Atlanta’s A3C Festival has always been a must-attend event for those who want to be up on the city’s emerging hip hop musicians and cultural icons. But as music, entertainment, culture, and technology have become more and more intertwined over the last few years, the A3C Conference, and its Music Tech track, have scaled programming to showcase the most innovative startups, leaders, and artists in these fields.
In addition to panels, presentations, and a startup and tech expo, this year A3C Conference Music Tech: Spark (held on Friday Oct. 6 at The Loudermilk Center) will host a Startup Spotlight competition. Five music tech startups will be selected to be highlighted at the conference, giving them a platform to connect with investors, customers, and music industry partners.
The Spotlight is best suited for companies that help artists create, market, share and monetize music.
“We really want to provide a platform for startups in music tech to connect with music makers and the hip-hop music industry. Music tech startups are often working to solve a problem from personal experiences and are focused on building an product and bringing it to market,” says Mike Walbert, A3C Executive Director.
“We hope music tech companies leave A3C with new partnerships, valuable insight from end-users and brand evangelists,” says Walbert
The startups that are selected for the Spotlight will receive 2 A3C passes, an exhibitor table at the Music Tech experience, and passes to the Music Tech mixer. They will also be a featured speaker during the day’s programming.
A3C is the perfect place for these worlds to collide, says Walbert, because hip-hop artists specifically are some of the most active and engaged communities on social and music technology platforms. They’re innovative, willing to try new things, and early adopters.
In other words, these musicians don’t wait for someone to tell them what’s cool — they make it cool.
“Every week it feels like there is a new music app for artists. Music apps are enabling artists to become entrepreneurs. Artists are using apps to create, market, share and monetize their music. It’s an exciting time to be a tech-savvy independent artist,” says Walbert.
Topics to be discussed at Music Tech: Spark include the future of music streaming and discovery, gamifying the industry and VR and AR integrations. Music tech startups from all over the world seeking to apply for A3C Startup Showcase can submit their pitch here.
