Crossroads: Streaming's Time to Choose with Mark Mulligan

This week as we have just wrapped up the Music Tectonics Conference in person in Santa Monica, I thought I’d do something a little bit different and release a clip from our pre-conference a couple of months ago by Mark Mulligan of MIDiA research called “Crossroads: Streaming’s Time to Choose.” 

In this keynote, Mark talks about the pressures facing streaming from AI generated content flooding platforms to Gen Z’s slower adoption rates and why the industry needs to move from optimization to revolution. We also open it up for some thoughtful questions at the end from you, our community, so stick around for that.

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Episode Transcript

Machine transcribed

11/12- Mark Mulligan Preconference

[00:00:00] Dmitri: Now for our kickoff keynote, when Mark Mulligan speaks, he shares thoughts you've never thought before, but you find yourself nodding along as if you were about to think these thoughts, because they make perfect sense. He expresses a future for the music industry based on the research he and his team do all year long.

He anticipates what's gonna happen next and fills in the holes for the rest of us. This time he has thoughts on music streaming. He calls it crossroads streaming's. Time to choose streaming is reaching It's height, but what comes next might be unexpected. Are you ready? Here? To set the tone of our seventh Annual Music Tectonics conference, please welcome to the Stage Media Research's founder and music analyst,

mark Mulligan.

[00:00:39] Mark: Hello. Thank you. Hello everyone. Great to be here again. And, uh, a little bit of trivia for you, Dimitri Narwals. In 2019, a UK citizen fought off a terrorist with an NARAL tusk. There you go.

[00:00:54] Dmitri: I did not know that.

[00:00:55] Mark: Right now, let me get this swiftly moving gear. Let me get my presentation up and running,

 So here we're gonna go. It is gonna be a little bit of a rollercoaster and it is going to be. Very much a setup for Tatiana's presentation, when, uh, for all of you're gonna go to the conference. And if you weren't planning to go to the conference, if for no other reason, you should go to see what Tatiana is going to present.

 we, as I'm sure you'll know, we've constantly immersed in the industry and data and analysis, et cetera, et cetera, but we've been doing something. Tatiana and I have been doing something a bit different this last few months. We decided We saw how much of an impact our bifurcation theory had, about a year and a year and a half ago.

And we're essentially trying to work at, we are having our awkward second album moment. How do we do a follow up to bifurcation? And so what we decided was actually what we really need is a looking at what is the future going to hold a for streaming. B for record labels. Now we are not really thinking about what does 2026 or even 2027 hold, but really being that, and so what we've been doing is we've been talking to all of the leaders across labels and streaming services.

We've still got a few more interviews to go, but on the streaming side, we, you know, we've spoken to everyone and anyone, and that's given us some really great insight, which has been able to get us towards. What we think is a unique perspective on where the streaming market is now, um, where streaming's leaders think streaming is heading, and then where we think streaming's heading.

And so really what I'm going to walk through today is gonna be sort of riding on the coattails of that to some degree, as is what, and then Tati is really going to sort of walk through where things need to go. So I'm gonna start off talking about why change is needed, and that's why we're looking at things as a crossroads.

There are two dynamics shaping today's music business. There are many of course, but I think we think there are two incredibly important ones. One is financialization, right? So there's been this influx of capital, you know, sort of everything from pension funds to sovereign wealth funds, getting into music catalogs.

And then you've got the exposure to the public markets. Warn music and universal music, public, whole bunch of, sort of bigger independence, um, public. And what this has resulted in is, all the sort of things that happen when you, get closer to big institutional capital and you've made big promises to big institutional capital, and you, and this is not just a music thing.

This is something that happens, you know, across the world. There's a really big difference between taking. Venture capital, which most of the narwals here will probably be looking for versus taking later Stage capital. Venture stage capital is we're gonna do a moonshot. Let's go. Let's get as big as we can.

We back you. We've buying into your vision, we're buying into your team. We think you've got a chance to change the world later. Stage institutional capital. We like you because you've got proven cash flows. We like it because you're steady, stable, and you've got growth potential left in you. and so it inherently creates a very different dynamic about how you do your business.

The music industry, I think over the lot, this last five years in particular, but really over the last decade has become more and more shaped by the influx of really big capital. I mean, it seems like every week or two. There's another new story about, oh, here, another label or fund has got another a hundred, 200, $300 million of debt capital to go and deploy, but you know, buying catalogs, et cetera.

