Monetizing Media

Diya Sagar, an investor at Lupa Systems, talks with Monetizing Media's Eric Cohen-Peckham about her thesis that investors are approaching film production companies with misaligned expectations, creating pressure for short-term wins without enough risk tolerance and long enough time horizon to develop massive new IP franchises and a content empire that can challenge the largest incumbents like Disn...

Eugene Chung has been on the investor side of the start-up world at Warburg Pincus and Morgan Stanley before entering the creative world's of Pixar, heading Oculus Story Studios and founding Penrose Studios.  Eugene knows the spatial computing space really well and through this episode he gives thoughts and comments on the current state of the Metaverse with Apple's release of the Vision One...

Katie is the CEO of Hearst UK. Overlooking brands such as the Cosmopolitan, the Runner's World and more. Some would call her a veteran in the media industry a title she herself reluctantly use. Her background as co-founder of Tortoise and previous roles at News Corp as CCO of WSJ and C-level roles at The Times and The Telegraph certainly builds to the title of veteran.  Our conversation with...

Leading intellectual property attorneys Bobby Ghajar (Cooley LLP) and Felix Hilgert (Osborne Clarke) share a lawyer's perspective on the rise of generative AI within the media & entertainment industry. Can AI companies be barred from training their models on copyrighted content? Can content creators copyright and monetize content they create using these tools? How much control do public figure...

Zach Tarica is the Co-Founder & CEO of The Forest Road Company, a leading investment firm specializing in lending to independent film productions. In this episode, he joins Monetizing Media host Eric Cohen-Peckham to explain the types of funding producers need to secure, the role of tax credits offered by different governments, and how his firm evaluates investment opportunities in this space....

Which skills are in high demand within entertainment C-Suites and which are falling out of favor? How is executive compensation 💰 changing and how does it vary between different parts of entertainment (music, film, TV, games, etc) and different geographies? Are companies starting to look down on executives working remotely? Monetizing Media's Eric Cohen-Peckham and Edward Lindqvist interrogate ex...

Andrew Kotliar (Partner at MEP Capital) and Ivar Combrinck (Managing Director at Salem Partners) join hosts Eric Cohen-Peckham and Edward Lindqvist to discuss how investors value what different types of entertainment IP (intellectual property) are worth and what the current market is for different types of IP rights. Think: buying ownership of individual films, songs, books, games, YouTube channel...

Video games involving NFTs and cryptocurrencies were supposed to be the future. In 2021 and 2022, investors poured $3.6 billion and $3.7 billion, respectively, into gaming-related crypto companies. Then...it collapsed. Axie Infinity went from over 1 million "daily active wallets" to just 9,000 in January 2023, and the top 10 web3 gaming tokens lost on average 97% of their value. The hype is gone....

Josh Ludmir , a partner at law firm Greenberg Traurig who specializes in contracts between media companies and talent, talks with Monetizing Media host Eric Cohen-Peckham about how one of the most common contracts in the industry is evolving. >> The Personal Appearance Release gives a media company or advertiser permission to use the name, image, and likeness of a person. It has long been st...

Chris Peterson (CEO of Modish Media, former president of Kindred Media at LionTree, and former EVP Podcasting at iHeart) discusses the state of the podcast industry with investors Eric Cohen-Peckham and Edward Lindqvist. // See more resources for media & entertainment businesspeople and join the newsletter at MonetizingMedia.com // Cross-posted with the V66 Podcast.

Lux Capital's Danny Crichton joins media investors Edward Lindqvist and Eric Cohen-Peckham to discuss their first impressions of OpenAI's Chat GPT and the shock it is creating across the industry as creatives and businesspeople realize their jobs are about to change (or disappear). Just how good is generative AI right now and what is a realistic timeline for further improvements? Which types of jo...

Stephanie Solomon (CRO of Foreign Affairs) and Danny Crichton (Head of Editorial at Lux Capital & former managing editor of TechCrunch) talk to Monetizing Media host Eric Peckham about the strategy and business models of long-form political/policy magazines where top government officials, CEOs, and policy experts debate how to tackle the world's many challenges. // Keep up with other episodes...

