Sound Connections

What would it take to make music discovery more personal, contextual, and meaningful? In this episode of Sound Connections, Jakob Wredstrøm speaks with Ty Roberts, co-founder of Gracenote and currently Chief Commercial Officer at MusiMap, and Göran Andersson, Head of Strategy at MusiMap and veteran music producer and music technology entrepreneur, about the technology shaping music discovery. They...

What would it take to make music discovery more personal, contextual, and meaningful? In this episode of Sound Connections, Jakob Wredstrøm speaks with Ty Roberts, co-founder of Gracenote and currently Chief Commercial Officer at MusiMap, and Göran Andersson, Head of Strategy at MusiMap and veteran music producer and music technology entrepreneur, about the technology shaping music discovery. They...

What does it take to build a scalable music technology company in a market many investors consider too niche? In this episode of Sound Connections, host Jakob Wredstrøm speaks with Andrew Carlins, Co-founder and CEO of Play Anything, about how assistive AI is making music learning more accessible. Andrew shares how a Stanford classroom project became a music technology company, developing tools th...

What happens when AI takes care of more of the business behind an artist’s career? In this episode of Sound Connections, Jakob Wredstrøm sits down with JC Sanchez, founder of Orphiq and a former music strategist at Spotify, Meta, and Sony, to explore how AI could change the way artists and their teams manage careers. JC shares why the next generation of music technology should reduce complexity ra...

Artists can have millions of listeners, ticket buyers, and fans, yet still have limited visibility into who those people are. In this episode of Sound Connections, Jakob Wredstrøm speaks with Tommy Stalknecht, founder and CEO of Single Music, about the infrastructure connecting music, e-commerce, chart reporting, fan communities, and direct-to-fan experiences. Tommy shares how Single started by so...

Learning an instrument has never been more accessible, but keeping people motivated remains one of music education’s hardest problems. Raul Rodrigues , founder and CEO of Upbeat Studio , joins Sound Connections to unpack the business and technology behind modern music education. Starting with drummers, Upbeat is building educational tools designed to move beyond libraries of content and toward a m...

What happens when superfans stop being treated as the end of the music experience and become part of building it? Jacquelle Amankonah Horton, founder of Fave, returns to Sound Connections to explore how fandom has evolved since our first conversation. Drawing on her background at YouTube and Google and years spent building tools around creators and fans, Jacquelle explains why the next opportunity...

Music rights generate value, but turning that income into capital can still be difficult for many creators. In this episode of Sound Connections, Michael Bizenov, Managing Partner and President of Sound Royalties , joins Jakob Wredstrøm to unpack the business of financing music royalties and how alternative financing can give creators access to capital without giving up ownership of their work. Mi...

African music is growing globally, but the business behind that growth is still catching up. In this episode of Sound Connections, Jakob Wredstrøm speaks with Yoel Kenan, a longtime music executive and entrepreneur whose career has taken him from major-label roles at Universal and BMG to building businesses focused specifically on African music. After founding Africori and helping develop it into...

Music is everywhere, but the systems for licensing it at scale are still remarkably fragmented. In this episode of Sound Connections, Jakob Wredstrøm sits down with Chantal Epp, founder of ClicknClear, to explore the hidden challenges and opportunities within music licensing. Chantal shares how her background in music and cheerleading led her to identify a licensing gap in choreographed sports, an...

Music is becoming increasingly data-driven, but having access to data is only the beginning. In this episode of Sound Connections, Oskar, founder of Songstats, joins Jakob to discuss the business of artist analytics, music technology, and the growing role of AI in how artists and music companies understand their data. Oskar shares his journey from building music-related tools as a young DJ and tec...

Building music technology is often presented as a story of rapid growth. Matt’s journey with Artist Growth tells a very different story. In this episode of Sound Connections, Jakob sits down with Matt Urmy , Founder of Artist Growth . He reflects on more than a decade of building software for the business side of music. What began as a product for independent artists eventually led him toward a de...