Of course, investors do not deploy money. For fun or for charity, they deploy it because they expect returns and they expect, and, there is more pressure on those returns now than there was before because interest rates are higher and, you know, all these sorts of things. So that's one of the most important things I, and you want sort of an example of how that looks.

About 10 years ago, maybe sort of 8, 7, 8 years ago, we started to see this influx of sort of like new next generation. Independent labels, and this was like a real moment of opportunity for the Indy sector. Most of those ended up taking really big financial backing. Now they are, they have become very successful companies, but they look a lot less independent, like independence, many of them than they do mini major labels, you know, operating with the same sort of way and you know, sort of focus on scale and growth, et cetera, et cetera.

And maybe slightly less of an emphasis of how a traditional indie might have on artistry, et cetera. So that's an example of how financialization changes, the industry. There's no value judgment in that. It's just saying it is a different thing. A big financially motivated record label operates with different, methods and different objectives than a smaller boutique artist centered independent would.

The other one is optimization. And optimization is really the number one reason that we're saying there needs to be change. You know, everything is focused on optimization. It's like, how can we make ARPU go up? How can we squeeze a bit more out of a slowing market? How can we make supply chains work better?

How can we improve metadata? How can, you know all really, really important things, but what they are doing is fine tuning an engine. Whereas, You know, if you think about streaming up to maybe even five years ago, it was about building a new engine. And if you, you know, not trying to be sort of, you know, doomsayer here, but you know, if you think about where streaming is now, it's been around for about 15 years.

It's growing at a good steady clip and there's lots of growth potential still in it. It's the dominant format. There isn't really a competitor. um, the main route to growth in, in developed markets is by raising the prices. Rewind in 1999, the CD had been around for about 15 years. It was doing really well.

Still had growth potential in yet, but the main wave growth was raising prices. And then we all know what happened in late 1999 and of those of you too young to know what happened. That's when Napster happened and the music industry went into a tailspin, which it took about a decade to get out of. We are not suggesting for a moment that we are about to have another Napster moment, although ai.

Probably could have a chance of being it, but let's just put that aside for now. What we are saying is streaming has an opportunity to have another 15 great years, but, and this is, you know, for all the narwals, this is a really important thing, which, you know, as you develop your business, you'll find that the things that get you through your first couple of years aren't going to be, in many cases the things that get you through your next couple of years.

What got you here won't necessarily get you there. And that's where we definitely think we are with streaming. For those of you who saw myself and Tatiana give our presentation, give sort of the presidential debate around bifurcation for the play versus listen. at Tectonics last year, you'll have seen us make the case for streaming being an increasingly traditional incumbent on one side.

All of this cool stuff without any sort of particular home at the moment, happening elsewhere and creating these two lanes. What I'm gonna make the case for today is how streaming can really try to carve out more of that play side of the equation to be part of its future. So it is a crossroads. But it isn't really just a case of left or right, it probably looks a bit more like this.

There's lots of different directions, and crucially, we think that difference should be embraced. We would love to see five years from now Spotify and Apple Music looking dramatically different from each other. Amazon and YouTube music looking dramatically different to each other. They haven't been able to look dramatically different from each other because they were operating with the same pricing dynamics, the same financials, you know, the same, licensing terms, et cetera.

The same catalog. So we think there is an onus on the industry as a whole. So this is not just, you know, streaming cannot fix streamings problems itself. rights holders need to be part of that equation as well. There's not much data in this presentation or rather there is quite a bit, but it's all on this slide.

So if you look at your data, this is your slide, and after this there is no more data and this is really to sort of try to set up, there are many, many things which are great about streaming and there are many, many things which are not. and the pain points. How are tolerated, as essentially the cost of doing business with all of the benefits that come with it.

But there are things which are beginning to emerge that sort of show that things are changing. I won't go through all of these, but a couple which are interesting. There's 60 million people using generative AI apps. Well, at the end of 2024. if you were to add together all the numbers that everybody says they've got, you get a much bigger number, but they tend to be registered users, whatever else.

So this is people actually using the apps regularly. So there's a, and that's a big number. I mean, you know, the next big number artists direct self releasing artists. Is way bigger than the number of artists and record labels at 8.2 million, but it's still a fraction of that 60 million. So it's like every few years we get a step change in the number of people making music and the number of mu people getting music on streaming services, which means that there's more music, which means it gets more difficult to work your way through it as a consumer, but crucially to work your way through it as an artist because you're having to compete with all of this noise.

