Summary 👇 

Last WOMEX I was invited to Napoli in December. I really didn’t know well what was it about but as I trust Davide and Fabio Scopino, I was sure it would be interesting so I accepted. Now I know that the event is Napoli World.

The website of the city council of Napoli explains that: “The first edition of Napoli World, the showcase festival that brings together the artistic directors of the most prestigious international world music festivals, will take place in the Quartieri Spagnoli.
The first major b2b event by Napoli Città della Musica – a project for the development of the music industry desired, promoted, and financed by the municipal administration – is Napoli World 2022 […]. The general organisation is entrusted to Italian World Beat, under the artistic direction of Davide Mastropaolo and Fabio Scopino, who have chosen Naples, after the 2021 edition in Pistoia, for the second round of the itinerant Music Connect Italy event. […]. Napoli World 2022 is in partnership with RAI Campania and RAI Radio Live.“

On the website of MusiConnect Italy you can find more information and the call for artists from the region.

Davide leads the record label Agualoca Records, that has released albums by quite appreciated artists like Maria Mazzotta or Fanfara Station. Don’t miss a visit to the link. And on this occasion we will talk with him about Italian World Beat.

Mapamundi Música: When was the Italian World Beat Network born?

Davide Mastropaolo: Italian World Beat has been an idea of Fabio Scopino, my friend and colleague. We were as world music professionals (I was leading my label Agualoca Records at that time, Fabio was involved in the management of a couple of Italian artists) at WOMEX in Santiago de Compostela in 2016, and we realized that every country was represented EXCEPT Italy.

Our friends from Puglia Sounds lead a stand – but dedicated to they regional proposals – and the other Italians around were there as single delegates. Our institutions at that time were not interested in supporting us so we decided kind of a DYI: we started with a website and we proposed to all the Italians to be under an umbrella stand for the next fairs (Babel Med in 2017 has been our official debut). We did a budget to have a stand big enough, a catalogue and some people working actively to make connections, and we started going around the world promoting out idea

MM: What is its legal form? I am not sure if you are a not for profit or a business.

DM: We have intended this as private investors since the very beginning, as we realized that our function was basically to create opportunities for Italian professionals in the world music environment. Apart from a small fee covering catalogues and stands costs, Fabio and I carried on all the expenses with our resources. Just last year for the first time, and in partnership with a cultural association we got our first public fund, and we did the first Musiconnect Italy showcase festival in Pistoia, Tuscany

MM: For your About website, I see the objectives are very concrete and focused on business. Do you guys have any other objectives that are not explained there?

DM: In the last year a lot of thing are changing. Now there is a public office helping Italian professionals in some activities – Italia Music Export – and this year at WOMEX for the first time there were an Italian stands area (including Puglia Sounds, Emilia Romagna Music Commission, Italia Music Export and us) together with an offWomex Italian night. We are proud to have been a start up for this networking approach and we are going further this way organizing our second edition of Muisconnect Italy in Napoli. This is gonna be our main activity in the next future.

MM: I see there are some criteria for the selection of the artists and the promoters. I am not sure if I understand you right. It is not an association based on membership, is it?

DM: It’s mainly a virtual space where you can find Italian professionals linked in some way to the world music environment in its widest sense. It’s quite smart. we don’t ask any fee, we just offer a space an our contacts and links in order to encourage the growth of the Italian world music scene.

MM: On the page of Contacts of the website I see three people: you, Davide, who are the management and label director, Fabio Scopino (General Management) and Sara Gigante (coordinator for Balkan and Middle East Area). On the Catalogue there is also Eric van Monckhoven, as referent for Nordic and Baltic countries. Are you four all the structure or do you have more collaborators? If so, which is the current structure? How do you organize between yourselves?

DM: As we started in a very spontaneous way, all our long terms friends were invited to play a role following their skills and natural approach. At the moment I am mostly in charge of the label (we released 2 albums so far but we have more releases in our plans for the future) as it’s what I did for years with Agualoca Records, while Fabio is more oriented into networking and management issues. Everything is in transformation but we believe in collaborations and sharing as best practices to be done. 

MM: How are you economically supported?

DM: Our own investments, and sometimes (recently) public and private support.

MM: What is going to happen in the event that you are organizing in Naples in December?

DM: Our showcase festival, based in Napoli and supported by the local administration, will offer 17 free concerts by Neapolitan bands in 3 wonderful locations plus 3 guests from Spain, Morocco and Capo Verde following our established partnerships with MUM (Extremadura), Visa For Music and Atlantic Music Expo. We have 30 International delegates plus local professionals. It will be amazing and I am working together with Fabio to make it happen properly. 

