Among the artists in attendance, R&B star Mýa provided some insights that stem from her illustrious 28-year career.

“I’m an independent artist, and I’ve never been to an event like this during my journey before I was an artist or during my independent journey,” Mýa told Blavity. “So I love things like this where the unity is in the community and that there are people here to educate and uplift with awareness, knowledge and discussions where we can ask questions and a lot of things are on our radar in one place where we can pull from and decide what pieces to choose.”

Shifting from the age-old, one-size-fits-all tradition of joining a label, Mýa is a proponent of the idea that one can potentially build one’s infrastructure by attending the rising conference.

“When you hold events like this, there’s so many people you can build your team with. There’s so many resources that empower you to get where you are trying to go,” Mýa said. “And it’s not just a one-way street. We can all utilize something from each other. You don’t necessarily have to sign your life away to a major label. You can build your own team.”

While the annual event brings out an increasing crowd yearly, Mýa believes a conference of this nature should be happening much more often.

“I think this is so necessary to happen at least once a year, even if we could have something like this virtually once a month to keep the conversations going,” she expressed.

With everything at one’s disposal, Mýa believes that whatever one needs for their music industry career, it is more than feasible to find it at the Island Music Conference.

“I hope that people take away the gems obviously but that they take away numbers, email addresses, social media pages so that their Rolodex is built, so if they are looking for a content creator, if they meet a videographer or graphic artist, they got them from here,” she said. “If they need some musicians or producers, they also got them from here. Or even a lawyer or even a deal. There are so many people from so many different walks of life that make all the mechanics work that are also necessary.”