Music Tectonics

What goes on in your mind when that chorus hits and you get shivers, when you lay down a track and know that one was THE take? Neuroscientists have been digging into these and other questions of music, emotion, and cognition for decades. David Rosen, PhD and Brian Owens of AI and neuroscience startup Secret Chord Laboratories explore our brains on music and how the science of creativity and recept...

When music venues in Los Angeles were shut down as part of Covid-19 safety measures, Ari Herstand knew that he wanted to help the artists and performance spaces weather the financial shortfall. With a couple of friends, he launched "UnCancelled Music Festival", a live-streaming enterprise that organizes performances and collaboration between musicians from across the country. Now he is busier than...

If you're interested in the world of music equipment retail, you have heard of Sweetwater. More likely than not, you are a customer that has contributed to its over 700 million dollars in sales. But how did the company become one of the biggest catalog and online retailers for music? Founder Chuck Surack sits down with Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze to explain his humble origins touring around...

SXSW hosts a music tech hackathon every year, and 2020 was no exception. Except this was the year everything changed: the huge music and tech conference was cancelled due to the coronavirus.  We're not going to let that stop us, however. To honor the spirit of the hackathon, we've brought together some of the mentors and thought leaders involved to talk about how music tech can transform our lives...

If you are still trying to grasp best practices for monetizing recorded music in the streaming era, Label' Logic's Jay Gilbert lays it out for you with no hesitation on this episode. Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze dives headfirst into Jay's world of helping artists and managers understand the variety of experiences you can create for fans, the truth behind Spotify playlists, the role of your c...

After selling his festival cruises company to Norwegian Cruise Lines, entrepreneur Andy Levine returns with his new startup Topeka, which gives artists an opportunity to get paid for online fan conversations, digital house concerts, and Zoom serenades. Music tectonics host Dmitri Vietze finds out from Andy why he started the new endeavor, and how it is well-suited for the current Shelter-at-Home m...

What happens when your concert matchmaking platform comes to a screeching halt thanks to social distancing? Side Door co-founder Laura Simpson joins host Dmitri Vietze to talk about how the pandemic's crisis is leading to a new type of ticketed yet intimate performance. Laura talks about how she does not think artists should be forced to play for free, and the types of reactions they are seeing fr...

If anyone could see the immediate deluge of concert cancellations when COVID-19 became the planet's immediate reality, it was ubiquitous concert-discovery platform Bandsintown's co-founder and managing director Fabrice Sergent. Listen to his conversation with host Dmitri Vietze, as he describes how he watched 100,000 concerts get canceled in just a couple of weeks. He translated his team's passion...

Imagine you are editing sound for a TV program. You work together with the show runner, music supervisor, and director to get the sounds just right. You play portions back together several times discussing how every note and every effect should be timed with the video. But what happens when those teams are immediately dispersed for weeks thanks to COVID-19? Ameen Abdulla had already created a plat...

  The founders of SoundStorming join Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze to talk about how their music collaboration app cracks open the song making process. Their vision is to allow fans and artists alike to collaborate at the point of creation. Capture an initial musical idea on your phone and before you know it someone across the ocean will add a layer that makes you think about your snippet in...

Long before COVID-19, Ivan Talaychuk pivoted from artist to tech startup founder because it was such a challenge to collaborate with his bandmate in Kiev, Ukraine. He was tired of the tangle of emails, Dropbox, Google Drive, and text messaging to share and comment on music tracks while they were in process. He literally traded his synthesizers to fund his company Pibox at first. Now it's one of th...

Now that the concert industry has come to a screeching halt, the live music industry is turning its attention to livestreaming. A little startup formed in 2009 called Stageit is seeing an unprecedented surge in performances and revenue. They grossed $500,000 in 2019 and in just three weeks have seen $850,000 roll in. Listen to Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze talk to Stageit founder/CEO Evan Low...

Industry journalist Cherie Hu joins Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze for a conversation about her research and summary of live streaming music platforms. The two discuss the big picture of the music field's response to COVID-19, approaches of specific artists, and dive into how this moment might lead to leapfrogging some of the past barriers for music tech use cases like performing on a screen,...