Can music software become more powerful without making creativity feel less human? Casey Kolb, founder of Lunacy, joins Sound Connections to explore the changing world of audio plugins and what it takes to build tools that feel as inspiring visually as they sound. From his years as a film composer in Los Angeles to spending a year and a half programming Lunacy’s first flagship product, Cube, Casey...

What happens when the future of the music business is built by small, agile companies instead of industry giants? In this episode of Sound Connections, Jakob Wredstrøm sits down with Aidan, CEO of Patchbay and Partner at 1916 Enterprises, to explore how music, technology, investment, and entrepreneurship are reshaping the industry's future. Aidan explains why independent music businesses are becom...

A missed CD delivery exposed a gap in India's music industry. That moment led Vijay to build OKListen, an independent music platform that spent more than a decade growing alongside a market that wasn't yet ready for it before ultimately being acquired by AWAL. In this episode of Sound Connections, Vijay shares what it was like to build a music tech company in one of the world's largest music marke...

Are traditional music production tools entering their last era? Noam Levinberg , founder of Safari Audio , believes the future of music creation may look very different from the world producers know today. In this episode, we explore the rapid impact of AI on music software, why traditional plugin businesses are being challenged, and how the next generation of creators may never adopt the workflow...

What happens when creators make music, but the industry does not know who to pay? In this episode of Sound Connections, Jakob Wredstrøm sits down with Niclas Molinder , songwriter, producer, founder of Session, and one of the music industry's leading advocates for creator rights. Niclas shares how missing rights data continues to cost creators credits, royalties, and recognition, and why solving t...

Streaming changed music, but it did not solve the business problem for most independent artists. In this episode of Sound Connections, we welcome Thierry Ascarez , Chief Business Officer at Winamp, to discuss how the company is reimagining its role in the music industry after nearly three decades of history. From its origins as the iconic MP3 player that helped define the early internet music era,...

Most music platforms are built for listeners. This one is built for creators. In this episode of Sound Connections, Jakob Wredstrøm sits down with John Lister, Head of Community at Rap Fame, to explore how a global rap platform is reshaping music creation, discovery, and artist communities. From recording directly on a phone to joining crews, entering competitions, and exchanging real-time feedbac...

What does it take to build a music streaming service around culture, access, and long-term value? In this episode of Sound Connections, we sit down with Faraan Irfan, Founder and CEO of Saarey Music, to unpack how he’s solving one of music’s biggest access problems. Saarey is a streaming platform dedicated to South Asian classical music, built on exclusive rights, deep cultural metadata, and a bus...

Freddie Moross , founder of Myndstream, joins Sound Connections to unpack the growing role of functional music in wellness, hospitality, and care environments. This conversation explores how intentional audio can shape experiences inside spas, hotels, and treatment spaces, and why music should be treated as infrastructure rather than background noise. Freddie explains how soundtracks can guide gue...

Mark Bamford joins Sound Connections for an open discussion on startup building, video monetization, and the hard truth about innovating in music. As the founder of Viktrs, Mark is working on a new model for video that aims to unlock more value from every view by focusing on engagement, discovery, and data rather than the traditional advertising-driven approach used by major platforms. Mark unpack...

Rob Abelow, product leader at OpenStage, joins Sound Connections to go deep into the infrastructure behind fan relationships and why they are becoming central to music growth. This conversation breaks down how today’s ecosystem fragments fan data across multiple platforms, limiting visibility and control for artists. Rob shares how bringing that data together into unified fan profiles changes how...

Join us for a grounded conversation with Jan Willem , Co-Founder of Momants and the strategic mind behind Paylogic .  Jan Willem reflects on Paylogic’s journey as a fintech pioneer which provided a white-label ticketing solution that let event organizers sell directly to their own audience. This technology famously scaled to handle massive peaks for global events like Tomorrowland. We explore his...

We welcome Christian Ringstad Schultz , CEO and co-founder of the Norwegian music tech company Masterchannel – delivering industry-grade audio mastering. With a team of just two and a half people, Masterchannel has reached a million-dollar revenue run rate while mastering nearly 100,000 songs every month. In this episode, Christian shares how proprietary AI, white-label partnerships, and disciplin...