8 Ways to Grow the Value of Music in 2026

In this episode, Dmitri and Eleanor walk through eight revenue multipliers reshaping the music business in 2026, including catalog valuation, revenue recovery, music licensing, and more. 

This conversation sets up the theme for this year’s Music Tectonics conference: “Rising Tide: Grow the Music, Grow the Value,” exploring why music has massive cultural influence but a music industry that still lags behind gaming and sports in overall economic size. Dmitri and Eleanor dig into who this impacts across the music industry, from music tech founders and investors to record labels, publishers, managers, and the song catalog investment world.

The conversation also covers the future of streaming revenue growth internationally, the unresolved infrastructure problems around music rights and royalty data, and why platforms like TikTok and Instagram are still not paying enough in music licensing revenue. 

This episode sets the stage for the Music Tectonics Conference 2026, happening October 27-29 in Santa Monica, California, where the music industry and music technology ecosystem come together around innovation, investment, and growing the value of music. Get your tickets now at- https://www.musictectonics.com/ 

The news

• US music publishing revenues hit $7.3B in 2025, NMPA reveals at Annual Meeting honoring P!nk, Julian Bunetta and Harvey Mason jr.

• The music industry is closing in on a billion global subscribers – with Spotify out in front

• Four music datasets holding millions of tracks are being shared among AI developers, The Atlantic reports

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Episode Transcript

Machine transcribed

[00:00:00] Eleanor: Hey, Dmitri. Thanks for sitting down with me today.

[00:00:03] Dmitri: Hey, I'm excited to talk to you, Eleanor. Always fun to be on the pod with you.

[00:00:06] Eleanor: I really wanted to talk to you today because I've been hearing something from you. It's kinda like a drumbeat in everything we've been talking about. Music punches above its weight, and I really wanted to get you, like, in a corner so you can explain it all to me.

[00:00:21] Dmitri: All right.

[00:00:22] Eleanor: Um, we've been talking about how music has a strong cultural impact, and the music economy just isn't as big as other industries, including the other forms of media and entertainment that people also find super powerful. Now you're proposing that Music Tectonics focus on a theme for the rest of the year.

Tell me more about the theme and what inspired you.

[00:00:42] Dmitri: Awesome. I'm happy to explain this to you and also everybody out there in podcast land. So, our theme this year at Music Tectonics is Rising Tide: Grow the Music, Grow the Value. And, you know, at Tectonics, as you know, Eleanor, we've always brought the entire music ecosystem, to-together.

You know? Like, it's around music tech and music innovation, but it really only matters if it's not in isolation, if we're all working on this together. But I feel like something's shifted. I've been talking to a lot of our regulars at the conference and other people throughout the industry, and we're all kinda feeling the same way.

 I've noticed... Actually, it started, I was sitting at a, at a coffee shop here in Portland, and there was some great music on the sound system. There was literally somebody, next to me talking about how they were gonna release a record, and then there was somebody on the other side of the cafe reading a book about the, like, top 100 albums ever.

And I was like, "Music is literally everywhere." It seems to have so much influence on people's lives, how they identify, um, it motivates them, all that kind of thing, and yet it doesn't seem like it's quite as big monetarily as it should be. Everyone talks about the gaming industry is, like, 10 times bigger than music.

Rob Sealy was on our podcast not too long ago. He mentioned that sport is 100 times bigger than music. And it just got me thinking, we all need to row in the same direction and focus on innovations that grow the value of music, so that's the whole idea here with the Rising Tide theme. Get everybody together.

Let's all work on it together. it helps all of our individual businesses. It helps artists. But it also helps the industry as a whole if we can figure out, how do we grow the value? What are people paying for music?

.

[00:02:17] Eleanor: Wow, Dmitri, there is a lot to unpack in that. You mentioned that everybody could benefit from this. Can you dig a little deeper into who the players are that would be impacted by this thesis?

