GRAND RAPIDS — Hailing from the Lake Michigan shoreline to Detroit, last weekend’s Music Econ Summit in downtown Grand Rapids drew a wide variety of musicians embracing “the business of being an artist.”
The daylong event hosted by the nonprofit Michigan Music Alliance covered a lot of ground for emerging artists and veteran musicians — from taking advantage of rapidly changing technology to the proper etiquette for marketing music to media outlets to tips on songwriting, recording and stage presence.
The conference attracted about 120 registrants from across the state, along with a dozen presenters, panelists, volunteers and music industry experts who offered up a day filled with information designed to help musicians create successful enterprises from their art.
As Nicholas James Thomasma, MMA executive director and veteran musician/songwriter, put it: It was all about “the business of being an artist,” with plenty of opportunities for attendees to network, ask questions of those in the know and hand out business cards “like candy.”
There was plenty of all of the above with notable experts such as recording studio owners Michael Crittenden and Robby Fischer, Christian hip-hop star Steven Malcolm, Lutely CEO Kyle Jekielek, Sounds of the Zoo founder Jennifer Hudson-Prenkert, Opnr CEO Dre Wallace and more on hand for presentations and panel discussions…