Canadian Music Trade’s
2020
RPMDA
Convention “Not-a-Preview”
Retail Insights from Would-Be Presenters
By Michael Raine
As
you may gather from
the title, this was
supposed to be our
annual preview of the
RPMDA Conven-
tion – you know, the one where we discuss
all the enlightening educational and fun so-
cial events that await the few hundred print
music dealers and publishers who will gather
together in a confined space at some hotel,
most definitely not keeping six feet apart?
It’s also the annual preview where we get
some insights from a few presenters to share
with the folks here in Canada who won’t be
crossing the wondrously open border to the
United States to join their colleagues.
Well, you know what happened. The
RPMDA Convention, like every other
gathering, big and small, around the world
was cancelled because of the COVID-19
pandemic.
Nonetheless, before the convention
was cancelled, Canadian Music Trade spoke
with three planned conference presenters
about sessions that we thought would be
especially interesting. And, convention or
not, those conversations yielded plenty of
valuable insights and best-practices for print
24 CANADIAN MUSIC TRADE
retail success. So, consider this our first (and
hopefully last) RPMDA Convention not-a-
preview! CMT: So, what do you mean by the “Sil-
icon Valley way” in the context of music
products retail?
Innovation and Growth –
The Silicon Valley Way
(but without the tech!)
With David Friedman of
Ficks Music Friedman: Unlike most in this print music
world, most of my professional career has
been in tech and a lot of that has been in
high-growth startups and venture-backed
startups. Some have succeeded wildly, like
Venmo, and some have failed horribly, like
ones you haven’t heard of [laughs]. When I
came into this arena – and I am a musician
but not professionally and not seriously – it
was more an exploration into e-commerce…
What I learned in doing those startups
over and over again is that failure is not an
absolute concept. It’s how you failed and it’s
why you failed. There are good reasons to
fail and there are good ways to fail. Because,
when you’re really innovating and changing
and you’re really trying to do something that
you’ve never done before or maybe nobody
else has done before, the unknowns are so
vast. So, how you manage that process and
how you think about it really impacts if
you’re going to fail and how fast you fail.
This isn’t the whole Facebook thing of “just
break things to break things,” but the speed