[00:02:27] Dmitri: Well, I mean, it starts with even the tech founders. A lot of the people that come to Music Tectonics are trying to solve problems in the industry. They have a great idea. And what happens when they go to pitch for investment? the investors wanna know what's the total addressable market for whatever it is you're trying to sell, right?

It's usually... It's obviously something music-related, media, entertainment-related, et cetera. And so it starts with sort of like, "Well, how big is this market?" And then they start to ask the question of, "Well, if X percentage of that market pays for a subscription or buys this product, what does your revenue potentially look like?"

And so it's that whole concept of sort of like, how big is the market? And so tech founders, investors, both of them are always talking about this, this question of sort of how big is everything. But as I said, we always bring the whole ecosystem together at Music Tectonics, so you've got record labels, publishers, managers, agents.

Anyone that's in the music space that's interested in innovation might show up. but of course the value of the market is important to all of them. That's literally where they're deriving all of their revenue from is how much people are willing to pay for music. Recorded music, live music, tickets, all of that can go into the, hopper.

 so I think, you know- If we grow the value overall for record labels and publishers, clearly more people are paying for, whether it's subscriptions on the B2C side or licenses on the B2B side, we're growing the market overall. Even PROs, you know, even all the other kind of CMOs, the ways in which music rights are getting used and, quote, "exploited" to create revenue, that all gets impacted.

And if you think about it, there's the whole capital side of the industry, too, the people who are investing in songs and catalogs. There's funds that are behind them. Th- that could be the publishers, but there's also these financial, investors as well that maybe they're not as much like a publisher, but they are investing in the, the song assets and what the royalties could be.

They wanna see all that increase. There's the private equity companies behind that. There's the investment bankers who are helping to cut those deals, and so forth. There's this whole other side of it that I think we're gonna see a large group of them showing up at Music Tectonics this year in additions, which I think will only attract more labels and publishers and managers and only attract more tech founders and in- tech investors as well.

So it's gonna be really interesting. Basically, we're becoming a marketplace for a variety of these type of dynamics. It's already happening organically, but I think those are the types of roles that'll be impacted by this whole concept of rising tide.

[00:04:53] Eleanor: Yeah, our whole, uh, the conference is now in its eighth year, and we've always wanted to bring the ecosystem together, and it does...

the ecosystem does come to Music Tectonics. Now this feels like a conversation that everybody can be having together-

[00:05:06] Dmitri: Right

[00:05:06] Eleanor: ... in our different strands, in our different tracks, but it's something that can unite all of us rather than kinda feeling like there's isolated corners of the industry. Uh,

[00:05:14] Dmitri: exactly, Eleanor.

I think, one of the issues is that the music tech founders might be coming to seek investment. They might be coming to do deals with record labels or managers. They might be coming... A lot of them actually come to talk to each other and just learn more about, um, you know, what it's like to run a company and how do you grow it and things like that.

But what also happens at this conference, and something that I think we wanna put even more emphasis behind, is having people from the ecosystem, the record labels, the publishers, the managers, et cetera, come and find the tools that are gonna help them grow the market.

[00:05:44] Eleanor: Nice. All right this is a beautiful dream to grow the market.

Let's talk a little bit more about where all of this money that we're gonna find is gonna come from

[00:05:52] Dmitri: Right. Like, when we're talking about additional revenue, it's not just gonna, like, fall from the sky, maybe not grow on trees, et cetera.

[00:05:59] Eleanor: We're manifesting, Dmitri.

That's what we're doing.

[00:06:02] Dmitri: Yeah. Yeah, we're manifesting.

And, you know, I kinda think of, I guess part of what I wanna do with this theme is shift the narrative. A lot of the conversation about tech and music has to do with disruption. And so sometimes you have some of the ecosystem, the record labels, the publishers, the rights holders, et cetera, kinda keeping technology at arm's distance.

I mean, there's definitely been some technologies that have come in and devalued music and transformed the economics of music in a way that's not so positive. But I think the best innovations really come in tech. They come from things that multiply revenue. So I was thinking through, like, what are the types of companies out there that really add to this rising tide theme?

