I have that melancholy feeling that the party is over and its time to go home. Its been three pleasent days pottering about Brighton, pretending to be part of the music industry.

Saturday's talks remained bouyant even after two night of partying, starting off with a panel on digital promotion. I was awakened sharply when I find myself only artist in the room honest enough to identify myself, suddenly answering the question "Would I ever consider signing to a promoter?". I'm not sure I dealt with it especially well, and wondered how far back I would need to sit to avoid being picked on in future. The panel discuss how promoters must add value to the live experience, some ideas including recording live shows for webcasting after the event.

The next panel featured speakers from the PRS, Music Glue and a Marillion band member, a band that has forged ahead in DIY music. I ask why a band who does nearly everything else themselves have ended up on Music Glue, and I'm told about the unique data-capturing technology that they provide on user demographics. Out of 250,000 downloads, Marillion recorded 8,000 new e-mail addresses to whom they plan on marketing, all through Music Glue's free service. From what I can tell, Music Glue is sort of an aggregator; through which an artist can upload content to one place, and see it's progress on P2P and other places. Instead of building user information in the corporate social networking sites, which can't be exported, musicians can build user information and plan tours. Marillion have put an entire album out for free in this way.

For the first time all weekend, the sun decides to pop out, and so I fancy a stroll down the pier to watch a day-time performance from Die! Die! Die!, a youthful and energetic electro-rock group whose members can't be more than twenty years old on average. Their lead singer raps and rasps in an incubus style but at a higher pitch, possibly on account of his age, and sparingly moves into a roaring metal-style rant, which the band managed to incorporate well. The music is up-tempo, the drummer playing sixteenths on the high hat the entire set. It's party music, a younger audience would be well into it, a thought that makes me sound worringly old.

I took the opportunity with the nice weather to stroll through the lanes and grab some lunch, and walk it off down the promenade with a Mr. Whippy. As festivals go, Great Escape is rather unique with its bucket+spade feel of the seaside. Its nice that on day three I've washed each day and slept in a bed.

I return for the final talk of the weekend, on the subject of music writing. We hear of the initiative to create a bi-annual music journal, called Loops, a coffee-table style magazine (although the contributers would probably prefer not to be called a magazine) with a focus on creative music writing. Jorunalism with quality, rather than necessarily being informative or descriptive. I decide not to tweet during the talk, after hearing about how the Internet has eroded the commerciability of quality music writing. They describe a lost world, where the limitations of information created a handful of information sources which were authoritative, where a few writers would pass judgement on music and build a hierarchy of acts which would serve to shape the music scene. They admit that there may well be some good music writers out there, writing on blogs, who may only have nine readers each. I've had nearly two hundred in May so far, but I see their point. My generation has the tools to write before they think; I can tweet from my phone, blog anywhere and anytime, and I inevitably write more colloquially as a consequence. Yet I wonder whether Loops is wishful thinking; at £12 a throw I wonder whether anyone cares anymore what anyone else's opinion is. On the other hand, Colin Greenwood of Radiohead wrote a piece for the first issue, as did Paul Morley and Simon Armitage, amongst others.

After some last-minute networking back at the hotel, and some free beer, I head down to Komedia with the intention of seeing Little Boots. I suppose I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. For those who haven't heard, Little Boots is the solo project of Victoria Hesketh, who after an unsuccessful stint in an electro-pop band, was label-backed to start a solo career. After a year or so running a music blog, where she releases made-in-my-bedroom music videos of her playing covers and making music, she was tipped as the best act of 2009 in January, quite an achievement. Maybe the BBC have some crystal ball, but apparently its all downhill from here.

I was interested to see how much of that intimate performing would enter into the live show. She is accompanied on stage by a drummer, largely for show I think, and a synth-player; neither of which seemed to have a lot of work to do. A lot of sound was produced on the pre-programmed tenori-on drum machine. There must have had some off-stage or computer assistance, as from what I could tell the tracks ran smoothly between subsequent songs, without much interaction with the gadget itself. The penultimate song seemed to be programmed live, ammounting to pressing the right combination of buttons to play a New Order cover.

I was surprised to see a lot of guys there, and I think Little Boots has a winning formula that could appeal to guys as well as girls. For instance, her latest single starts with a cool synth progression, but in the chorus I can imagine girls dancing round their handbags. This is pop music; but it has a modern sound and considering this 25-year-old hasn't had a single or album out yet, its remarkable that she's headlining a festival and earning such recognition. I think the reason is that unlike a lot of pop music we've heard over the last ten years, Little Boots has talent. She can get up there and sing. Of course, she is pretty and that is undeniably useful; but she isn't an ex-neighbours actress singing someone else's song with a pack of muscular men in tights dancing in unison behind her; she is a talented musician who made some pop songs in her bedroom, and good luck to her.

I hope that by now I would have written enough words to appease Paul Morley, but I thought I'd try and summarise the event and what it meant for me.

From the first day, I could see how the music business is in a state of flux. But not panic. There is acceptance now that the only certainty is uncertainty. There are plenty of ideas, some of which will work, some that won't. There is a feeling that music has a strong future; just that no-one knows what it will look like. The convention asks the question whether labels are still relevant: this is an industry looking itself in the mirror.

I hear about individuals going DIY to launch multi-platinum albums, a company that sends music videos to your phone at gigs over Bluetooth, subscription-funded business models. The future is wide open: for labels, artists, promoters; there are no rules now, and I feel now more than ever the certainty about pushing my band's music out over the web via subscription. I suppose that by next year's festival that will probably be old fashioned. 

I look at Little Boots, who is a year younger than me, building a career out of her own endeavours, and Daniel Ek, also a year younger, the darling of the music business for monetising music streaming, and realise that if they can do it, so can I, so can anybody. Maybe there are tons of fantastic artists out there we haven't seen or heard of yet, and won't until they have their DIY thing sorted out and come out of nowhere. Its completely unpredictable. I think the situation is rather like that at the turn of the twentieth century, when the U.S. patent office considered closure on the basis that 'everything had been invented'; and the recent pessimism brought on by piracy ignores the golden opportunity of the Internet, and the pessimism that music has stagnated, that there is 'only so much four guys with a guitar can do' is being proved wrong all of the time.

What did I gain from it all? As an artist, I learned a few things, mainly feeling vindicated on my ambitions to go DIY. I perhaps saw the other side of the picture too: that label's arn't necessarily evil; they're just not necessary. There will always be artists who can't or won't do their own promoting, distribution; there are some who thrive on it. As an entrepreneur, I see that the concept of building a following initially on-line, especially with subscription money, is now precedented, and been proven to work lucratively. Looking back on the amount of work I've put into Vibey Subscriptions Ltd., I feel that with a bit more work I can package that into a platform that can help others go down the DIY route, and there are a large number of free tools that I can collaborate with to help realise that. As an audience member, I saw a mixed bag of performances, drank a lot of beer, and had a lot of fun.

Viva Great Escape!