Jesse Burton, Oren Rosenbaum, Kendall Ostrow, Nick Barnes, Dr. Cheryl Slay Carr
On Thursday, October 18th at Belmont University, over 200 students attended United Talent Agency’s (UTA) inaugural Digital Summit. The event presented discussions with UTA executives including Nick Barnes, Digital Strategy Agent, Kendall Ostrow, Head of IQ Strategy, Oren Rosenbaum, Digital Agent/Emerging Platforms and Spotify’s Director, Head of Originals, Jesse Burton. The summit was held for faculty and students who are currently enrolled at Belmont University.
The Digital Summit, conceived by UTA, aimed to educate students on the various career opportunities in the digital marketplace, and explore what the current landscape looks like across practice areas such as social media, podcasting, and fan retargeting. Three sessions took place including “Retargeting: How to Cut Through the Noise and Market to Your True Fans” by Nick Barnes, followed by “Social Media: What Could go Wrong? Brand Crisis Management in the Digital Age” by Kendall Ostrow and “Creation to Syndication: How to get a Podcast off the Ground” by Oren Rosenbaum and Jesse Burton.
“Our ongoing relationship with UTA has resulted in countless professional and educational benefits for our students here at Belmont,” said Dr. Cheryl Slay Carr, Associate Dean of Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business. “By hosting a unique event like The Digital Summit, we were able to introduce them to career opportunities in a burgeoning field and invaluable insights from industry thought leaders.”
“We created The Digital Summit alongside Belmont to educate the next generation about career opportunities in the digital world,” said Nick Barnes, UTA Digital Strategy Agent. “Upon graduating, music business students tend to only consider the traditional route of labels, publishing, management, etc. and we wanted to highlight the value of the growing digital marketplace.”
During Ostrow’s presentation, she stated, “A study in 2015 found that 57% of Americans who use social media have posted something they’ve regretted. After this past summer’s string of high-profile firings, I bet that number will be much higher in the next study conducted. Offenders can go back and delete their tweets or do an apology tour, but these scandals will follow them for the rest of their lives. There is no easy ‘control-alt-delete’ button on Google.”
Burton added during his session, “This industry is too small to be interesting if it stays the way it is. We need to change the business, bring diverse voices into the fold, and make the content relevant for everyone. The podcast space is ripe for disruption.”
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