ITC agenda embraces changing landscape; Manchester forum to focus on new opportunities.(Conferences)

This year's In The City conference will address the overall theme of making money from music in a rapidly changing business environment.

Sanctuary Group founders Rod Smallwood and Andy Taylor will he among the speakers at the September 17 to 21 event at Manchester's Radisson Edwardian Free Trade Hall Hotel, where they will give keynote addresses on their successful business model.

ITC director Yvette Livesey says this year, more than any other in recent memory, there is a strong sense that the old rules are being re-written and a new template for the music industry is emerging. "In The City has always been a catalyst for radical thinking and I can't think of a better time to be debating this new era of opportunity at a time when we are facing perhaps our biggest challenges," she adds.

Smallwood and Taylor will feature in the Sunday programme of events billed as New Models, New Ideas Day, while the Monday of the conference has been named Mature Monday and will look at recent examples of artists who have been successfully marketed to the growing audience at the older end of the consumer demographic. Universal Classics & Jazz marketing director Dickon Stainer will give a speech examining this market and its implications for the business as a whole, followed by a series of panels and seminars examining the sector.

The Monday will also include two in-conversation interviews with leading music industry figures, although details have yet to be unveiled.

The final day has been given over to Songwriter Day, which will consist of a schedule of master-classes and discussions ...