Music Ally Focus

Ep. 168: we speak to Jorge Brea, CEO of Symphonic Distribution, and Guji Lorenzana, Symphonic's Territory Manager, Asia, to talk about successful strategies for international expansion. We talk about:

* What has worked well so far in their expansion into Latin America and Asia – and what didn’t go as planned?

* When you're entering a new market  what are the very first steps you take? What are the absolute essentials for making it work?

* What are the key local insights they've uncovered that outsiders tend to miss?

* How do you evaluate and build label/distributor partnerships in new markets? What does a good partner look like?

* How do you manage the tension between “global consistency” and “local relevance”?

* What are mistakes companies or artists make when they try to expand internationally?

* If you’re a small-to-mid-level label or manager looking to grow in another country... what is the first move they'd recommend?

* What one move should artists or companies make this year if they’re serious about international growth?

Ep. 167: We speak to beatBread CEO Peter Sinclair – on getting more options, insight and choices in music funding, and how independent artists, labels and songwriters are getting better deals while retaining ownership of their music using beatBread’s game changing deal comparison tool.

Peter chats to Music Ally Editor Joe Sparrow in this episode of MA focus, in collaboration with Beatbread.

Artists, songwriters and music rightsholders can now free up capital using their music in so many ways, and the old days of simply seeking advances from labels or publishers are long-gone.

Sound Royalties provides a way to access tomorrow's music income today: over a decade ago the company pioneered a funding model they call “creative-friendly music finance”, where the company fronts money to artists and rightsholders based on future earnings from streaming – and other sources.

Those artists or rightsholders can then use that money to further develop their careers, and then even return to Sound Royalties for more capital – at a new valuation that reflects their newly-developed success.

In this Music Ally Focus episode, made in collaboration with Sound Royalties, Music Ally's Joe Sparrow met with CEO and founder Alex Heiche in London –and spoke about what he’s learned from ten years of offering new funding solutions, the new income streams that the company is offering advances for, and what future developments he sees in a world where capital is routinely raised in this way.

Ep. 163: The jobs market in the music industry is changing fast: it's not just artists who are decoupling from the traditional industry businesses, it's the industry workers too. Not only have various major players laid off significant percentages of their workforce, but some artists and teams are seeking smaller, nimbler companies to do niche tasks. So we got Music Ally COO Patrick Ross on the show to chat about what this means for people: how to up-skill, re-train and branch out; how to recognise the opportunities this brings. Spoiler: now is a better time than ever to learn new abilities and make them into a creative career.

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Ep. 162: It's always a Very Special Episode when Music Ally's Head of Insight, Stuart Dredge, joins the Focus podcast, and lo, Stu chats to Joe Sparrow in depth about AI (of course!), music fintech, music ecotech, music healthcare tech and more!

This episode is part of Music Ally's annual music-tech Insight Report, available to Music Ally subscribers.

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Ep. 161: Direct to Consumer is a model that most artists, of all sizes, are now prioritising. But which type of artist does this approach work – and not work – for? Mag Rodriguez, CEO/founder of D2C platform Even – which has the tagline "Buy The Art From The Artist" – talks to Music Ally's Editor Joe Sparrow about how artists can use this business model to generate money.

He says that artists can make more money from a new release this way than on a streaming platform, sometimes even before that release reaches the DSP.

Joe and Mag also talk about artists using fan data, how emerging artists with small fanbases can make D2C work, and how to treat superfans in a way that feels fair, while maximising income for artists and the experience for fans?

Ep. 160: A marketing-focused episode – Sarah Seukeran analyses three recent notable campaigns and activations from Lainey Wilson, The Cardigans, and Peggy Gou. Featured are campaigns that combine local weather data with music streaming, showcase a good way of getting catalogue to connect with The Kids on TikTok, and encourage fans to design localised merch. It's ideal if you're trying to find good ideas to try out in your own music campaigns!

