Airwaves Pro: Iceland Industry Conference To Feature Alison Donald, Nelly Ben Hayoun, Tina Tallon

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Music festival Iceland Airwaves has announced the Airwaves Pro industry conference in downtown Reykjavik Nov. 7-8 coinciding with the festival featuring Mac DeMarco, Of Monsters And Men, recent Pollstar cover artist Whitney and many others at various venues in the city Nov. 6-9.

Airwaves Pro will include keynotes and talks from industry leaders including Alison Donald (Head of Creative, Ko-balt / AWAL), Stephen O’Reilly (Director ie:music /Managing Director ie:ventures) and Nelly Ben Hayoun Ph.D (Director, University of the Underground / Designer of Experiences at Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios and SETI Institute/ Chief of Ex-periences at WeTransfer / Founder, NASA and SETI Institute‘s the International Space Orchestra)

In a new collaboration, entrepreneurs from Firestarter, Iceland’s first startup accelerator for exciting business ideas and innovations in music, will be advised by MIT Bootcamps, an innovation and entrepreneurship accelerated pro-gram from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Open Learning department.

MIT Bootcamps also brings composer, computer musician, vocalist, and improviser Tina Tallon as a keynote speaker during the conference.

Iceland Music (Iceland’s music export bureau) will present their new exciting new initiative, Record in Iceland. STEF (the Composers Rights Society of Iceland) will host a panel featuring some of the world’s most exciting music super-visors, and Iceland Naturally will assemble a crack team of radio programmers to discuss the future of radio in the digital age.

Reykjavik Music City will conduct a series of panels around music cities – exploring the night economy of cities, Rey-kjavik as a music city, the future of venues in Iceland and beyond. Angela Dorgan (director of Music from Ireland), will host a panel on mental health in the music industry. Other panels will explore the touring and exporting to neighbouring Nordic markets and what better mutual cooperation can be achieved.

Iceland provides a convenient location between North America and Europe, and the conference is within easy walking distance of most of the key hotels, restaurants, bars and of course the festival venues.

“Iceland Airwaves has a long standing reputation for shining light on the best new talent from Iceland and beyond,” says Will Larnach-Jones, Managing Director of Iceland Airwaves. “It makes great sense to connect the best of the music industry together from both continents, in an amazing city, and to have great fun doing it.”

Airwaves Pro runs for two full days on Thursday November 7 and Friday November 8. Last year’s conference hosted attendees including booking agents, festival programmers, musicians, label reps and many others.

Iceland Airwaves will include more than 100 performances from bands from Iceland and all over the world.