What Multiplies Revenue for Music? (Bonus Episode)

We interrupt this miniseries for a special bonus episode! Last week, we laid out a theory on what technology can do to grow the value of music, so this time we wanted to hear from someone who is actually betting billions of dollars on the answer.

Sam Hendel is the managing partner of Chord Music Partners, a leading pure play music rights catalog home to works from artists like the Weeknd, David Guetta, OneRepublic, Kid Cudi, Diplo and Fleetwood Mac, and he is deploying serious capital alongside Universal Music Group to acquire more of it.

Dmitri and Sam get into how catalogs actually get valued, where the industry is still leaking money through under collected royalties and outdated PRO systems, and why streaming remains the best deal in the world for consumers. They also cover how AI, fandom data, and artist brand extensions could reshape where music revenue grows next, plus the thorny question of AI generated music: why attribution is the real unlock, and what a fair model for paying creators when their work trains or inspires new songs might look like.

If you have ever wondered how the people writing nine figure checks for music catalogs think about risk, growth, and the future of the industry, this conversation is for you.

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Episode Transcript

Machine transcribed

[00:00:00] dmitri: Our topic is what multiplies revenue for music. I know many of you know that for the first time in the eight-year history of the Music Tectonics Conference, I've given the 2026 edition a theme, which is Rising Tide: Grow the Music, Grow the Value. The idea here is that music hits above its weight in terms of culture, but it doesn't garner a total market size on par with industries like gaming or sports.

So much of music tech has been seen as disruptive, but if we change the narrative to how tech can add value for music, we can grow the value of music. So my goal with the theme is to bring together the entire music ecosystem together, including labels, publishers, managers, catalogs, investors, and tech founders and companies to work together to help all businesses from independents to majors, from rights holders to platforms, from artists to companies to increase revenue across the board.

So to push this discussion forward, I'm honored to have as our guest Sam Hendel, the managing partner of Chord Music Partners, the world-leading pure play music rights catalog, including works from iconic artists such as The Weeknd, David Guetta, OneRepublic, Kid Cudi, Diplo, and Fleetwood Mac to add to that.

Sam's also the managing director of Dundee Partners, which is the family office behind Chord Music in partnership with Universal Music Group and Searchlight Acq capital. If we want to understand what can grow the TAM, the total addressable market for songs and recordings, why not talk to the guy who's deploying $3 or $4 billion to acquire music as an investment?

Let's find out why buying song catalogs and recordings has become so sought after, and what would multiply the revenue and value of music. Welcome, Sam.

[00:01:42] Sam: Thank you, Dmitri. Appreciate, joining today.

[00:01:44] dmitri: Yeah. I'm really happy you're here. So we'll dive in.

Why is buying songs and recordings so popular these, days, and what appeals about music to investors?

[00:01:54] Sam: Sure. Dmitri, I'll go back, you know, 30 years ago when, when all of us would buy music, we were going to a record store and purchasing a CD or a record or vinyl, uh, it was a hardware purchase.

And obviously the industry got disrupted very heavily when I was in college and was using Napster and downloading illegal music. and it took a while for the industry to sort of realize that the selling the hardware asset wasn't gonna be the future consumption model for most people. And, you know, going back to, call it, really 2014 is where streaming really started.

You know, the music industry was in decline from, you know, '99 or 2000 to 20- early 2014. It started to rise again, because of the broader adoption of streaming, and that's what these investors are underwriting toward. That's what we're underwriting toward. right now about, let's call it 65% to 70% of our revenue are coming from streaming.

 that is a, recurring cashflow much different from the old model of music, which was more of a hardware model. You buy it once and that's it. even, you know, iTunes was a one-time purchase and then the consumer owns, the music and can listen to it. Now we have this recurring revenue model and, you know, music is r- at this point one of the only assets in the world that's extremely long lived and also generally uncorrelated to the market that financial investors can model.

And so over the past really, you know, 12 years or so, we've seen an influx of, financial capital come into the market, first starting with, you know, some entrepreneurs like Willard Audrets and, and Merck Mercuriadis, also getting backed by pension funds, and the like. and now you have, you know, very sophisticated private equity investors in the market, and now we're moving more into that insurance-type capital, where insurance companies are looking for these long-lived, high-quality, consistent cash flows.

