Pandemic lockdowns revolutionized how people consume music overnight. After gathering and analysing the resulting data, Mark Mulligan of MIDiA Research offers his insights and predictions for the future of streaming, live events, and the unexpected blooming of new use cases for music. How have music fans’ need states changed, and how does the industry need to change to meet them? How will live streaming have to mature to become a significant revenue generator? Will the coming recession result in...
Jul 09, 2020•41 min
For musicians in lockdown, trying to jam with friends or teach lessons on a videoconferencing app like Zoom or Skype is like putting toothpaste back in the tube: it’s just not built for that. Find out how JamKazam was built for musicians to play together in real time from CEO David Wilson. Host Dmitri asks what makes JamKazam so different from those videocallling apps? How does JamKazam deal with the latency issues that make synchronous collaboration challenging? Learn how Wilson’s experience wi...
Jul 02, 2020•33 min
Now that everyone has posted their black box on Instagram, now that large music and tech companies cut their $150 million checks, what anti-racism efforts will endure in music tech? Hear from leaders who were working to bring Black people into positions of creativity and leadership long before the murder of George Floyd: Tarik Moody (Radio Milwaukee & 88Nine Labs), Keisha Howard (Sugar Gamers), and Arabian Prince (Inov8 Next Open Labs, Covitech, and founding member of N.W.A.). They tell toug...
Jun 25, 2020•58 min
When Jovanka Von Wilsdorf wrote songs for a virtual pop star, she found herself falling in love with humans again. The spaces between art and tech, human and artificial intelligence, is where the Berlin-based songwriter, artist profiler, and speaker feels at home. Jovanka tells irregular host Tristra Newyear Yeager how she got there, from touring and recording with her band Quarks, to writing hit songs for top artists, to distilling AI research into stories that reach musicians. Jovanka discusse...
Jun 18, 2020•43 min
Charts aren’t just about bragging rights for Stephen Blackwell, Alpha Data president. Charts rank top songs to bring people together, forge chart-topping hits into cultural touchstones, and point the way the culture as a whole is moving. Formerly known as BuzzAngle, Alpha Data analyzes over 50 billion streams from more than 50 DSPs daily to provide insights to the music industry and power Rolling Stone’s authoritative charts. Stephen explains how Alpha Data transforms a trillion data combination...
Jun 11, 2020•41 min
This is a milestone: it’s the 100th episode of the Music Tectonics podcast! In 18 months, Dmitri Vietze and Tristra Newyear Yeager have explored 100 music tech topics and interviewed innovators in Los Angeles, New York, Cannes, France, and isolated at home. They got together on zoom to recap what’s changed in the music tech industry since the podcast launched in December 2018. How has TikTok matured as a cauldron of fandom, and how has worldwide quarantine changed its userbase? How did live stre...
Jun 04, 2020•34 min
Music festivals, sports events, and all kinds of entertainment have a common goal: reach fans and sell tickets. Ten years ago, Darshan Kaler built Tradable Bits to be a bridge between the entertainment industry and fans’ digital lives, and the company has been innovating in the collection, analysis, and activation of fan data ever since. Find out how Darshan went from bringing the Olympics to your screen to partnering with festivals like Bonnaroo and teams like the Florida Gators. How has the ro...
May 28, 2020•42 min
With the unprecedented pandemic, musicians are looking for new ways to collaborate across long distances. They’re finding that the Trackd app already offers a lean, mobile recording and collaborating experience. Grant Tilbury, explains how Trackd lets artists capture moments, edit multi-track audio, and release “Virtual Vinyl” to social media all on one’s smartphone. Learn how Trackd was born out of the innovative spirit that made London’s Trident Studios famous, and how Trackd is reviving that ...
May 21, 2020•36 min
What goes on in your mind when that chorus hits and you get shivers, when you lay down a track and know that one was THE take? Neuroscientists have been digging into these and other questions of music, emotion, and cognition for decades. David Rosen, PhD and Brian Owens of AI and neuroscience startup Secret Chord Laboratories explore our brains on music and how the science of creativity and reception can influence the tech tools we build. The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of t...
May 14, 2020•31 min
When music venues in Los Angeles were shut down as part of Covid-19 safety measures, Ari Herstand knew that he wanted to help the artists and performance spaces weather the financial shortfall. With a couple of friends, he launched “UnCancelled Music Festival”, a live-streaming enterprise that organizes performances and collaboration between musicians from across the country. Now he is busier than ever. Having a lot on his plate, however, is business as usual for Ari, who has worked as a musicia...
