Today Dmitri speaks with Con Raso of Tuned Global, about the evolving landscape of music streaming. They talk about profitability and innovation opportunities, and Con shares thoughts on making music more social, advancing curation and discovery through AI, and the role of personalization in listening experiences.
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Episode Transcript
Machine transcribed
Dmitri: Welcome back to Music Tectonics, where we go beneath the surface of music and tech. I'm your host, Dmitri Viza. I'm also the founder and CEO of Rock Paper Scissors, the PR and marketing firm that specializes in music innovation. Today we're talking to Con Rosso, the managing director at Tune Global.
People continue to be curious about the fate and circumstances of streaming. So we brought in an expert who's helped build multiple streaming services for different use cases in a variety of regions around the world. And joining us today on startup sessions, we have Maurice Pam, founder of Punchline Connect.
We'll hear a little bit about what they're up to in a great little, uh, recording. He sent in now onto the show. With streaming services, getting a lot of positive news on profitability in recent weeks. I wanted to find someone who could talk about the future of streaming [00:01:00] and to try to help me understand where the technology and listening is going, and I found the perfect person for the job. Con Rosso is the founder and managing director of Tune Global, A leading B2B music and streaming platform, powering innovative digital music experiences, a lifelong music technologist, Kahan.
Has developed disruptive solutions through every major shift in the industry, from CDs to downloads, streaming, and now AI and Web3. Under his leadership tune, global remains at the forefront of music tech innovation, providing cutting edge tools for rights holders, brands, and streaming services to navigate the evolving digital landscape.
If you've been to Music Tectonics, you've probably met Khan. He's been on panels and been on the podcast before. Welcome back to the show, Khan. How are you?
Con: Great to, uh, be back. Thank you.
Dmitri: Yeah, I appreciate you jumping in because there have been a lot of positive news coming out of the streaming services and obviously it's had a great impact on the music industry and you've got a unique vantage point. We see these reports of great profits from players [00:02:00] like Spotify and YouTube. I guess I would ask, is the streaming war over and also is there room for innovation for upstarts in the space?
Con: It is an interesting question 'cause I guess from what we do, we really provide a broad range of music services, not only to people who are doing streaming, but maybe in other innovative areas. So I think the. That question is an interesting one because is a profit for the rights holders and the artists, which then may we start to look at the broader market, or is it just the DSPs themselves and their public personas or whatever else may be there?
So I think, you know, we're seeing innovation still on both sides. We're seeing innovation from, um, our clients approach. D. I'm, I'm gonna say that it varies broadly with what they're trying to do across the world. When you consider what I'm gonna call non-traditional [00:03:00] versus traditional markets, uh, and non-traditional being emerging markets.
Eastern Europe, countries like Kazakhstan, Stan, large parts of Asia, uh, large parts of, uh, Africa, they make up about 85% of the world's. Population, but often when we look and make our decisions of what's happening with streaming and dss, we take this very western emerging markets
Dmitri: Great point.
Con: But when you go into the other areas, there's really cultural differences there.
And so what are these companies trying to do? What is their threshold that they want to make available on their service that aligns with their cultural values? Right. And also we've seen. A lot of people such as, you know, we, we run a service in Greenland and their main focus is how do they really ensure that local music [00:04:00] continues to thrive, not only in their environment but in a broader term, especially through, you know, Canada and other parts of the region.
So I think there's a lot of room still for innovation. And we are seeing that innovation continue. But I think if we. If we consider a plateau at the moment where there's been a, I guess I'm not gonna say stagnant, but growth has been less than ideal for a number of the major labels from streaming services.
I think we are continuing to see what is actually next. What, how does the TAM actually grow the total addressable market for. I think what we looked at, say three years ago, and we said, here's what the addressable market is for music. I would say when we looked at it today, it's probably double what it was because [00:05:00] our ideas of how music goes through and becomes available to users has changed.