Then when you look at how consumers are using streaming, it is not a coincidence that 70% of listening is passive. Because if it's so difficult to find your way through all of this, because there's so much music and gen AI making that even worse, then you're going to align the algorithm and playlists and curation and all those things to do that work for you.

And yes, TikTok, great place for discovery, particularly, you know, number one among 16 to nineteens. But a quarter, people who discover music on social say that they don't leave social because they hear it enough from social and then they never go through and stream. So you've got this sort of disconnect happening between the parts of the ecosystem.

And streaming hours is good, right? 6.6 weekly hours. It's one of the most, it's one of the highest, weekly ads for entertainment, but really significantly smaller than social. Social is eating the world and social is at the moment the home of the bifurcation side of the debate. and we're seeing a whole bunch of artists.

Who are opting into the social side of the equation. We've got 37% of music creators upload the music to social because that's where they feel that they can connect with fans in a way they count on streaming. I won't go through all the rest of the numbers, but you get the sense here.

None of these things are like, oh my goodness, the ship is about to sink. None of these things are, industry breaking metrics, but you put them all together and it starts building up into. Sort of something that you might say could create some tectonic shifts. So the crossroads, there's maybe, if we want to really simplify it and ignore all the myriad different possibilities, there's two fundamentally different strategic directions Streaming can go in, optimize or revolutionize.

Now the case for optimize. There's loads of things. More artists are releasing more music than before, so that's great. label revenues are, uh, you know, sort of a huge part. streaming revenues represent the vast majority of label revenues and, significantly more than half the publisher revenues. you know, Spotify's values increasing massively.

The global revenues are increasing massively, and most importantly, consumers have never had its own good. So is it really a problem? How do you fix a problem that doesn't need fixing? Consumers absolutely love it. More artists have been getting their music out than ever before. Record labels and publishers have this as the main income stream.

So the case for revolutionize, well, gen Z and Gen Alpha not engaging in music the way millennials did. One of the numbers I didn't go through on the, previous slide was showing how much slower, gen Z penetration for streaming is versus, growth for Gen Z versus growth for millennials.

Millennials are up 20 odd percent. Uh, you know, so there's about 20% more of millennials are using streaming now than they were four or five years ago, but only about 9% more of, gen Z. It's just not appealing to them in the same way that, it did for millennials. And then you've got fraud and generative AI flooding streaming.

You'll have seen the diesel announcement that about a third of, daily uploads are, are generative ai. Now it doesn't mean a third of listing is, but nonetheless it does mean everything is getting overwhelmed. And, I'm just absolutely full of AI slot. So music listening's becoming commodified.

It's like more and more music listenings happening in the background. It's becoming sonic wallpaper that we put in, you know, even while we're sleeping. so we are listening to a lot of music, but we are hearing less of it. And the flip side of artists being able to, you know, this democratization of access.

Is there's so much music, people are struggling to cut through. This democratization is no longer working for people in the way that it should be.

Now you can, you know, optimizing is what the next couple of years will look like. Right. So if super premium, if or, well it finally comes. That's a product tweak. It's like Apple putting a new lens on its phone. You know, it doesn't change a phone, but it's enough to go and get people to buy the next generation phone.

You can have supply chain tweaks, you know, sort of metadata improvements, crucially important. But again, it's, you know, it's fine tuning the engine rather than changing the engine Price increases in licensing. so that's the, you know, optimize. These are all super, super important things to do. They're the things that will be the difference between, say, Spotify universal music, having a good quarter versus a bad quarter.

So I do not want to diminish the importance of this stuff, but what it does not do is prepare for future. What it does not do is address factors like. Well, how does an artist build a career anymore? How do consumers actually find music that they're going to fall in love with? how do we make sure that Gen Z start adopting streaming in the way that millennials did?

So the case for revolutionize? Well, you're going to have to come to Tectonics to find the case for revolutionize or capture the media future of streaming report, which will be out in a few weeks time. But what I will do is leave you with one little, teaser one. Really, really important idea is a time for rate limits.

So this is absolutely not without controversy, right? Because the, if I'm going to dumb this down, rate limits means less music getting to consumers. So who decides which music gets to consumers and which music doesn't? Does it just mean that all the big labels get everything and the small artists don't get that?