May 07, 2020•40 min
If you’re interested in the world of music equipment retail, you have heard of Sweetwater. More likely than not, you are a customer that has contributed to its over 700 million dollars in sales. But how did the company become one of the biggest catalog and online retailers for music? Founder Chuck Surack sits down with Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze to explain his humble origins touring around the country as a musician in a beat-up VW and how he ended up building a retail business. He also e...
Apr 30, 2020•30 min
SXSW hosts a music tech hackathon every year, and 2020 was no exception. Except this was the year everything changed: the huge music and tech conference was cancelled due to the coronavirus. We’re not going to let that stop us, however. To honor the spirit of the hackathon, we’ve brought together some of the mentors and thought leaders involved to talk about how music tech can transform our lives as we face crisis. What’s changing as we stare down our current moment of crisis? What does it say a...
Apr 28, 2020•32 min
If you are still trying to grasp best practices for monetizing recorded music in the streaming era, Label' Logic's Jay Gilbert lays it out for you with no hesitation on this episode. Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze dives headfirst into Jay's world of helping artists and managers understand the variety of experiences you can create for fans, the truth behind Spotify playlists, the role of your career narrative, and what data to track and optimize. If everything else is on hold, you can follow ...
Apr 23, 2020•49 min
After selling his festival cruises company to Norwegian Cruise Lines, entrepreneur Andy Levine returns with his new startup Topeka, which gives artists an opportunity to get paid for online fan conversations, digital house concerts, and Zoom serenades. Music tectonics host Dmitri Vietze finds out from Andy why he started the new endeavor, and how it is well-suited for the current Shelter-at-Home moment. Andy's career focus has been on helping artists and fans connect with more authenticity while...
Apr 21, 2020•29 min
What happens when your concert matchmaking platform comes to a screeching halt thanks to social distancing? Side Door co-founder Laura Simpson joins host Dmitri Vietze to talk about how the pandemic's crisis is leading to a new type of ticketed yet intimate performance. Laura talks about how she does not think artists should be forced to play for free, and the types of reactions they are seeing from fans who have bought a ticket. Because they use Zoom for their live streamed concerts from home, ...
Apr 17, 2020•38 min
If anyone could see the immediate deluge of concert cancellations when COVID-19 became the planet's immediate reality, it was ubiquitous concert-discovery platform Bandsintown's co-founder and managing director Fabrice Sergent. Listen to his conversation with host Dmitri Vietze, as he describes how he watched 100,000 concerts get canceled in just a couple of weeks. He translated his team's passion for helping performing artists to raise money for artists in need, re-build touring revenue losses,...
Apr 15, 2020•29 min
Imagine you are editing sound for a TV program. You work together with the show runner, music supervisor, and director to get the sounds just right. You play portions back together several times discussing how every note and every effect should be timed with the video. But what happens when those teams are immediately dispersed for weeks thanks to COVID-19? Ameen Abdulla had already created a platform for just this type of remote collaboration. It's called Soundwhale. He schools Music Tectonics ...
Apr 14, 2020•39 min
The founders of SoundStorming join Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze to talk about how their music collaboration app cracks open the song making process. Their vision is to allow fans and artists alike to collaborate at the point of creation. Capture an initial musical idea on your phone and before you know it someone across the ocean will add a layer that makes you think about your snippet in a whole new way. SoundStorming is already being used as an A&R tool to find up-and-coming artists ...
Apr 10, 2020•36 min
Long before COVID-19, Ivan Talaychuk pivoted from artist to tech startup founder because it was such a challenge to collaborate with his bandmate in Kiev, Ukraine. He was tired of the tangle of emails, Dropbox, Google Drive, and text messaging to share and comment on music tracks while they were in process. He literally traded his synthesizers to fund his company Pibox at first. Now it's one of the favorite collaboration tools on the web. Now that everyone is on lockdown due to a worldwide pande...
Apr 09, 2020•35 min
Now that the concert industry has come to a screeching halt, the live music industry is turning its attention to livestreaming. A little startup formed in 2009 called Stageit is seeing an unprecedented surge in performances and revenue. They grossed $500,000 in 2019 and in just three weeks have seen $850,000 roll in. Listen to Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze talk to Stageit founder/CEO Evan Lowenstein about how artists are using Stageit to sell tickets, get tips, and engage their fans. Evan g...