So that's why we've seen, you know, music become much more of an institutional asset class over the past, you know, 12 years or so.

[00:03:45] dmitri: So is there anything else like music for those qualities as an investment asset, or is it unique?

[00:03:53] Sam: It's fairly unique. and I, I think the really unique part is the lack of correlation.

So there are a lot of, you know, ways these types of, financial firms are getting yield and getting, you know, investor returns. I always sort of akin music to digital infrastructure. everyone around the world is paying a toll. they're paying when they're buying a streaming service, they're paying when they're listening on the radio, they're paying when they walk into a bar and restaurant.

Um, we're collecting all those micro pennies, and I think it's a big opportunity still, and we're not all the way there from that digitization to be able to capture all the micro pennies, that are available. And one of the reasons I got, you know... My family's been investing in music for almost 30 years now.

Um, we've accelerated it with, Chord, kind of the, you know, starting the company and, putting a large deal together and now growing it. but it's a, it's a very rare opportunity to buy a highly uncorrelated cash flowing asset. that's what gets us excited, and we think there are a lot more opportunities to grow the TAM.

Um, and the industry is in a better place, than I think it was, you know, 10 years ago when there weren't public companies. The public companies now have a little more incentive to work together on growing the TAM rather than just sniping for market share. I, I... Dmitri, when we chatted, you wore that hat.

Spectacular stuff. Yeah.

[00:05:10] dmitri: I put up my grow the TAM hat for your sake.

[00:05:12] Sam: Yeah. I love it. I love it

[00:05:14] dmitri: It's really interesting. So what I'm hearing is, like, there's this modeling of the maturation of digital music and streaming that makes it reliable in a way that's different than other investable assets.

I keep thinking, like, something's shifting. People are seeing the growth and, you know, we used to hear, "Oh, what's the growth of streaming look," you know, "in the United States, in the West," et cetera. And, and now we hear, "Well, it's still growing, but it's growing at one p- you know, single digits instead of double digits."

But globally, there's all these other territories, so I feel like, oh, maybe that's the growth area that more investors are putting into as well. But... And we can talk about that, but I'm also really curious, do you see something emerging in the future that means you can increase the value of your investments even beyond where streaming is?

'Cause everyone's like-

[00:05:55] Sam: Yeah

[00:05:56] dmitri: ... "What comes after streaming?"

[00:05:57] Sam: Yeah. Well, I mean, streaming's a pretty good modality, right? Like, we literally can, I think streaming's the best consumer deal in the world. For the cost of two cups of coffee, I can listen to any music I want, no matter what it is, what genre, where it's from in the world, for a month.

It's an amazing deal. It's too good of a deal. and that's why we're seeing, you know, slow but steady price increases in developed markets. We're still onboarding people in developing markets. And then the key thing is the conversion from an ad model into a paid model. The fact that we still have a freemium model in the United States and kind of Western Europe, I think makes no sense.

 I really believe that we should have more of an Avon model, where there's a lower tier where it's partial pay and partial ads, similar to what some of the t- some of the streaming TV services have done, and then we have the paid tier. and what the mu- music services have done wisely is they made the ad tier, over time, a little bit worse.

 we're trying to convert people into the funnel of, paying for their music rather than just getting it for free and listening to some ads. That's a much less good model for the music industry. And so I see the opportunity to keep onboarding people into the ecosystem, converting them into paid. there's a crazy stat.

I think it's 11% of smartphone users around the world are paying for their music right now. Um, so we have a ways to go. And then the ability to really digitally collect fandom, most bars and restaurants around the world, we have no idea what they're listening to, who's listening to what. that digitization, the industry is still pretty far behind there.

Um, and that's an area of personal interest on figuring out ways to collect more of the micro pennies and then know what our audience is listening to so we can better serve them.

[00:07:39] dmitri: Yeah. Cool. I hear some just kinda like roll up your sleeves work around collecting those additional, opportunities where people are already engaged with music and songs and catalog-

[00:07:49] Sam: Yeah

[00:07:49] dmitri: uh, to just get the rest of the system done in the digital world, in a way.

