Djooky Music Investment Summit: Summing it up

Djooky Music Investment Summit, the global virtual music conference with 1000+ participants and 50+ speakers worldwide has ended after two intense days of deep-diving into the financial aspects of the music industry.

Djooky Music Investment Summit, organized by CFC Big Ideas, shed a light on the new ways of attracting funding, utilizing monetization tools, and promoting emerging artists. The Summit brought to the stage prominent speakers of the music business including representatives of global labels, music distribution companies, streaming platforms, investment funds, as well leading music entrepreneurs and independent artists. The leaders of Merlin, Round Hill Music, TuneCore, DropLabs, CD Baby, Pandora, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, United Talent Agency, and many others joined the event to share their unique personal experiences with the global audience. Partners of the Summit were F6S, world's largest platform for founders, Music Business Association, Music Press Asia, and gener8tor.


The agenda of the event featured a series of talks, panel discussions, keynote presentations, and a Startup Pitch Contest. The Summit provided a unique opportunity for all attendees to connect with the world's best experts and to learn more about how to build a business in today’s volatile music industry. Speakers touched upon a variety of questions regarding NFTs, intellectual property rights, music finance technologies, direct investment, and more.

One of the most discussed topics was technology advancements and their effects on the investments made in the music industry. For instance, a panel discussion titled “Streaming Platforms as an Emerging Source of Revenue” led by the representatives of CD Baby, Deezer, and Pandora concluded that the rise of streaming platforms is vastly changing the global investment scene.

The speakers also highlighted the role of artist brands as a new way of monetizing artist’s creativity. Michelle Edgar, Head of Music Partnerships at LiveXLive, named one crucial element of a successful artist brand: "Authenticity is a key. It refers to a clear understanding of the artist's values and the core mission of a brand."

Eric Baptiste, CEO at QwantumRights Solutions emphasized the effect technology has on the music’s rights management business: “Driven by technology advances, rightsholders and regulatory pressure, the rights management business is undergoing a radical change that most collectives struggle to proactively manage, either because they don’t feel (yet) the local impacts of that change, don’t know what to do about it or have some ideas but are not able to transform these ideas into actionable plans.”

Moreover, the speakers shared their own experiences and gave valuable advice to all artists and music entrepreneurs. "When you are releasing music, there are things you can control and things that you can't. You should do your best to maximize the things you can control, and try your hardest with the things you can't,” said Aly Gillani, European Label and Artist Representative at Bandcamp.

The Summit finished with the Final of the Startup Pitch Contest, a showcase designed to provide more visibility for early-stage startups, as such get new clients, funding, or achieve strategic partnerships. Contestants went through the 3-min pitch and 4-min Q&A sessions while competing in three categories and were awarded special prizes from partners and organizers. The Contest was especially diverse with the finalists representing the United States, Egypt, the United Kingdom, Estonia, Denmark, Japan, Italy, Argentina, Spain, and other countries. The participants of the Startup competition also got a chance to become part of the Online Expo, where they were able to demonstrate their products and services to prospective clients from every corner of the world.

CFC Big Ideas, the organizer of the event, is an international communications consultancy. Established in 2002 as CFC Consulting, the company has made its name by implementing BIG IDEA international projects: international conferences, country presentations, special events, and advocacy campaigns in more than 40 countries across the globe. Some of the most successful projects were recognized by Bronze Cannes Lion in 2017 and Gold SABRE Award in public affairs in 2015. CFC Big Ideas has created several successful global event platforms since the COVID-19 outbreak. Among them are the Global Inclusion Online Forum, the biggest Diversity & Inclusion online event in the world, and Davos Energy Week which gathered 7 European Ministers of Energy and over 5000 participants online in 2021.

For additional questions, please contact Anastasia Cherkaska at ac@cfcbigideas.com.