There's many, many, many, sort of what I'd refer to as like logistical moral factors that have to be worked through, but simply carrying on where we are, where there is no limit to what gets into streaming. That model isn't sustainable. It wasn't sustainable before. Gen ai. Now in the era of Gen AI where that third of music uploads being gen ai, there is no other choice.

A really difficult set of decisions need to be made. In the old world, there were natural rate limits. Factories could only produce so many CDs. There are only so many radio shows. There are only so many music reviewers. There are only so many TV shows. Now, we've got a near, you know, near infinite supply of content and inventory, listening inventory.

But we've got a finite set of ears and a finite amount of time for those ears to listen to music. and so we, you know, this, we r and d, everything, everywhere, all at once era, it is time for the less is more era and consumers are already beginning to cry out for it. If you look at the little indication.

Like, there's more and more of people going, valuing, going to small gigs and parties and you know, not filming it on the phones. You're getting, you know, all this demand for, exclusive access and, you know, exclusive access to merch, et cetera. Why? Because when everybody's got everything than the thing that makes you stand out is by having the things that other people don't have.

So rate limit is not gonna be an easy thing to roll out, but we have gone beyond the point where this, is essentially an option. The good news is the, with our Tatianas and my ears to the ground, we are hearing a real ground swell of support from moves in this direction. even two years time rate limits have been set in place and it's killed off the long tail, but I will.

Try not to take responsibility for that because that is absolutely not what we mean. And when you see the report when it comes out, we've got lots of really intricate suggestions about how we make sure it's quality, not the size of the label behind the artist that ensures where the different lanes are.

And the last thing I'll leave you with, you think this sounds crazy. Really what we're talking about is having different lanes, right? So think about, does anybody confuse a Netflix show for a TikTok video? No, because they exist in different places, but music has got the equivalent of TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, and HBO and everything else, all thrown into one place.

Streaming wasn't made for that and it can't support that. So I'll get off my soapbox now. That is the end.

[00:17:44] Dmitri: you went too fast, mark. and in fact, as a result, would you be up for taking some questions?

[00:17:50] Mark: Absolutely.

[00:17:50] Dmitri: All right. So if anyone has any questions, you can, raise your hand or, put it in the chat as well.

I'll ask you a question while we're waiting to see if anybody else is ready to come on Mike or anything. you mentioned differentiation between the streaming services, and you mentioned this idea of rate increases. they don't seem like they're necessarily part of the same, mix, but I feel like partly what you're talking about is a bit of a curation to keep

People engaged, which was sort of what streaming services looked like in the early days. Um, where there was some of this was it called windowing, I think, where some tracks would only get released on one streaming service. And you see that on the video side. Interestingly, it has persisted on video streaming.

It has not persisted on music streaming. I guess I could ask lots of questions about this, but I'm curious specifically, what are some of the differentiation that we might expect to see across music streaming services?

[00:18:41] Mark: So I, I think we, it's great question, and I think we need to have fundamentally lanes, lanes within streaming and lanes without streaming.

So a, a really simple but really powerful illustration of how this can work in music. If you go into Beatport and you go into any genre, you'll see the chart and then you'll see a height chart. And the hype chart is basically any record label that is below a certain revenue threshold. Only they are allowed to go into the hype chart.

So what it does is it gets loads of exposure to all of these smaller artists and labels who would've never got anywhere near the top 100. So actually by taking them, they can still get into the top 100, but they've been given their own place where they can be showcased. you know, because I think, you know, one of the things that people might assume is like, okay, so if you go to create a, lane for smaller artists or whatever else, nobody's gonna bother with that, right?

They're just going to want to focus on the good stuff. But the hype charts in Beatport a really good illustration of how that has given a platform for smaller artists and labels to be able to prosper. So, curated channels like that within streaming would make a lot of sense. I think the streaming works really well revenue wise and exposure wise for superstar artists.

It works really well access wise for long tail artists. You know, they can find audiences. They might not get many audiences, but they can get audiences in a way they didn't. You've got a sort of squeezed middle dynamic, you know, which is what all of the bands who are neither tiny nor neither the superstars.

And it's like, you know, they're the ones who are at risk of getting lost and those labels as well. So a lane for them, you know, and so as much as we can think about lanes within streaming services, I think streaming services also can decide which lane they want to major on. You know, it's like,

In the report, we've got an actually laid out where we think SoundCloud could go, should go where we think Apple should go, et cetera. All based upon what they've got at the moment. They've all got sets of unique things. You know, apple has got radio and documentaries and Apple TV and all these sort of things, and YouTube has got shorts.