MM: As I will be there, I will come back with more information, of course, but, at the moment, do you want to share any ideas, information or insights?

DM: We launched recently a call to select 5 local projects to perform in front of our delegates. In the next days the official program will be shared via internet and socials. 

On the previous edition of this newsletter I already talked about Sébastien Laussel and his incorporation as the director of Zone Franche.

I bring again this paragraph about the organization: “The Zone Franche association was created in 1990, when the meeting between traditional oral music and the sounds of globalisation was creating new languages and soundscapes. Today, there are about 180 structures that are federated around professional and political issues. The diversity of our members finds its unity in the shared values set out in the World Music Charter, and constitutes a rare wealth in that it allows for daily interaction between different professions, different legal statuses, and different territorial locations, in the service of an abundance of aesthetics, practices and musical inspirations.” Learn more about the association and access the World Music Charter on their website.

And I announced I would make some questions to Sébastien and he has kindly answered. So, here you are! 

Mapamundi Música: Your website is very complete and full of useful and inspiring information. There is one thing that is not so deeply explained, that is how it began. Who were the first members, the people who decided to start the organization? Did they have any specific, concrete objectives at that time, that you could share with us?

Sébastien Laussel: The first members were its founders, namely bookers, festival programmers and journalists (Christian Mousset, Frank Tenaille, François Bensignor, etc.). They had known each other well since the end of the 1970s, exchanged information on their practices, and after about ten years, they wanted to formalise these discussions by creating a network in order to make their difficulties heard by the institutions, and to be able to better exchange information on their ways of working within the World Music sector.

Thus, created in 1990, the Zone Franche network was built on the basis of cooperation, seen as a political ambition on one hand, and on the other hand, as a professional practice guided by a set of values.

Its creation was primarily a response to the isolation felt by professionals in the fields of dissemination, production and promotion of world music. Since its beginnings, Zone Franche has been a tool at the service of world music professionals, representing the entire musical ecosystem (festivals, venues, labels and publishers, artist representatives, media, cultural associations, markets, etc.).

MM: Nowadays, Zone Franche has 180 members. Some of your members are not in France. For instance, Crossover Sounds, they are in Dresden, Germany. There are members in Belgium, Morocco, Cameroun, Armenia,… I imagine that there must be a relation of these members with France, is this the case, or can any entity related to world music, from any other country, be associated?

SL: In extenso, the statutes of Zone Franche define the organization’s objective as “bringing together in an international network the professionals representing the entertainment, recording, cultural and media companies involved in the development of world music (traditional and urban music).
In short, the prerequisite to be a member of Zone Franche is to wish to gather around the values of cultural diversity, defined in our ethical charter adopted in 2001 and available on our website. There is therefore no notion of frontier: any foreign structure can be a member without necessarily being linked to a French organisation, the link will be the network! 

MM: If any organization that fulfills the requirements can join, no matter the country it is from, first, are you guys interested in having members from other countries? If so, what would you say to encourage them to join?

SL: Zone Franche is interested in welcoming members from other countries (European and non-European) to encourage cultural openness and exchanges. The networking encounters take place in France for economic reasons and this is probably a hindrance to maintain the international dynamic. However, today, thanks to our webmedia AuxSons.com, this collaboration is facilitated by writing and sharing of articles, playlists, and shining light on the activities of foreign members.

MM: I’d like to tell you that I knew about Zone Franche from before but I had never paid such attention as now that I met you in WOMEX and I feel very aligned with the ideas you explain. For instance, “Ils en sont les artisans parfois sous-valorisés, des “passeurs” entre les artistes et le public. Leur travail est nécessaire aux artistes et indispensable pour le public. Sans leur “médiation”, nombre d’œuvres resteraient inconnues, réservées aux communautés ou à quelques curieux avertis. La formidable diversité des cultures resterait ignorée d’un vaste public.” One of the objectives of this newsletter is to contact a global community that I perceive that exist, that is huge and very diverse, with members who face many different obstacles but that share a common vision in trascendental issues of human life. At some step in the future, I would dream of a global association, similar to yours, for the whole planet. I’d like to ask you if you know other organizations with this similar vision as yours, in other countries. And, if there is any, do you maintain any kind of communication or collaboration?  

SL: Zone Franche was, it seems, the first international network to bring together in a single organisation different categories of actors (festivals, venues, labels and publishers, artists’ representatives, media, cultural associations, markets, etc.) with the common aim of defending and promoting World Music and artists. Today, similar networks are being created. We have identified like-minded institutions, for example, the Belgian Worldwide Music Network, which brings together all the Belgian stakeholders (French and Flemish speakers); alba Kultur, in Germany, or the Music In Africa Foundation (based in Johannesburg, SA). At the European level, the European Folk Network is participating in this dynamic union. Projects and collaborations are in progress and we have to build bridges, because what counts above all is to defend cultural diversity, a real challenge in a historical period where we face the threats of cultural isolationism around sectarian and enclosed identities.