Ep. 158: When Jamie Oborne's career as a musician ended, he decided that the second best thing was to be an artist manager. He also decided that he'd stay independent, write contracts different to the one's he'd signed, and work closely with his artists. Twenty years on, Oborne's approach seems to have worked well enough: he runs management company All On Red and indie label Dirty Hit; both of which have a host of globally successful acts, most notably The 1975.

Jamie joined Music Ally's editor Joe Sparrow to discuss his career and his thoughts of the future of management: how the role will change and the shifting responsibilities of a manager in an era where you can do it all in-house.

They also talked about how artists – from DIY to arena-level – are aiming to create a D2C business model; how managers should trust their artists' decisions and work with them to nurture their instincts yourself; and what advice he'd have given himself when he was starting out in management.

Jamie also shared some of his favourite current artists that he's working with:

Ep 157: Cast your mind back to 2020, when public spaces were shut down and the world suddenly felt insular and closed. Live-streaming became wildly popular overnight – in fact this podcast began in these circumstances – and many apps and platforms appeared and disappeared to feed the need for watching live events from our homes.

A mere four years later, and live-streaming has matured and the froth has died down. So what is the space like now that it is no longer the buzzword of the moment? How healthy is  the livestream ecosystem today compared to the frothy ecosystem a few years ago? And How are artists using live-streaming now? And what do audiences and superfans really want from livestreaming now that they can go to gigs again?
Jakub Krampl, founder and CEO of music livestreaming company On Air talks to us about where live-streaming is in 2024, and what artist teams and audiences really want from live streams and recordings of their favourite artist. 

On Air: https://onair.events/

Led Zeppelin - The Song Remains the Same (Madison Square Garden 1973): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtVKz0rv4cg

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Ep 156: Superfandom, superfandom, superfandom. Unless you’ve been living on the moon for the last year, you’ll not have been able to avoid the latest obsession of pretty much anyone working in the music industry. We chatted to Jacquelle Horton, CEO/Founder of superfan platform Fave, about the nature of superfandom – and we also dug into how to nurture it without taking advantage of enthusiastic fans.

The industry’s current interest in superfandom makes sense: whether you’re a DIY artist, a manager, a label, a booking agent, or anything else – it’s clear that super-serving your superfans makes fans more happy, and makes you more money. Plus, it dovetails nicely with the direct-to-fan business model many are trying to build. Jacquelle tells us about the power of superfandom and how to do it right.

Fave: https://faveforfans.com/

Eminem – Til I Collapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi3_Zs-oRUo

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Ep. 155: Andre Benz founded The Nations when he was in high school. What began as a Youtube channel uploading dance music remixes has transformed into a media conglomerate with a record label and various genre-focused channels. 

In the latest episode of the Music Ally Focus podcast, he explains the challenges of building a multi-faceted ecosystem that meets the needs of modern music fans, and also creators – and doing it all on top of existing infrastructure in the form of Youtube. 

The Nations' success, he says, hinges on understanding its audience.By fostering a community through comments and replies, he built a loyal fanbase hungry for curated music experiences.

This community-building resonated deeply with Benz. "There's so much power... in replying to comments and making them feel special," he says. This philosophy, he believes, aligns with a shift in music consumption, where tastemakers and algorithms now play a bigger role than traditional gatekeepers.

"It's essentially a modern-day radio station" for a younger generation seeking music that aligns with their tastes, says Benz.

Content warning: this episode discusses sexual abuse.

Ep. 154: Caroline Heldman Ph.D and Samantha Maloney are co-founders of the Sound Off Coalition, which recently published a report that called out “the scathing history and financial impact of decades of sexual abuse and coverups in the music industry”. In the report, publicly-available information on reported allegations of sexual abuse, harassment and related misconduct involving musicians and music industry executives is catalogued in detail. Amongst its key demands is a call for an end to the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that silence survivors.

While its mostly comprised of allegations - and the report notes that "all individuals should be considered innocent until proven guilty” – it’s still a sobering document: over 200 pages detailing allegations against some of the most well-known names in the music business.

