Keeping Tempo With Music Biz

Given the constant evolution of the music business, it is extremely important for today’s industry professionals to stay current with the latest trends and technologies influencing the ways we work. Music Biz’s Keeping Tempo With Music Biz content series taps into the brain trust of our member & partner community to arm readers through the tips and tricks they need to succeed, and discuss the issues affecting industry professionals on a holistic level.

MEMBERS: Do you have an idea for a future article to contribute to the series? Reach out to Henryk Bik from the Music Biz team today at henryk.bik@musicbiz.org.


February 20, 2024 – [KEEPING TEMPO WITH MUSIC BIZ] It AIn’t All Bad: It’s Time To Give AI Its Due — Op-Ed by Orfium’s Michael Petychakis

A turbulent journey of love and hate best describes the relationship between music and technology over the years. But the reality is that technology is critical to the more recent and long-term future success of the music industry; they are inextricably linked. I include Artificial Intelligence (AI) in that.  Upon its launch in late 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT democratized access to a powerful generative AI tool, sparking a now familiar debate around copyright protection and highlighting the pressing need for legislation to define the boundaries of AI in music creation.... Read More

January 30, 2024 – [Keeping Tempo With Music Biz] — Modernizing Music Marketing In 2024: An Interview with Geoff Robins of Tradable Bits

Music marketing is incredibly complex and ripe with challenges. Just connecting a throughline can be a cumbersome chore for marketers who typically coordinate across multiple entities (labels, promoters, artists, sponsors, etc.) To streamline this process and help marketers really understand the fanbases they’re dealing with, Tradable Bits has developed an all-in-one ecosystem to manage every aspect of companies’ fan-marketing efforts. This month, we talked to Geoff Robins of Tradable Bits about the company’s background, its proven offerings for the music &... Read More

October 31, 2023 – [Keeping Tempo With Music Biz] — The State of Music Publishing In 2023 & Beyond: Interview with Great South Bay Music Group’s Travis McFetridge

The advent of music streaming, changes in label service offerings, and other new technologies have led to major changes to the music publishing space in the last few years. In this month’s interview, we talked with Great South Bay Music Group President & CEO, Travis McFetridge to get a sense of how publishing professionals have adapted to operations in the modern music industry, what the institution of The MLC has meant for their day-to-day, and what the future may hold for this subset of the industry!... Read More

August 23, 2023 – [Keeping Tempo With Music Biz] — Tackling the Challenges Presented by Generative AI in Music: An Interview with ARS Counsel’s Almuhtada Smith

As with the advent of most new technologies, the arrival of Generative AI tools poses unprecedented opportunities and challenges for the music industry ecosystem. While some artists are already using these tools as an additive element to their creative process, bad actors have found ways to exploit them by posting fake tracks modeled after, and attributed to, today’s most popular artists to DSPs for monetary gain. Moreover, there are serious ethical concerns over exploitation of culture and perpetuating stereotypes due to the nature of AI models being based on existing art.... Read More

February 21, 2023 – [Keeping Tempo With Music Biz] — Music NFTs: Separating Fact From Fiction with Revelator’s Founder & CEO, Bruno Guez

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly three years ago, much conversation was had around how an industry like ours, with highly important revenue streams based on in-person events, might adapt to meet the needs of a world in lockdown. One such area that was explored was that of digital goods and NFTs, a way for fans to support the artists they love by owning a unique digital keepsake. Now that the technology is beginning to mature,... Read More

January 5, 2023 – [Keeping Tempo With Music Biz] — The Value of TV For Music Video In 2023: Interview with Jordan Glickson of Vevo

Music videos, both as an art form and as a promotional tool, have seen significant evolution in the ways they are created and consumed since the early days of MTV. And while the trending rise in user-generated content and short-form video platforms might seem like a blow to the format’s popularity, the adoption of smart TVs and availability of videos in different formats across connected devices has actually lended to increased music video consumption. To sort through all this and discuss what’s next for the music video,... Read More

November 1, 2022 – [Keeping Tempo With Music Biz] – Finding A Fanbase: Training Algorithms For Music Discovery, Op-Ed by Chelsea Hallman from Targoz Market Research

In 2022, 46 percent of insights buyers from Coca-Cola to McKinsey revealed their spending on research projects increased over the past twelve months. Has yours? What’s driving your strategy? Previous release stats, or tailored marketing research that explores precisely what your listeners want? Training algorithms or recommendation engines to feed your release to an audience that matches your target market’s desired lyrical content, song features and past listening habits is paramount, particularly with emerging artists. Promotion teams must have the most effective listener profile at launch so they can coordinate early likes,... Read More

October 13, 2022 – [Keeping Tempo With Music Biz] — UGC ID, PLZ: An Interview with Song Sleuth CTO, Ibrahim Maali

In an industry that is often black-and-white when it comes to AI/Machine Learning applications versus human input, Song Sleuth offers what might be considered a novel solution: a platform that marries proprietary AI with manual human review. Their two-step approach helps to more granularly analyze pieces of live music user-generated content (UGC) — be it a live concert recording, a song remix or a short-form video clip with live audio — and help link it to the proper content license so the original songwriters and/or artists can be fairly compensated.... Read More

August 30, 2022 – [Keeping Tempo With Music Biz] — Navigating Modern Music Copyright Law: An Interview with Cosynd’s Liz Cimarelli

Basic copyright protection should be affordable and accessible to all creators, but unfortunately that’s not always been the case. Cosynd was created to turn the lengthy, bureaucratic, and expensive process of copyright protection into one that is intuitive, cost-competitive, and time-saving by simplifying two essential tasks — establishing ownership of copyrights and seamlessly registering them with the U.S. Copyright Office. We sat down with Cosynd’s COO and Head of Business Development, Liz Cimarelli, to shed more light on the critical steps that copyright owners must consider to keep their businesses afloat in today’s evolving legal landscape.... Read More

February 7, 2022 – [Keeping Tempo With Music Biz] — Centralizing the Fight Against Music Streaming Fraud: An Interview with Beatdapp’s Andrew Batey & Morgan Hayduk

Music streaming has held a major place in our industry for a number of years, due to the promises of a strong value proposition to users, the democratization of promotion across major label & indie artists alike, and the ready availability of global music from artists who otherwise might not be heard. But like with every seemingly “good” innovation, there are always folks looking to exploit it for nefarious reasons. Streaming fraud is not a relatively new phenomenon,... Read More