Dmitri: Yeah. Interesting. And, uh, you know, some of that I, I see in your answer is about. Additional regions, new, new places that just don't have as much developed streaming market or economy. And that's a place that Tune Global plays a role in helping new types of DSPs that are specific to particular countries or regions get off the ground with technology there and, and listening features and, and all that kind of stuff.
But I also hear that there could be a room for innovation in those places because of cultural differences or just a different sort of like history or runway or lead up to where those. Regions are with listening, uh, here in the west on, on a lot of people's minds is this disconnect between music streaming and social interaction.
Like it's really been fragmented and there's been this disconnect between artists and fans. I'm curious, what do you think is the solution to making music feel more social again? And are there opportunities that you see in other parts of the world to do that?[00:06:00]
Con: Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's, it's interesting as we're recording this today, Spotify's announcement on their new service that allows super fan engagement actually just hit the market, right? And so we are seeing that innovation start to come around. I would argue, has music ever been social? Right. If we look at companies like TikTok from the very start, it's really around the social interaction around videos and creation of videos and consumption of videos.
If we look at Instagram, it's the same thing about images, but music's always been a consumption, not creation sort of part of the process. And I think our challenge in our minds has been, I guess, on two ends. One is. What the rights holders allow you to do. And that's always a challenge, right? That's always a challenge, but I think we're aligned with the rights [00:07:00] holders in terms of how do you actually create deeper innovation for people to be able to now feel that they're part of a community. And an example of that, Dimitri, is, you know, just very recently I've come out with a new product from an acquisition we made a couple of years ago where we bought a company called Pacemaker, which is called Social Radio. And Social Radio. We've designed. To be able to be used by any particular music service.
They can just use it by using our tech in their, um, in their applications. And it really enga. It takes a TikTok like concept and says, you've got both creators and consumers. How do you actually turn your consumers into creators and create more of an opportunity around this? Now there's a zillion ideas, right?
Social radio, not the. That exists to [00:08:00] actually bring true social innovation into music applications.
Dmitri: So social radio, do you mean like, uh, almost like user generated radio where there's a host that's playing music and you can bring people on mic. What do you mean by social
Con: Yeah, yeah, no, great question. Now, social radio, from what we are doing, I mean the, the sky's the limit where we want to take it, but where it is at the moment is that you've got a creator that actually can start to broadcast their own, uh, for want of a better word, radio station, but they can actually interact with their audience.
Both through text and uh, voice, they can actually start to add visual effects and other elements without changing what they're allowed to do. With music there, they can do various fading, so in a lot of ways they can actually present themselves to the audience as someone who's actually created something without being a musi, a musician themselves, or an artist.
Themselves. And so that engagement we found has been in our early tests, it's been [00:09:00] extremely, an enthusiastic response, is probably the way, best way to put it. So we feel, we feel that it can actually be used in. Traditional radio circles, it can be used in DSPs. But again, I wanna reiterate where your question was at around social.
I think this is just one example, but it's how do you actually allow not only artists to engage, which we've seen a, a number of those super fan type of concepts, but also users to engage. 'cause that's what's happening on the other platforms. How do you bring that growth and that opportunity to there, to music?
Dmitri: Yeah. Well that's a, that's a forward-leaning thing around social interaction that's intriguing. And I like your example, and I could see there, there could be other things that come into play. What about the, the evolutions around curation and discovery? I'm curious, has the, the heyday of innovation and playlisting and discovery passed and been supplanted by algorithms and ai, or is there more innovation to come?
Con: It's, it's a really interesting thing [00:10:00] when you look at curation discovery, isn't it? Right. Because I would say we haven't really changed, just the tools that we are using may have changed in the. You know, we would use product experts and you'd have to sort out who your product expert was for the particular genre or type of music you are interested in, and then you'd follow them to actually see a new products that come out, friends, et cetera.
And while some of those things came across in streaming services, the challenge has been that with really large amounts of. Data, you should be able to provide better insights for users into what they're actually looking for. So I don't see personally AI or algorithms as something that is. Supplanting something else.
