Music Tectonics

What will the music business look like in 2033, and which of today's bets will get us there? This week, we're sharing the kickoff keynote from last month's Music Tectonics pre-conference called "Future Echoes: The Music Business of Tomorrow Being Built Today," from Leon Farrell, senior music analyst at MIDiA Research . Leon looks back at the tech the industry was betting on in 2026, like VR and me...

AI in music is about more than generating songs. How could it transform the business behind the music?   This week on the podcast, Dmitri talks with Matt Urmy, co-founder and CEO of Artist Growth , about how AI can help music companies work smarter, connect their data and systems, and spend less time on operational challenges and more time supporting artists  A former touring musician, Matt built...

What does a rising tide look like when the whole music industry rows in the same direction? This week, we close out the Rising Tide miniseries witha recap conversation between host Dmitri Vietze and Eleanor Rust, director of marketing at Rock Paper Scissors and Music Tectonics, recorded in the Seismic Studio. Dmitri shares why Music Tectonics chose a theme for the first time in 8 years, how a coff...

What happens when music becomes more than something you stream, but instead something you can hold? This week, we're wrapping up the Rising Tide miniseries with the 8th and final revenue multiplier: new products for the music buyer.  First, Jennifer Sullivan of KiTbetter explains how the KiTalbum pairs a physical collectible with a digital experience. Then, Jaime Marconette of Luminate breaks down...

This week on the podcast, we're on revenue multiplier 7 on our Rising Tide miniseries: direct-to-fan.  First, Mag Rodriguez, founder and CEO of EVEN , makes the case that most artists are leaving serious money on the table by skipping direct-to-fan entirely, and why you don't need a big mailing list to start selling directly to fans. Then, J Edward Keyes, editorial director at Bandcamp , explains...

What does it actually take to turn followers into fans who buy?  This week, we're digging into Fan Growth, one of the 8 revenue multipliers in our Rising Tide miniseries. First, DJay Brawner of TUFF MGMT and MANAGR breaks down why the real work often starts before you grow your audience, making sure you're collecting the money from the fans you already have. Then, Megh Vakharia of SymphonyOS share...

What is a music distributor actually responsible for in 2026? This week on the Music Tectonics podcast, we're focusing on distribution and artist services as a revenue multiplier. It used to mean one thing: getting your music onto Spotify and Apple. Now the companies doing that are pitching marketing, financing, even A&R, and we're asking what's real and what's marketing. First, Daouda Leonard of...

What if generative AI actually grows the music business instead of shrinking it? This week, Dmitri Vietze tackles the AI question everyone's tired of hearing about, but from a different angle.  First, Matt Adell, co-founder of Musical.ai , breaks down the $20 billion opportunity sitting inside AI music, and what it actually takes to get consent, attribution and compensation right instead of scrapi...

What happens when businesses, apps, and games use music without really paying for it?  This week we're on the third revenue multiplier of our Rising Tide miniseries: new forms of licensing hiding in plain sight.  First, Soundtrack CEO Ola Sars breaks down the 40 billion dollar market for background music in businesses, and why more than 80% of companies playing music today are doing it the wrong w...

What is your music catalog actually worth, and how would you even find out?  This week we're on the second stop of our Rising Tide miniseries, tackling catalog valuation, one of the revenue multipliers we're covering ahead of the Music Tectonics Conference this October. First, music lawyer and Instagram creator Ryan Schmidt breaks down how catalogs get valued, the difference between the multiplier...

There's no lost and found for your royalties. If you don't claim them, they don't come looking for you, and depending on where the money's sitting, you may only have a few years before it's gone for good.   This week we kick off a new thread inside our Rising Tide miniseries: the eight revenue multipliers in music. We're starting with revenue recovery, the money that's already been earned but neve...

What's your music catalog actually worth, and where is the industry still leaving money on the table?  This week, Dmitri is joined by our chief writer Tristra Newyear Yeager for a deep dive into eight revenue multipliers that they believe can grow the total addressable market for music. Building on last month's conversation with Eleanor about the rising tide thesis, Dmitri and Tristra break down e...

