Episode 169: This podcast is aligned with Music Ally’s newest International Focus report, which pulls together the last year’s worth of Country Profiles which we publish, plus some extra exclusive analysis. So, we’re joined by Stuart Dredge, Music Ally’s head of insight, to discuss some of the burning topics when we look at the international music market right now in summer 2025. Stu talks to Joe Sparrow about: - The new dominance of local talent and genres in markets around the globe. - What ar...
Jun 13, 2025•41 min
Ep. 168: we speak to Jorge Brea, CEO of Symphonic Distribution, and Guji Lorenzana, Symphonic's Territory Manager, Asia, to talk about successful strategies for international expansion. We talk about: * What has worked well so far in their expansion into Latin America and Asia – and what didn’t go as planned? * When you're entering a new market what are the very first steps you take? What are the absolute essentials for making it work? * What are the key local insights they've uncovered that out...
May 30, 2025•33 min
Ep. 167: We speak to beatBread CEO Peter Sinclair – on getting more options, insight and choices in music funding, and how independent artists, labels and songwriters are getting better deals while retaining ownership of their music using beatBread’s game changing deal comparison tool. Peter chats to Music Ally Editor Joe Sparrow in this episode of MA focus, in collaboration with Beatbread. Website: https://www.beatbread.com/ Deal Comparison Tool: https://www.beatbread.com/compare Music Ally Co-...
Apr 09, 2025•48 min
Ep. 166: Music Ally’s Head of Insight, Stuart Dredge joins Joe Sparrow to discuss two of the most meaningful topics relating to music streaming today: the value of music on DSPs; and the big DSPs' upcoming superfan plans. This podcast connects to Music Ally's latest Insight Report called the State of Streaming in 2025 (https://musically.com/category/reports). In this podcast we discuss: The value of music on DSPs – not just the ongoing subscription price rises, but the ad-supported tiers, and th...
Mar 27, 2025•39 min
Artists, songwriters and music rightsholders can now free up capital using their music in so many ways, and the old days of simply seeking advances from labels or publishers are long-gone. Sound Royalties provides a way to access tomorrow's music income today: over a decade ago the company pioneered a funding model they call “creative-friendly music finance”, where the company fronts money to artists and rightsholders based on future earnings from streaming – and other sources. Those artists or ...
Feb 26, 2025•32 min
Ep. 164: Music marketing is always changing - and yet the fundamentals stay the same. So what's going to change in 2025 – and how can you change your strategy to make sure you keep cutting through? Liam James Ward is CEO/co-founder of social/digital music marketing agency Something Something , and he joins Music Ally's Joe Sparrow to look ahead. And it's not just a bunch of hand-waving predictions – Liam digs into shifts he sees coming around some fundamental concepts: What does and doesn't work...
Jan 14, 2025•49 min
Ep. 163: The jobs market in the music industry is changing fast: it's not just artists who are decoupling from the traditional industry businesses, it's the industry workers too. Not only have various major players laid off significant percentages of their workforce, but some artists and teams are seeking smaller, nimbler companies to do niche tasks. So we got Music Ally COO Patrick Ross on the show to chat about what this means for people: how to up-skill, re-train and branch out; how to recogn...
Nov 08, 2024•26 min
Ep. 162: It's always a Very Special Episode when Music Ally's Head of Insight, Stuart Dredge, joins the Focus podcast, and lo, Stu chats to Joe Sparrow in depth about AI (of course!), music fintech, music ecotech, music healthcare tech and more! This episode is part of Music Ally's annual music-tech Insight Report, available to Music Ally subscribers. ------ 👋 The Knowledge , Music Ally’s free weekly newsletter: ...
Oct 10, 2024•47 min
Ep. 161: Direct to Consumer is a model that most artists, of all sizes, are now prioritising. But which type of artist does this approach work – and not work – for? Mag Rodriguez, CEO/founder of D2C platform Even – which has the tagline "Buy The Art From The Artist" – talks to Music Ally's Editor Joe Sparrow about how artists can use this business model to generate money. He says that artists can make more money from a new release this way than on a streaming platform, sometimes even before that...
Sep 30, 2024•38 min
Ep. 160: A marketing-focused episode – Sarah Seukeran analyses three recent notable campaigns and activations from Lainey Wilson, The Cardigans, and Peggy Gou. Featured are campaigns that combine local weather data with music streaming, showcase a good way of getting catalogue to connect with The Kids on TikTok, and encourage fans to design localised merch. It's ideal if you're trying to find good ideas to try out in your own music campaigns! 1. Lainey Wilson: 2. The Cardigans: https://pro.music...
