Local acts adapt to changes at 2015 Florida Music Festival

The Florida Music Festival and Conference rid national headlining acts at this year's festival, allowing local unsigned musicians a chance to perform on the main stage.

The Florida Music Festival invaded downtown Orlando this past weekend and gave locals the opportunity to discover a wide range of various music acts, across some of downtown’s hottest clubs, pubs and music venues.

More than 150 artist gathered across the three day music festival and conference to showcase their talents, and, network with each other and those of the media and music industry. A various supply of industry reps from different states — New York, Los Angeles and Nashville — were on hand to mix and mingle, including reps from Atlantic Records, Superfly Entertainment, William Morris Entertainment, Working Group Management and more.

Unlike recent previous years, the Florida Music Festival (FMF) did not enlist in any national headliners, instead returning to its original mission of promoting unsigned acts. A move many of the local acts thought was a great idea.

"I love that you can network with industry professional. It's small enough to where they will talk to you," said Jonnie Morgan, lead vocalist for Orlando rock band The Jonnie Morgan Band. "South by Southwest is awesome, but it's really big. This is a little more personal. Five years ago we didn't make it so doing things like this is special for us. All of our fans love it and it's good for the community."

Morgan and his band headlined the opening night of FMF, Friday, April 16. While their show was originally scheduled to be outside, on the Wall Street Plaza Main Stage, it had to be moved into the smaller intimate Slide Show, just around the corner, due to a rainstorm. While the stage was not as big, and the crowd had less space to move and groove, Morgan states that the energy from the crowd was amazing and that he was happy that the seven-piece band could keep the party going despite things going as planned.

"Things happened and you got to go with the flow, it is what it is. I think it turned out better than it could have been. It was a little bit rainy last night, so when we moved inside people followed us in and it got crazy. We had people inside jumping up and down — we had people in the streets stopping to watch.

"It all worked out. Everything was amazing."

No stranger to FMF, Orlando's own indie-pop starlet Britt Daley made her fifth appearance as the festival. Daley would state that FMF's free approach is the right idea, because it doesn't force fans of local acts to debate whether or not to spend money to their favorite artist on a festival stage, when they can wait a week and see them inside at a venue for a cheaper price.

Accustomed to performing on the earlier days of the festival, Daley stated to me at an industry party, on Day 2, Friday, April 17 at the Aloft Hotel, that the anticipation for her performance on the final day was a bit "nerve-wracking," because she would be debuting new material for the first time and had no experience with how the new sound would go over with the crowd.

"In previous years my stuff was a little more uptempo and dancey," said Daley, explaining how she is no longer making records at 126 to 128 beats per minute. "I sort of gone in a different direction. My music is still electronic and indie-pop but it is definitely more chilled out. The new sound is cool, it's more downtempo and soulful."

With so many rising artist in the area, in addition a vast amount of headlining acts bringing their tour to Orlando, and not many stations focussing on local acts, the Florida Music Festival and Conference allows for music junkies to find out about great talent right in their hometown. The record breaking attendance at FMF2015 proved that there’s plenty of local talent out there making names for themselves, they just need a stage to showcase their talents.