We interrupt this miniseries for a special bonus episode! Last week, we laid out a theory on what technology can do to grow the value of music, so this time we wanted to hear from someone who is actually betting billions of dollars on the answer. Sam Hendel is the managing partner of Chord Music Partners, a leading pure play music rights catalog home to works from artists like the Weeknd, David Gu...

That's the question host Dmitri Vietze presents to Vickie Nauman, founder of CrossBorderWorks, in this episode of Music Tectonics. Vickie has spent over two decades at the intersection of music and tech, working on sync licensing for video games and virtual worlds, and pioneering the concept of minimum viable music. This is episode three in the Rising Tide miniseries, built around the theme of thi...

Streaming built the modern music industry, but its growth is slowing in the US and other mature markets. So what comes next?  This week on the podcast, Dmitri sits down with Monica Corton, CEO of Go to Eleven Entertainment, to unpack where the total addressable market for music grows from here. This conversation is part two of the Rising Tide miniseries built around the Music Tectonics Conference...

Why is the value of the music industry so small compared to other forms of entertainment like gaming and television, even though music seems to be everywhere in our lives? This week on the podcast, Dmitri kicks off a new miniseries built around this year's conference theme, "Rising Tide: Grow the Music, Grow the Value" with Jimmy Stone, managing partner of Alderbrook. Jimmy pushes back on the prem...

How do you actually put a price on a music catalog in 2026?    In this panel from our recent Grow the TAM event, Billboard's Elizabeth Dilts Marshall sits down with three experts who each value catalogs from a completely different angle. Rob Frech of Raine Group has advised on catalog and M&A deals for Warner Music Group, Quality Control, and Downtown. Tom Sarig spent decades managing artists like...

What will the music business actually look like in 2030?  In this special panel from the Grow the TAM summit, Tatiana Cirisano, VP of Music Strategy at MIDiA Research, leads a wide-ranging conversation about the future of music monetization with three industry veterans: Liz Moody, partner and chair of the new media practice at Granderson Des Rochers; Mauhan Zonoozy, founder of Vinyl Bar in Shibuya...

In this episode, Dmitri and Eleanor walk through eight revenue multipliers reshaping the music business in 2026, including catalog valuation, revenue recovery, music licensing, and more.  This conversation sets up the theme for this year's Music Tectonics conference: "Rising Tide: Grow the Music, Grow the Value," exploring why music has massive cultural influence but a music industry that still la...

What if you could make music with anything around you? Fruit, water, human skin, or even the weight of objects on a kitchen scale? That's the question Playtronica has been answering for over a decade   This week on the podcast, Adam McHeffey sits down with co-founders Sasha Pas and Aglaya Demidenko to explore how they built one of the most creative and community-driven companies in music technolog...

What if the biggest opportunity in music monetization isn't streaming, social media, or live concerts? It's the $300 billion pro AV industry, and most musicians and music tech innovators have never thought about it. This week on the podcast, Graeme Harrison, vice president and general manager of Bluesound Professional , joins Dmitri to break down how commercial audio is reshaping the way brands us...

Remember when the best music recommendation you ever got didn't come from Spotify's algorithm, but from your coworker, your cousin, or a stranger in another country who loves the same obscure band you thought only you knew about? Eric West is the founder of Music League , a competitive music discovery platform with nearly 200,000 monthly active users across 160 countries. Players compete in themed...

Why are most brands still stuck licensing royalty-free tracks nobody recognizes while short-form content runs on music?  This week, we're sharing a conversation Jade Prieboy had at SXSW with Ferris Bseiso, founder of Cipher Music , breaking down how TikTok rewrote the economics of sync licensing, why major brands are getting hit with eight-figure copyright lawsuits over Instagram posts, and how Ci...

Emmanuel Zunz, the CEO and founder of ONErpm , has spent 16 years building one of the fastest-growing independent music companies in the world, across 40 territories, with a staff of over 500, and without a single round of outside investment. In this episode, he breaks down exactly how that happened. This week on the podcast, Emmanuel and Dmitri get into why the traditional definition of independe...

What does it actually look like to build a music career from the ground up as an artist in 2026?  This week Dmitri sits down with Aryyzona , a Brazillian-born, LA-based artist who has been posting videos on YouTube since 2009 and recently released her hyper pop EP Gacha World, complete with a custom video game.  With over a million YouTube subscribers and a devoted following across TikTok and Inst...