OUR NEXT WORKSHOP DATE & TIME: Saturday, September 27, 2025, 11am

WHERE: Pacific Beach Library, 4275 Cass Street, Pacific Beach

 

TICKETS: Registration RSVP is required; seating is first come first serve.
To attend the workshop, CLICK HERE

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Join us at the Pacific Beach Library on September 27 for Two Music Business Education Panels​​

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Panel One: Promoting Your __________. Promoting your Event and or Musical Release 

Do you have a release, a single, EP or Album, or maybe a big show to promote? We will have a panel of experts in the industry discuss the best practices on how to get the word out to promote your next project. Our panelists may work at a club or venue tasked with promoting hundreds of shows per year. They may be an artists themselves, with years of experience promoting their own singles, EPs, albums, and with great insights from the shows they book to promote those releases. Our panel will focus on the do’s and don’ts, lessons learned, and best practices.

Panelists include:

• Max Green (Writer, Artist, Producer, DJ) is a writer, artist, and producer originally from San Diego and a founding member of the indie band Inspired & the Sleep. With a catalog of over 1,000 releases and more than 250 million streams across platforms, his music has taken him on tours across the U.S. and abroad with his music syncing on networks like MTV, Bravo, VH1, and more. Currently working full-time in music, Max continues to create (for his own project URCHN), collaborate, and support emerging artists.

 

• Robbie Butler (PR Soda Bar, 10yrs, production manager, label manager) has been a part of Soda Bar since 2014. Butler started out as the assistant production manager and social media manager, before becoming production manager in 2022, all the while still overseeing the venue's social media presence. A stalwart in the San Diego music scene for most of his life, for the last 3 decades he's developed a deep knowledge of music and music industry know how. For many years he served as touring merch manager for Wavves, Cults, Future Islands and Beat Coast,  as well as being inventory/shipping manager for Topshelf Records, while they were located in San Diego.

 

Panel #2: DIY Releases Independent and Small Labels 

A conversation with people in the industry, making it happen and doing the hard work to consistently put out releases digitally and physically. You first have to write the songs, rehearse the songs, plan the recording, do the recording and pay for it. Next, production of the physical products. Scheduling and planning the release date, the publicity and marketing plan, designing the artwork, get the products completed and received, and/or figure out the uploading and timing. Finally, planning that release show, and then follow up with more PR and more shows…

We will talk with our expert panel, and get their advice on how to be successful, lessons learned and tips on what to do, and not do...

Panelists include:

• Rory Morrison (Musician, Artist, Manager, Promoter, Label manager) is known artistically as Strange Bouquets, Rory Morrison is a musician, writer, and cultural organizer based in San Diego, CA. He is the founder of Bad Vibes Good Friends, a record label and arts collective that has grown from a grassroots movement into a multidisciplinary platform bridging music, art, and community. Since 2016, the collective has hosted more than 200 shows, four music festivals, and partnerships with brands like Vans, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Madre Mezcal, and Casa Lumbre, while establishing itself as a home for genre-defying, visionary projects.

• Brian Witkin (Label Founder & President) is the Chief Executive Officer of Pacific Records. A lifelong musician turned music executive, Brian has spent more than two decades in the record business, where he oversees daily operations and drives the company’s growth and development. In addition to leading Pacific Records, Brian remains musically active as an artist, songwriter, and record producer. He is also an entertainment attorney and a GRAMMY® Voting Member of the Recording Academy. As a touring musician, Brian has recorded and performed alongside acclaimed artists including ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons and four-time GRAMMY® winner George Kahumoku Jr. He is the founder of the two-time Nā Hōkū Hanohano (Hawaiian GRAMMY®) nominated group Slack Key ‘Ohana® and is an endorsed artist with Ovation Guitars.

• Phil Beaumont (Artist, Musician, Writer, Promoter) has released over a dozen independent records with bands such as Maquiladora, Little White Teeth and his current band, The Color Forty Nine, and has toured throughout Europe, the US, Mexico and Japan. Phil has produced numerous music videos including a collaboration with world famous, Grammy winning singer Rubén Albarrán from Café Tacvba, and Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery Award winner, Hugo Crosthwaite for the song, What Would I Know?/Yo qué sé? His bands have also collaborated with numerous documentary filmmakers to create sound scores and soundtracks.

 

Moderator: Lou Niles (91x Loudspeaker, In Your Neighborhood w. Lou Niles, and the San Diego Music Foundation)

Lou Niles has decades experience in the music business as an A&R executive, signed artists to record deals, planned and promoted releases in media and on radio, booked and promoted tours regionally and nationally, has done radio promotion campaigns, is a radio show host, and has also been an artist manager.

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DEMO LISTEN

If time permits, we will have a short Demo Listen session, where the experts will give feedback on a limited number of pre-submitted songs.
 

DEMO Listen Rules – There will be a short demo listen of 5 songs chosen at random at the end of the 2nd panel. Please submit your demos in person on CD or call out a Spotify account and song. Five songs will be chosen. Please submit only ONE song. Choose your best song.