I mean, you think about, they've all got different things that if you put them actually together, you can create something that looks like a different music service. They could have different sort of focuses. One could be way more focused on music for the over 40 fives, and another way more focused on music for the under 20 fives.

Doesn't mean that's all you do, but it can be your specialism and then there may be, you know, well not, maybe there is an opportunity for things that exist outside of the traditional DSP infrastructure. You know, when the bifurcation sort of approach. The economics of streaming, particularly with things like artist centric, which fundamentally demonetize much of the long tail.

Well, the long tail is essentially, you know, streaming services have put this big notice up on their door, which he says, long tail, you're not really welcome here. Well, you can come here, but we're gonna take the money from your songs and then give it to the big artists. You know, we've just got our latest music created survey back, and,

We ask, long tail creators what they think about this. A most of them didn't even know it was happening. And B, when you ask 'em what they think about, well guess what? They're pissed. You know? So I think there's, you, there is a real opportunity for somebody to build a new home for them. You know, maybe there's a new home for like traditional indi.

Essentially what we're saying here is it's time to think about designing a really, differentiated and segmented music world. Because at the moment. Really is a segmentation when you think about Spotify versus YouTube music,

[00:21:59] Dmitri: right

[00:21:59] Mark: People like them because of their brands, not because you know, and you can make a case.

Maybe final point can make a case. YouTube has slightly changed that narrative in the last month, whether introduced really cool features like commenting and you know, liking or whatever else. That is such a rare mood though most of the Western streaming services are in optimized mode, not revolutionized mode.

[00:22:22] Dmitri: Interesting. Okay. Got it. So the, a lot of the differentiation will be around segmentation of who is your audience, what are you giving to them that's unique and building audience around particular interest areas. And then maybe some features and some functionality will come from that as well.

[00:22:36] Mark: Yeah. and you build it around the music.

I mean, that's one of the things this financialization has done to music. It's like everything's focused on business model. What about if we select, flip the equation and think about the music, and then work out what the business model is you build around the music rather than just saying it is a music business

model.

[00:22:52] Dmitri: You sound like a musician talking there. Hey, let's take a, uh, let's take a question from Ian Connolly. Welcome. Please, uh, introduce yourself briefly and ask your question.

[00:23:01] Ian: Hey, my name's Ian Connolly. I spent about 20 years mixed, uh, between being at YouTube and Google and at Iota, RIP Iota. See a lot of familiar faces here.

Been reading your work for a long time, mark, and I'm excited to, um. Talk to you about it a little further. I did want you to ask you to clarify between rate limits, versus rate increases because it's not entirely clear to me what you mean there.

[00:23:24] Mark: Yeah. So when we talk about rate limits is literally what are the ways that we can constrain and curate and limit the flow and put it into different lanes.

So, you know, for example, let's just say it was a streaming service that's saying we are just focused, you know, our main focus is mainstream pop. And that's what you know, and that's the thing. So. Most of the stuff that isn't mainstream pop doesn't get pushed into all of the main playlists. And they might have other channels or whatever else, or they might essentially say to anybody who's not mainstream pop, actually, we don't really want your music here.

You know, go and find another place. And you might say, that sounds really crazy. But if you look at streaming services, they don't all have the same catalog. They've been quietly differentiating a bit already.

[00:24:07] Dmitri: Cool. Awesome. Thanks. Nick Sagia, what's your question?

[00:24:12] Nick: mentioned that the, it's a controversial thing to have multiple lanes.

Um, and I, I agree. And the data kind of shows that something's gotta change. I was thinking, that. The two lanes would be so controversial that the DSPs would be reluctant to wanna do that. So I, what I was thinking was gonna more likely happen would be there would be, the DSPs would put pressure on the distributors to slow things down, so there might be more requirements for metadata. Things like, you know, is the numbers for all the ISR, uh, all the artists and, you know, make sure all the, you know, publishing is there and just all, just load more and more requirements for slowing things down, getting the metadata in place, the AI companies.

They wanna industrialize content, production so that slowing down doesn't work for them. I've also started to see, pressure on the distributors to, if they have a large number of tracks that don't get any streams or get a very low amount of streams, suddenly their rating as a distributor starts to go down.