And I came up with several different, let's call them revenue multipliers. it starts with just understanding the value of catalogs. So catalog value's one revenue multiplier in the sense that if you don't know what a catalog's worth, you can't figure out how to increase it, right? You don't know what price to pay for it, buying and selling, but then on top of that, you don't really have the, benchmark to say, "Well, what's going to raise the value of this?"

So that's one category. Another category is revenue recovery. there's a lot... As we know, there's a lot of places in which money kind of leaks out of the music industry. It could be nefarious practices, but a lot of times, it's actually missing data. who are the rights holders for a given song?

Where do the splits go? How does it happen in one territory, like United States, versus another territory, like, you know, any place, Australia or, you know, Italy or something like that? Different people own the rights to different parts of different songs based on different territories. But also, there's just so much that's happened with things like collecting the right amount of revenue from streaming services, from social media platforms, et cetera.

When music's getting used in, different ways, like derivative works or interpolated works, then how do you get the royalties that are deserved back to the original rights holder there? So there's all these cool tools around for catalog valuation, but there's also really cool technology tools around for revenue recovery.

How do you find where your music's being used? How do you reconcile the difference between what's supposed to be paid and what is being paid, and all that kinda stuff. So there's two categories. another one would just be, like, the top level revenue generator of licensing, and I put it on here, as one of the revenue multipliers because I think there's so many new emerging opportunities for licensing music.

We saw it happen with things like fitness, with gaming, with meditation. There's all these other opportunities where people are using music, and collecting that revenue is, new in a lotta ways, right? And as new technology platforms emerge, as new Uh, use cases and social uses of music emerge, there's opportunities to increase revenue.

So there's a bunch of technology and tech out there to help with that, whether it's marketplaces or, like LyricFind, for example. Basically, there's revenue that's getting brought into the music industry now as a result of licensing lyrics, which wasn't even a thing in a pre-digital era really.

 I add another category here of AI licensing. Technically, it's part of licensing, but I feel like given what's going on with generative AI and the use of training data to train those models, it feels like a whole new category that's gonna probably change what the dynamics are for revenue.

So I would add it as its own category. So anybody that's helping s- with attribution or even with, spotting what is and isn't AI, any types of marketplaces that are helping with generative AI licensing content as well. There's a lot of opportunities there, and then actually the generative AI companies themselves would fall into this category.

If they are saying, "We want to do this fairly, and we wanna license music or voice or image and likeness," whatever it is, there's new revenue on the table there, and that's a technology opportunity as well. I've got a few more categories, Eleanor. Um, One of them is on fan growth. You know, like how do you get more fans for a particular artist, for a particular album, for a particular scene and genre? There's a lot of technology tools available that if your audience is just bigger, then that's super helpful. So there's a lot of marketing tools that would fall under fan growth as well.

And then as a separate category, I would say fan revenue. We hear a lot about super fan, super fandom. We hear about premium tiers on streaming. But there's a lot of opportunities, I think, to figure out other ways for fans to pay. It's not necessarily they're buying something new specifically, but it might be more of an experience.

It might be unlocking things that already exist within, say, streaming or fandom or social, in social media, things like that. So I'd say fan revenue is its own category. And then as a separate category, I would add new music products. So I'm thinking of things like kit better, new form factors.

[00:10:48] Eleanor: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:48] Dmitri: But it also could be things like stem separation, um, where maybe is...

Are they a fan or are they a creator? Who knows? But they're gonna start messing around with music and things.

[00:10:56] Eleanor: Or some secret third

thing.

[00:10:58] Dmitri: Yeah, exactly. There's some blending thing, which we're seeing a lot at Music Tectonics. We've seen that from the beginning where the whole creator versus fan thing is starting to blend together.

But new music products, I mean, we could brainstorm a million different new products.

[00:11:11] Eleanor: I feel like each of these categories, uh, each of these revenue multipliers, we could brainstorm a ton, and I hope we can get to that on maybe a future podcast.