[00:07:54] Sam: Yeah, and the good thing is, like, we're all on the same team. Like, uh, y- the, the music industry should be working together more to, again, grow the TAM. But, let's solve some of the, you know, difficult solutions that I think there's a lot of inertia.

You know, the global PRO system, there's a lot of inertia. that is an obvious one that, you know, the industry is still paying for, you know, someone to go and collect the micro pennies in bars and restaurants where the vast majority goes through digital. The digital revenue that we're collecting all over the world on publishing, you know, the performance royalties should be a direct pay from the streaming services to the owners of the rights.

 there's a lot of inefficiency that, everyone knows is an issue. Like, we, you probably heard the black box. there really shouldn't be a black box over time. We should know who listens to what and where. and that's a good thing for the industry, but it's gonna take some time.

[00:08:44] dmitri: Okay. Super helpful.

So one of the things that we're talking about at Music Tectonics this year are the technology multipliers of revenue, the way that tech can be used to actually increase revenue, and some of that is, like, back office stuff. Some of it is frontline with consumers, fandom, you kinda mentioned that as well.

It could be some of the things you're talking about with, like, just knowing how music's getting used and charging for it in the right ways at the right times. But I'd like to ask you about a few different categories of technology and get a sense if you have any shout-outs of particular tools-

[00:09:14] Sam: Yeah

[00:09:14] dmitri: ... or, or even just trends in tech.

 let's start with the valuing of catalogs. What tools do you use to value a catalog?

[00:09:21] Sam: Yeah. So, I mean, we're basically using, it's large scale DCFs, discounted cash flow analysis. we do use a tool called Syncopate, which is really good at taking all the royalty statements, consolidating them, and getting them into an easily digestible form.

But after that, like we're modeling, you know, I would say we're... Everyone can get Luminate data, so people tend to get the streaming data from Luminate. We're getting years' worth of statements, so royalty statements, recorded statements, or publishing statements, depending on what we're looking for, and we're running out really long-term analyses.

 you know, we're we're taking the royalty statements, we're dividing them amongst, you know, sync should have a different multiple. It's lumpier. it has a different multiple than performance royalties, which is a different multiple than streaming. I would say streaming's still the highest multiple 'cause we can underwrite.

That's much easier for me to extrapolate what that's gonna look like, you know, out into the future. but, you know, one area that we're quite passionate about is modeling the fandom. so in addition to kind of the data that's publicly available, we try to enrich our data with more, you know, understanding well, who are the fan cohorts that are listening to our music?

 an LTV of the life of a fan. We all know that when someone listens to music, they tend to listen to that music the rest of their lives. it gets into our algorithms. It gets into our playlists. Um, when we fall in love with a band, we can see that data in the streaming, in the streams. so if someone's listening to, we bought the G59 catalog last year.

It's a band called the Suicideboys. they have an extremely dedicated fan base, and the average fan listens to, like, 26 songs per day.

[00:10:56] dmitri: Wow ...

[00:10:57] Sam: and those young people, what we're taking a look at are there more young people coming into the funnel versus the 30-year-olds that are coming out of the funnel 'cause they're starting families?

 we don't have enough data to know will those 30-year-olds after the very busy period, busy decade they're gonna have in their life, you know, are they gonna start listening again when they're 50? we don't know the answer on that yet. But-

[00:11:17] dmitri: Yeah

[00:11:17] Sam: ... you know, we're trying to underwrite, and I'd much rather buy a catalog that's listened to people all over the world, where we're gonna see more growth in the industry, than listened to by older people in North America.

Um, there's an LTV of a fan, and we look at that when we're thinking through our underwrites.

[00:11:31] dmitri: Really interesting. You mentioned modeling the fandom and enriching data with these fan cohorts. Are there tools for that as well? Is that Spotify for artists? Or is it-

[00:11:40] Sam: Yeah ...

[00:11:40] dmitri: stuff you build or what?

[00:11:42] Sam: you know, we, we, you know, Universal's our partner.

 they have an amazing insights team. so we enrich our data, and we have some proprietary tools that we're using to, you know, evaluate and extrapolate a fan base. Um, in addition to the publicly... E- you know, everyone's using... Uh, the good thing is the math's the math here. Like, we're big believers that, as the business becomes more institutionalized, we shouldn't be competing with each other, so they're, with other catalog owners on price.

