Music Ally Focus

In this episode we’re joined by Rio Caraeff, Chief Commercial Officer of Syng, the home audio manufacturer who make a "triphonic speaker" that they claim enables a new kind of listening experience, where music follows you around, and tracks can be stripped down to create unique musical experiences. Rio is one of the people who can confidently talk about the music/tech landscape, having founded the...

Music Ally Focus #60: One of the benefits of web3 tech, its proponents argue, is that it encourages meaningful interaction between fan and artist. We’ve seen examples, for instance, of NFTs acting as fan club memberships. But what if the artists don’t exist in the first place? We’re happy to welcome Ian Simon, co-founder of Spirit Bomb, a virtual artist record label, to explain how virtual artists...

In this fascinating and entertaining episode, we're joined by two people who are asking complicated questions about the nature of music copyright: Damien Riehl , technologist, technology lawyer and musician, and coder and technologist Noah Rubin . You may have heard of them previously – together, Riehl and Rubin created software that composed every single possible melody – and then they relea...

Ian Matthews and Sam Bates to talk about how a Web3 business becomes a DAO and what happens when a smart linking service is added to the mix. You may know Ian's work as a member of the wildly successful UK band Kasabian – whose songs have been streamed billions of times – but he is also in the Web3 business, as co-founder of a community-owned, not for profit web3 organisation. We’re going to ask h...

Andrea Czapary Martin, CEO of PRS for Music, which represents the rights of over 160,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers in the UK and around the world. The last few years have seen income in the music industry fluctuate wildly due to the impact of coronavirus – and PRS for Music has just released its 2021 results, including how much money it has collected and has paid out to son...

Last year, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative examined over 4,000 executives from 119 music companies and found that only 7.5% were Black. In this episode we’re joined by Jaia Thomas, founder and president of Diverse Representation, and Amity Paye, senior director of communications at Color Of Change, two organisations that recently announced the launch of the Diverse Representation Music Dat...

We warmly welcome Godwin Tom and Elizabeth Sobowale to talk about developing the next generation of music industry executives in Africa. They oversee Music Business Academy (MBA) for Africa – a training program that aims to develop that next generation. Godwin is CEO of iManage Africa and Elizabeth is Programme Director of MBA for Africa, which has developed the program in partnership with Music A...

Music Ally Focus #54: Vickie Nauman, founder of music consultancy CrossBorderWorks, recently worked on a notable metaverse project, which involved the music licensing for 20 of David Guetta’s songs for an event where he – via his virtual avatar – DJ’ed in Roblox earlier this year. So we wanted to talk to Vickie about licensing music – something tricky enough in normal circumstances - in the metave...

Josh Empson, CEO of Tempo Music Investments, joins Joe Sparrow to explain what it’s like to have a $1 billion-plus fund to invest in the purchase of music rights, and what these purchases mean for music and rightsholders. We are fascinated by this space, where huge sums change hands for ownership of songs – so we talked to Josh about how catalogues are chosen for purchasing, whether music is under...

The music NFT bubble has not popped as some predicted, but it has deflated dramatically since it’s STONK-stastic peak in early 2021. The music-related NFT business is now settling into something more affordable, practical, and dare we say it, mundane. So we invited Max Shand, of the music NFT platform Serenade, to talk about it. Serenade has partnered with a number of music industry institutions a...

Edward Balassanian, founder and CEO of AI music creation company Aimi, chats to Music Ally's editor Joe Sparrow about the role AI music will play in our lives – and the conversation quickly gets a little bit philosophical. AI generated music is fascinating, partly because it questions our connection with music in the first place: if that music is not made by humans, then what is it we actually enj...

Distributors hold even more keys to powerful fan-engagement opportunities than ever. Last year saw big changes in the space: aggressive geographic expansion, moves into NFTs, DeFi, and crypto, and fintech partnerships. Music Ally’s Editor Joe Sparrow talks to special guest Kristin Graziani, president of music distribution service Stem – who talks about the evolving role of digital distributor...

Music Ally Focus #49: In the first in a short series of podcasts designed to help you understand how various elements of Web3 tech can be used in music, Grammy-award-winning artist RAC (AKA André Allen Anjos), and Head of Crypto at Hifi Labs, Jack Spallone, both speak to Music Ally Editor Joe Sparrow about racOS – RAC's new fan club / website which is also a DAO. the DAO – a Decentralised Aut...