We spoke to Caroline and Samantha about their work, the impact of the report, what they describe as a pattern of “covering up” by big music companies, the way they are using shareholder and political activism to try to make a difference –  and the scale of the challenge. 

> Links mentioned in the podcast:

Episode 153: What's the health of the music festival ecosystem like? Not great, says Nick Morgan, CEO of UK festival company The Fair. Nick, who is also vice chair of the UK’s Association of Independent Festivals (AIF), and his colleague Yasmin Galletti join Music Ally's editor Joe Sparrow and discuss the pressures festivals are under, in an environment where, they say, having seen one in six festivals go bust in the pandemic, another 1 in 6 will go bust in 2024 too. 
the place that music festivals hold in the UK society – and in other countries – has changed dramatically in the last 20 years; and whether the many festivals are still viable during an economic crunch. We also chat about what the are AIF is campaigning for, and the changing customer demographic and how festivals need to cater for their needs differently.

Episode 152: Young Voices arranges huge, arena-sized, choir performances for school children, and we were joined by Ben Lewis, CEO of Young Voices, and Anna Phoebe, violinist who performs with Young Voices (and is on the Board at The Ivors Academy.)

We spoke about the importance of music at the grassroots level, and encouraging children to sing and perform together. They talked about the unifying effect of the huge Young Voices shows, the state of music education and the need for it in the talent pipeline, and what singing and taking part in music does for children's development – and for the economy.

Young Voices: https://www.youngvoices.co.uk

Young Voices video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMhHRV_l-68

Young Voices’ Impact Report: https://www.youngvoices.co.uk/yv-social-and-economic-impact-report

The dawn chorus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWLK2gu_Krk

Bob Marley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSOqWgqwynQ

Inner City Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-P98B2skts

Dice: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/716798-most-dice-stacked-with-one-foot-in-one-minute

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Episode 151: We're joined by music industry psychologist and therapist Anne Löhr to get a snapshot of the state of mental health within the music industry, and her interpretation of how well the industry has supported the mental health of the people in it. SPOILER: uh-oh, it’s not been great – but it’s getting better.

The music industry has, according to Anne, stuck to one approach when dealing with mental health: and the results have been disastrous. So we talked about the damage that has been done and whether now, in 2024, things are changing – and are they changing fast enough?

We also ask Anne if the big players, like major labels, have a duty of care to look after the mental health of the people it is making money from.

Episode 150(!): Suzanne Bull, founder of Attitude is Everything – which connects disabled people with music and live event industries to improve access – and Dr Teresa Moore, Director at A Greener Future – which helps organisations, events, festivals and venues be more environmentally sustainable – join Music Ally's editor Joe Sparrow.

They spoke about how the twin issues of sustainability at music festivals and access for people with disabilities connect, and why they’re opening up a conversation about how the sustainability challenge can incorporate the needs of people with disabilities.

Despite the live music industry taking steps to improve the individual issues, sustainability and accessibility have generally been two siloed activities. Suzanne and Teresa are aiming to change that.

They spoke about the toolkit their two organisations have put together, which is designed to help festival organisers make their sustainability ambitions work in step with their accessibility goals, and we also chatted about the challenges that disabled people face in the face of climate-change-related actions.

And if you’re are interested in making a difference, we chatted about what you can do (besides downloading the toolkit!) to make simple but effective progress to sustainable accessibility.

Ep 149: Sofar Sounds CEO Jim Lucchese joins Music Ally editor Joe Sparrow to talk about the current economics of live music and its impact on local, independent artists. Live music is a hard business at the best of times, but for smaller and emerging artists, it can be brutally tough. A good number of artists now get their start playing Sofar Sounds shows, so we ask Jim to explain what artists and people working in the local live industry are experiencing, and what are the main economic and infrastructure pressures on them at the moment.

Joe also asks Jim what the solutions might be – at a local grassroots level, but also the responsibilty of bigger players in the live space.