The price should be the price. we're using the same discount rates. There's rating agencies. S&P and Moody's and Fitch are looking at these catalogs and valuing it for the purpose of an asset-backed securitization. we have a firm called Virtu Global that's the gold standard of, you know, music valuation.

The banks are using JP Morgan and Fifth Third Bank and Barclays. They are using, you know, valuation agents. We're all kind of using the same numbers. What I'm focused on competing over is when we buy a catalog, can we be a better partner to the artist or the songwriter or the independent label on the back end?

[00:12:44] dmitri: Okay.

[00:12:45] Sam: That's, that's my- Yeah ... that's my view.

[00:12:47] dmitri: Cool. I'm gonna keep pushing you on, on-

[00:12:48] Sam: Yeah

[00:12:48] dmitri: ... other tools. What tools do you use to identify under-collected royalties or underexploited opportunities?

[00:12:55] Sam: There are a lot of them. There are a lot of companies out there that are hunting sound exchange, that are, you know, doing audits.

So we use a few tools. you know, if it's like, I would say every week we get hit up by another company trying to crack the, "Hey, I'm gonna go find you money." The, the, "I'm gonna go find you money that's uncollected business." There's a ton of them.

[00:13:14] dmitri: Yeah.

[00:13:14] Sam: probably too many.

[00:13:15] dmitri: Yeah. You can't shout out any for us here?

[00:13:18] Sam: Um, we, I don't know. I think we have like

[00:13:21] dmitri: three of

[00:13:22] Sam: them that we're in discussions with

- None, none off the top of my head that I, that I, I would shout out.

[00:13:26] dmitri: Okay, no problem. Yeah. Um, but there are a lot of them, and like you said- Yeah ... some of them are for SoundExchange, some of them are for, PROs, YouTube, uh, there's all sorts of stuff-

[00:13:36] Sam: Yeah

[00:13:36] dmitri: right? Different regions, et cetera.

[00:13:38] Sam: Yeah.

[00:13:39] dmitri: Um, where else do you see technology playing a role in growing the TAM for music? And I, I say growing the TAM, and I have the growing the TAM hat.

[00:13:45] Sam: Yeah.

[00:13:45] dmitri: Technically that's growing the audience, which I think you talked about with reaching new younger audiences globally.

But I guess in this case, I'm really talking about growing the market, growing the entire value, growing the pie really. But-

[00:13:56] Sam: Yeah

[00:13:56] dmitri: ... where else do you see technology playing a role? Are there new types of products, new revenue streams, marketing tech-

[00:14:02] Sam: Yeah

[00:14:02] dmitri: ... fandom experiences? What, kind of stuff do you see that you're like-

[00:14:05] Sam: Yeah

[00:14:05] dmitri: I think this is where tech can be additive instead of disruptive?

[00:14:08] Sam: Well, everyone's trying to crack the super fan.

[00:14:10] dmitri: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:11] Sam: Um, we have not found, the magic bullet there. I don't think... There's been no company that's really succeeded in becoming a super fan platform. So I think the i- the deal with UMG and Spotify is interesting on kind of the AI tooling to let fans mess around with the music and play and, pay a premium to kind of have that, you know, internal tool.

I think that's pretty interesting. We'll see how that, you know, develops and, But the super fan tier or some of the companies that are building the fan communities, like no one's found scale there. There have been a couple of success stories, um, in particular around merch drops and kind of vinyl drops, but there hasn't really been a company that's, that we've seen that- has won that space.

So that is open and we are all ears to find great partners to try to, you know, add value to our catalogs. we buy premium catalogs. We buy catalogs that have fan bases. So we, we have a record label called Partisan Records that's totally separate from Chord, and Partisan's mantra is, you know, differentiated artist voice.

We try to bring that to Chord. Like I'm not buying lo-fi, you know, YouTube catalogs or anything like that. We're buying catalogs that have a fan base. So when they have a fan base, I wanna activate that fan base, you know, a, a little bit deeper. Um, and there are a lot of companies working on the problem, and we're all ears for the Chord catalog, like please reach out.

 we'd be delighted to try to run an experiment, try to see if something works. And we have the kind of whole UMG apparatus behind us, which, you know, helps us to validate, you know, some of these things. But we can be pretty entrepreneurial and try to get our catalog, into one of those platforms.

