The Future Of What Podcast
A Podcast and Radio Show About the Music Industry
Founded by Music Biz President, Portia Sabin as a way to educate musicians on the realities of the music business, The Future of What Podcast has become a forum where the most significant voices in our industry discuss important issues of the day. Tune in as she hosts important industry figureheads and innovators alike in exciting discussions on where the music business is headed next!
December 16, 2024 – The Future of What Episode #241 — Music & Tech’s Trajectory In The Year To Come
2024 was yet another transformative year for the music industry, bolstered by the widespread embrace of AI integration, challenges to the cornerstone that DSPs have become, and maturing integrations in gaming & VR. In our final conversation of 2024, we speak with Vickie Nauman of CrossBorderWorks about how as music consumption becomes more passive, more interactive experiences enabled by exciting new tech may define the music industry in the year to come!... Listen
December 4, 2024 – The Future of What Episode #240 — Managing Artists In 2024 & Beyond!
With the ever-changing landscape of the music industry, as well as new expectations from today’s artists, it’s time for us to check in on how the management field has evolved to meet the needs of today’s music makers. In our latest podcast, we talk to 10 and 8 Management’s Nicholas Mishko about what managers can do to best support their artists in the 2020s, when artists should enlist a manager & for what reasons, what new tech &... Listen
November 19, 2024 – The Future of What Episode #239 — Ensuring Ethical AI Use With AI:OK’s Dr. Martin Clancy
The misuse of generative AI tech has already tested the status quo of music distribution & streaming, with DSPs being flooded with thousands of fraudulent tracks meant to siphon royalties away from rightful artists & rightsholders. AI:OK is a new initiative which takes a multi-pronged approach to ensuring that the music industry is ethical in its use of AI. In our latest podcast, we talk to AI:OK founder & CEO, Dr. Martin Clancy about the initiative’s origins and goals,... Listen
November 4, 2024 – The Future of What Episode #238 — Music Research & AI-Detection Tech With Deezer’s Romain Hennequin
Research divisions within music companies often operate to advance the products & services they offer. In the case of Deezer’s most recent research on identifying & tagging songs, it may improve the ways our business fights against bad actors. This month, we talked to Deezer’s Head of Research Romain Hennequin about his team’s origins, its most recent paper which delves into how self-supervised learning (SSL) may help accurately identify AI-generated tracks uploaded to streaming services, and much more!... Listen
October 15, 2024 – The Future of What Episode #237 — #iVoted & Leveraging Music To Increase Voter Turnout
#iVoted is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that hosts concerts on election nights & during early voting periods to help drive voter registration & turnout. After hosting the largest digital concert in history during the 2020 Presidential Election, which data from MIT touts as bolstering voter turnout by an estimated 7%, #iVoted is gearing up for a series of events leading up to and on Election Night 2024. The org’s Founder & CEO, Emily White, joins us on the podcast to talk about how it has evolved since 2018,... Listen
October 2, 2024 – The Future of What Episode #236 — Supporting Women In Music: Interview With Head Bitch Music’s Jessica Vaughn
Following up on her op-ed for our Keeping Tempo series, we’re thrilled to have Jessica Vaughn of Head Bitch Music on our latest episode of The Future of What! In this interview, Vaughn discusses the ways our industry has evolved (both for better and worse) in its support of women & marginalized communities, how her industry origins as an artist influenced her to pursue an executive career and institute change from the inside, her current roles in the sync/custom music space,... Listen
August 20, 2024 – The Future of What Episode #235 — How AI Tech & TikTok Consumption Is Changing Our Industry
Since the digitization of the music business began, new tech applications and methods of consumption have helped to redefine how our industry operates. In recent years, the highest profile changes have been the implementation of AI algorithms and the rapid adoption of music consumption through short-form video platforms. We spoke with Miquido’s Chief AI Officer, Jerzy Biernacki about the benefits of AI applications on personalized music experiences like curated playlists & song recommendations, and how music trends on TikTok are changing how labels search for &... Listen
August 6, 2024 – The Future of What Episode #234 — Modern Music Royalties Processing
Ray Bush founded The Music Royalty Co. (MRC) in 2014 after identifying opportunities to modernize royalty calculations in the face of music data’s exponential explosion as streaming began to take off. A decade later and the company has remained an expert in complex royalty calculations for labels, publishers and distributors, while also evolving to meet the accountancy needs of music companies. In our latest podcast, we speak to Bush about the company’s first decade, how the global music industry has financially grown in that same time,... Listen
July 16, 2024 – The Future of What Episode #233 — Our Employees’ Needs Have Evolved: How Do We Best Support Them?
The events of the last few years, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic, have had a major effect on how people across the globe view work-life balance and traditional ways of working. In our latest episode, we discuss how to best support today’s workforce with two experts in the avenues of HR and workers’ rights. First off, we speak with WorkFour Director, Jackson Kerchis about how his organization is raising awareness in the U.S. about reduced work-time initiatives and how they stand to benefit both employees &... Listen
June 25, 2024 – The Future of What Episode #232 — Solving Music’s Identity Problem With Switchchord
The complex web of unique identifiers associated with an artist and their body of work can make it extremely difficult for them to interact with publishers, sync officers, and other parties they work with. Switchchord aims to eliminate this friction by allowing artists to document ownership of their music and map out the legal & business relationships they engage in via legally verifiable, decentralized digital identities. We spoke with company founder and CEO, Cole Davis about how the technology works and what opportunities it opens up for artists!... Listen
