Milano Music Week, the event that investigates the future of music is back
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It actually happened, digital has overcome the most daring imbalances of postmodernism by giving us a now well-acknowledged truth: virality has clearly surpassed the distances of genre and style, giving the youngest an almost unlimited accessibility to immaterial music and consequently allowing works of the past to rediscover centrality precisely through the meshes of streaming. The 2022 edition of «Milan Music Week», an event organized by the municipality of Milan, Assomusica, Fimi, Nuovo Imaie and Siae, starts from this dichotomy: the old and the new, the sociability of live music and the planetary potential of online dissemination.
Departing today, Monday 21 November, the program continues until 27 through conferences, meetings, dj-sets and showcases, trying to cover the entire musical chain. At the center of the debate, the possible connections and interactions between live performances and virtual spaces, especially at the end of a year that has finally seen a copious return of the public to live concerts. «Italian music has already experienced the opportunities of digital», explains Enzo Mazza, CEO of Fimi, «in particular with the growth in consumption thanks to streaming, even during the pandemic. Now, with the resumption of live shows, we are faced with an ever wider offer». Digital therefore represents the present and the future of the creative industry, but the complexity of the economic relationship with the physicality of live performance remains a territory with enormous unexpressed potential.
«The new frontier of digitization can be of great help for the birth of all new forms of expression», confirms Vincenzo Spera, president of Assomusica, the association of promoters, «because their growth occurs automatically through platforms and social media, with methodologies that completely break with the past. Let’s not forget, however, that live music leads to 10 million tickets sold every year to which, if we add free events and other thanks, we arrive at an impact of around 2 billion euros and an induced activity of 7/ 8 billion”. In fact, if other forms of entertainment, such as cinema and theater, suffer a lot in this first post-pandemic period, an important revaluation for the territories has come precisely from live music, which has once again become relationship experience with great anticipation for the feedback it will be able to give in the immediate future.
«The recovery, after two difficult years, has demonstrated a strong attachment of Italians to music and concerts», continues Mazza. «The latest research that we have published as Fimi confirms an increase in the time dedicated to listening to music in all its forms: physical, digital, live. The future shows great opportunities also thanks to a strong generational change in progress». For a phonographic support market that is based on vinyl turnover (between exasperated price increases and great success for historical reissues), the production of new artists remains important, who especially in Italy need a boost to be competitive on the market . «We have to put our hands on the whole system», says Spera, «trying to privilege the development of creativity and not the repetition, perpetrated for years, of genres and products belonging to the past, not to the future. The live entertainment sector has been waiting for regulation for over 40 years, so now we expect a law and related implementing decrees. Clearly the matter is quite complex and concerns sectors that often do not communicate with each other, which refer to musical genres that are very different from each other. Among them, unfortunately, there are sectors that have always been privileged to the detriment of others. The fundamental theme is to have rules to work throughout the country in a uniform way, rather than with different legislative interpretations».
Milano Music Week will also see the presence of internationally known artists, special events dedicated to great historical names, insights to introduce non-experts to activities such as that of booking agent, label owner or festival organizer . But attention will evidently also turn towards the debate on economic support measures for the sector, such as the art bonus for everyone, the reduction of VAT to 5% and the method of accessing ministerial funds. All around a productive world in which the “seasonality” of the profession remains the ordinary model of organization. «There is a fundamental problem», Spera of Assomusica reiterates: «the majority of live entertainment workers are intermittent, without a permanent employment contract. This is achieved where it is the State that hires workers and pays salaries, through private, public and para-public institutions. We must now understand if we want to work on the future of entertainment and music, having a vision that leads to the crossroads and not to the separation of genres».
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