We just see how-- we haven't found anything super scaled that's worked. you know, other areas I would say just like the broader emerging digital platforms, you know, the music industry has grown a lot, and listen, TikTok, they're massively underpaying the industry, which is a shame and needs to change at some point.

But you know, Meta's been a good partner. I think AI is a big opportunity, and I know we'll probably talk about that later, Dmitri. I, I won't go into too much depth, but we think AI is a great way to engage fans with our music. letting fans remix, mess around, mash together, and eventually release once we have attribution, I think that's pretty interesting.

 but it has to be done with companies that aren't stealing our music. Like, there's a, the big white whale company, Suno is, has stolen the world's music and is using it, to create new music to compete with existing artists. And I think it's, I actually think they've built a great product and I support, you know, I want them to succeed, but they have to pay the piper and they have to find a model that, isn't stealing and is rewarding the true creators who are the human beings.

[00:16:48] dmitri: you did just nail both of my next two questions of the three questions-

[00:16:51] Sam: Okay

[00:16:52] dmitri: ... I have left for you. So let's dig into them a little bit.

[00:16:54] Sam: Yeah.

[00:16:54] dmitri: Since you're on the AI topic, let's talk about that and then we'll go back to social media. So, I mean, I've, my theory or my, hypothesis is if we could work out the licensing piece on the training data, and then we could-

[00:17:07] Sam: Mm-hmm

[00:17:07] dmitri: also work out not only the attribution, but sort of the payout on the end product as well, because I could imagine a lot of AI creators create songs using the best catalogs in the world with these platforms, but then they could do something with it. They could release it or post it on social media, or it could be listened to in bars, like you said before.

There's other PRO stuff that could happen from there. The original creators who train the data should not only get paid for getting trained, but they also should get paid if there's a public release of something in partnership with those AI creators as well. That sounds like if, we get it right, if the music sounds good, if it's not AI slop and people actually engage with it, that sounds like it could be a huge portion of the future catalog of music, like exponentially-

[00:17:49] Sam: Right

[00:17:49] dmitri: more music.

[00:17:50] Sam: Yeah.

[00:17:50] dmitri: And if it pays well, couldn't it make a lot more money than even streaming? Because people are paying to interact with it. Instead of building something inside Spotify where you can remix a song and only your friends will listen to it, you've actually created a song that actually is original, original, derivatively original

[00:18:05] Sam: Yeah

[00:18:06] dmitri: slightly interpolated,

slightly covered.

[00:18:08] Sam: I would say stay, stay, stay tuned on that. Like the-

[00:18:09] dmitri: Yeah

[00:18:10] Sam: ... tricky thing, we're doing something big in that area that I, I probably can't publicly share right now, but, the challenging thing is the attribution. So there are a couple of companies that are building some we'll call watermarking, digital watermarking tools to be able to see who owns what.

But one, how do you do the splits? How do you then... So the splits, training, we're already there with, you know, my partners at UMG and I know, you know, I'll leave Warner out 'cause they did the Suno deal, which I personally think was not the right deal for the industry. but you know, we're starting to work with ethically trained AI companies, to have a training model where the music that gets trained on gets paid a certain amount.

The prompting, "Make me a song that sounds like XYZ," gets paid out on a market share basis. And the AI companies win too because they're getting a nice portion of the revenue similar to like what I call it a Spotify deal. that's the right model. now that's in a walled garden 'cause the cool...

Like, the cool thing with, you know, and what Suno I think has, pushed for it is that creation is also a way to make money here. Like, creation's interesting. Like, our high-quality music shouldn't just get paid money when it gets listened to, it should get m- paid money when it's used to create new music.

Um-

[00:19:25] dmitri: And then when that music gets listened to

[00:19:27] Sam: When that music gets listened to, we should get paid, but the attribution is really tricky. So what people are doing is they're super charging and downloading songs off of Suno, and they're dumping it onto, the, you know, onto the DSPs. that's theft. It's just pure theft.

 and that's so- And that we need to fix. I- if they can figure out a great at- attribution model, and pay us and pay the artists whose mu- music has been taken for what's owed, I think that's fantastic, and we are super supportive of technology companies building and trying to find new ways for us to make money, but it can't be on the back of every single human creator.