Sep 18, 2024•26 min
Ep. 159: Dhruv Chopra, co-founder/CEO of Brooklyn venue Elsewhere , joins Joe Sparrow to talk about finding new ways of running local independent venues. Dhruv and Elsewhere are reaching around to find a new business model in a new gig-going world. Today, music is consumed, created, performed, played, discovered, experienced and valued differently – and yet, the basics of live music are the same: a group of people in a room while some music happens. So Elsewhere is trying something that is both ...
Aug 30, 2024•42 min
Ep. 158: When Jamie Oborne's career as a musician ended, he decided that the second best thing was to be an artist manager. He also decided that he'd stay independent, write contracts different to the one's he'd signed, and work closely with his artists. Twenty years on, Oborne's approach seems to have worked well enough: he runs management company All On Red and indie label Dirty Hit; both of which have a host of globally successful acts, most notably The 1975. Jamie joined Music Ally's editor ...
Aug 07, 2024•41 min
Ep 157: Cast your mind back to 2020, when public spaces were shut down and the world suddenly felt insular and closed. Live-streaming became wildly popular overnight – in fact this podcast began in these circumstances – and many apps and platforms appeared and disappeared to feed the need for watching live events from our homes. A mere four years later, and live-streaming has matured and the froth has died down. So what is the space like now that it is no longer the buzzword of the moment? How h...
Jul 25, 2024•29 min
Ep 156: Superfandom, superfandom, superfandom. Unless you’ve been living on the moon for the last year, you’ll not have been able to avoid the latest obsession of pretty much anyone working in the music industry. We chatted to Jacquelle Horton, CEO/Founder of superfan platform Fave, about the nature of superfandom – and we also dug into how to nurture it without taking advantage of enthusiastic fans. The industry’s current interest in superfandom makes sense: whether you’re a DIY artist, a manag...
Jun 20, 2024•37 min
Ep. 155: Andre Benz founded The Nations when he was in high school. What began as a Youtube channel uploading dance music remixes has transformed into a media conglomerate with a record label and various genre-focused channels. In the latest episode of the Music Ally Focus podcast, he explains the challenges of building a multi-faceted ecosystem that meets the needs of modern music fans, and also creators – and doing it all on top of existing infrastructure in the form of Youtube. The Nations' s...
Jun 05, 2024•34 min
Content warning: this episode discusses sexual abuse. Ep. 154: Caroline Heldman Ph.D and Samantha Maloney are co-founders of the Sound Off Coalition, which recently published a report that called out “the scathing history and financial impact of decades of sexual abuse and coverups in the music industry”. In the report, publicly-available information on reported allegations of sexual abuse, harassment and related misconduct involving musicians and music industry executives is catalogued in detai...
May 23, 2024•46 min
Episode 153: What's the health of the music festival ecosystem like? Not great, says Nick Morgan, CEO of UK festival company The Fair. Nick, who is also vice chair of the UK’s Association of Independent Festivals (AIF), and his colleague Yasmin Galletti join Music Ally's editor Joe Sparrow and discuss the pressures festivals are under, in an environment where, they say , having seen one in six festivals go bust in the pandemic, another 1 in 6 will go bust in 2024 too. the place that music festiv...
May 03, 2024•40 min
Episode 152: Young Voices arranges huge, arena-sized, choir performances for school children, and we were joined by Ben Lewis, CEO of Young Voices, and Anna Phoebe, violinist who performs with Young Voices (and is on the Board at The Ivors Academy.) We spoke about the importance of music at the grassroots level, and encouraging children to sing and perform together. They talked about the unifying effect of the huge Young Voices shows, the state of music education and the need for it in the talen...
Apr 25, 2024•44 min
Episode 151: We're joined by music industry psychologist and therapist Anne Löhr to get a snapshot of the state of mental health within the music industry, and her interpretation of how well the industry has supported the mental health of the people in it. SPOILER : uh-oh, it’s not been great – but it’s getting better. The music industry has, according to Anne, stuck to one approach when dealing with mental health: and the results have been disastrous. So we talked about the damage that has been...
Apr 19, 2024•43 min
Episode 150(!): Suzanne Bull, founder of Attitude is Everything – which connects disabled people with music and live event industries to improve access – and Dr Teresa Moore, Director at A Greener Future – which helps organisations, events, festivals and venues be more environmentally sustainable – join Music Ally's editor Joe Sparrow. They spoke about how the twin issues of sustainability at music festivals and access for people with disabilities connect, and why they’re opening up a conversati...
