Vegas Music Summit brings music industry to downtown

It’s a small music conference inspired by a big one.

The biggest, in fact.

No one would confuse the downtown-based Vegas Music Summit, in its sixth year, with the massive South By Southwest music industry gathering, an event as sizable as its native Texas.

But then again, this is part of the appeal of the two-day conference, which begins Thursday.

“South By Southwest has become so big, which is fine, but I think the true essence of that conference originally being an industry network event as well as finding new talent and spotlighting new artists has somewhat been lost,” says Rodel Delfin, executive producer of the Vegas Music Summit. “It’s become more of a marketing event, in a way, rather than an unsigned artist discovery thing. That was the impetus for starting Vegas Music Summit, to go back to the roots and make it more of a local/regional conference.”

The idea is to bring music industry veterans to Las Vegas for a couple of days to network, speak on panels during the day and be exposed to unsigned local talent at night.

This year, speakers include Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman, A&R executives from Warner Bros., Epic Records and other labels, music attorneys, booking agents, band managers and producers, along with members of signed Vegas bands like Otherwise and Adelitas Way.

There will also be nightly concerts at four downtown venues, with national headliners such as Hot Water Music, Reggie and the Full Effect and Blonde Redhead and locals such as The Dirty Hooks, Play for Keeps and The Astaires.

“A big part of it is trying to showcase the best emerging, unsigned artists in Las Vegas,” says Delfin, himself an A&R consultant for Red Bull Records.

The event has had a decent track record of doing this: Imagine Dragons played VMS in 2011, before their rise to superstardom, while Otherwise found their attorney at the conference, who later helped get them a deal with Century Media Records.

Imagine Dragons’ early career was incubated downtown, at least in part, and the development of the Fremont East Arts District has enhanced the VMS as well: Now there are half a dozen venues within walking distance of each other.

“That was one of the reasons with starting the conference, we knew that things were starting to happen on Fremont Street,” Delfin says. “We were thinking that this could be a similar situation with Sixth Street in Austin.”

That being said, the idea is to grow the VMS slowly, organically.

There’s a lot of Vegas bands worth seeing. And now a few more of them will be.

“There is talent here in this town. There always has been,” Delfin says. “It’s just that the spotlight has become stronger.”

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow on Twitter @JasonBracelin.