It's crazy.

[00:20:04] dmitri: Yeah. I, I'm with you on that, Sam. One thing I've thought about is, you know, part of the challenge with the attribution is how many inputs go into the training as well as the prompting because even if you only prompt a couple of artists, it could also reference, you know, 50 other artists for each of the artists you mentioned, and then once derivative content gets made on top of derivative content, it gets into the thousands and the millions and the billions of influences really quickly, and the splits get insane.

But if an artist like, say, The Weeknd said, "We're gonna do an AI project where our fans can create original content trained only on our stuff, and we're gonna share with our fans some of the revenue-"

[00:20:44] Sam: Yeah

[00:20:45] dmitri: ... "to do that," all of a sudden you get rid of all that attribution problem.

[00:20:48] Sam: Dmitri, we have not spoken about this, but stay tuned on that.

[00:20:51] dmitri: Yeah, yeah. I'm just waiting for, like, anyone. Yeah. It could be The Weeknd. It could be Taylor Swift. It could be Fleetwood Mac, you know? Like, just do what, Grimes tried to do early, a little too early before people-

[00:21:01] Sam: Yeah

[00:21:01] dmitri: ... were ready and when the training models weren't strong, maybe strong, as strong as they are.

[00:21:06] Sam: Well, I, I think the cool thing is it's the storytelling around our music, like the remixing. you know, remixing, I'll use an example like Major Lazer. We have, we own the masters for Major Lazer. there's a great remix culture around those songs. We've ran pro... Um- I'm blanking on the name of the company.

Um, SKIO. we ran some, like, remix contests through SKIO, um, letting fans mess around with the music and, you know, we picked a winner and we paid them mon- we had sort of a pot of money to, to pay them. And it, it, added value to the catalog. It got more listenership and people kinda liked a bunch of the remixes that came out.

, That's good business. , But it's done with, you know, the fan base being engaged. Um-

[00:21:43] dmitri: Yeah

[00:21:43] Sam: ... and it's ethical and it's train- and, and it's supported by the band. And if you're doing stuff that's not supported by the artist, you shouldn't be in the music business

[00:21:52] dmitri: Well, and remix is one thing, but original music based on the style of or in the voice of, all of a sudden you give the fans the key-

[00:21:59] Sam: Yeah

[00:21:59] dmitri: to the artist, and all of a sudden crazy stuff can happen. Now, you might wanna have a vetting proc- all right, I'm going deep on this, guys. You know?

[00:22:06] Sam: No, right, like, like, but sh- I guess the question is should the world dump all that music onto the Spotify? Probably not.

[00:22:12] dmitri: No.

[00:22:12] Sam: But should we be able to test and see what hits?

And if something does resonate with the fans, let's release it as a new work and make sure that everyone's getting paid a fair share.

[00:22:23] dmitri: And-

[00:22:24] Sam: That's what I'm interested in ...

[00:22:25] dmitri: and maybe those AI creators get treated and paid like producers rather than as songwriters.

[00:22:31] Sam: They should be. Exactly.

[00:22:33] dmitri: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:33] Sam: They should get a small portion, um, as a, call it a f- yeah, it should be a producer or a small royalty, and that's really engaging for the fans.

[00:22:40] dmitri: Yeah.

[00:22:40] Sam: Imagine a fan does something and they own a piece of the song. That's really cool.

[00:22:44] dmitri: So you think we'll get there? You think we'll get to a place where there's a legally licensed AI-

[00:22:49] Sam: Yeah

[00:22:49] dmitri: ... generative AI with a training model that is good that will be able to eventually have publicly released works in collaboration with fans?

[00:22:57] Sam: I do, but the attribution's key. Like-

[00:23:00] dmitri: Yeah

[00:23:00] Sam: ... we can't let music go out into the ether without the ability to, to, to attribute it.

[00:23:06] dmitri: Yeah.

[00:23:06] Sam: And it has to be controlled 'cause people don't want... It's like the menu at Cheesecake Factory. It's too damn big.

Like- ... it's just too big. Like, we, we can't dump the world with slop. but if there are high-quality works that get produced, , for me that's the song. and that should be out there in the market and should be listened to by fans. And as long as we're paying the creator the fair way and we create a model that is being developed.

