Billboard’s Ed Christman sat down with the Music Business Association’s President, Portia Sabin, to talk about what attendees can expect from this year’s Music Biz Conference.
Music Business Association president Portia Sabin’s career has reached most of the corners of the music industry, including drumming under the stage name of P-Girl in all-female punk power-pop band The Hissyfits in the late 1990s.
– Ed Christman, Billboard
After studying for a doctorate in anthropology and education at Columbia University in the early 2000s, she worked intermittently for the indie label Kill Rock Stars (and married its founder Slim Moon in 2004). Around that time, she also founded Shotclock Management and in 2006 took the reins of Kill Rock Stars when Moon left to work at Nonesuch Records. She led the label — home of Bikini Kill, The Decemberists, Sleater-Kinney and Elliott Smith — for 13 years while serving on the boards of directors for both U.S. label trade associations — the American Association of Independent Music and the RIAA — and the Recording Academy’s Pacific Northwest chapter. “I made a lot of connections across the industry through them and got a good sense of what part trade associations play in the ecosystem, as well as ideas about board management,” she says.