‘Midem invites Global Start-ups and Artists with its Exclusive Programs’- Stephane Lefevre

Stephane Lefevre Head of international Partnerships Reed Midem the world’s largest music trade show, in his maiden visit to India talks about exploring the vibrating Indian music market, exploring opportunities in bringing  Indian artists, music labels, Industry professionals to its global platform which offers key opportunities to the music industry professionals in a tet-e tet with loudest.in.

Stephane  Lefevre began with the inception and evolution of Midem over the years, “ Midem was the first event to bring together the global music community on one platform, which covers all the fields of music today. Since 1967 Midem has one obsession to connect people together from the music community and so it is  attended by people from across the regions worldwide every year.”

Talking about what brings Midem to India Lefevre said, "We are here in India because we do have a few participants coming from India which is a vibrating market now, we look forward to having more participation in Midem next year.”

Talking about the participation of the artist community from India, “To be honest we don't have many artists from India, but we do have music labels, publishers, organizations like IMI, digital distribution companies. We want more artists from India to attend Midem, as Midem provides performance opportunities in Cannes, by the beach which is an exotic outdoor location which is happening since 2017 and sees performances across genres for 4 days once a year, as we provide global visibility to the artists.”

Lefevre highlighted on the various programs Midem offers to the artists and the industry professionals, “Typically for artists there is a program called, ‘Midem Artist Accelerator’ which was started 3 years ago, the artists need to apply and on the basis of the selection criteria as set by a select jury the 11 artists or bands across genres are selected from all over the world. They are given performance opportunities in Midem and their stay and participation are taken care of, although they have to pay for the flight. Last year we saw an exotic line up of rock bands from Japan, China and pop singers from Latin America and we await to see artists from India.”

Designed to support managers, agents, labels and publishers as they look to grow their artist’s profiles globally ‘Midem Artist Accelerator’ is a unique opportunity to access Midem business expertise in bringing innovative solutions. The select 11 get to play live on the beautiful beach of Cannes, get benefits from a tailored 360 degrees program onsite with key players from the global music community which includes entry to selected conferences, learning and coaching sessions with industry mentors and networking opportunities.

“We also have a start-up program which is called as ‘Midemlab’ wherein we provide presentation opportunities to promising tech start-ups to bring forward innovative solutions helping the music industry to build new consumer experiences. We also help them by organizing network opportunities with key global clients and investors. Midem is indeed a platform to meet, interact, share,” Lefevre added.

Since its inception in 2008 ‘Midemlab’ is a platform to feature most promising tech start-ups. The competition invites a call for entries out of which 20 finalists every year, who are chosen by Midem’s selecting partners selecting partners Music Ally and Bluenove are given opportunities to find new business partners and raise funds, Pitch their music start-up and get recognition from the industry, help reaching out to the global media at Midem to talk about their products along with connecting with tech & music pros to get advice.

Lefevre underlines the challenges and opportunities Indian music industry provides, “India is an emerging market which is going very fast but has the challenge to switch towards more sustainable markets, and so there is a need to control piracy, taking care of copyrights. To have that the structure is a major challenge India faces. While we see that China did that which was similar to India in terms of mobile, data and high-speed network and their government created policies to stop piracy because if there is no revenue, there is no market and then there is no investment. Looking at opportunities I see India is a music-loving country and its vast population gives an opportunity to explore the medium across segments.”

So how popular is Indian music and artists in France, “ Well we have a big diaspora of Indians in Paris who listen to Indian music, while the French people maybe don’t know the language but love the sound of Indian music, some flavors of EDM  and Indian Hip Hop is picking in France especially the artists like ‘Divine’.”

Talking about partnerships in India, “We are looking at partnerships with labels and music companies in India, also I am looking forward to understanding the Indian music market because it’s a very big market, which has  Bollywood which has the playback artists which is something unique for us. We are very focused towards the B2B space and trying getting the professionals to Midem.”