CD Baby and Berklee Valencia hosted the first ever DIY Musician Conference in Europe…
… and it was a blast.
The quality of the seminars, the enthusiasm and talent of the attendees, and the beauty of the setting all exceeded my expectations.
The DIY Musician Conference EU — at a glance
Things kicked off on Friday evening outside the Berklee College of Music campus (part of the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain), with music performed by Berklee students.
The next morning we headed to the Opera House to begin an intensive day of sessions and panels.
Here’s Kevin Breuner (our VP of Marketing) welcoming everyone and thanking our awesome sponsors, including Spire, Sofar Sounds, Downtown Music Publishing, and Music Ally.
Kevin and I, along with CD Baby’s Danielle King and Cristina Cano, did a panel discussion later in the day about preparing your next release for success. We talked over some of the common mistakes artists make (and some of the smart things you can do) when getting ready to put out new music.
Here’s the CD Baby team smiling in front of a giant Star Wars stormtrooper helmet… I mean… IMAX cinema. 
On Saturday night a handful of selected attendees showcased their music, including Burt Byler…
… and Them Fantasies…
And here’s a group shot of the attendees, Berklee staff and students, and CD Baby team.
It’s true of all our DIY Musician Conferences: the workshops are great, but the real value is in the community that forms and continues to be a support network once everyone goes back to the day-to-day of their music careers.
A few of our wise speakers…
Our friends at Spire set up a mobile studio to show off their portable recording device:
Wow, 10am seemed like a reasonable time to begin a musician’s conference, up until I realized that Saturday night dinner in Spain doesn’t really wind down until 1am.
Here’s me leading an early morning session on Sunday all about Spotify:
Wesley from Music Ally gave artists an adult dose of serious social-promo wisdom:
The whole event ran smoothly — which of course was a concern when the thing was being hosted overseas — thanks to some really welcoming and knowledgeable Berklee grad students, including these folks:
I’ve been back long enough for the jet lag to wear off, but I’m still flying high from the trip. Great times, great place, great people.
In this video, I talk about three high-level “motivational” takeaways from my conference experience in Spain:
If you want to hang out with a bunch of music industry professionals, the CD Baby team, and 1500 other independent musicians for three days of education and networking, join us in Nashville this August 24-26 for CD Baby’s 4th annual DIY Musician Conference (in the USA)!
Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.