ALLAN McGOWAN

Allan McGowan has some thirty years of experience in the advertising, music and entertainment industries. He has worked in record retail, and as a concert promoter, artist manager and booking agent for such companies as Chrysalis and Virgin, specialising in the arrangement of European tours. He set up and ran the successful Brighton based comedy club Wit’s End in the late 70’s and early 80’s. He has worked on music videos as a storyboard artist and produced and script edited for television, and is a music business journalist having contributed to various trade magazines including Audience, the major live music industry trade journal and the Performing Right Society members magazine, ‘M’.

For 12 years he worked with international event and design company The Button Communications Group as an event producer, working on corporate entertainment for major clients and producing and programming both established and new talent showcase events for major media trade shows in Cannes,Hong Kong, Austin Texas and Cologne amongst others, being particularly responsible for the British At Midem Showcases. .

At present he is News Editor for Vip News, an on-line data and news service for the live music industry, administrates music publishing company Wintrup Songs Ltd and is an advisor on the Music Open Learning Programme, part of the Government’s New Deal for Musicians. He is also working on plans for an international music industry trade show to take place in Brighton next June. This will involve the co-operation of Brighton & Hove City Council and both local and international music industry professionals.

This year Allan has planned and been responsible for panels at the ILMC in London, and moderated panels at the Noorderslag Seminar and the Amsterdam Dance Event. he has attended Midem, SXSW and Popkomm as a journalist and been invited to participate in Export Music events in Helsinki and GoNorth in Scotland as well as moderating panels at PopPlus for the City of Cologne Music Office.