MM: About the Charter of World Music, I have to tell you that it is great and I think it should stop the unfruitful debate about the term “world music”. The first version was adopted in 2001. The current version is from 2015. Do you have any plan to revise and perhaps update it? Not that I miss anything, but I see that you are spearheading the reflection.

SL: Currently, we have two coexisting versions of the charter: the version adopted in 2015, which has been widely printed and disseminated. It can be found on the Zone Franche website in a somewhat different version: it has since included a chapter on gender equality, since the 2020 General Assembly:

“# Equality between women and men

The signatories of the Charter commit to act for real equality between women and men:

We have not made an “official” print re-edition of the charter because this aggiornamento is still in progress with the aim of producing a final modified version in the form of an “International World Music Charter”. 

MM: Sébastien, you are the new director, you have been in the position for around 2 months. Can you tell me if you have anything new in mind for the near future?

SL: I have indeed recently arrived at the network’s management and in an intense period of activity: my first day of work started on the train! I headed to Bordeaux (a city in the South of France) for the ¡Franchement! festival created by Zone Franche. Then followed the various fairs (MaMA, WOMEX…). It was more a matter of action than a reflection, but a very useful action because it allowed me to meet very quickly many of the network’s members, its partners, and the national and international ecosystem of World Music.

I have long noticed that many artists do not have a website and do not have a mailing list to collect the contacts of their followers. They rely on third parties, such as Instagram or Facebook, to contact their fans. There are known cases of hacked Facebook accounts with thousands and thousands of followers, which have never been recovered.

But let’s say nothing this tragic happens. Every now and then the conditions change and the visibility of posts can decrease from one day to the next and you have no control over what happens. I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave this contact with your community in the hands of third parties who use you to monetise you in the way that suits them best. That’s why what Will was telling me resonated with me. So the next few questions are specifically about your content hosting and monetisation platform project for artists.

I met Will during the pandemic. Of course, only digitally. He was doing a series of interviews with people from the, let’s say, industry, and he interviewed me. Since then, we have been following each other and he is a really restless guy, and in this conversation he is going to give us a very concrete vision aimed at solving a need that I think many artists have. He will also help us to define some concepts that, al least me, didn’t have so clear.

Mapamundi Música: First of all, please, describe what your platform provides for the artist or for the managers. Some of the recipients of this newsletter are that profile of professionals. 

Will Villa: Hi. I am Will Villa, Artist & Engineer and also CEO of the SQRZ Agency. We make websites with Superpowers for Artists & Agencies…not those old boring websites blogs… Our sites include Membership Platforms, Marketplaces, Booking Platforms, gated Content and more. Giving Artists the power to control and monetize their content in an inexpensive way. 

MM: Please, define some concepts: gated content, membership platform, booking platform, marketplace. 

WV:

MM: Which is the unsolved problem that you want to resolve with the platform? 

WV: The beautiful thing is that there are many problems to solve, and today´s so-called No-Code tools allow us to develop digital products at a fraction of the cost.
I had my first website for my DJ Brand back in 2006. My friend helped me set it up for a friendly price.
But maintaining it was the bigger challenge. It was a pain for me to make changes or update the site.
And I know many artists struggle with this, they don´t want to be part-time developers.
That´s why we created a collection of Website Templates for Artists. They are super easy to set up and maintain, no need to hire developers for every little change. 

MM: To which extent the user has the control of the visitors / subscribers? I see an obvious issue about this with the usual social media platforms, that you can’t really control the communication with your followers and sometimes you can even lose your account because it is removed or it can be hacked and you lose all those contacts.  

WV: That´s true, that’s why I want to focus on the aspect of direct-to-consumer markets.
In my opinion, today is the greatest age to be an independent musician. There are all these tools out there that allow us to take our intellectual property and keep control over production, distribution & monetization.
But it’s also a challenge, keeping up with the platforms and understand what those 270 pages of terms & conditions actually mean.
For example, many website builders will not allow users to export the code, thus binding them forever to their hosting plan.
Now because of this, we work particularly with Webflow.
Our sites can export their code & Database and would allow users to move to another provider later. It always depends on the use case, but it’s always important to own your work & your contacts. 

MM: Does the client need any knowledge of making websites? 

