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,

The Nations: from YouTube remixes to modern music radio – founder Andre Benz explains how he tries to meet the needs of young music consumers

Jun 5th, 2024 34m 8s

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 e

"This isn't just another #MeToo issue... it's way bigger than that." Sexual violence, NDAs, and the music industry – with Caroline Heldman, PhD and Samantha Maloney of the Sound Off Coalition

May 23rd, 2024 46m 20s

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 o

"The music festival industry is suffering and there is something fundamentally wrong at its heart" – so what can be done to revive it?

May 3rd, 2024 40m 3s

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

"We're not just creating musicians; we're shaping well-rounded individuals" – Young Voices CEO Ben Lewis and violinist Anna Phoebe on the impact of choir singing on children

Apr 25th, 2024 43m 57s

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 Acad

"The music industry's approach to mental health was disastrous”

Apr 19th, 2024 43m 29s

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 p

How to make disabled people’s access to live events environmentally sustainable – with Suzanne Bull, founder of Attitude is Everything & Dr Teresa Moore, Director at A Greener Future

Apr 11th, 2024 36m 3s

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, fes

Local, independent artists want to play gigs – but it's increasingly hard to make money or find a venue. Sofar Sounds CEO Jim Lucchese, talks about the economics of live music – and what should change

Apr 5th, 2024 30m 33s

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 em

Marketing music to Gen Z: hyper-authentic, and always online – how do you connect with this elusive audience? Keturah Cummings of Forward Slash explains

Mar 28th, 2024 27m 31s

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

The biggest questions that music streaming platforms face in 2024 – Music Ally's Head of Insight, Stuart Dredge, answers them.

Mar 25th, 2024 37m 47s

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 Questi

How do people search for music – and what do they really want in their results?

Mar 21st, 2024 29m 7s

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

How will AI-generated music be used in virtual spaces like metaverses and video games? And do we lose a communal experience if we all hear different music? Verses' Sean Lee & Kyungtae Kim explain.

Mar 14th, 2024 34m 54s

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-crea

Should music streaming platforms charge to store music? Con Raso of Tuned Global explains the potential impacts on indie and major rightsholders.

Mar 7th, 2024 31m 8s

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 up

Marie Clausen, Merlin's Managing Board Director, on mentoring women to help them rise to senior positions in the music industry

Feb 29th, 2024 30m 39s

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 En

The enshittification of music – Cory Doctorow explains how a monopolistic music industry's rush to claw back value might also kill it. PLUS! An exclusive extract from Cory's new audiobook

Feb 22nd, 2024 1h 11m

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 digita

How can you unlock more value from music catalogues using AI? Harmix CTO Dmytro Lopushanskyy explains how this AI tech works – and how artists should be able to opt music out of AI model training

Feb 15th, 2024 32m 57s

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 wh

Will this idea disrupt the record label model? Sherry Saeedi says that her company Verswire – “a venture capital model alternative for signing musicians” – is the future of music. We ask how and why.

Feb 8th, 2024 37m 34s

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

What's it like to manage the Black Eyed Peas? Co-manager Rachel Strassberger explains the challenges of managing a household name artist, and how managers will need to change in the coming years

Feb 1st, 2024 31m 49s

Ep. 139: The Black Eyed Peas have sold an estimated 80 million records, are one of only a handful of artists to have simultaneously held the number-one and number-two spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and have headlined the Super Bowl half-

What next for song lyrics? From autonomous cars to AI chats, we discuss lyrics' future with Darryl Ballantyne of LyricFind

Jan 18th, 2024 36m 37s

Ep. 138: Lyrics are now everywhere - in our streaming apps, on short form social media, and in the now ubiquitous lyric video. So how might lyrics be used in the future in ways we may not have thought of? Joe Sparrow is joined by Darryl Ballant

Gender representation in the music industry, and how to undertake a "total restructure" – with Marie Fol, of the Keychange initiative

Jan 11th, 2024 48m 48s

Ep. 137: Marie Fol, Lead of the Keychange initiative, joins Music Ally’s Editor Joe Sparrow and they takes stock of gender representation in the music industry in 2024. Keychange is a global network and movement with a wide ranging remit to wor

AI and music marketing – how will artificial intelligence help marketers reach new fans and grow audiences? Music tech expert Virginie Berger makes some predictions...

Jan 5th, 2024 39m 57s

Ep. 136: AI is promising fundamental changes to the business of music and its creation. But what about the part where music is connected to the fans? Virginie Berger is a long-established music-tech industry expert and like many people working

YouTube's Artist & Label Development team for Europe, Middle East & Africa: what does it do, and how do they choose which artists to support? YouTube's Nur Ozdamar explains all.

Dec 14th, 2023 29m 51s

Ep. 135: YouTube's Nur Ozdamar joins Music Ally's editor Joe Sparrow to explain how her Artist & Label Development team for Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) supports the careers of artists and its label partners. She describes the help that

Lior Tibon, co-founder of Duetti, and former COO of TIDAL, talks artist-centric payment systems and Duetti's music financing platform

Dec 7th, 2023 37m 9s

Ep. 134: Lior Tibon is former COO of TIDAL, and now co-founder of music financing platform Duetti, which aims to let smaller and mid-range artists sell part or all of their catalogue. He’s got experience in both the investment and streaming sid

Licensed music: what YouTubers and TikTokers really need, according to Lickd's Paul Sampson (Plus: will generative AI music take a slice out of his business?)

Nov 30th, 2023 35m 33s

Ep. 133: we’re joined by Paul Sampson, CEO and founder of Lickd, the licensing startup that supplies music to creators on YouTube and other platforms. We seem to be shifting into an era where a new and widespread use of music is emerging – wher

Making vinyl records with 85% lower energy consumption – we get hands on with Sonopress's new EcoRecord

Nov 23rd, 2023 34m 15s

Ep. 132: Making vinyl records requires a lot of heat and energy, and uses plastics that are bad for the environment. But vinyl records are an old technology - so how might a modern record be made? Sven Deutschmann is Managing Director of Sonopr