Face The Music Speaker Focus: Nicholas Greco

Company: Beyond The Valley - Festival Director

How did you first become involved in the music business? Going to shows throughout uni and meeting the right people led onto getting involved in the touring and events space and into me taking the leap and putting on my own events.

What's your area of expertise and what experience do you have? I head up artist bookings but I always need to be across all areas of our events. We have a pretty small core team so we need to be pretty versatile.

What topics will you be mostly talking about at Face The Music? Absolutely everything around Beyond The Valley. Mostly my roles - which are artist bookings and working with promotions/marketing - but also the day to day of BTV and how we got the festival off the ground.

What's been the biggest change in the music business you've seen over the past 12 months? The explosion in the number of festivals. When we started BTV there was only a handful of other festivals over summer and now there's at least two to three every weekend.

What do you think will be the biggest issue affecting the music industry in the next 12 months and why? I would say again the explosion in the number of events on offer, not everyone can be successful competing on the same dates.

What advice would you give young practitioners in your area starting out today? Never turn down opportunities, it's about having a long-term goal and seeing how these smaller stepping stones can work in to help you achieve that.