Player piano rolls… electric guitars… wah wah pedals… ProTools… AutoTune… and now AI. But is artificial intelligence the next step in creator tools or something far more threatening? Join Living Colour guitarist and technologist Vernon Reid as we unpack how AI technology is affecting the way we create, record, license, and consume music.
With Britnee Foreman from Exceleration Music.
Deep into the streaming era, vinyl outsold CD sales last year for the first time since 1987 and grew for the 16th straight year. We unpack the state of vinyl with John T. Kunz, owner of Austin’s Waterloo Records; Russ Crupnick, Managing Partner of MusicWatch; John Pette, co-owner of new vinyl pressing plant OUTTA WAX; Gina Williams, Senior Director of Independent Retail and Vinyl Marketing at Warner Music Group; and Larry Jaffee, author of Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century.
Our new report How Streaming Impacted the Value of Music made waves in Billboard, Music Ally and other cool places! In this episode of the Musonomics podcast we cover streaming’s impact — not just on revenue, but on the dramatically increased multiples of revenue sophisticated investors have paid for music rights over the past decade. We discuss what our report says, how we put it together and what it means. With DiMA chief Garrett Levin.
The transition over the last decade from purchases of CDs, vinyl albums and downloads to subscription and advertising supported streaming has had an enormous economic impact on the music industry.
Download report here.
Many American music executives and students have difficulty understanding neighboring rights — which have nothing to do with territorial proximity. Neighboring rights are similar to the public performance rights associated with musical compositions — so they’re “neighbors” from a legal perspective — but they’re paid to record labels and performing artists rather than to songwriters and publishers. Neighboring rights have great potential in the streaming age, but with each country comes a different challenge in reporting and collecting. In this episode we unpack these issues with peermusic CEO Mary Megan Peer and Concord COO Vic Zaraya.
George Wein single handedly created the model for the popular music festival. In this episode, host Larry Miller of NYU Steinhardt celebrates George’s legacy with the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals with a cast of Wein’s friends and colleagues. Included are Newport Jazz Festival Artistic Director Christian McBride, City Winery’s Michael Dorf, Newport Festivals Foundation Executive Director Jay Sweet and COO Kira Favro, Newport Board Chair Bruce Gordon, Secretary of Commerce, and former Governor of Rhode Island, Gina Raimondo and longtime friend Jerry Chazen.
This episode of Musonomics features an exclusive interview with Jon Platt, Chairman and CEO Sony Music Publishing, recorded in front of a live virtual audience at NYU in conversation with Larry Miller, our host and head of NYU Steinhardt’s Music Business program. Jon’s work with songwriters like Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Kanye, and Drake has afforded him a well-deserved place as a shrewd creative executive and as a major advocate of music creators. Jon discusses his unique career path from his early days as a DJ and his development as a creative at EMI, the competitive advantage of diversity and inclusion and the future of music publishing.
If it seems like a remarkable number of larger-than-life legacy artists have sold the rights to their catalogs lately for astonishing price tags, it’s very likely the work of Merck Mercuriadis, CEO of Hipgnosis Songs Fund. Hipgnosis is disrupting the music industry by dropping big bucks on artists’ songs and transforming them into an investable asset class. In this episode of Musonomics, host Larry Miller analyzes how the valuations of artists’ catalogs are calculated through historical and economic factors and then speaks to Merck Mercuriadis about the present and future state of his company, and pop songwriter/producer Tricky Stewart — along with his brother and business partner Mark Stewart — about Tricky’s sale to Hipgnosis.
Read full transcript of episode.
The evolution of video games has been entwined with the music industry since the 1970s; dependent on related tech developments and targeting a similar consumer audience. Video games have become a significant revenue stream for music artists from e-sports, rhythm games, and titles like Grand Theft Auto. Now Fortnite, Minecraft, Twitch, and Roblox have changed the context for how music interacts with the gaming experience, and with the pandemic keeping people at home, have become a primary channel for many artists to reach their fans. In this episode of Musonomics, host Larry Miller of NYU Steinhardt explores the history of sound and games, and speaks to Jon Vlassopulos, the Global Head of Music at gaming platform Roblox, about the platform’s music events, and what’s coming in the future.
Why is licensing music for a podcast like sailing in uncharted seas? In this episode of Musonomics, host Larry Miller delves into why this format creates so much complexity for music usage even as the audience for podcasts is exploding. In conversations with music clearance expert Deborah Mannis-Gardner, who works with podcasts like Broken Record and the Actual Stretch and Bobbito Show; music supervisor Scott Velasquez, who just launched Frisson Sync; and Premier Music founder and Downtown Music Records Chairman Josh Deutsch, we explore different approaches to licensing this format, anchored by a review of the key terms that can make music licensing seem so opaque.
