Innovating Music

Cherie Hu has grabbed a front-row seat to tech and music change. Forbes grabbed her after graduation from Harvard, bringing her interests in music and tech to their own digital pages. She also brings that magic to both Billboard, Variety, Pitchfork, and Music Business Worldwide, among other publications. She shares how she tracks both the news and how people react to the news into her own analysis of music change. Her own sandbox, Music and Water, is how she gathers many of the pieces of her...

Gigi Johnson invites listeners of this Innovating Music podcast to join in research, events, and conversations in 2019 on the possible Future(s) of Music in Los Angeles. She discusses the Center's research so far in looking at tech's impact on live performance. She mentions work in many other Music Cities to look at how to help their live performance ecosystems. The UCLA Center for Music Innovation (CMI) will be looking at how Los Angeles is both complex and perhaps different. Its 91...

Gigi interviewed Adam Moseley, a long-time producer/mixer/engineer who is exploring new adventures in spatial audio, mixed reality, and sound technologies. Adam also teaches at UCLA's Music Industry Program at the Herb Alpert School of Music. Adam shares the blockages and doorways from learning saxophone to a wide door into audio engineering at Trident in the UK. He tells us how technology has touched nearly every major change in his career. He shares how designing with his synesthesia had...

We were joined by Maggie Weiland and Dylan Rice from the SF Entertainment Commission to talk about how they work to nurture music in San Francisco. Gigi had met them at an event hosted by Jocelyn Kane, who created many of the public policy rules and artist-supporting structures to help clubs and artists survive in a very high priced, high tech city. Dylan and Maggie share their challenges and dreams for helping venues, outdoor events, and artists continue to make San Francisco a culturally...

Jonathan Stone shares the adventures of Rocket Songs, which connects songs with singers from around the world to discover and perform. He talked about the past century or so of relationships between singers and songwriters, and the challenge of connecting those dots now. Their own work in connecting international singers to music now includes master recordings as a licensed product as well. We discussed the challenges of marketing for artists in this prolific era. Guest: Jonathan Stone,...

Vickie Nauman and Andrea Young joined us to talk about Music 3.0. Vickie had written an article for Rethink Music, a blog by the Berklee College of Music, about Music 3.0. Music 1.0 in this discussion was music sold as physical goods and Music 2.0 was the world of digital music. Vickie spoke about how the Music 2.0 world “bent” the existing ecosystems and infrastructures, trying to make them work for a downloading and early streaming world. Music 3.0 is needing new pipes and systems, and is...

Andrea Young sees playlisting as a revolution for artists. She shared a lot of basics of how to engage with both your fans and playlisters to create a thoughtful playlisting strategy for artists at different stages of their careers. Toolsets are available within different platforms to understand analytics and learn from where and how your fans listen to your music. We talked about how the new funnels are a bit more translucent than the old ones to get your music in the right places and to...

At MusicBiz in Nashville in May 2018, Joe Conyers III shared his thoughts and experiences about a wide variety of international and domestic songwriter royalty, rights, markets, and metadata issues. For more than 150,000 songwriters and more than 20,000 music publishers, Songtrust has been collecting songwriters’ royalties, creating systems that were ready for streaming’s global growth path. Joe Conyers commented that Songtrust was ready perhaps 5 years too early for global streaming’s...

Robert has been on a 14-year quest: to translate music legally between languages and cultures. Lyrics are the #1 search term on the internet and Robert shares the story of LyricFind's path to creating a legal marketplace in the US for song lyrics, up to nearly a billion lyrics a month in volume. LyricFind is on a mission with far-reaching social implications: giving music subtitles, with many more translated songs than the top 50,000 and many more than 15 languages. Guest: Robert...

We caught up with Deborah Fairchild at MusicBiz in Nashille in May 2018. We talked about music tech as both a relationship and trust business, with VEVA Sound's role as an archive and validation company standing right in the middle of the boost in streaming and all that implies as to remixes, stems, and volumes of digital content, both old and new. We talked on how metadata needs a sexier name, which also was a theme of a MusicBiz panel conversation. She shared about the proximity effect of...