[00:11:20] Dmitri: Yeah. Right? Maybe, a few. Maybe it's a miniseries. I don't know.

[00:11:23] Eleanor: Yeah.

[00:11:23] Dmitri: You know what? I left one off that I wanna mention. I saved it for last- Yeah ... Eleanor. It's distribution and artist and label services. and the reason I waited is because people might not see it as a revenue multiplier because it's such an entrenched role. It's su- such an entrenched-

[00:11:38] Eleanor: Mm-hmm

[00:11:38] Dmitri: there, there's already so many distributors and artist and label service companies out there. But I feel like we can't undervalue that they were one of the original revenue multipliers of the music industry.

[00:11:50] Eleanor: Mm-hmm,

mm-hmm.

[00:11:50] Dmitri: Like bringing in so many more independent artists, creating these kind of scalable, turnkey ways for independent artists to get onto the streaming services, or iTunes before that, or Amazon CD sales before that, really did grow the market as a whole, so there are more opportunity for people to be engaging with music.

So I think there's, you know, a lot of those distribution companies are doing these other things around fan growth or fan revenue or licensing or, revenue recovery. Those things are part of them, but I feel like we have to have them as their own category because they're sort of like a gateway to-

[00:12:20] Eleanor: Mm

[00:12:20] Dmitri: a larger industry as well.

[00:12:22] Eleanor: And whatever comes down the road next, they're gonna be at the front lines of figuring it out and monetizing

it.

[00:12:27] Dmitri: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:29] Eleanor: All right, so we've talked really big picture. We've d- broken it down into the eight revenue multipliers. Let's take it to the conference now.

How do you imagine all of these ideas affecting what we actually do at the conference, the conversations we have, the panels we attend? What do you think?

[00:12:46] Dmitri: Yeah. We're, I mean, we're definitely pushing programming so that people find business alignment before they even show up at the conference around this theme of rising tide.

I think, you know, in the past you might have come to Music Tectonics to network generally. Each individual business might have their priorities. They could be looking for investors. They could be looking for record labels. They could be looking for camaraderie and ideas and they could be looking for technical co-founders.

There's a lot of reasons why, people would come to the conference. But now we're, like, placing this in the programming. We have our annual Swimming with Narwhals startup competition. We're adding these as criteria, how are you growing the value of the music industry, as part of the reason to be voted in as a winner of Swimming with Narwhals.

We're inviting, music tech startups from these eight categories to do demos at the conference. So you'll have the opportunity to see actually how the products work. the same thing with our panels. We'll be pairing panelists in a way that sort of tell that story of like, what does one panelist need?

What does one panelist offer? How do they work together to grow the value? You'll... There'll be a lot of really interesting conversations that happen. I mean, we've done that all along with Music Tectonics, but it's definitely a focus here, where you'll see that the programming is themed around that. Now- We already create a lot of space for networking.

I mean, I think most people's memory of Music Tectonics is standing at the carousel and meeting an old friend and all of a sudden having a deal to do, or meeting somebody new and thinking about how they might work together, or being at the beachside venue on days two and three of the conference around the pool.

Maybe they're an exhibitor or maybe they're grabbing lunch or something. Maybe they're listening to a talk outside under the palm trees. But there's a lot of space and time for networking. It's a good vibe for that. But by putting the theme out there and, programming around the theme, I think we're actually helping everyone grow their businesses, use it to grow the market overall by having that as the theme.

So I think it'll be on people's minds. We've got some creative ideas that we're still... You and I are, and Shayli are discussing about how to get people to almost gamify networking for their own businesses and building the business as a whole. That'll be super fun.

[00:14:48] Eleanor: I love this because we always talk about how we chose the venues, we chose the locations to provide that welcoming atmosphere where people really connect on a person-to-person level, have those deeper conversations, and now we're offering something to shape those conversations and make them even more productive.