Ep 148: Gen Z music fans are able to immediately sense when an artist’s communications with fans feel inauthentic. But marketing has in its nature an element of inauthenticity – so how do you maintain a feeling of authenticity when marketing to this young, online-only generation? And how can artists and teams market effectively directly to these younger fans or potential fans?

Keturah Cummings is founder/CEO of Forward Slash, a social media agency and content production studio that specialises in connecting with youth audiences – and she explains where marketing efforts should be focused in an increasingly D2C environment.

Ep. 147: Stuart Dredge, Music Ally’s Head of Insight, joins Editor Joe Sparrow to answer some of the biggest and most complex questions in the DSP space in 2024.

Ep. 146: In this episode we ask: how do people search for music today and what do people really want in their results? We welcome Einar Helde, AIMS API co-founder and CCO, to the Focus podcast to answer that question, as well as to explain how technology is allowing people to search in novel and nuanced ways – and what that means for people who make music.

The needs of people who make, share and use music have changed dramatically. Artists scramble to be discovered amongst the supposed 100,000+ new tracks uploaded each day, and equally, the people seeking music scramble to find what they really want. In this Music Ally Focus Extra episode, made in partnership with AIMS API, we discuss the future of this discovery quandary, and how being able to search for music in a way that allows those searchers – whether professional music supervisors or simply fans of music – to get what they want, and perhaps even get what they didn’t know they wanted in the first place.

Ep 145: Joe Sparrow is joined by Sean Lee, CEO/co-founder and Kyungtae Kim, co-founder and Audio & AI Specialist, of Verses, an AI music platform that powers music generation in virtual spaces. We wanted to talk about the use of dynamic AI-created music in the metaverse, and how that music then connects to virtual items. Essentially: where three of recent years’ most hypebeast products – AI created music, NFTs and metaverses – all come together.

Verses has recently been nominated for a 2024 CES Award for its “Beat-based AI music video generator”, aespa world, a tool that “automatically creates music videos when users touch the screen in sync with the beat.” We spoke about how AI generated music will fit into virtual spaces, who owns the music generated in this way, and whether human communities will miss out on communal experiences if they are not united by a consistent musical presence

Ep. 144: Tuned Global's CEO Con Raso joins Joe Sparrow to talk about something that sounds a bit intangible and distant: the cost of storing all the music that gets streamed. If it’s essentially free for owners of huge catalogues of music to upload their files to someone else’s server, then they will – and smaller rightsholders like DIY artists and labels will be under increasing competition against an ever-increasing volume.

Con and Joe chatted about whether DSPs should charge for storage and what the effects of that may look like for large and small rightsholders - and they also talked about a hypothetical future with small indie streaming platforms – just like small indie labels.

Ep 143: Marie Clausen worked hard to rise to a senior position in the music industry, only to find that she was often the only woman in the room. So she’s now driven to change that – and she explains to Joe Sparrow how she initiated Merlin’s Engage mentorship program, designed to boost the representation of women in the top ranks of the music industry.

Marie is U.S. Managing Director at Ninja Tune, and is also Managing Board Director for Merlin, the digital rights music licensing partner organisation for independent rightsholders. We talk about her own career, how Merlin’s mentorship program works, the importance of finding strong allyship and support, what changes she is already seeing – and what you can do to be part of the change.

Ep 142: Cory Docorow is a highly regarded sci-fi author, activist and journalist who is in favour of the liberalisation and modernisation of copyright laws. He recently coined the concept of "enshittification", which is when monopolistic digital platforms offer increasingly worse services to continue making money... and then they die. We talk about how the music industry is enshittifying itself, and how copyright could be used better. You may find his views provocative and/or counter to your own beliefs – which of course is all the more reason to listen to them! PLUS, stay tuned until the end of the podcast for an exclusive extract from the audiobook of Cory’s new book The Bezzle, read by Wil Wheaton, and which deals with music copyright theft.