Apr 07, 2020•28 min•Ep. 86
Industry journalist Cherie Hu joins Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze for a conversation about her research and summary of live streaming music platforms. The two discuss the big picture of the music field's response to COVID-19, approaches of specific artists, and dive into how this moment might lead to leapfrogging some of the past barriers for music tech use cases like performing on a screen, virtual reality live performances, or collaborating remotely. Listen to the two compare audience eng...
Apr 02, 2020•53 min
There is a new generation of apps and platforms for listeners to become musicians and many of them allow you to collaborate remotely. What will make them reach the next level? A worldwide quarantine! Sounds like a perfect time to launch an app, right? Tim Exile — electronic artist turned tech founder — rocks out some tunes on this episode, jamming across oceans, while he explains to podcast host Dmitri Vietze just how looped collaboration sidesteps the latency challenge of working across the pla...
Apr 01, 2020•41 min
Touring screeched to a halt with worldwide social distancing. But you know what to do: live stream! Luckily platforms like YouNow have been brewing with fan-building and monetization tools for several years. On this episode host Dmitri Vietze talks to YouNow president Jake Branzburg about the skyrocketed growth they are experiencing during the COVID-19 crisis. You’ll learn about the diversity of creators on the service, how to engage in reciprocal performances, and what it takes to bring or buil...
Mar 30, 2020•37 min
Amper’s AI-powered music composition tool, Score, helps content creators make music tailored to their projects, whether they’re seasoned musicians or novices. Amper Music CEO Drew Silverstein places Amper and AI music in context of a long history of algorithmic music, and an even longer history of increasing accessibility to the means of music creation. How will AI music composition technology transform the jobs—and careers—of musicmakers? What makes Amper’s sample library different from all the...
Mar 25, 2020•43 min
Emma McGann returns to share what every musician needs to know right now: how live streaming can keep fans connected and replace income lost to cancelled gigs. When her U.S. tour had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, UK-based singer songwriter Emma McGann drew on 6 years of experience live streaming on YouNow and replaced every tour date with an online concert. Through sales of virtual tour passes and perks, she’s been able to recoup her losses. Emma tells Dmitri everything artists n...
Mar 24, 2020•41 min
With isolation and remote work looming last week, we recorded a podcast conversation about communication and collaboration. Irregular host Tristra Newyear Yeager (and rock paper scissors writer / strategist) tells Eleanor Rust, rps marketing director, about essential lessons she’s learned from collaborating with people scattered around the globe, and how to maximize listening while minimizing distraction. How could music creation change as tech solutions for synchronous collaboration develop? Wh...
Mar 19, 2020•26 min
How can the music industry take a proactive role in confronting the climate crisis? Tristra Newyear Yeager chats with Bas Grasmayer about the answers tech is providing for music biz sectors from live events to streaming. Why are music festivals the perfect context to explore innovation, inspire attendees to shift their behaviors, and incubate ideas that have positive impacts on climate? What’s the one thing that could change the carbon footprint of music streaming? How could the music industry m...
Mar 11, 2020•24 min
Zack Zalon believes streaming music could sound better- a LOT better. His company Super Hi-Fi lives in the spaces between songs, spaces that music streaming services have ignored (until now). Zack explains how Super Hi-Fi’s AI-powered song and audio transitions make the streaming experience sound more distinctive and more engaging. Find out what this high-tech company learned from broadcast radio- a medium that’s still thriving despite being built on antiquated technology. Zack takes Dmitri on a...
Mar 04, 2020•45 min
Host Dmitri Vietze has been closely watching the seismic shifts shaking up the music industry as a result of tech and innovation. Dig deeper into the 20 music tech phenomena that Dmitri’s watching for 2020. He lays out what he thinks could be next for Spotify, the indie music sector, AI music creation, music’s role in the changing geopolitical landscape, what PR’s got to do with it all, and 15 other trends. Find out which phenomena are already seeing some action since Dmitri first targeted 20 to...
Feb 27, 2020•22 min
We have big news in this special episode: the venues and dates for our next Music Tectonics Conference! Find out from hosts Dmitri Vietze and Tristra Newyear Yeager what new experiences we’re planning for 2020. What made the first Music Tectonics Conference so much fun that we had to do it again? Which music and tech topics will we add into the conference mix this year? What can you win in the pre-sale contest that ends Feb. 25? Get updates on your hosts’ latest contributions to the MT blog: whi...
Feb 21, 2020•25 min
