The international Music Industry Lab (IMI lab) is a hybrid multidisciplinary learning environment. Within the educational programme of the lab, teams of young professionals (students from different Inholland programs) join forces with partners from the music industry to explore current challenges in the music ecosystem (for more information see www.imi-lab.nl).
\Since a year the German music industry convention and showcase festival C/O Pop is one of our partners. Together with C/O Pop, a team of young professionals are exploring the question “How can an urban music convention and festival help the music industry to become more sustainable?”. With this question in mind, teams of young professionals are designing concepts for C/O Pop to implement in their organization.
This semester, the young professionals who are working in the IMI Lab had the opportunity to participate in the convention and visit the festival that took place from 20 until 24 of April. This offered them a unique way of learning more about current issues in the music industry, as well as being able to do field work on the spot, for instance participatory observations as well as having the opportunity to interview music industry professionals.
During the convention, there were several panel sessions that were of particular interest to our young professionals, for instance gender equality and inclusivity, which is a theme that other young professionals are working. Likewise, another couple of sessions were focusing on topics such as NFTs for artist, which was particularly relevant for another group of young professionals who work on tokenization and the use of blockchain technology in the music industry. In the evening, we enjoyed some of the showcase performances by upcoming artists and in addition, there was plenty of free time to explore the wonderful city of Cologne!
