XP Music Futures: multi-track workshop series

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) music industry had just seen a 35% growth spike in revenues, and the Global Music Report called it the “fastest growing music market in the world.” The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has since published the first official music chart for the region.

Millions of MENA listeners stream every day, following their favorite rising artists. MENA music, which thrived for decades behind closed doors, has arrived on the international scene.

The challenge

The relaunch of MENA’s music industry was already a few years underway, but still finding its identity, when XP Music Futures approached Wavetable. They had a new, first-of-its-kind conference concept: bring MENA’s entire music industry (plus a global network of professionals, talent and listeners) together in one space. As a team of music hobbyists and artists ourselves, we were in.

The ask was simple. XP needed a creative partner to design and develop a workshop series that would:

offer learning and connection to its attendees
reveal insights and strategic recommendations for future initiatives
represent the four pillars of XP’s mission
do all of that without the copy-paste formats of conferences past

What we built

Everything was built on XP’s four pillars:

TalentSupercharging Creativity
SceneMaking the Music Count
ImpactEnable & Empower
InnovationDisruptive Forward Thinking

We wanted range: different disciplines, stakeholders, backgrounds, levels of expertise and curiosities. Out of thousands of relevant topics, we narrowed the menu down to eight:

An Intro to Copyright Law
Gender Parity in the Music Business
Building a DJ Career
Creating a Regional Sustainability Agenda in Touring
How to Influence Decision Making in the Creative Industries
Cities & Dancefloors: Building the Future of MENA Music
Experiential Event Safety & Ethics
A Glance into the Regional Nighttime Economy

Cities and Dancefloors worksheet: Amsterdam, New York City, Berlin and Sarajevo as global inspiration, each with population and what makes its nightlife work — **Cities & Dancefloors.** Four cities to borrow from before mapping your own.

Cities and Dancefloors worksheet: a grid of assets and gaps across relationships, infrastructure, underutilized assets and culture — **Cities & Dancefloors.** Then a city's assets and gaps, column by column.

Regional Sustainability in Touring worksheet: a touring universe map linking community, talent, production, logistics and marketing — **Sustainability in Touring.** Build the touring universe you want to see exist.

Copyrights for All prompt card: What new opportunities are emerging for artists to exploit their creative IP? — **Copyrights for All.** One question per table, with a nudge underneath.

How it ran

There was no real precedent to model the series on, so we started from scratch, with a mix of interactive formats, activities and panels. Every session had to balance:

topics as different as copyright law and crowd safety
language: English was a second language for many attendees, so sessions needed both depth and clarity
60 minutes per workshop
an unknown audience: open access meant designing for a range of attendance and expertise levels
a local delivery team we’d never worked with, or even met

The work ran across four international time zones, endless WhatsApp threads and Notion pages. COVID-related travel disruptions and visa restrictions kept the Wavetable design team at home, hosting remotely from the US.

A workshop room in low light, a big screen reading The Obstacle is the Way, flip charts at the side and attendees seen from behind — One of the rooms, mid-session.

Even so, it became one of the most dynamic and fulfilling workshop series we’ve ever produced.

What shifted

Attendees from every session left with new knowledge and a shared sense of motivation. The pride in the rooms was hard to miss: MENA professionals celebrating the future of their own industry.

A flip chart split into Obstacles and Action, covered in yellow and pink sticky notes — What went up on the walls: obstacles and actions from Building a DJ Career, and a skills map from the gender parity session.

Two sticky notes: Comparitis, comparing yourself to others, and the action, catching yourself, being mindful — What went up on the walls: obstacles and actions from Building a DJ Career, and a skills map from the gender parity session.

Hosting remotely (“being there” without physically being there) still let us hand the organizers a set of strategic and practical insights, which are now being built into future plans. We were honored to bear witness to a global titan in the making. And the WhatsApp group with the hosting crew is still alive and kicking.

A selfie of the hosting crew in front of a QR code on the big screen, grinning, pointing and pulling faces — The hosting crew, after the last session.

“It was great to truly understand our huge potential and see the roadmap ahead.”
Cities & Dancefloors attendee
“The next 5 years are going to be very exciting.”
Creating a Regional Sustainability Agenda in Touring attendee

What we took away:

Celebrate the people behind the scenes (your own conference ushers, say) as much as your celebrities. Acknowledging the boots on the ground goes a long way.
Making space for dialogue is the first step to creating community.
Always triple-check your room stations on the day. Room changes tend to slip through the cracks.
There’s nothing quite like waking up to positive participant feedback forms.
Only we would get that excited about positive participant feedback forms.

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