[00:15:05] Dmitri: Absolutely. and keeping that in mind, we're always trying to think about, like, what's the experience of somebody that's going? And this year we're gonna have, for the first time ever, a VIP house, where we're looking at a VIP experience for investors of songs, of platforms that monetize in new ways, and more.

So people can look out for the VIP application launch to see how they can get involved with that, if that's, if that's of interest as well. So there's gonna be, I think, an attraction of a lot more capital, people who are investing in music, in tech, to be part of the conference. Something we've grown out for a while now, but I think this will take it to the next level.

[00:15:40] Eleanor: Wow. All right. We've been talking a lot about the dollars and the economics of these revenue multipliers, the rising tide. But there's been another factor growing in the Music Tectonics Conference, and I haven't heard yet how it's really fitting in. We've really been digging into the music creation side of things.

We've seen it as kind of a parallel to the music industry side. So we've brought musical instrument companies, we've brought musical creator tools, and creators who are creating their music careers on social media to the Music Tectonics Creator Fair. How do they fit into the rising tide theme?

[00:16:18] Dmitri: Yeah, I mean, it's rising tide, grow the music, grow the value. So we also just wanna be thinking about what helps increase the engagement of music regardless of whether it's listening or creation. And let's be honest, without the culture of making music and music listening, none of it really matters. So you've got both sides, right?

You're making the music, and then you're putting it out there for people to listen to, and they both inspire each other. And I think from the beginning we've created space for this convergence of music creation and the music industry, and if you think about it, they really feed each other. It's interesting, like you might say, "Well, which one is top of funnel for the other one?"

I mean, creators are the original super fans, right? What's more fanatical than covering a favorite artist's song or DJing your favorite songs? Is it using the aux cord at a party, or do you have like a Pioneer DJ setup that you're actually, like, DJing and starting to play festivals and shows? You know, if you're remixing or being inspired by these artists that you love, that's about as inspired as you could be as a fan, is to actually, like, start to use their music in that way and share it and you know, th- those selling of instruments, you mentioned musical instrument companies who are very much present at Music Tectonics Creator Fair, and the subscriptions of song listening, they're very different, but in a way they're like, I said, top of funnel for each other.

Songs inspire other artists to create music, and new creators are the future song makers. So so in a way, like, artists are getting inspired by other songs, but then those artists or even new creators are creating the future songs, and so they kinda just keep feeding each other. It's kinda like a, a, it is an ecosystem in a way.

[00:17:53] Eleanor: Yeah. And you were describing that experience in the coffee shop where music was everywhere. Music is gonna continue to be everywhere in ever-changing ways, right? People's interactions with the music they love is happening in new places.

[00:18:07] Dmitri: Right.

[00:18:07] Eleanor: New media. So we can't let the music making side, we can't pretend it's stagnating.

[00:18:13] Dmitri: It's absolutely not stagnating. In addition to the fact that, you know, people are picking up guitars and keyboards-

[00:18:19] Eleanor: Mm-hmm

[00:18:19] Dmitri: ... for the first time every day, right? A new generation is-

[00:18:22] Eleanor: Right

[00:18:22] Dmitri: ... a new generation is born every generation. Yeah.

[00:18:24] Eleanor: And mobile phones and, right? I mean-

[00:18:26] Dmitri: And that's it. Yeah, mobile phones, and then also new form factor instruments.

A lot of people love coming to see the Blipbloxes or the Musical Beings Tembos, the Orbas. You know, there's all, all kinds of ins- the, the Demon Boxes, coming to see, like, these new instruments that are emerging here. And part of what's cool about those new form factors is they're, they're oftentimes built with a non-musician in mind, you know?

You start playing with the toy or the instrument, and all of a sudden you start to realize how song form is structured without having to sit through a musical theory lesson. So it's interesting because most conferences separate these two musical worlds. and we're, b- you know, we talked about kinda like bringing the, song funds and the recording and tech together.

That's one aspect, but also bringing together the recording industry, the streaming side, with the music creation, the musical instrument side. I was on a call with an investor just the other day, and he referred to Music Tectonics as a full stack conference, which I just love.