I mean, like, they'll probably get a, you know, market share is probably where it'll end up to start, rather than going and doing a colonoscopy on the AI model to figure how- what actual element... That, that's really challenging. but you have a pool for training. You have a pool for, call it prompting, or, you know, make me a hip hop song.

Well, that should reference hip hop songs, and the hip hop songs that are used in the training model should get paid extra. It's a work in progress, but it's something that I, I do think we'll get to eventually, but we have to stop the bad, the companies that are doing wrong and stealing.

 They have to come, you know, into the fold and do the right thing, and then we'll be super supportive of their products.

[00:24:06] dmitri: Yeah.

[00:24:06] Sam: Some of which are amazing.

[00:24:08] dmitri: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I wanna wrap up with one more question. Is there anything else on the horizon you think will grow the market? Anything we haven't talked about that you think has potential for being as exponentially impactful as the discussion we just had?

[00:24:22] Sam: I think, you know, the brand of an artist I think has a lot of, You know, right now there- not too many companies are kinda looking at the name, image, and likeness. that's something that we're particularly interested in. you know, growing, growing a brand, and combining the music side with, you know, real true fandom, merch, other things.

And I think some of it gets o- like the black T-shirt business, I think that's... Obviously we'll, people will buy black T-shirts at concerts, but, I think there's more to do with artist brands over time. And we've seen that in sports, we've seen that in, you know, film.

 we're starting to see some of that in music, but I think that's an area that we're particularly focused on, partnering with artists. And I, I don't think it's one where an artist should sell 100% of their name, image, and likeness, especially young artists, but, where we can hopefully bring some more tools to help them and to accelerate, th- their, their brands over time.

That's an area of particular focus for me.

[00:25:15] dmitri: So are you looking at, like, new types of merch, like toys or household objects or electronics, headphones-

[00:25:23] Sam: Uh,

it has to be- ...

[00:25:25] dmitri: musical instruments

[00:25:25] Sam: ... I, I would say it has to be true to the artist-

[00:25:29] dmitri: Yeah ...

[00:25:30] Sam: if that makes sense.

[00:25:31] dmitri: Yeah.

[00:25:31] Sam: Like, having, um-

[00:25:33] dmitri: the Rolling

Papers and, uh-

[00:25:35] Sam: Yeah, Rolling Papers from Marley, you know, makes sense.

 I think, sneakers for Nirvana probably doesn't make sense. that could make sense for another artist. you know, certain artists should have, like, uh, the ABBA Voyage really works great for ABBA. It's super kitschy music. I think it's perfect. Does it work for every artist?

Absolutely not. Like, not every artist is gonna have a biopic.

[00:25:55] dmitri: Yeah.

[00:25:55] Sam: Um, but there are other ways of storytelling, and we're, we wanna partner with the artist to hear their viewpoint on how their stories wanna be told and be good partners to them on the back end.

[00:26:06] dmitri: on the Music Tectonics podcast when we were at NAMM, the big musical instrument convention, we came across an old friend who goes by Modern Biology.

He does, Church of Mushroom, and he does music where he plugs synths into mushrooms and plants to get their signals to make it into, you know, kind of a ambient-

[00:26:22] Sam: Yeah

[00:26:23] dmitri: ... electronic music thing. But now he's partnered with a musical instrument, maker to have a $180, $200 synth called the Pocket Scion that you can hook up to plants and, and mushrooms, and he sells them at shows.

So instead of selling-

[00:26:37] Sam: That's cool

[00:26:37] dmitri: ... a $20 or $30 T-shirt- Yeah ... he's selling a $200 synth to his fans who can then make music like him.

[00:26:42] Sam: Yeah, that's really cool. Like, yeah, I think it's like finding ways to connect to audience is the key thing, and it has to be authentic to the artist.

[00:26:51] dmitri: Yeah. Amazing. Sam-

[00:26:52] Sam: Otherwise...

Yeah.

[00:26:53] dmitri: Yeah. This, this has been a blast. Thanks for doing the deep dive on all these questions and letting me grill you about all this stuff.

[00:26:58] Sam: Sure. My pleasure. Thank you, guys

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.