The Future of What

Jennie Smythe, CEO of Girlilla Marketing, not only brings on unique & interesting clients, ranging from local businesses to well-known actors, but has proudly ensured her agency remains female-led throughout the 17 years she has been running it. With her tenure as a woman in both the music and digital marketing industries comes a great deal of lessons imparted onto her – thus, she decided to compile them all into a memoir. In this episode we dive into Smythe’s journey that led to her memoir, the evolution of diverse representation in the music industry, how the digital age has allowed for increased artist & fan expression, and the role of creativity in marketing.

The financial loss our industry faced when touring came to a halt during COVID-19 has brought attention to the importance of the long glossed over live sector. From here, NIVA (the National Independent Venue Association) was born, where Jamie Loeb, SVP of Marketing for Nederlander, worked tirelessly to help secure the biggest arts grant program in history from Congress – $16 billion of aid used to keep promoters, festivals and venues afloat. In this episode, we speak with Loeb on her work at NIVA & Nederlander, the career journey that brought her here, and the live event marketing process. Loeb zeros in on the power of social media for marketers & artists alike in targeting specific fan demographics, and explores how this knowledge can be translated into creating a live concert audience.

The Music Leaders Network exists to establish a network of underrepresented female, trans & non-binary music executives and support their industry careers. In our latest podcast, we speak with Music Leaders Network co-founders Remi Harris & Tamara Gal-On about the organization’s origins, its latest UK cohort & expansion into Nordic countries, the changing landscape of DEI initiatives in 2025, and so much more!

With the Music Biz Conference coming to Atlanta for the first time this year, we’re continuing our series of interviews with local executives to learn more about the city’s thriving music & entertainment business scene. This month, we spoke with Atlanta-based Shachar Oren of a media technologies venture capital firm, Sound Media Ventures, on his experiences in the city at the crossroads of music and technology. Tune in for his perspectives on why Atlanta is the perfect place to bring our Annual Conference, ranging from its status as an international business hub & large artist community to its bolstering presence in the music tech space & growth as a home for venture capital in the last decade.

The music industry’s high-stress and ever-changing nature often leads to the development or exacerbation of mental health issues for artists & professionals alike. Particularly since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, music & research organizations have looked to study the effects being in this industry has on its workforce and develop resources to best support their needs. A new study from MusiCares and Amber Health seeks to look beyond the need for mental health resources and instead analyze how access to these resources impacts those who receive them. In our latest podcast, we talk with Amber Health’s Dr. Chayim Newman and MusiCares’ Theresa Wolters about how both organizations support the music industry ecosystem, the need for robust mental health resources for music professionals, and the groundwork for this new research initiative!

Generative AI has taken all creative industries by storm over the last few years, and the technology’s rapid adoption has already led to major headaches for the music industry. AI-developed “songs” have flooded streaming services, being used by bad actors to siphon royalties from hard-working artists and creating problems for music discovery. Jen, founded by tech entrepreneur Shara Senderoff, is an AI-driven creative platform that seeks to mitigate these ethical issues by putting artists’ needs & concerns first and foremost. This month, we talk to Senderoff about Jen's origins, the platform’s role as a companion tool for artists, the ways the company has involved & aimed to compensate artists since its inception, and much more!

The Annual Music Biz Conference will take place in Atlanta for the FIRST TIME in 2025, gathering more than 2,100 global music professionals in a vital music hub city for four days of educational & networking opportunities to help inform the industry’s trajectory forward. This month, we’re kicking off a special series of interviews with Atlanta-based music & entertainment executives to learn why it is the PERFECT place to bring our Annual Conference and all the things that make Atlanta’s music industry so special. Up first, we’ll hear from Tobago Bonito from local record store DBS Sounds & founder of the F.A.M.S. (Forever a Music Store) Coalition!

The past decade has seen a vast uptick in the importance of the music publishing sector. Publishing rights now account for roughly 30-40% of rightsholder revenue, thanks in part to both the adoption of consistent digital revenue streams and major investments from the financial sector that have bolstered the value of music catalogs. In our first podcast of 2025, we talk to Reservoir Media President & COO, Rell Lafargue about the evolution of the music publishing sector, what changes in the industry as a whole have contributed to publishing’s importance, what the future may hold, and much more!

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!

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 & revenue streams managers need to be aware of, advice for those looking to break into management, and beyond!

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, as well as the immediate outlook on AI’s impact on our industry.

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!

#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, how her music industry background informs how #iVoted operates, the ways it uses data to most effectively plan events in target areas, and much more!

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, and much more!

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 & market new talent!

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, the impact of having a dedicated royalty service, and much more!

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 & employers. Then, we discuss how companies can best support their employees and answer their questions around wellness, as they either navigate their new work-life balance or return to the office, with Natoya Brown, SVP of People Inclusion & Culture for Universal Music Group.

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!

The Digital Media Association (DiMA) represents the world’s leading audio streaming companies and streaming innovators, providing community, resources and advocacy for its member companies. This month, we spoke with newly appointed DiMA President and CEO, Graham Davies about DiMA’s mission, his first few months at the helm of the organization, and what the Association is working towards through the rest of 2024!

The music industry has proven time and time again that inclusive practices lead to better productivity and a higher quality of work in all business segments. That’s why Ralph Torrefranca of Angry Mob Music has sought for more diversity in high-level songwriting rooms by starting the New Normal Writing Camp in 2023, which featured 70% female artists & writers and 50% women producers from more than 12 cultural backgrounds in its inaugural edition. In our latest podcast, we spoke with Torrefranca about his op-ed, “Why Diverse Writing Rooms Must Become An Industry Standard,” what led him to start the writing camp, and his plans to further support diverse writers going forward!