Music Biz Is Sticking With Atlanta After a Rip-Roaring Occasion

Adaptive Music’s Tony Alexander chats with soul artist MAJOR at Music Biz in Atlanta final week (Photograph: Music Biz)

Music Biz switched cities and stored a lot of the music enterprise crowd. Now, Atlanta is the chosen metropolis for 2026 as properly — leaving a probably juicy alternative in Nashville.

Regardless of extreme hand-wringing over Music Biz’s swap to Atlanta from Nashville, the music enterprise crowd confirmed up in droves final week. Attendance appeared barely down from final yr’s Nashville shindig, it must be famous, although the convention introduced its intention to stay in Atlanta in 2026.

We’re nonetheless unclear on the machinations surrounding Music Biz’s shift from Nashville after a number of years in Music Metropolis, although organizers stated they’ve at all times deliberate to shift cities periodically. Apparently, COVID sophisticated plans to leap round, although now the unique sport plan is being carried out.

That’s the official line and Music Biz is sticking to it, although some chatter suggests a political motivation for the shift — although that’s one scorching potato we’ll politely go alongside. Both approach, the crowds confirmed up, and the occasion was chock-full of core music business firms and execs.

Music Biz’s city-switch is vaguely harking back to the Grammys of yore, when ‘Music’s Greatest Evening’ ping-ponged between New York and Los Angeles earlier than largely being anchored in Tinseltown.

For Music Biz, it appears like a ‘construct it in a brand new metropolis and they’ll come’ dynamic is at work: for these bumping elbows at Music Biz on the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly, crowds had been strong and dealmaking brisk — all substances for a strong music business fest that’s poised to hop round.

So how does this shift the deck on the music business convention scene?

Music Biz continues to emerge as a marquee music business occasion within the US, notably given SXSW’s waning fame for precise enterprise, dealmaking, and even showcase high quality. In the meantime, Nashville already has a smattering of fine business occasions — most notably CRS. However given the town’s density of music celebs, songwriters, and business folks — to not point out its celebration getaway attraction — will any individual make a run at constructing a mega business convention in Tennessee?

Individually, Nashville’s sudden significance to the music business’s vital lobbying agenda can’t be overstated, notably given the big shakeup that simply went down on the US Copyright Workplace. All of the sudden, the music business is waffling in Washington in opposition to the tech bros — can Nashville and its extra red-leaning artists probably flip issues round on the AI and copyright safety fronts?

Shifting again to Atlanta, Music Biz kicked off simply as Dwell Nation signed a significant lease within the metropolis’s $5 billion Centennial Yards mega-project. Particularly, the live performance large inked a long-term lease for a 5,300 seat venue within the downtown stadium and leisure megaplex, a transfer designed to attract a string of celebrity artists to the Centennial zone.

Maybe Atlanta opts to sweeten the deal additional and twine Music Biz right into a longer-term relationship? It’s at all times good to have a complete business of movers and shakers strategizing in your city, notably given the music business’s tendency to bump native economies.

And with that, right here’s only a fast canvas of the businesses on deck at Music Biz this yr:

Apple Music, Spotify, Warner Music Group, Common Music Group, DiMA, ASCAP, A2IM, RIAA, SONA, The Orchard, OpenPlay, Empire Publishing, Rhymesayers Leisure, Harmony Music, CD Child, Downtown Music Publishing, Columbia School Chicago, DDEX, The MLC, AllTrack, Sound Credit score, Encore Music Tech Options, MusicWatch, Luminate, New West Information, Music Canada, Felony Information, Elektra Music Group, The Vinyl Alliance, Stem Disintermedia, Lark42, Sureel AI, College of North Texas, Drexel College, Music Enterprise Toolbox, 24/7 Artists…

… and the checklist goes on and on.

See y’all subsequent yr — in Atlanta, that’s.