Ep. 140: Joe is joined by Sherry Saeedi, founder & CEO of Verswire. Sherry says that Verswire is a new alternative to record labels – or “a venture capital model alternative for signing musicians” as she puts it. We ask her why she believes it is “the future of music” and Sherry talks with the passion and language of a tech founder. She thinks that the Verswire model of investing in artists in a similar way to how startups are funded will have a major disruptive effect on the long-standing record label model. Verswire is now signing bands, has pulled in $12.3M in seed and series A investment, and is opening a publishing arm in partnership with Kobalt – so we ask her to explain how it is disruptive.

LINKS:

Ep. 139: The Black Eyed Peas have sold an estimated 80 million records, are one of only a handful of artists to have simultaneously held the number-one and number-two spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and have headlined the Super Bowl half-time show. We were very happy to talk to Rachel Strassberger, one third of the Black Eyed Peas' management team. She speaks to Music Ally’s Editor Joe Sparrow about what it's like to co-manage one of the world’s best-selling and well-known groups, and what she has learned along the way.

Rachel also talks about how the team balances promoting a mix of classic hits and front line releases, and what the modern requirements are from managers for artists – of all sizes. She also talks from her personal perspective about the skills managers will need to adopt in the next ten years as the industry undergoes another cycle of rapid change.

Ep. 138: Lyrics are now everywhere - in our streaming apps, on short form social media, and in the now ubiquitous lyric video. So how might lyrics be used in the future in ways we may not have thought of? Joe Sparrow is joined by Darryl Ballantyne, founder & CEO of LyricFind, one of the oldest companies to license lyrics on behalf of rightsholders to various digital services, who chats about the how lyrics will be used in autonomous vehicles – and by various generative AI tools. Are these platforms licensing them and what are the wider legal implications if someone, for instance, asks an AI to create a new set of lyrics in the style of U2 or "Penny Lane"? (He also explains how Hanson’s “Mmm-Bop” is actually a very tragic song if you think about the lyrics...)

Ep. 137: Marie Fol, Lead of the Keychange initiative, joins Music Ally’s Editor Joe Sparrow and they takes stock of gender representation in the music industry in 2024. Keychange is a global network and movement with a wide ranging remit to works towards what it calls “a total restructure of the music industry in reaching full gender equality.”

Joe and Marie discuss Keychange’s ambitions for the year ahead and talk in depth across a number of areas in the music business – as well as the challenges that Keychange faces, and the pushback and common counter-arguments she faces. Marie and Joe and also dig into the more complex issues, including the "pipeline problem", and her advice on how you can make tangible and actionable differences.

Ep. 136: AI is promising fundamental changes to the business of music and its creation. But what about the part where music is connected to the fans? Virginie Berger is a long-established music-tech industry expert and like many people working in innovative areas of the music industry, she’s been doing deep research into the role AI will play now, and in the future. In this episode, Music Ally's Editor Joe Sparrow picks Virginie's brains on the role that AI will play in music marketing and fan engagement. 

Virginie explained how AI tools are already streamlining community building, creating unique fan experiences, and generating content.

Ep. 135: YouTube's Nur Ozdamar joins Music Ally's editor Joe Sparrow to explain how her Artist & Label Development team for Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) supports the careers of artists and its label partners. She describes the help that they provide, how they choose which emerging artists they eventually partner with – and how her team consider the changing face of music consumption on YouTube.

Ep. 134: Lior Tibon is former COO of TIDAL, and now co-founder of music financing platform Duetti, which aims to let smaller and mid-range artists sell part or all of their catalogue. He’s got experience in both the investment and streaming sides of the industry and so we talk about two things that are distantly, yet directly, connected: the recently mooted artist-centric payment systems that divide up money to artists from streaming platforms in new ways – and the service that Duetti provides, giving artists another route to the money that their songs will make.

Lior talks about who would benefit the most if an artist-centric system was widely rolled out – and whether it would please artist who have been calling for a fairer remuneration model. He also talks about Duetti’s work, who they target, and how artists may use services like this to unlock value from songs alongside streaming income.

