Inside the New Music Industry Conference That’s Prioritizing Wellness Over Status

In 2020, amidst the pandemic, Nick Maiale started thinking about the music industry beyond titles and company affiliations. Having spent over a decade working in music, including at the Music Business Association and Music Biz Conference, he felt inspired to promote more than professional development — he wanted to advocate for personal growth, too. 

Through his work, Maiale was consistently meeting impressive and driven young professionals, but a throughline started to emerge. “After listening to [so many] stories of working in the industry and feeling the limitations [of it], I asked myself ‘How can I help add value to these people’s lives?’…Our business is so fast-paced and revenue driven that we don’t always get the opportunity to step back and get to know people for who they are — and this leaves us placing strong emphasis on job titles, company affiliation and status,” he says. “The answer was clear: build a company that helps my community navigate the industry.”

By the end of 2020, Maiale had launched jump.global, a “community-first” company that manages music business executives. And come November, it will host its first annual summit in Los Angeles. “I started to think about this around the same time I thought about starting the company as a whole,” says Maiale, who serves as founder/CEO. “ I thought it would take place somewhere like Wyoming with 30 people in a cabin — but here we are, about to welcome a much larger number than that to Los Angeles in just a month.”

Held Nov. 12-14 at The LINE Hotel, conversations will largely avoid hot topics like AI and streaming and instead center on stress management, burnout prevention, resilience in the music business and more. Speakers include J Erving (founder of Human Re Sources and executive vp at Sony Music), Moody Jones (GM of dance at EMPIRE), Fadia Kader (executive vp/GM at Venice Music) and Gwen Bethel Riley (senior vp of music/head of content partnerships at Peloton).

“The topics we are covering at the summit are necessary to work in any industry or simply just to exist: leadership, effective communication, stress management, pivoting, financial literacy,” says Maiale. “Imagine a music industry where more people are trained on different personality types, emotional intelligence, how to deal with conflict in the workplace, how to manage their money and how to really address and support mental health.”

Perhaps the best evidence of the need for such a summit is also the biggest challenge in launching it: “Getting people to focus on themselves, as opposed to their work,” says Maiale. “It’s going to take a lot of work, but we believe that as a community, we can all make the music business more human.”

Fittingly, attendee badges will solely list their first and last names, with no companies or titles to be found.

Registration and more information on the jump.global annual summit can be found here. The event kicks off Nov. 12 with a NO EGO Welcome Party.