool artists and artists from the wider north-west region, that’s at the core of what we do. Looking at the music business in general, we
also felt that Sound City could be a tangible opportunity for people looking for different routes to market. So we give them, the artists, an opportunity
through great venues, great production great marketing and so on, but also making sure that we had a world class business audience there to see them. And when I say ‘business audience’, it isn’t primarily about those old routes to market, the major record labels. We put a very heavy emphasis on the digital side of things, we have done since day one, and we want to get those companies that are engaging with artists and managers in an innovative ways that allow them to work together to create wealth in ways other than selling records.
I guess it was an interesting time to start a conference like this because whilst the public perception might have been of an industry in tailspin, the truth was that it was an industry undergoing rapid change, with people stumbling in the dark a bit, looking for a new map, new partners, new revenue streams… Absolutely. It’s a fragmented marketplace and due to that it can feel quite lonely out there for a young manager or a new label or whatever. Gone are the days where you’d be taken into the heart of the multi-national major with a cigar-chomping exec saying, “Leave it to me.” So one of the things we do is draw people
together. People do find that Sound City is a great place to come and share experiences as well as ideas. Those fears I have, those trepidations I have, those
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