[00:19:22] Eleanor: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:23] Dmitri: It's like we're not trying to separate things out.

We're actually trying to bridge it together, again, to, to, to lift all boats.

[00:19:29] Eleanor: Wow. All right. I can't wait to do the, for the conference now.

[00:19:34] Dmitri: We got a little work to do before then, but yeah.

[00:19:35] Eleanor: We do. We do, but we got great ideas. All right. let's take it out past the conference to the future. What do you think the challenges are for the music industry in the coming few years?

[00:19:47] Dmitri: Well, I'm gonna start with the one that probably gets talked about the most right now, even though I'm not sure it's the biggest challenge. But one of the biggest challenges is whether generative AI will undercut copyright, as well as whether most AI-generated songs are gonna compete with human-made songs.

Like, are they gonna be so good that humans are gonna be like, "Oh man, some kid who just, you know, text prompted a song is now stealing revenue share or market share from those artists that put in their 10,000 or 100,000 hours of recording and songwriting." but the question is, if that does take place, who's gonna own the value and revenue-making opportunity of that generative AI song getting popular?

Are music rights holders just competing for market share here, or are tech companies arbitraging all those music rights? these are the challenges that I think about when I think about generative I- uh, AI. so that's definitely a big challenge, Eleanor, that I think

It's sort of like, does it get fought in the courts? Does it get fought in politics?

[00:20:46] Eleanor: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:46] Dmitri: Does it get fought in the boardrooms where licensing, uh, c- conversations are happening? It's sort of happening all at once.

[00:20:51] Eleanor: Yeah.

[00:20:52] Dmitri: but I will say, not too long ago, at least one company that invests in song catalogs that I talk to doesn't see AI as a threat, but they also don't see it as an augmenter.

I'm hoping-

[00:21:05] Eleanor: Hmm

[00:21:06] Dmitri: ... that generative AI licensing, if everybody starts doing their own music or remixing music or making personal versions of Taylor Swift songs or whatever it is, I'm hoping that that money comes back. Not only does that grow, and it's doesn't replace streaming, but grows the overall pie, but that that money makes it back to the rights holders, the songwriters, and the recording artists, and, and their teams, the, the labels and publishers.

But this-

[00:21:32] Eleanor: You

described it as rowing all together. This feels like a, an, an area of potential growth where we really need to be rowing all together.

[00:21:39] Dmitri: Yes. But it's unclear, right? Maybe nobody's-

[00:21:42] Eleanor: Yeah

[00:21:42] Dmitri: ... gonna care. maybe generative AI isn't actually gonna be a thing. Maybe nobody's, you know, maybe as Tim Ingham at Music Business Worldwide says, that pretty much all the paying users of Suno are using it to basically then launch fraud bots on streaming services, and in the end it's just shuffling the chairs.

Yeah. It's not actually creating new value or new revenue. So we'll see.

[00:22:01] Eleanor: Interesting.

[00:22:01] Dmitri: But we've gotta get it right. If it, if it-

[00:22:02] Eleanor: Yeah

[00:22:02] Dmitri: ... if it is, if it does blow up, we need to get it right to grow the market. So that's one challenge, Eleanor. you know, one that I don't think gets talked about enough is that streaming revenue is still growing internationally.

You know? Like, for a while, a couple years ago, everyone was talking about, you know, in the United States, in the West, there was kind of like a leveling of growth. It doesn't mean that growth ... It's not like- the market is shrinking. It's just that the growth is not as high as it was before. But internationally, you know, I would expect to see a lot of competition in Africa, in India, in East Asia, in Latin America.

There's still growth there. There's, like, double-digit growth there. Now, the markets overall aren't huge, but double-digit growth over time compounds. So everyone needs to start paying attention to the differences in how the music industries work in other parts of the world. It's not just language. Maybe it's not even just culture, but the, it's the economics.