Monetizing Media host Eric Peckham interviews Neal Rothschild, Director of Audience & Growth at Axios, about Axios' audience development funnel. That is, its tactics for bringing readers to their site, converting them into newsletter subscribers, retaining them as engaged newsletter readers, and converting some of them to a new portfolio of paid ($599/yr) newsletters covering deals in differen...

Monetizing Media host Eric Peckham is joined by Lewis Silkin partner Cliff Fluet, a leading music industry attorney, to break down which segments of the music industry are hot (or not) with dealmaking right now and why. Covering the gold rush to buy music catalogs, live music's navigation through the pandemic, consolidation opportunities among indie labels and talent management firms, the expanded...

Soundcloud VP of Creator Jeff Ponchick talks with Monetizing Media's Eric Peckham about the music company's strategy to provide a tiered offering of services to indie musicians while leveraging their consumer-facing streaming platform for data to inform A&R and marketing. Soundcloud now competes with cross-platform music distributors and label services firms to identify and promote breakout ar...

DEALS | Joost van Dreunen (investor / advisor / Superdata founder) and Mike Sepso (Vindex CEO / fmr Activision SVP) analyze the Take Two/Zynga, Microsoft/Activision, and Sony/Bungie acquisitions Monetizing Media's Eric Peckham. Why did they make sense, why did they happen now, and how do they reshape the industry? Also, has gaming bifurcated into synergy-focused giants who are happy to outsource i...

Eze Vidra, co-founder of seed stage VC firm Remagine Ventures, and Monetizing Media host Eric Peckham discuss trends and challenges in the "creator economy" as investors and entrepreneurs have flooded into the market. From the increased priority among many creators to own their own audience and be less beholden to major platforms like YouTube to creators' use of NFTs, social tokens, and AI tools,...

echo3D Co-Founder & CEO Alon Grinshpoon talks to Monetizing Media host Eric Peckham about how his company is enabling developers to create and deploy AR/VR and other 3D apps/games on the cloud so they don’t have to be downloaded to be used, can be updated in real-time, and can work with high-performance across a wider range of devices. // Keep up with Monetizing Media episodes and get other re...

In 2019, Salone Sehgal left London Venture Partners to launch a new VC firm focused on seed stage gaming startups in India. She talks to Monetizing Media host Eric Peckham about why India's gaming ecosystem offers big opportunity, why Indians are spending a lot more on In-App Purchases than in the past, the game mechanics that are most popular among different segments of the market, and how politi...

Monetizing Media’s Eric Peckham discusses the frontiers of where media brands are attracting and engaging a community around their content with Boye Fajinmi. Boye is a co-founder & president of The Future Party, an LA-based media and events brand targeting professionals in entertainment, tech, marketing, and other creative fields that invested early in creating content on Clubhouse and attract...

Pico's President Jason Bade and Chief Revenue Officer Rodolphe Ködderitzsch talk to Monetizing Media's Eric Peckham about the current boom in creator monetization tools and their work to make Pico the central CRM, analytics, and monetization solution for creators to manage their fan relationships and independent business. // Join the Monetizing Media newsletter and find more resources at Monetizin...

Eric Peckham dives into the rapidly growing webcomics industry with Michele Wells, the former editor-in-chief of DC Comics who recently joined leading webcomics platform Tapas Media as Chief Content Officer. // Join the Monetizing Media newsletter and find more resources at MonetizingMedia.com

Andrew Sugerman, President of Sketchy, talks with Monetizing Media host Eric Peckham about the intersection of education, entertainment, & gaming. Sketchy takes the learning technique of memory palaces as the basis of entertaining, interactive video courses for medical students. Backed by $30M from TCG Capital, they’re now rapidly expanding to new content verticals. Andrew previously led Disne...

TopFan CEO Jeff Kohn and Monetizing Media host Eric Peckham discuss strategies for entertainers and entertainment franchises to own their audience, better engage super fans, and increase lifetime value (LTV) of super fans. TopFan is a platform for musicians, sports teams, movie studios, and others who have large fan bases to create online community portals with paid memberships, exclusive e-commer...

Exploding Kittens co-founder & CEO Elan Lee talks with Monetizing Media host Eric Peckham about the $13 billion (and growing!) tabletop games market and his company's expansion strategy within it. Elan was a longtime video game executive who rose to become the Chief Design Officer at Xbox before leaving in late 2014 and launching Exploding Kittens as a new card game on Kickstarter. It not only...