Ep. 133: we’re joined by Paul Sampson, CEO and founder of Lickd, the licensing startup that supplies music to creators on YouTube and other platforms. We seem to be shifting into an era where a new and widespread use of music is emerging – where music is a component of a wider experience: for instance in the background of short/long videos, live streams of gaming, or as part of users building interactive experiences - almost “music as Lego”. We chat to Paul about the future of music usage and whether the current system of licensing is up to the task of recovering the correct money for music creators.

Creators of online content are eager to use recognisable hit songs in what they make. And Paul Samson has an interesting perspective on these creators needs – whether they are zillion-streaming superstars like MrBeast, or more modestly-successful creators. So we ask him about what they actually want from music, and also how they view music in terms of its use and its value, when they are perhaps only using it as a component of something bigger that they’re piecing together. Plus we ask Paul about generative AI music – and whether this could take a slice out of his business model.

Ep. 132: Making vinyl records requires a lot of heat and energy, and uses plastics that are bad for the environment. But vinyl records are an old technology - so how might a modern record be made? Sven Deutschmann is Managing Director of Sonopress, a company that makes vinyl records and other physical media. He showed Music Ally’s Editor Joe Sparrow a new type of disc and spoke about a new process of making records that uses the same plastic used in plastic water bottles, and that uses significantly less energy – and creates less waste.

It's called EcoRecord and is made by injection moulding, not pressing, and is produced using polyethylene terephthalate (PET) as its base material rather than polyvinyl chloride (PVC). They can also be produced using 100% recycled PET.  Creating the discs requires neither natural gas nor steam, and Sonopress says its test operation saw energy savings of up to 85% compared to the traditional process. The product is being launched in collaboration with Warner Music.

Ep 131: We have been puzzling over the impact of AI-generated music and how it will align with the laws that have made the music business, well, the music business. Eliane Ellbogen is an intellectual property lawyer at Fasken law firm in Montreal, and has spoken at a number of conferences about the legal implications that accompany AI Music. She joined Music Ally's Editor Joe Sparrow, who lobbed some (depending on your point of view) tricky and/or stupid legal questions at Eliane – who answered them with patience and clarity.

For instance: can an AI author music? Can humans claim ownership of AI-generated music? What happens if an AI-created piece of music sounds very similar to your own human music? What laws might be used to regulate it all? Eliane gamely got to grips with them all.

Ep. 130: Andrew Batey and Morgan Hayduk are both co-CEOs & co-founders of Beatdapp, a platform which processes huge quantities of data to detect streaming fraud for clients like labels and streaming platforms. Editor Joe Sparrow welcomes them back to the podcast to update us on the state of streaming fraud – and they have some truly shocking statistics to share.

They chat to Joe about the recent changes in streaming fraud, what percentage of all streaming is actually fraudulent, how many billions of dollars will be siphoned out via fraud this year, and reveal a remarkable statistic: that 40%-60% of all streams from songs distributed  via many well-known distributors are fraudulent. 

(It’s worth noting we spoke before some DSPs announced changes to their payment thresholds, which will require songs to get a certain number of streams before payout.)

Ep. 129: Dan Stein, AKA DJ Fresh, and Declan McGlynn are co-founders of Voice-Swap, the AI-powered service that, as the name suggests, allows you to swap your singing voice for that of one of their chart-topping singers’ voices. They chat to Music Ally’s Editor Joe Sparrow about why they think producers, artists and writers will want to use AI to transform their own voice to sound like one of their featured artists.

One of the difficulties that songwriters and songwriting producers face is using their own voice to sing lyrics on a track that is designed for someone else: perhaps their own voice is not very good, or perhaps it’s too hard to picture another artist performing the demo. This was a problem that Dan Stein, as DJ Fresh, faced – and he and his founders are addressing this issue with the help of AI. Voice Swap allows people to sing something into their platform, and the resulting output will sound like one of the singers whose voices the AI has been trained on. Dan and Declan talk about their technology, and who will be interested in using it, and they also dig into some of the more complex concepts: like whether particular AI voices might become ubiquitous across pop music, and whether this will diminish or boost human creativity.

