Hi! I’m glad you’re here.
My name is Christian Pearson. My co-founder James Beach and I want to Oklahoma City to be one of the best music cities in the world… We have a long way to go!
But we have some ideas, and we want to share them with you…
Here’s what we believe in, and what we aim to accomplish.
3 things OkSessions believes in…
1. Farm-to-table Music –
Outback Steakhouse is nice. It’s consistent wherever you go. You can find one anywhere. I like Outback… … … Mahogany blows it away. It’s boutique, excellent, local. There’s a story to the ingredients, the menu, the business. When you go there, you get an experience. You have a closer relationship with the people you dined with when you leave than when you arrived. Music is similar. Ryan Seacrest’s Top 40 are nice, you can find fans of this music anywhere, the music is fun… but they are not the voices of the world. Music is and always will be an oral tradition, specific to a locale, and being present in an intimate room with artists sharing the musical voice that’s been passed down to them is the pinnacle of a musical experience.
2. Rising Tides Lift All Ships (80/20 Rule) –
When someone in the community benefits, the community as a whole benefits. We all need to give a 20% tithe of our efforts to those around us, without expecting anything in return. There are 1 million+ people in OKC in the surrounding areas, what % of them are attending live music events regularly? A small one. No one needs to compete for a fan base here (the word would actually be squabble, not compete, haha). We need to work together to engage a much larger portion of the population. Music will become a big part of the culture here, and musicians will be able to consistently sell tickets/merch, connect with fans, and make a living doing what they are meant to do. OKC will be a better place to live, audiences will happily pay to hear musicians perform, and we will put OKC and its artists on the map.
3. OKC Must Change the Music Seen –
Create a truly exceptional, genuine, organic movement, and the world will notice… if someone tells them. We can’t rely on anyone else to tell the story, the community itself needs to. We will do this with content and media. We also need to bring in great artists from outside Oklahoma (the broader our perspectives and relationships, the better), and we need to help Oklahoma artists represent us on the road.
3 things OkSessions is going to do:
1. Facilitate Community-driven Content Creation –
The community needs to tell its own story, and that is done with content (photo, video, writing, etc). Making content is a meaningful creative endeavor, and everyone (even non-musicians) wants to contribute. Many don’t know how to be a part yet. OkSessions will help facilitate OKC creating great content. Content is engaging and entertaining when done well; and content is a vehicle for ideas, information, and awareness.
2. Music Media –
Content is shared via media (word of mouth, websites, text messages, emails, apps, news, radio, print publications, physical signage, and more). We will make an awesome website with a solid events calendar, blog, and video channel. This will serve as OKC’s go-to source for knowing about music happenings. We will also form healthy relationships with existing media sources to help place content with them. We will build our social media accounts and email lists, and have a dedicated SEO plan to find web traffic and tell them about live, local music.
3. Innovation and Tech –
OKC is exciting because there is little music industry/infrastructure here (as compared to Nashville, Austin, etc). What’s nice about this is we can build things new rather than renovating. We will consciously look for new, efficient ways to book artists/venues, put on shows, promote artists, and create content. We think technology will be key to this, and we will leverage tech solutions to be efficient. Efficiency means getting work done effectively so artists can spend time creating great art, and audiences can participate easily.
We are a small and scrappy start-up, and we are looking forward to rolling out our ideas gradually in 2018. Join our email list, follow us on social media, and make OkSessions part of your life in Oklahoma City. There are so many great artists here locally that the world needs to know about.
Let’s change the music seen.