Apr 11, 2024•36 min
Ep 149: Sofar Sounds CEO Jim Lucchese joins Music Ally editor Joe Sparrow to talk about the current economics of live music and its impact on local, independent artists. Live music is a hard business at the best of times, but for smaller and emerging artists, it can be brutally tough. A good number of artists now get their start playing Sofar Sounds shows, so we ask Jim to explain what artists and people working in the local live industry are experiencing, and what are the main economic and infr...
Apr 05, 2024•31 min
Ep 148: Gen Z music fans are able to immediately sense when an artist’s communications with fans feel inauthentic. But marketing has in its nature an element of inauthenticity – so how do you maintain a feeling of authenticity when marketing to this young, online-only generation? And how can artists and teams market effectively directly to these younger fans or potential fans? Keturah Cummings is founder/CEO of Forward Slash, a social media agency and content production studio that specialises i...
Mar 28, 2024•28 min•Season 1Ep. 169
Ep. 147: Stuart Dredge, Music Ally’s Head of Insight, joins Editor Joe Sparrow to answer some of the biggest and most complex questions in the DSP space in 2024. This podcast is aligned with Music Ally’s new quarterly report and the Big Questions they chat about include: • Who are the winners and losers from artist-centric payment systems – and will creators and labels be satisfied? • How often and by how much should subscription prices change – and are we now in an era of incremental increases?...
Mar 25, 2024•38 min•Season 1Ep. 168
Ep. 146: In this episode we ask: how do people search for music today and what do people really want in their results? We welcome Einar Helde, AIMS API co-founder and CCO, to the Focus podcast to answer that question, as well as to explain how technology is allowing people to search in novel and nuanced ways – and what that means for people who make music. The needs of people who make, share and use music have changed dramatically. Artists scramble to be discovered amongst the supposed 100,000+ ...
Mar 21, 2024•29 min•Season 1Ep. 167
Ep 145: Joe Sparrow is joined by Sean Lee, CEO/co-founder and Kyungtae Kim, co-founder and Audio & AI Specialist, of Verses, an AI music platform that powers music generation in virtual spaces. We wanted to talk about the use of dynamic AI-created music in the metaverse, and how that music then connects to virtual items. Essentially: where three of recent years’ most hypebeast products – AI created music, NFTs and metaverses – all come together. Verses has recently been nominated for a 2024 ...
Mar 14, 2024•35 min•Season 1Ep. 166
Ep. 144: Tuned Global's CEO Con Raso joins Joe Sparrow to talk about something that sounds a bit intangible and distant: the cost of storing all the music that gets streamed. If it’s essentially free for owners of huge catalogues of music to upload their files to someone else’s server, then they will – and smaller rightsholders like DIY artists and labels will be under increasing competition against an ever-increasing volume. Con and Joe chatted about whether DSPs should charge for storage and w...
Mar 07, 2024•31 min•Season 1Ep. 165
Ep 143 : Marie Clausen worked hard to rise to a senior position in the music industry, only to find that she was often the only woman in the room. So she’s now driven to change that – and she explains to Joe Sparrow how she initiated Merlin’s Engage mentorship program, designed to boost the representation of women in the top ranks of the music industry. Marie is U.S. Managing Director at Ninja Tune, and is also Managing Board Director for Merlin, the digital rights music licensing partner organi...
Feb 29, 2024•31 min•Season 1Ep. 164
Ep 142: Cory Docorow is a highly regarded sci-fi author, activist and journalist who is in favour of the liberalisation and modernisation of copyright laws. He recently coined the concept of "enshittification", which is when monopolistic digital platforms offer increasingly worse services to continue making money... and then they die. We talk about how the music industry is enshittifying itself, and how copyright could be used better. You may find his views provocative and/or counter to your own...
Feb 22, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 163
Ep 141: Dmytro Lopushanskyy, CTO of AI-powered song analysis and discovery tool Harmix , joins Joe to explain how tools like his actually work, and how they can find overlooked songs that are buried deep in catalogues. Dmytro also talks about what life in the music industry may be like when we have useful AI assistants, and how artists and rightsholders should be able to opt their music out of training AI models. Harmix uses AI to sift through giant catalogues of music with the intention of help...
Feb 15, 2024•33 min•Season 1Ep. 162
Ep. 140: Joe is joined by Sherry Saeedi, founder & CEO of Verswire. Sherry says that Verswire is a new alternative to record labels – or “a venture capital model alternative for signing musicians” as she puts it. We ask her why she believes it is “the future of music” and Sherry talks with the passion and language of a tech founder. She thinks that the Verswire model of investing in artists in a similar way to how startups are funded will have a major disruptive effect on the long-standing r...
Feb 08, 2024•38 min•Season 1Ep. 161