WV: Our sites have an Editor and a Designer.
The Editor makes it super easy for clients to change text/images/video/links without changing anything dramatic on the site.
Deeper changes can be made in the Designer. To be honest, the designer has a learning curve and can be a handful, but that’s why we developed our template library. So the client only has to copy/paste a section and put the new info in. 

MM: How do you resolve the payments for the monetized contents? 

WV: We offer Membership platforms, subscriptions & Downloadable Products.
We stay away from dropshipping and fulfillment solutions. As earlier mentioned it becomes an issue of control & accountability.
That’s why we focus on Content Creators or Digital SAAS Products (software as a service) who have complete control over their IP & Production.
So what does this mean for your artist? Well, maybe they could create behind-the-scenes, how-to-videos, live-streamings, or downloadable products.
And charge a monthly fee to get access to the gated content.
With a few hundred real fans an artist can create a stable and recurring income. 

MM: Which is the cost for the user? 

WV: As mentioned, today´s tools allow us to create incredible things for a fraction of the effort.
Our Page-Templates take only a couple of minutes to set up.
One page costs only 250$ and includes the Webhosting for the first Year.
I will implement the site personally during our zoom call. After transferring the site to the clients’ account they can enter into the Editor and change text & image.

Now some bigger websites can have superpowers such as searchable databases, Memberships, Subscriptions, Chatbots, Tracking, and more.
When I started to get quotes for an app just a few years ago, the estimated prices were ranging from 40 to 150K dollars and would take from 3-6 months to implement. Of course, this was never an option, so I started learning how to do it myself.
Now an App of this type today could probably be done with a budget of 5-15K, having the first usable results within weeks.

• Transglobal World Music Chart welcomes a new panelist: Magda Tejchma (on the picture). Check all the current panelists on the website.

• Applications to showcase at English Folk Expo are now open. NEW IN THE NEWSLETTER.
  Dates: 19-21st October 2023. Location: Northern Quarter, Manchester, UK.
  “The only showcase exclusively for folk, roots and acoustic music in England. English Folk Expo invites music industry representatives from the UK and beyond to network and discover amazing artists from this broad and diverse genre.”
  “All selected showcasing artists receive a fee and a Conference Pass which permits access to the conference programme (including the European Folk Network events) and the trade fair. Artists also receive a full listing (including booking contact information) in the delegates’ app.”
  Application deadline: Midnight, Sunday 15th January 2023. “We will aim to make final artist selections by April 2023”. For application, click here.

• For artists who live in Canada, have a Canadian passport, or are led by a Canadian; who have PR status or an application for PR or refugee claim: applications for Global Toronto are now open. NEW IN THE NEWSLETTER.
  “Global Toronto (GT) is a music showcase and conference rooted in building a sustainable, equitable, and accessible future for the music sector. It is a platform to discover great music, make connections, build community and create change. Global Toronto 2023 (GT23) will be held in Toronto from September 18-22, 2023.”
  Deadline: Friday, December 9th at 11:59pm EST. For FAQs and application, click here.

• For artists settled in the USA.  NEW IN THE NEWSLETTER. Applications are open for the 2022-23 cycle of the Performing Arts Discovery (PAD) Showcase program
  — an international virtual showcase opportunity for U.S.-based performing artists who are ready to tour internationally.
  “Applications are open to music, dance, and theater artists/ensembles with a demonstrated capacity to tour internationally. 25 artists/ensembles will be selected for this year’s cohort by a diverse panel of peers from across the country“Applications will close on January 6, 2023 at 11:59pm PT. Learn more and apply, here.

• »FolkHerbst« (Folk Music Autumn), open call. FolkHerbst “is a series of folk music events that culminate in handing out the only European Folk Music Award of Germany, the »Eiserner Eversteiner (the Iron Eversteiner)«. The promoter Malzhaus e.V. bestows this award upon folk musicians living in Europe as he/she has for the past 30 years. He/she will do it again next year at the 31th FolkHerbst. We anticipate the best, most accomplished and inspired musicians competing for this prestigious award.” “Musician/ artist must be a European resident. The performance/ music must be derivative of or influenced by folk music. This includes both the broadest interpretation and most specific, as a traditional folk music“. It is open until 01th March 2023. I have received the complete information with the procedure and conditions from Christian Dressel (kultur(at)malzhaus.de) and I don’t see them on the website so I suggest you to ask him. Their website is this.

• Tallinn Music Week 2023, open call. Artist submission will close at 23.59 (CET) on 12 December 2022. Dates: “Music festival: Thu, 11 May – Sat, 13 May. Around 150 artists from various genres and scenes from all over Europe and beyond in Tallinn’s best venues play to an audience of around 15,000 people and to 1,000 music industry professionals from international markets and Baltic-Nordic region.” Check their proposal and apply here.