Like, how do people-

[00:22:55] Eleanor: Mm

[00:22:55] Dmitri: ... pay for stuff in different parts of the world? How much disposable income do they have? What... You know, how do you price these things? How do you bring the right music to the right audiences at the right time?

[00:23:05] Eleanor: Mm.

[00:23:06] Dmitri: And so forth. So that's-

[00:23:07] Eleanor: Yeah

[00:23:07] Dmitri: ... that's a big one as well.

[00:23:08] Eleanor: Especially since we've seen, uh, other regions really leapfrog some of the technologies, um, you know, going straight from physical music to streaming rather than-

[00:23:19] Dmitri: Right

[00:23:19] Eleanor: ... uh, you know, skipping over downloads, skipping over, um, skipping over all those painful years of, um, Napster, um-

[00:23:26] Dmitri: Absolutely

[00:23:26] Eleanor: before.

[00:23:27] Dmitri: Skipping-

[00:23:27] Eleanor: Yeah

[00:23:27] Dmitri: ... skipping the idea that you have a big hard drive that you could put free songs on and going straight to streaming from your phone. Good point.

[00:23:33] Eleanor: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:33] Dmitri: Yeah. a couple other challenges, I guess the one that Always gets talked about.

[00:23:39] Eleanor: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:39] Dmitri: It's not, like, super sexy, but it's probably the one where you can capture the most revenue is th- we have a lot of infrastructure problems still around rights, around data, around ownership.

They're not really solved. So as the number of songs available multiplies exponentially, both because of generative AI, because of independent artists, you know, removing barriers to getting their music out there, and international, you know, having more cross-

[00:24:03] Eleanor: Mm-hmm

[00:24:03] Dmitri: ... cross-border music getting released, it's just gonna be more and more exponential, right?

In terms of how we handle that data. So that's still a challenge for everyone. I think there's a lot of opportunity to fix things and to help the right people get paid, as well as making sure people get paid at all. And then I guess the last one I'll bring up for now, I mean, we could obviously, we could do hours and hours of-

[00:24:23] Eleanor: Yeah

[00:24:23] Dmitri: what are the challenge of the music industry? But the, the other thing that's not being discussed is that there are already uses of music that aren't paying enough. You know? Other than YouTube, social video platforms are still not major contributors to the licensing, revenue that gets paid to music rights holders.

And so I think that's still a challenge, you know? Even on this podcast, we had Emmanuel Zunz from OneRPM and asked him a bit about AI, and he was like, "Well, I don't know much about AI, but let's talk about TikTok and Instagram." Like-

[00:24:52] Eleanor: Mm-hmm

[00:24:52] Dmitri: ... they're not paying enough yet for music.

[00:24:54] Eleanor: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:54] Dmitri: So there's opportunity there.

So that's a challenge there, you know? there's big advertising related platforms that use music. I mean, music is often the driver of many of the most popular videos, and that's what powers advertising revenue that the music industry isn't seeing. So that's another one. It'll be interesting to see how people are coming up with solutions at Music Tectonics, specifically around getting that revenue extracted.

[00:25:19] Eleanor: Yeah, I think we're gonna have to keep having these conversations over the summer, aren't we? Before the-

[00:25:22] Dmitri: Absolutely

[00:25:22] Eleanor: ... uh, before we get to the conference.

[00:25:23] Dmitri: Yeah, there's lots to unpack there.

[00:25:24] Eleanor: Settle it, settle it there, yeah.

[00:25:25] Dmitri: Definitely.

[00:25:25] Eleanor: That's right. We're gonna set the world to rights-

[00:25:28] Dmitri: Yeah ...

[00:25:28] Eleanor: at the Music Tectonics Conference.

All right. So who should be paying attention to this year's theme at the Music Tectonics Conference?

[00:25:34] Dmitri: You know, it kinda goes back to the, earlier in the conversation when you asked who's gonna be impacted by this growing value of, music.

[00:25:40] Eleanor: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:40] Dmitri: You know, there's the tech founders, obviously the people that are building cool music tech things that solve these problems, they're gonna wanna be part of these conversations.

