David Dufresne is CEO of Bandzoogle, the most powerful platform for musicians to build their website, engage their fans, and sell their music and merch directly. Bandzoogle works with many thousands of bands and musicians to help them create a strong base for their online strategy. David is a reformed venture capitalist, having spent 8 years placing bets on software, web, and video game startups. He’s an obsessive music fan and a apparently a wonderful DJ. He’s also a daddy, and he plays soccer and hockey, both very defensively.

As President of CD Baby and HostBaby from 2008-14, Brian Felsen was responsible for all business development, operations, customer service, marketing, and technology at the world's largest online distributor of independent music. At CD Baby, he massively grew their customer base, to where the company now has over 330,000 artists and 5 million tracks. Brian launched new programs such as foreign royalty collections and our sync and YouTube monetization programs. He also founded BookBaby, which digitally distributes the works of independent authors to digital retailers worldwide (including Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble.com, Sony's Reader Store, and Amazon.com). Previous activities include founding and running one of the largest independent music conferences in the world, composing several classical music works, creating art photography, poetry, and plays, and producing an award-winning documentary film about Turkish military coups d’état.

Most people now know Ari Herstand as the guy who helped them fly with their instruments. His Carry Your Instrument On The Plane… It’s The LAW blog post went viral and has been viewed over 250,000 with over 40,000 Facebook Likes. In just under two years, Herstand’s music business advice blog, Ari’s Take, has been nominated by the LA Weekly as the best music blog in Los Angeles and has become a go to resource for DIY musicians.

Ari Herstand is a DIY musician who has played over 600 shows around the country, has opened for or toured with Ben Folds, Cake, Matt Nathanson, The Milk Carton Kids and Ron Pope, and has had his music featured in countless TV shows.

Herstand is best known for his live looping: combining the trumpet, beat boxing, keys, acoustic guitar, percussion and vocals to create a full, sonic live experience.

He recently joined the Digital Music News team as a staff writer. Herstand brings the musician’s perspective to most current topics.