Music Launch Hub’s Steve Palfreyman!

Starting September 13th, the founder of Music Launch Hub is launching a free digital conference featuring over 40 speakers from the music industry. The Music Launch Summit will be streaming for three weeks, touching on four key areas of the industry: creative, marketing, live and business. If you’re looking to delve into the industry, this summit is for you! While you can get all the information here, we also got to chat with founder Steve Palfreyman all about this innovative concept.

Stage Right Secrets: You originally created the summit concept before starting Music Launch Hub and have now come back to your original concept. How did that come about?

Steve Palfreyman: I don’t actually remember when I had the idea for the summit but I know I bought the domain  March of last year. It must have been around that time because I usually get excited and I’m like “Let’s do it!” So it’s been many months in the idea process; 12 months of that was probably a lot of planning and I found it tricky to know where to start because I’ve got quite a big vision for where this was going to go. So I didn’t know whether I should start the summit first or the online community first or do I do a course first? I’ve done plenty of workshops and coaching before so I’m like “Do I start with that?” Even though it’s not the first time I’ve done something like this, it felt like I was starting again and it was hard to commit to one thing. My big takeaway is it doesn’t really matter where you start, just start somewhere. Just start on something because the next thing is going to be easier because of that.

SRS: Who is the audience for the Music Launch Summit? Who can learn and appreciate the content?

Steve: Here’s the interesting thing: When I started the Facebook group, I really wanted independent musicians who were committed to building a career but I also really wanted industry professionals at different stages who could come in and offer support. I really want music pros to know there’s a lot out there to learn about for their own career as well as what they might do for other bands. The artists are going to be more drawn to this but I want the artists to know that they’re going to get more from it if they come into the Facebook group and start talking and meeting the other people and get out there and get out of their shell a little. It’s going to make everything easier and the experience much richer for them. I love the Facebook group because it’s a closed community, like Andrew Apanov is going to talk about in one of his sessions, but he mentioned it’s like creating a safe space.

SRS: You are also a musician on top of founding and running Music Launch Hub. How are you balancing everything?

Steve: I’ve had to hand over a lot more of the reigns of the management side to my bandmate, who’s the songwriter. I’ve always been more naturally inclined to be the one who gets the social media so I’ll take charge of that or I’ll take part of booking shows… but he’s the main songwriter and he should be taking charge of that. I had to sit down with him and say, “Hey, look. I just actually can’t do this at the moment. I can be there as a band member and a support mechanism but you need to take charge and I’ll be back in October to focus more.” It’s been really interesting because we’ve got two visual albums that we’re working on at the moment; one’s a live recording and the other is a web series that’s being made for our last EP. The other day I was literally doing an interview here and in the next room there is a scene going on between a couple for the web series. It’s been a tough juggle. There’s just so much overlap when you’re trying to do two big projects at once. Knowing where the priority is is the only thing that matters. Picking something and sticking to that and knowing when to say no to other stuff, which is hard, but you have to do it.

SRS: What were your influences growing up that made you want to be a musician?

Steve: Early on influences were changing because every year there was a band I would fall for. This is from when I started playing guitar at the age of 9. I think I started really finding artists that I really connected with from the age of 11 or 12 onward. I would always have someone I was following that I wanted to be like. It was around the age of 17/18 that I really believed in my band. I knew we weren’t just going to get a label deal, even then. I knew we had to take charge so when we did our first release we funded it all and figured it out and just winged it. Waking up that next day and knowing that we pulled it off and had actually made money back to what we spent was the first moment of “What’s next? Let’s keep going.” That kind of fueled my fire and I started following some people who will be at the summit. John Oszajca was one of the first people I started following and was really fascinated that someone out there was going, “Hey I’m an artist and you can take charge of your career.” He was the big inspiration and it was so much fun interviewing him and telling him he started my curiosity to try and find my own pathway. Every single person who’s in the summit has inspired me in some way at some point in different ways and that’s why they’re here. I’ve either met them personally and come across their stuff or I’ve been introduced to them. However it’s happened, they’ve all inspired me with something that they’re doing. They’re not all just people out there in the education space, some of them don’t usually do talks like this and I knew they’d have a lot to give. There’s a really nice mix for people to get inspiration.

To learn more about Steve and how to get involved in the Music Launch Hub, head over to musiclaunchhub.com and we will see you at the Summit!