Music Ally Focus #48: We have quickly published this podcast due to the rapidly developing situation in Ukraine, where Russian forces have invaded and numerous cities are under attack. Dartsya Tarkovska, co-founder of Music Export Ukraine spoke to Music Ally from Ukraine and explained the war's impact on artists and people in the music industry, and how the industry will need to change its approac...

Music Ally Editor Joe Sparrow speaks to Jeronimo Folgueira, CEO of music streaming platform Deezer about the company's current and future strategy, and also to get his thoughts on the state of music streaming today. He explained the various  ways that he thinks streaming can better serve artists and fans: including more ways of buying and selling inside streaming apps, how the relationships b...

New money is pouring into the music industry: giant alternative asset management companies like Blackstone and KKR, are partnering with the likes of Hipgnosis and BMG to purchase music catalogue at great expense. But... why? Are they suddenly interested in buying some cool rock songs for some reason? Have they run out of other places to invest money in times of very low interest rates? Or have the...

Music industry veteran Karen Emanuel is CEO of Key Production – and is on the board of Moving the Needle, a UK group that supports women entering the music industry. She speaks to Music Ally Editor Joe Sparrow about what can be done to encourage more women to enter the music business, and how to support and showcase their work when they are in it. Also: what does she want to see in terms of repres...

Spotify has a lot on its plate all of a sudden. In 2020 it signed the controversial, blunt-smoking, bow-hunting podcaster Joe Rogan in a $100m deal - and while there has always been pushback against some of his guests, this week things came to a head, as Neil Young asked Spotify to choose between him or Rogan due to the podcaster's Covid-19 views. His music is now being removed from the service. I...

Double Elvis is the music-focused podcast company behind the hit rock n roll crime music podcast “Disgraceland” and others, including the recent hip-hop inspired audio drama podcast “Here Comes the Break”, which was made in partnership with Def Jam and featured an exclusive soundtrack. Music Ally has written a lot about the space where the music industry and podcasting meets so we’ve invited Doubl...

The long-held assumption is that artists make music, and that music is then the core connection between the artist and the fan – as well as the thing that is monetised. But that paradigm is rapidly changing. Christine Osazuwa, Strategy Director for Pollen Presents, speaks to Music Ally's Editor Joe Sparrow about how artists can and should seek new streams of income outside of the traditional sourc...

Music Ally Focus #41: Music Ally has just published its latest Quarterly Report – our yearly Trends Report is a forward-thinking series of analyses, with advice, ideas and context, to help you navigate a better route through the year ahead. ( Music Ally subscribers can access it here .) In this podcast we are going to pick over a couple of the topics from the report. First, we'll dig into New...

Music Ally Focus Ep. 40: Every December, Music Ally publishes its hotly-anticipated Sandbox Campaigns of the Year issue, which rounds up the best, most innovative and interesting campaigns of the previous 12 months – and 2021’s is the biggest ever. (There's a link to the report below). It's an incredibly useful resource for anyone planning marketing in 2022: so in this podcast we invited three of...

In advance of the NY:LON Connect conference ( nylonconnect.com ), which returns for its sixth edition online over January 18-21 2022, we spoke to two previous conference participants to understand what these two experts see as the most meaningful and important topics as we look ahead into the fast-shifting music industry. The topics they zeroed in on include the creator economy, sub-Saharan Africa...

Private equity funds and firms like Hipgnosis are scooping up music catalogues. And 60% of Hipgnosis’s expensively-purchased catalogue of music is over ten years old, with only 2.5% under 3 years old. Will major publishers and labels be drawn into a bidding war over copyrights, and will new artists suffer as a result?  Music-tech strategist Dan Fowler recently wrote a fascinating article call...

Smartlinking services like Linkfire are now ubiquitous to music fans and industry alike: they have become essential glue that holds all the disparate areas of the business together, sending fans from one place to another, and generating income along the way. We chat to Linkfire CEO Lars Ettrup about this quietly powerful sector, and we ask him if smartlinks are empowering independence for DIY arti...