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True to music industry form, many sore heads saw in the One Movement Saturday morning. It was sweet to wander up St Georges Tce from the Parmelia Hilton to the Rydges where the Music and New Media forum was being held, and see musos, industry players and fans scattered about with the same hangover.

The New Media forum had an impressive panel of speakers and it was interesting in the fact it pitted some – œold school’ figures against younger, more – œinfo-age’ reps. Representing the old school was Russell Thomas of Kaos Management who deals in getting artists songs played on the radio and TV. He’s been around for years and seen the highs of the 80s when Aussie music dominated radio and the lows of the 90s when he said there was only nine Aussie bands that got played. He was responsible for getting John Butler his first mainstream play, and some of his clients include Little Birdy, Ladyhawke and Cut Copy. His old-school counterpart was journalist Steve McClure who used to work for Billboard but is now a freelance journo in Japan.

On the new school side was Jerry Soer who manages Miami Horror as well as being a viral blogger and founder of the Who the bloody hell are they? blog, which puts the powers of the web to good use and breaks unheard of bands like Chuck Norris breaks arms. Together with Soer was Carney Nir, who manages new media for bands like Powderfinger, The Grates and Sarah Blasko and Adam MacArthur who started up the lovely Moshtix.

Piecing the whole panel together was Lars Brandle who writes for Billboard’s Australian branch and turned out to be a pretty decent interviewer as well.

He opened with a juicy quote perfect for a journo to take note of use later. He said the the pen had always been mightier than the sword but now the backspace button had subverted the pen.A comment like that could stimulate discussion for hours and it did. He threw the discussion over to Jerry Soer who talked of the influence of blogging. He said the key to using blogs to promote your music was to create a buzz around yourself online to create the perspective that the mainstream media was missing out on something.

In typical old-school fashion, Steve McClure butted in halfway through his discussion to question him on quality control of blogs. It was then made quite clear that bloggers should not be considered journalists (unless they are journalists) and Soer freely admitted this. He said you had to trust the quality was good and there wasn’t really any control. He mentioned Flux blog as one of the better blogs on the web.

After Soer came Carney Nir, who was only a young looking chic working out of Secret Service Artist management in Brisbane. Hers was an interesting role, who would have thought you could make a living handling an artist’s online content, pretty damn innovative idea really that seems to have been successful for her. She said indie bands had leaped ahead in recent times due to the ease in which they adapt to new media trends whereas the majors were slow to catch on. She helped organise Powderfinger’s secret shows last month which they only revealed details about through Twitter. She said if an artist is going to use online content then they had to update it constantly and not just use it for making pointless tweets. She also said it was a necessity for an artist to have a My Space page these days, but also recommended artists have their own page because My Space may no longer be free one day… Uncle Rupert is running short of a few quid after all.

Steve McClure was up next and gave an interesting perspective from a traditionalist’s viewpoint and also the viewpoint of someone dealing with music media in Japan. Surprisingly he said Japan, despite their technological superiority to the rest of the world, had a very conservative media landscape. He said copyright was protected at all costs, which prevented artists using new media to promote their music. He said mobile technology was more important than PC in Japan so scouring and updating My Space pages was not really practical. Like most traditionalists, he refuted the fact that new media would ever replace traditional forms. He said new media needed old media to survive.

Moshtix represents the next generation of how ticketing for bands is managed and founder Adam MacArthur let everyone in on how the concept was developed. He said the aim of Moshtix was to act as a ticketing agent for bands playing at smaller local venues around the country and to provide a really simple platform of getting info out. Instead of bands trying to sell tickets themselves, he said Moshtix took out that hassle and had been pretty successful in doing so through collaborating with other online content like My Space and Facebook.

Russell Thomas knew the contemporary Australian rock music business like the back of his hand. He said it was booming in the 80s and then he really struggled in the 90s because it became almost impossible to get an Australian rock band played on the radio. He said it all turned around with John Butler’s Betterman in 2001, which they famously chopped down to four minutes and got played on Nova. He said this broke down all the barriers and created a whole new business to take on the majors. He said a band had to be played on radio if they were to get anywhere and said social networking sites were a waste of time. A true old-school player of the game.

New media or old media, all these guys seemed to deliver the same message: the media is a very powerful tool but only if you know how to manipulate it to suit you best. You’ve got to know how it works inside out, do something that’s different from what the majors are doing and be a bit of a chameleon by easily adapting to the nuances of each medium. Ultimately it seems, if you’re a band that’s seen some relative success and you want to take it to the next level, you’re not going to be able to do it by yourself and that’s why these guys exist in the industry.

Check out the One Movement Fringe Gallery

Check out the One Movement Festival Gallery