So I've seen incentive systems there. I was just curious what your thoughts are, uh, with some of those. Yeah,

[00:25:27] Mark: totally agree, Nick. I mean, the, in the report we actually put a huge amount of the owners for change on distributors themselves. and you know, if you think about it, distributors Of smaller artists, independent artists, and, smaller Indy labels, et cetera.

And they are having a bit of an existential angst moment, right, with things like, you know, artist centric and the fraud finds and, you know, a whole, as you said, there's been a whole bunch of things, which is just making it harder for them to operate the way they used to. So they are having to already think about.

Actually, maybe we focus more on identifying good talent, working to make that good talent as way, as best it can be, and actually starting to sound a lot like a record label. so, I think that you're right, the changes already there, which is part of the reason why we're talking about the lanes.

We already see the foundation stones are being, laid. but I think human curation is, there's we think there is a, Massive role for human curation to play, both at supply and demand side. So at supply side. the distributors need to work out how they make sure the best music is the stuff that gets onto the streaming services and the other stuff maybe goes onto social or wherever else.

And you can put quite simple mechanisms in, you know, they already have different tiers of paying customers, so maybe, you know, if you want to be. Considered for streaming, you have to be on one of the more expensive tiers. Now none of these things are gonna be clean, right? What about the struggling musician who can't afford the, the better tier and the making great music?

We are gonna have to work out, you know, ways to fix those things. But at the moment, the great musician who could afford the really cheap tier still isn't getting heard because they haven't got an ability to be able to cut through the clutter. So yes, I think on the supply side. Big onus on distributors, but also labels to be, you know, sort of more focused on quality rather than quantity.

And then on the demand side, one of the things we think is a really big opportunity is bringing in like crowd source, human curation. Where talent floats up, you'll have to put in, you know, mechanisms to make sure payola type dynamics don't come in. But you know, the, one of the things that we know has been the history of the modern recorded music business is taste makers play a really big role.

And yet, when you look at streaming services, where do you see the faces of taste makers? There are taste makers behind some of the playlists, but it's fundamentally been dehumanized. And in the age of ai, I think we have a, a huge onus on rehumanizing music.

[00:27:46] Dmitri: Awesome, Nick. Thanks for the question. Thanks.

 we have about five minutes still. We've got three hands up and we also have a bunch of questions in the chat. But, let's get the folks who have their hands up. Let's go real quick with the questions and see how quick we can get Mark to answer 'em. Julian, go ahead.

[00:28:00] Julian: Hey, mark. Yeah, I think I was gonna ask you a question about,

That each of these conglomerates that has the DSP, that their particular stream of service actually has just giant ways of being able to, explode ip. If you look at the way Apple TV just did with the F1 movie, I think at the moment it seems a little myopic to look at the streaming service in of itself.

And look at more like, how can I blow out an ip? Because they're everything. I mean, Amazon music is four. Uh, Amazon is 48 different companies. so I understand the optimization of the streaming service, but it surely the route is around how do I use my other assets to drive the, discovery and explosion, right?

That's really the differentiator, right? Not that I can put stuff on there and I've got a rate limit, right? Like, yeah. I wanna get your thoughts on that.

[00:28:51] Mark: Yeah. So, first of all, absolutely agree that, as I was sort of alluding to before, that, most of the streaming services have a bunch of ancillary assets which pulled together could, you know, create something really distinct.

 but the fact that those assets have been there readily available and not utilized so far is not going to be accident. Right. You know, there, there've been very, Clear reasons not to fully deploy all of those assets into music. and, you know, if you to, you know, speak in really sort of basic simplified terms 10 years ago.

Music was what got Apple excited. Now TV's what gets Apple excited, you know, so it is like if we're talking about let's use some of the, you know, let's use some of these, the Stardust from, you know, TV and all the assets that you've built around making the TV shows and film successful, let's go and deploy that to some of the music.

Well. Actually, our focus is on TV at the moment. So I think there's, and if you look at, you know, Amazon, imagine what it could be doing with, you know, merch via, you know, the store and Twitch and whatever else. But those things haven't been pulled together either. So what have streaming services done?

They've just pushed other types of content into streaming, which is predominantly audio books and podcasts. But not only that, so I wouldn't say that it's a lack of imagination. I think it is a decision. That music. So their own music services are operating within very clear corporate lanes.

 but I completely agree with you. The potential is amazing.

[00:30:15] Dmitri: Thanks, Julian. Uh, Steve, if you have a quick one, let's try to get Steve and Susan just to ask their questions real quick and get 30 seconds on 'em.

