The Future of What

The Future of What

Founded by Music Biz President, Portia Sabin as a way to educate musicians on the realities of the music business, The Future of What Podcast has become a forum where the most significant voices in our industry discuss important issues of the day. Tune in as she hosts important industry figureheads and innovators alike in exciting discussions on where the music business is headed next!

Episodes

July 8, 2025 12 mins
We caught up with Virginie Berger, Founder of Don’t Believe the Hype and Advisor at MUSICx; fmr. MatchTune during Music Biz 2025 for a conversation covering the sentiments of fear and concern surrounding the uncharted territory that is AI. She addresses the complications and confusion today’s music market faces, current copyright wins & losses, the fine line AI walks in terms of what is & isn’t forbidden, and MatchTune's AI detecti...
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This week we speak with Jonathan Azu, founder of Culture Collective, on the state of the live industry, along with some exciting projects & collaborations he’s working on! Jonathan discusses how important it is for executives to diversify themselves in the same way today’s artists do, highlighting the multi-hyphenate approach he has taken for his business by working on tours, TV specials, philanthropic and DEI-related work, and dev...
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Edward Ginis, Founder and CEO of OpenPlay, attended his 15th Music Biz Conference this year. In this episode, he discusses how the Conference continues to evolve with the times, providing true substance and debate over platitudes and hype. In the same vein, Edward touches on just how crucial it is for our industry to nurture entrepreneurs and startups in a mutually beneficial relationship. He discusses how the Conference’s startup ...
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The difficulty common earplugs have conforming to each person’s unique anatomy leads to frequent struggles with actually keeping these devices in our ears – not to mention the poor sound quality they create by blocking out only the top frequencies. Biomaterial professor and industrial designer, Lauryn Menard may very well be revolutionizing the future of earplugs, as she has pioneered a solution that not only resolves these issues ...
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Top Drawer Merch began their journey through collaborating with artists to create charity bracelets. Today, they service clients both in and out of the music industry, producing apparel & a variety of other merchandise. Implementing a traditional brand approach, they understand that merch is not just a band’s logo on a t-shirt – it’s a story told through the product that comes back full circle, tying into a much larger ecosystem. K...
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Friends of Noise, an organization supporting the creative youth of Portland, Oregon since 2016, is expanding their educational programming with the opening of their all-ages venue, “The Off Beat.” The nonprofit hosts professional development workshops and produces all-age concerts where teens can perform on-stage, run sound, accept tickets & create posters, with their youth sound engineers being hired to produce local events rangin...
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Building on our series of interviews with Atlanta locals, we spoke with Byron, Ryon & Tyson Horne, better known as The Horne Brothers. To commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop, the brothers highlighted Atlanta in their 2024 documentary, “The South Got Something To Say.” Though Hip-Hop’s birthplace is credited as New York, the documentary discusses how a large share of popular hits and collaborations have come from Atlanta. It...
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Independents make up 40% of the publishing industry, and yet, they struggle to leverage deals. Why? It all comes down to industry fracturing that is preventing the emergence of their collective voice. Angry Mob Music CEO, Marc Caruso touched upon this in his Billboard op-ed, “Why It’s Time for Indie Publishers to Get Angry,” where he highlights how the collaborative environment of the indie publishing space makes rallying together ...
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Jennie Smythe, CEO of Girlilla Marketing, not only brings on unique & interesting clients, ranging from local businesses to well-known actors, but has proudly ensured her agency remains female-led throughout the 17 years she has been running it. With her tenure as a woman in both the music and digital marketing industries comes a great deal of lessons imparted onto her – thus, she decided to compile them all into a memoir. In this ...
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The financial loss our industry faced when touring came to a halt during COVID-19 has brought attention to the importance of the long glossed over live sector. From here, NIVA (the National Independent Venue Association) was born, where Jamie Loeb, SVP of Marketing for Nederlander, worked tirelessly to help secure the biggest arts grant program in history from Congress – $16 billion of aid used to keep promoters, festivals and venu...
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The Music Leaders Network exists to establish a network of underrepresented female, trans & non-binary music executives and support their industry careers. In our latest podcast, we speak with Music Leaders Network co-founders Remi Harris & Tamara Gal-On about the organization’s origins, its latest UK cohort & expansion into Nordic countries, the changing landscape of DEI initiatives in 2025, and so much more!
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With the Music Biz Conference coming to Atlanta for the first time this year, we’re continuing our series of interviews with local executives to learn more about the city’s thriving music & entertainment business scene. This month, we spoke with Atlanta-based Shachar Oren of a media technologies venture capital firm, Sound Media Ventures, on his experiences in the city at the crossroads of music and technology. Tune in for his pers...
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The music industry’s high-stress and ever-changing nature often leads to the development or exacerbation of mental health issues for artists & professionals alike. Particularly since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, music & research organizations have looked to study the effects being in this industry has on its workforce and develop resources to best support their needs. A new study from MusiCares and Amber Health seeks to...
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Generative AI has taken all creative industries by storm over the last few years, and the technology’s rapid adoption has already led to major headaches for the music industry. AI-developed “songs” have flooded streaming services, being used by bad actors to siphon royalties from hard-working artists and creating problems for music discovery. Jen, founded by tech entrepreneur Shara Senderoff, is an AI-driven creative platform that ...
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The Annual Music Biz Conference will take place in Atlanta for the FIRST TIME in 2025, gathering more than 2,100 global music professionals in a vital music hub city for four days of educational & networking opportunities to help inform the industry’s trajectory forward. This month, we’re kicking off a special series of interviews with Atlanta-based music & entertainment executives to learn why it is the PERFECT place to bring our ...
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The past decade has seen a vast uptick in the importance of the music publishing sector. Publishing rights now account for roughly 30-40% of rightsholder revenue, thanks in part to both the adoption of consistent digital revenue streams and major investments from the financial sector that have bolstered the value of music catalogs. In our first podcast of 2025, we talk to Reservoir Media President & COO, Rell Lafargue about the evo...
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2024 was yet another transformative year for the music industry, bolstered by the widespread embrace of AI integration, challenges to the cornerstone that DSPs have become, and maturing integrations in gaming & VR. In our final conversation of 2024, we speak with Vickie Nauman of CrossBorderWorks about how as music consumption becomes more passive, more interactive experiences enabled by exciting new tech may define the music indus...
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With the ever-changing landscape of the music industry, as well as new expectations from today’s artists, it’s time for us to check in on how the management field has evolved to meet the needs of today’s music makers. In our latest podcast, we talk to 10 and 8 Management’s Nicholas Mishko about what managers can do to best support their artists in the 2020s, when artists should enlist a manager & for what reasons, what new tech & r...
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The misuse of generative AI tech has already tested the status quo of music distribution & streaming, with DSPs being flooded with thousands of fraudulent tracks meant to siphon royalties away from rightful artists & rightsholders. AI:OK is a new initiative which takes a multi-pronged approach to ensuring that the music industry is ethical in its use of AI. In our latest podcast, we talk to AI:OK founder & CEO, Dr. Martin Clancy ab...
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Research divisions within music companies often operate to advance the products & services they offer. In the case of Deezer’s most recent research on identifying & tagging songs, it may improve the ways our business fights against bad actors. This month, we talked to Deezer's Head of Research Romain Hennequin about his team’s origins, its most recent paper which delves into how self-supervised learning (SSL) may help accurately id...
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