There is a new generation of apps and platforms for listeners to become musicians and many of them allow you to collaborate remotely. What will make them reach the next level? A worldwide quarantine! Sounds like a perfect time to launch an app, right? Tim Exile — electronic artist turned tech founder — rocks out some tunes on this episode, jamming across oceans, while he explains to podcast host D...

Touring screeched to a halt with worldwide social distancing. But you know what to do: live stream! Luckily platforms like YouNow have been brewing with fan-building and monetization tools for several years. On this episode host Dmitri Vietze talks to YouNow president Jake Branzburg about the skyrocketed growth they are experiencing during the COVID-19 crisis. You'll learn about the diversity of c...

Amper's AI-powered music composition tool, Score, helps content creators make music tailored to their projects, whether they're seasoned musicians or novices. Amper Music CEO Drew Silverstein places Amper and AI music in context of a long history of algorithmic music, and an even longer history of increasing accessibility to the means of music creation. How will AI music composition technology tra...

Emma McGann returns to share what every musician needs to know right now: how live streaming can keep fans connected and replace income lost to cancelled gigs. When her U.S. tour had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, UK-based singer songwriter Emma McGann drew on 6 years of experience live streaming on YouNow and replaced every tour date with an online concert. Through sales of virtual...

With isolation and remote work looming last week, we recorded a podcast conversation about communication and collaboration. Irregular host Tristra Newyear Yeager (and rock paper scissors writer / strategist) tells Eleanor Rust, rps marketing director, about essential lessons she's learned from collaborating with people scattered around the globe, and how to maximize listening while minimizing dist...

How can the music industry take a proactive role in confronting the climate crisis? Tristra Newyear Yeager chats with Bas Grasmayer about the answers tech is providing for music biz sectors from live events to streaming. Why are music festivals the perfect context to explore innovation, inspire attendees to shift their behaviors, and incubate ideas that have positive impacts on climate? What's the...

Zack Zalon believes streaming music could sound better- a LOT better. His company Super Hi-Fi lives in the spaces between songs, spaces that music streaming services have ignored (until now). Zack explains how Super Hi-Fi's AI-powered song and audio transitions make the streaming experience sound more distinctive and more engaging. Find out what this high-tech company learned from broadcast radio-...

Host Dmitri Vietze has been closely watching the seismic shifts shaking up the music industry as a result of tech and innovation. Dig deeper into the 20 music tech phenomena that Dmitri's watching for 2020. He lays out what he thinks could be next for Spotify, the indie music sector, AI music creation, music's role in the changing geopolitical landscape, what PR's got to do with it all, and 15 oth...

We have big news in this special episode: the venues and dates for our next Music Tectonics Conference! Find out from hosts Dmitri Vietze and Tristra Newyear Yeager what new experiences we're planning for 2020. What made the first Music Tectonics Conference so much fun that we had to do it again? Which music and tech topics will we add into the conference mix this year? What can you win in the pre...

CEO Jared Kristensen explains how Audience Republic powers live event promotion by amplifying the most effective marketing tool: word-of-mouth. Their social sharing platform engages fans and provides valuable data and messaging tools to promoters. You can practically hear the moment that host Dmitri Vietze decides to dive in! After Jared and Dmitri dig into how Audience Republic campaign works, yo...

What really happens when a blockchain skeptic and a blockchain supporter talk to each other about solving music industry problems? At the October 2019 Music Tectonics Conference, we hosted a Blockchain Cage Match with three skeptics and three enthusiasts facing off in wrestling masks and capes. Podcast host and conference organizer Dmitri Vietze saw too many events where entrepreneurs and engineer...

Analysts point to Gaming and Esports as the next frontier for the music industry, and a useful model for "monetizing fandom." Occasional podcast host Tristra Newyear Yeager explores what that really means, with Andres Lauer of Five Vectors as a guide to this new terrain. A music industry insider himself, Andres founded Five Vectors with game industry expert Wasae Imran to open up gaming as a monet...