[00:30:23] Mark: I'm gonna do 32nd answers, so where we go?

[00:30:25] Dmitri: Okay, Steve, you're up real quick.

[00:30:26] Steve: my, my name's Steve Baur. I'm a, uh, music and entertainment lawyer, and I do a lot of work in the technology space. I'm partner at Rains. I really agreed with what you said. I, I think of it in terms of growing the business. Not fine tuning, like you were saying, we like fine tuning's great, but we need to.

Make music as relevant as it was in the Steely Dan days, you know? Um, and it's, it just isn't as relevant as it was. and, I feel like humanizing selection is a good idea. so I'd love to hear your thoughts on just any other thoughts on how do we grow, like sort of interest in engagement in music.

my one big idea is. reopening normal people sharing their playlists and stuff, you know, like, uh, sharing their likes on Spotify, uh, and other streaming services is a, is a start to doing that. Sorry. And then stars, we'll start to develop from it. So that's, the question.

[00:31:16] Mark: Yeah. so one of the things that we've been writing a lot about in media over the last couple of years is the need for, Streaming to become more social. Not, and ironically not like socialists now because socialists stopped being social. You know, social is now just entertainment. It social started off by building connections with each,

[00:31:35] Steve: right, right.

Not that kind of social like the original version of Spotify was, thing called Music Stream. And it was totally a social app about sharing and, and like curating of music. So, you know, sort of more of that.

[00:31:48] Mark: Yeah. So there's a lot of things I can say, but for the sake of it, keep it this quick.

Bringing in more social features, making the profile a place, a place where you can, A phrase I like is peacocking. It's like you spread your, feathers so you can show everybody what you like. You get badges for being the first one to listen to this and, you know, all those sort of things.

Yeah. Those are the things that can en unlock relevance, and cultural resonance for Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

[00:32:12] Dmitri: Steve, thanks for bringing that up. It's a great topic. We'll be talking about it in Santa Monica, I'm sure every single conversation. I appreciate that, Susan. Real quick, please say hi and what's your question?

Last one here.

[00:32:22] Susan: following Steve is great because we've known each other a really long time and I just wanna say I've been inspired by you, mark, and your great work for many years. I think what I've been trying to do, is do exactly that, reintroduce the idea of a socialization around premium content, whether it's sports, which I'm really focused on, but music and the creator culture.

And it's sort of disparate on all these different platforms. But I think your point is. And somebody who pointed out the growth piece is media streaming is really the key. The question is how do you, you know, the linear approach and the search and the endless search on YouTube is not a curated experience.

So I've been working on thin air. It's a new platform for media streaming that is a collective reality experience. So it's much more social. It's focused on live streaming and global. Media interaction because music is also a very global place. Like we're looking at a, you know, trying to cross culminate all these, different genres.

 So I wanted to just say that the business model underneath is something that I wanted to explore with you guys, is just not just based on. Advertising or rates. It's just all of the pieces in allowing artists to earn their own money.

[00:33:35] Mark: Yeah. So what I'd say very quickly, Susan, I think you touched upon a really important thing, which is connection and, and you know, you think about the thing at work, whether it's, you know, 12-year-old kid playing roadblocks or whatever else, it's being able to connect with other people. and that's why live music is, you know, continues to be as big and as important as it is because it is those connections streaming makes it really hard for you to have those connections.

So that's why humic. And the last thing is if we are in the everything everywhere, all at one stage where well actually connection one-to-one connections, those things are scarce. So it is the bring back scarce. Experiences and connections with people, then you make music. have a, you know, in the way that Steve was talking about having a relevance and a resonance to younger generations in a way that's simply just turning on Spotify to have something on while he study, doesn't do.

[00:34:25] Dmitri: Amazing. Thanks Susan for that question. Mark Mulligan Media Research, amazing. Thanks for the sharing your latest thoughts, optimize or revolutionize. Tatiana and I are gonna do a fireside chat at the conference to continue that conversation. She's here in the chat as well, mark. Always appreciate all the, um, ideas and thinking you're pushing us on, and really grateful for you to be here.

Sorry, we won't see you in Santa Monica, but Tatiana pretty good fit for us as well, so really good. Thanks Mark.

[00:34:53] Mark: Thank you everyone.

Let us know what you think! Tweet @MusicTectonics, find us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or connect with podcast host Dmitri Vietze on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

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.