#uncon09

Fabrício Nobre

Monstro Discos, Brazil

31 years old Fabricio is the current President of ABRAFIN (The Brazilian Association of Independent Festivals), an institution that congregates 44 Brazilian festivals, such as Abril Pro Rock (Recife – PE), Goânia Noise Festival (Goiânia – GO), Eletronika (Belo Horizonte – MG), Porão do Rock (Brasília – DF), Calango (Cuiabá – MT), Porto Musical (Recife – PE), Feira da Musica (Fortaleza – CE) . Fabricio is director of Monstro Discos since 1998, a label that released more than 100 records of Brazilian bands / and international bands, such as: Ratos de Porão, Autoramas, Mundo Livre S/A, Jupiter Maçã, Lucy And The Popsonics, Macaco Bong, Guitarl Wolf (Japan), Black Lips (USA) and Tormentos (Argentina), etc. Head director of Monstro Productions that runs Goiânia Noise Festival, Festival Bananada and the Brazil Central Music Conference; and produces International bands concerts in Brazil, such as Deep Purple, Mudhoney, Lemonheads, The Bellrays, Man Or Astroman, Vaselines, Trail of Dead, Battles, Guitar Wolf, Megadeth, Helmet, The Datsuns, Dirty Projectors, Danko Jones. Nobre has been presenting panels and lectures at many internationals conferences such as Porto Musical, Red Bull Music Academy, CMW, SXSW, Bafim, The Great Escape, Resonancia Colombia, Pop Montreal etc. In 2009, Nobre won the British Council’s Young International Music Entrepreneur Award for Latin America. As a musician, Nobre has been the main leader and singer of MQN since 1997.

Mark Meharry

Music Glue

Although with a background in management consultancy specialising in telecoms, Mark has been working part time within the music industry for over 15 years. In the last 5 years, Mark made the transition into full time, starting up his own technology consultancy company called Barking Spiders, which has now been folded into Music Glue. Barking Spiders enabled Mark to work side by side with key industry professionals, delivering state of the art solutions at budget costs, including:

a) Passport Back To The Bars. In 2003, a charity event was held to raise money for Warchild and Shelter by having 22 major recording artists performing at 200 capacity venues throughout the UK. All tickets were bought via auction using premium rate texting, the first of its kind in the UK (subsequently used for Live8). The entire project was managed by Barking Spiders.
b) Complete development of the Barfly website and Content Management System which now powers in excess of 20 venues for MAMA Group (one of the leading music groups in the UK) from The Hammersmith Apollo to the chain of Barfly venues.
c) Digital consultant and development of The Great Escape website and Content Management System used to operate Europe’s premier emerging artist festival since its inception to present.

In June 2006 Mark co-founded Music Glue, a D2C solution for artists and event promoters developed to reduce the number of intermediaries in the value chain between 'fan and artist' and maximise revenue opportunities for those that 'add value'. Music Glue recognises that digital music is simply content that consumers expect to get for free, and instead of fighting this cultural shift, embraces it by converting 'content into relationships', and 'relationships into revenue'. Music Glue is still in beta, however it has a rapidly expanding brand within the grassroots industry as a reputable company with a very big future.

Martin Atkins, TOUR:SMART

Martin Atkins is the definition of entrepreneurial activity in cultural arts endeavours, his 30+ years in the music business spans across genres and borders and industries.

He was a member of Public Image Ltd and Killing Joke. He founded industrial super group Pigface, The Damage Manual, and Murder Inc., and has contributed to Nine Inch Nails and Ministry. He is the owner of Invisible Records and Mattress Factory Recording Studios (est. 1988). He is the author of Tour:Smart, a Suicide Girls columnist, and teaches at Madison Media Institute (and prior to MMI he taught at Columbia College Chicago for six years). Martin is a producer, drummer, documentary film maker, DJ, and father of four.

Most recently, he started his own entrepreneurial school revolution number three. (www.revolutionnumberthree.com)

Whatever the future of music is, you can pretty much bet that he'll be in the middle of it.

Martin wrote his book Tour:Smart in 2007 and has since spoken around the world at the Midi Institute in China, NAMM, SXSW, CMJ, NYU, USC, Drumtech in London, By:Larm in Oslo, and many more.

A distillation of Martin's 30+ years in the music business, the book and Martin's Tour:Smart presentation contains not only valuable insight into his methods, but an unusually candid discussion of mistakes and failures. It covers routing strategies, strategies to sustain, sponsorships, geography, guerrilla marketing, and entrepreneurial activity in the music industry.

He is on the road in support of Tour:Smart hosting FREE Tour:Smart D.I.Y. summits worldwide.