They're gonna wanna meet the rest of the ecosystem who are potential users, who wanna grow their revenue using their technology. they're gonna wanna meet investors, and investors are gonna wanna meet them, so investors also should be paying attention. And we've been getting a great turnout of a wide variety of investors, from angels to VCs, to strategic investors from, corporate, entities.

They're gonna wanna see what these technology founders have to offer early and, and later, you know? We're, talking about making sure there's also plenty of scale-ups there for investors, 'cause there's investors who want to invest in, you know, Series A or post Series A, not just on startups or MVPs and things like that.

And then I think, you know, the ecosystem, the, the labels, the publishers, the managers, everyone that's in the music industry should come and figure out their tech stack for the next year to figure out-

[00:26:37] Eleanor: Mm-hmm

[00:26:37] Dmitri: ... what are these revenue multipliers they should be using. What's the best tool for evaluating their catalogs?

What's the best tools for revenue recovery of all types? What are the best tools for gr- marketing your releases and your artists and, and things like that? And of course, the capital behind all of this, the song funds, private equity, investment bankers, they're already coming, you know?

[00:26:57] Eleanor: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:57] Dmitri: They come to the conference, but I think we're gonna see them come even more as we're having an industry-wide conversation around how the best innovation is growing the value of music, not disrupting it.

So I would say pretty much anyone that's in music would be interested in this. obviously our Creator Fair, the musical instrument companies, they have a chance to grow the value of their work by connecting with the social media music creators that we have come to the Creator Fair and grow the market there.

But I think they also really appreciate having a conversation with the other side of the fence, the recording industry and the streaming side, and see what collaborations are there. They learn business models. We're seeing more and more subscription-related products from the musical creation side, paid ones.

But we're seeing a lot of collaboration across companies, too, a lot of things where, companies can team up and grow the value together. So I think, uh, I think that, that pretty much covers, the ecosystem that I think we'll see interested in the theme this year.

[00:27:51] Eleanor: Yeah, we've always said that the Music Tectonics Conference is for everyone who works where music and tech meets.

 and I'm really glad that we're kind of defining that intersection more and what the purpose is for a community around music and tech. There isn't really a music industry that's not touched by tech, and, this conversation is really about sending it in the right direction.

[00:28:13] Dmitri: Yeah, absolutely. And I'd invite anyone who's listening who has ideas around how are, how are they contributing to growing the value or what is it they need to grow the value, to reach out to us at Rock Paper Scissors and Music Tectonics to have those conversations, to help formulate what we should be programming or what types of experiences we want to be offering at Music Tectonics.

This is gonna keep unfolding, right? We're having, you and I and Shayli, we're having fun trying to figure out, like, what's the best way to push the entire industry in this direction. But it's not just us coming up with this. We really do wanna hear from founders-

[00:28:45] Eleanor: Mm

[00:28:45] Dmitri: ... investors, labels, publishers, catalogs.

What do you wanna see? What, what will build the value for you while we're out in the sunny beach of Santa Monica?

[00:28:55] Eleanor: That's right. what revenue multiplier are we not watching?

[00:28:58] Dmitri: Right.

[00:28:59] Eleanor: That's gonna... Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:00] Dmitri: Exactly.

[00:29:00] Eleanor: All right. Thank you so much for laying out your thinking. We've been having, conversations about it.

I'm really glad to hear the full story straight from, straight from you.

[00:29:08] Dmitri: It's been super fun. I can't wait to keep kinda figuring out what this all means and working with you and Shayli and the team to make a great event around the theme.

[00:29:16] Eleanor: All right. We'll see everybody who's listening October 27th, 28th, and 29th in Santa Monica, California.

[00:29:24] Dmitri: Whoo. See you there.

Let us know what you think! Find us on LinkedIn, and Instagram, or connect with podcast host Dmitri Vietze on LinkedIn.

The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Weekly episodes include interviews with music tech movers & shakers, deep dives into seismic shifts, and more.