The UK release process is one of the most front-loaded in the world, with pre-release promotion starting up to three months ahead of release. The problem is that, with everything riding on building pre-awareness, we’ve produced a system that creates demand for a product that is by definition not legally available – which doesn’t work when it takes just one promo CD to be uploaded to a p2p network for a release to spread around the world.

Industry bodies including ERA and the MMF are calling for abolition of pre-release windows in their entirety. With speakers including the BBC’s Head of Music for Radio 1 George Ergatoudis, this event will see leading lights from across the business attempt to build a consensus on the way forward.

Problem: when people start hearing music that has been officially pre-released, they get excited about it and want to hear more as soon as possible, but our current system doesn’t provide them with any way to do so.

Solution: stop pre-releasing music, so that people don’t have the opportunity to get excited about what we have to offer them.

Interesting. That isn’t the approach I would have taken, but I guess that’s why I’m not a “leading light” in the record biz.