A line-up of heavyweight speakers has help ensure that this year’s Moshito Music Conference and Exhibition has delivered real impact for delegates.

What’s more an impressive line-up of live events throughout Moshito’s three-day run (Aug. 31st to Sept. 2nd), including Moshito Presents …, Africa Unites (featuring Nkulee Dube) and a host of live events throughout Newtown on day two of Moshito meant it more than lived up to its mandate of showcasing live music and job creation within the sector.

Taking place at the Sci-Bono Centre in Newtown, Johannesburg, Africa’s leading music industry drew delegates and participants from across South Africa and the continent with its most extensive and heavyweight conference programme to date. Through broadcast partner SABC, the issues and challenges facing the SA music industry were given a national profile through interviews with speakers on site at Sci-Bono.

For many, the keynote speech at Wednesday’s opening at the Sci-Bono Centre in Newtown, Johannesburg has been the highlight. Jim Griffin, Managing Director of Virginia-based digital music delivery consultancy, OneHouse LLC, delivered a thought-provoking speech that made sense of why CNN Money has called him “One of the sharpest minds in digital music”.

A self-confessed admirer of scholarly writing, Griffin titled his keynote address “Marshall McLuhan was right: The Medium is the Message” and gave delegates in the Plenary Auditorium a distinctly new way of looking at how Africans can deliver the music they make in the digital sphere.

“The notion that technology is as important if not more important than content should now be obvious to all of us,” Griffin said.

“I say that partly because we are unconscious to the way we use it. This is how we live today – the technology is far more important than the content that is there, both in terms of the money we spend and the time we allocate. “

For Griffin, help driving this is the fact that “our technology choices are greater than our content choices”.

“This can be an alarming thing. It presents us with a dizzying array of choices for how we might release a song or what technology we may use to put it out. But we have to remember that when we make a choice through the technology, we are turning our back on another – and that does have consequences.”

Two of the most well-attended sessions at Moshito 2011 revolved around digital – ‘Understanding the digital music ecosystem’ and ‘The future of digital music in Africa’. One of the speakers at both these sessions, Arthur Goldstuck, MD of Joburg-based World Wide Worx, offered up some fascinating research statistics that revealed how the uptake of internet use in South Africa has been driven by the rise of the smart phone.

The practical aspect of Moshito 2011’s programming was another strong attraction this year, with multiple sessions aimed at imparting knowledge and experience to practitioners on issues as diverse as music publishing, what record deal to sign, and ways of distributing music.

One of the most popular of these was a session titled ‘Musicians as Entrepreneurs’ where musicians Wouter Kellerman, Concord Nkabinde and Danny K gave honest, insightful and practical accounts of their wn music career trajectories that was well-received by those attending.

For recordings of sessions and other information, go to www.moshito.co.za 

For media interviews on Moshito please contact Vanessa Perumal / Ayob Vania / Andrea Botha on (011) 788 7631 or media@jtcomms.co.za

Issued by JT Communication Solutions on behalf of MOSHITO www.moshito.co.za