Gigi Johnson, our Executive Director, shares the new and expanded directions of this Innovating Music podcast. We are shifting its focus from looking at Innovation now in music to looking at how tech may be changing music in the future, both globally and locally. The podcast will be looking at system changes to deal with rapid change toward streaming and real-time connections. It also will be following those changes globally as streaming and live music change by country and genre in...

To marketer Michele Tharp, innovation is creating a better way to do something, and working with an inner desire to make a change. She focuses - as we do - on changing mindsets -- new ways to work with technology, development, and platforms. She shares with us two current projects connecting both public radio stations and VR to artists and their audiences. Guest: Michele Tharp Michele Tharp is a marketing consultant at her own firm, which provides strategic and management leadership for...

Dennis Murcia shares his insights and experiences with innovation and Latin music. He shares how innovation is "solving a problem" and how it creates growing pains in traditional industry sectors. Guest: Dennis Murcia, Global Business Dev. and Digital Strategy, CODISCOS Dennis Murcia is an entertainment industry executive and producer with a background in A&R, marketing, and media sales. He has held positions at KRBE radio and Telemundo TV in Houston, and was international production...

Jay Gilbert runs three organizations, each working to help artists expand their work and presence. To Jay, innovation is standing on the shoulders of giants, improving tools you have to grow your audience. He works to take complex tech and make it simple for the artists and organizations he helps. Guest: Jay Gilbert, Label Logic As a teenager in the Pacific Northwest, Jay smuggled his Canon F-1 into rock concerts to get the perfect shot of the likes of Queen, Van Halen and Cheap Trick....

Gary Young sees innovation as creating value for others, and does so with creating an auction system for intellectual property that creatives want to monetize. He shares with us how Royalty Exchange connects 20,000 buyers with creative rights across music, books, and other media, and how this process is right at the beginning of a long period of bringing future growth to the present for music. Guest: Gary Young, Chief of Staff, Royalty Exchange Gary executes strategic initiatives, special...

Bas wears both the innovator and analyst hat in music innovation, and in countries from The Netherlands to Bulgaria, to Turkey to Russia and now to Berlin. He shares his insights on how technological realities drive fresh combinations and possibilities, and how we can learn and grow new capabilities from "MySpace moments." He also muses on conversational interfaces like Alexa and how technology choices are changing songs with Playlist Cuts. He closes with suggestions to look at video and...

Jason Robert takes us down the blockchain rabbit hole, introducing us to the many details that make up a new cryptocurrency business, which he calls a "social movement disguised as technology." His new platform to sell tickets with Ethereum is mere weeks old when we record this, and he takes us though some of his challenges innovating in both blockchain and ticketing at the same time. Guest: Jason Robert, Co-Founder & CEO, HelloSugoi Jason is Co-Founder & CEO of HelloSugoi, an event...

Ed Peto started placing a bet on music in China in 2006, and has been waiting for the market to catch up. We caught up with Ed in Berlin, but it could have just as easily been in London or China. Please enjoy Ed's discussions of stepping early into China and helping work toward a system that is believing itself into a streaming market, as well as his journey to both understand and create change in this growing market space. Guest: Ed Peto, Owner, Outdustry A native of London, Ed Peto moved...

How do you create new and innovative systems for producing content in a new space? For Connor Illsley of Combo Bravo in Toronto, you innovate by "creating fearlessly." Connor schemes how to create the most amazing creative scenario that is true to the artist -- and THEN figures out how to make the new tech work to serve the artist. He shares the thought process behind Jazz Cartier's 2016 music video Red Alert/100 Roses pair, as well as projects since. He shares with us how VR can open up...

How can artists and managers use all the streaming and touring information to plan their markets and concerts better? Rossanna and Efrain from Cayo5 joined us to talk about how their are working to help artists manage disparate data sets to make decisions about where to go. Guests: Rossanna Wright and Efrain Ochoa, Cayo5 Rossanna Wright out of Seattle and Efrain Ochoa in Mexico City are now building Cayo5, a new touring consulting practice to help artists' team design great touring...