Ep. 128: We’re joined by Kris Ahrend, CEO of the Mechanical Licensing Collective. He gives us an overview of the state of  mechanical licensing in 2023, the big issues from the MLC’s perspective, and the changes he’d like to see happen.

He also talks about data transparency, what he thinks artists and songwriters want (and what the MLC are doing to increase clarity for them); the recent Phonorecord III final determination; and what the streaming royalty space will look like in 5 years’ time.

Ep. 127: In this special episode, Music Ally’s Head of Insight, Stuart Dredge talks to our Editor Joe Sparrow, and focuses squarely on AI and music in 2023 – a topic that has caused so much excitement, confusion, innovation, and concern all at once. 

Stuart breaks down the ambitions and possibilities – as well as the ethical and legal issues – that AI music is bringing to the music business: 

❱ AI music is human music... for better or worse – We often talk about AI as if it were sentient already - AI is doing this, AI is doing that... but actually it’s humans behind it all – building these AIs, deciding what to train them on, and choosing whether to create music ethically... or not. 

❱ A battle for control... and industry tensions – The music industry has come together very quickly to set out its principles for how creative AI should be regulated: around permission, payment and transparency. But it’s not as simple as ‚music against AI’ – there are new concepts that are being discussed around who gets to choose how music is used and by whom. 

❱ AI is not just about pushing a button – AI music is seen by some as profoundly uncreative: you hit a button and a song comes out - and it’s probably not very good. But that’s not actually the direction of travel: the latest wave of musical AIs are about prompting platforms into creating good snippets of music then human musicians using their creativity to turn them into better work. 

“Johnny Cash” sings Barbie Girl –

Ep 126: in this episode Editor Joe Sparrow is joined by musician and music education facilitator Elizabeth J. Birch, and the CEO of UK charity Youth Music Matt Griffiths. They join us to talk about the experiences of disabled musicians in the UK music industry – and the work done by Elizabeth and Youth Music to improve it. Elizabeth is a champion of accessible music-making, and shares her knowledge with aspiring young disabled musicians. She hopes for a day when the disabled community are not so overlooked in the music industry – and Elizabeth has now been nominated for the Inspirational Music Leader award at this year’s Youth Music Awards for her work at Midlands Art Centre as a result of her work. She and Matt talk about their work, explain how the disabled community is still quite invisible in the UK music scene, and what can be done to improve things in the music industry – including platforming more disabled people on and off the stage.

Ep 125: In this episode Stationhead co-founders, Murray Levison and Ryan Star speak to Editor Joe Sparrow about the platform’s role as a gathering place for superfans, and what fans are seeking in a platform that mixes music, community and commerce. Superfans are well know for their all-encompassing support of an artist, and their desire to form a community to celebrate them. Stationhead started out as a kind of live radio platform that would allow users to play music and talk around the songs, and has changed its path a little to become even more oriented around fandoms. Now, fans gather around stations to geek out about an artist’s music and chat about. them – with some artists joining in on the broadcasts for things like release parties. Joe talked to Murray and Ryan – who is also a successful artist in his own right – about what fans want and what Stationhead is doing to give it to them.

Ep. 124: in this episode we’re joined by Christine Barnum, CD Baby’s Chief Revenue Officer – we’re talking about music streaming fraud, how the company tries to spot it, and what the fraudsters are doing to try to avoid being detected. Christine’s job is a form of fraud whack-a-mole: trying to spot suspicious streaming activity before paying rightsholders.  We talk about her efforts in “fraud, trust & safety” from the perspective of a distributor – including how she defines streaming fraud, how difficult it is to spot, how widespread fraud really is – and what a distributor does to stop it. 

