The Golden Melody Festival is a B2B-focused event hosted by the Bureau of Audiovisual and Music Industry Development (BAMID) of the Ministry of Culture since 2014. Each year, the festival draws more than 2,500 visitors, with last year’s event in 2015 staging close to 300 sessions for 3,000 participants and brokering more than 430 million New Taiwan Dollars in business deals. To further promote opportunities for the domestic industry to interact and collaborate with international industry representatives, the 2016 Festival has planned 12 “pitching” sessions. A dozen industry representatives from Taiwan, Malaysia, the United States, France, China, and Finland have been invited to present short reports to an international audience on innovative services and philosophies relating to topics such as music, performance, and entertainment, in the hope that the mutual exchanges can open up more diverse and deeper channels of cooperation.
This year’s Pitching Program is bolstered by a stellar lineup of special guests, starting with Kaz Michijima, Director at PROMIC for the Tokyo International Music Market (TIMM). As part of the first music industry exchange between TIMM and GMF, Japanese pop-rock band PASSEPIED will perform at the Golden Melody Showcases, while Taiwan will nominate one band or artist group to perform at TIMM in October. There is also Sami Haiko, Head of International at Music Finland, who is responsible for managing collaborations between Finland and musicians from other countries. Joanna Wang’s cover album Midnight Cinema, which received three Golden Melody Award nominations, was produced during one of Haiko’s creation camps. Also invited is Victor Tan, Managing Director of EQ Music & Media, Southeast Asia’s largest independent music label, which specializes in promotion and arranging corporate gigs for artists performing in Malaysia and Singapore. Another invitee is Tony Nagamaiah, General Manager of Malaysia Major Events (MME). This enterprise, which operates under the Malaysian Ministry of Tourism and Culture, is actively encouraging other countries to stage large-scale events (such as music festivals) in Malaysia. From Thailand, there is Peter Phornprapha, founder of the Wonderfruit Music Festival, an energetic yet relaxing four-day event that attracts 9,000 people a day and in which up to 50% of performing artists are from overseas.
Representing French digital distributor and content integration platform Believe Digital will be Syaheed MSBI, Head of Trade Marketing for Asia Pacific and Country Manager for Singapore and Malaysia. Believe Digital works with artists to release their music on online music platforms and to help them understand and analyze market conditions in other countries. Attending on behalf of French HD video-sharing platform Dailymotion is Head of Content Antoine Nazaret. Dailymotion currently has regional substations in 17 countries, allowing users to enjoy localized sharing and uploading of personal HD content. Visiting from Mainland China is Song Ke, CEO of the Alibaba Music Group. Song will be discussing the group’s Alibaba Planet, China’s newest fan entertainment-sharing platform. Also from China is TC Pan, founder and CEO of Ultimate Music, a Chinese digital music content provider and services aggregator. Pan will be sharing his experiences on Ultimate Music’s efforts to build China’s B2B music ecosystem, including through managing its own brand of online music services, e-commerce music providers and online ticketing services.
From Taiwan, the special guests will be new media artist Huang Hsin-chien, who recently worked on the audio-visual design team of singer Jody Chiang’s 2015 farewell concert tour; Iris Wu, founder and CEO of US-based audio technology startup Ambidio, whose instant sound processing technology has won high praise from international media and musicians alike and secured research funding from Hong Kong business magnate Li Ka-shing; and Raymond Pao, Associate Vice President of VR New Technology at Taiwanese consumer electronics giant HTC, who has been spearheading HTC’s foray into virtual technology and will be giving attendees the opportunity to experience the upcoming HTC Vive, a room-scale VR head-mounted display under co-development between HTC and Valve Corporation.