Ep. 123: Music Ally’s Editor Joe Sparrow chats to Cat Henry, executive director of the US-based nonprofit philanthropic organisation Live Music Society. Cat talks about the society’s mission, which it describes as “to recognise and protect small venues and listening rooms across the United States so that live music can remain accessible to all.” Small venues can be one of the most enjoyable and valuable things that any local community possesses; a place where people can gather, enjoy music and grow their community. Small venues have been under the cosh in recent years: not only did the covid-19 lockdown punish them particularly hard, but a changing gigging environment, and large increases in costs has meant that, in 2023, running a small venue is hard work. Cat tells us about the state of the small venue community in the USA, the threats they and challenges they face, and why they are so important to the people who love them.

Ep 122: Alex Mubert, founder of the Mubert AI generative music platform talks to Editor Joe Sparrow about using AI to make music, the impact creative musical AI will have on rightsholders, and whether we will have to redefine what music itself is – in an era where infinitely-long pieces of music can be tailor-made for each listener.

Most of us have come to terms with the fact that generating music with AI is now simply part of the music making landscape. Alex Mubert’s eponymous company was one of the early AI music platforms, and he has plenty of experience to lean on when answering our questions about how AI music will change things. He believes for instance, that mass adoption of generative music as a creative tool will be through video content creators – who may be keen to "co-create" music for their videos with an AI trained on their favourite artist – and he talks about how the integration of AI music into streaming platfroms could change how much money is paid out to human creators.

Mubert: https://mubert.com

RATM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ

Mustard: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/503372-most-mustard-bottle-drunk-in-30-seconds

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Ep. 121: We speak to two people from TikTok who have helped turn classical music into viral content. TikTok has captured the attention of people in every area of the music industry, who now look to the short-video app for A&R, marketing, music discovery, audience-building and fan-nurturing. Darina Connolly, Head of Artist & Label Partnerships, talks about TikTok’s direction and strategy, and she’s joined by Label Partnerships Manager Lisa Skeppner, who is one of the go-to TikTok people when it comes to classical music. Music Ally's Editor Joe Sparrow asks them what it is about classical music that holds users’ attentions – is it the song, the performance, the context of the song’s use, or the artists themselves? And what can non-classical artists learn for how they use TikTok?

We talk to Darina and Lisa about how classical music has connected on TikTok, and the impact on classical artists – and also they talk more widely about what it means for users to be discovering new “old" music this way – and what the longer-term impacts of that are beyond short-term spikes in attention around novel genres.

Ep 120: We're joined by Piers Henwood, a Grammy and Juno-nominated artist manager and musician. Artists today are under increasing pressure to do, well, lots of stuff: write, record and release music, create TikToks, collaborate, communicate with fans, go on tours, and so much more. A while ago, Piers wrote a guest post on Music Ally about “the implications of the pressure placed on artists to succeed in a needy industry and an always-on culture” – so we wanted to talk to him more deeply about the relationship between fans and artists, and the pressures that artists experience. Henwood says it’s time we take another look at who the customer is in this system, and help artists retreat from the always-on approach.  Music Ally Editor Joe Sparrow chatted to him about what a healthy and sustainable creative existence is for the people who, ultimately, are at the centre of everything we love about music.

Ep 119: Every time our Head of Insight appears on the podcast, people say how useful they find his analysis – so we're bringing Stuart Dredge back again to answer a thorny question: “is music streaming like radio?”. Stuart explains why this simple-sounding question is actually quite complex and how it could raise a number of fundamental legal issues around payments to artists and rightsholders.

Streaming platforms have always provided radio-like experiences: whether something simple like "lean back" listening – where you hit play and the platform chooses what music you hear – or more overt concepts like Spotify's new AI DJ, creating what is a recognisable personalised radio-like experience. So at what point should streaming music be classed as "radio"? Moreover, streaming services want to compete with regular radio, to attract its listeners and advertisers. What does it mean, then, if streaming and radio's boundaries are blurring? Editor Joe Sparrow puts these questions, and more, to Stuart.

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