I see it as a continued evolution of what we're doing. So some of the areas that we're doing a lot in [00:11:00] is a, a broad range of products that we're calling Tuned iq. And Tuned IQ actually looks at a whole lot of listening history across different people and at different times of the day and a whole bunch of other data that we can look at and says, okay, so what may you be interested in?
So a great example, Dmitri, is if we look at you in a really simple way and say, what is the cohort that you're part of that maybe is discovering brand new music, and how could you discover it as well? I'm gonna suggest that your listening habits are different in the morning where you might be going for a run or a walk or training versus the night where you really just.
It's difficult to do that without deep technology and to be, to be clear, what, what's Our role is tuned in that our role is that it is difficult for anything except the very largest players in the [00:12:00] market to actually be able to compete at this level because of the amount of research that's required.
And so we feel that we can fill that gap and provide opportunities for. Services to actually use something like that. But going back to your question, no, I actually think, I actually think we are gonna discover more music than ever before, and we are going to get out of one of my personal hates, which is really just getting in that top 5% of music and being able to drill a little bit deeper to understand it.
Dmitri: Yeah, totally. That, that, that makes sense. And, and that's my wish as well. I, I like weird, I like weirder stuff. I like more, uh, unique, interesting things. So I always wanna dig deeper. But something about your response in terms of how any individual demographic might have one listening habit in the morning and another one in the evening, and having a sense of.
Who are these people? Leads me to ask you, will we see more personalization continue to develop in, [00:13:00] in listening habits in tech? Because there's even talk about a song changes for a particular listener or mood or time of day and, and that sort of thing too.
Con: Yeah, I mean it's, it's super interesting, isn't it? Because I guess when we look at personalization, I think it's inevitable that as we get more data available, we are gonna be able to provide. A better user journey for that user. And it's not just the music. I think the music, and we'll come back to that in a moment, is, is key.
But we're also looking ourselves at the interaction between what we call behavioral data, and that is how does a user actually journey to get to a point that they're actually ready to listen. And what we would call transactional data, which is what they've actually listened to and where have they listened to it from.
Merging those two pieces together allows us to actually now start to use things like ml, machine-based learning to actually understand [00:14:00] what's the journey for you versus me on being able to get to a song, and then how does my application change. Or your application change, not only in the music, but in the journey to get to that
Dmitri: I could see like a more personalized interface that works for me. Yeah.
Con: Even the player, what's important to you as a player is probably tremendously different to what's important to maybe in a a 15-year-old as a player. Right. And so that can actually change, I think the music itself. Has got great opportunities to change, certainly the order and what you do with music.
Absolutely. The music itself, I think to be fair, I think we've gotta see what plays out in the next couple of years with all the different core cases that are playing through at the moment and understand just how much we can push the needle to personalize people's songs. But I think the opportunity's there to actually say, can I [00:15:00] actually change VPMs or some other elements of songs?
Based on what people are actually doing. And does that hurt anyone? Does it bring more relevance? I, I think we're gonna have two groups of people that stand on either side of that answer. Right? But if we are talking about being able to bring more dollars to artists and to allow them music to be consumed in a different way.
I would suggest that, is it all that different than looking at a piece of art and having an opinion? And those opinions are different because it all takes in where we are coming from and does the music change actually affect those outcomes in a negative way? I think there's a lot of discussion to be had in that space.
Dmitri: Yeah, no, I like con how you can take it top level. I think the fact that you're working with so many different. Entities that want to create their own version of a streaming service and kind of modularly build with the tech. And the research you have allows you to see trends on a [00:16:00] global level that probably other folks like direct streaming services maybe can't even comment on.
'cause they can only see inside their own walled garden. Um, so I like talking trends with
Con: And from that side, Dimitri, I certainly feel really privileged and always excited because to your point, absolutely, we are talking to people, uh, all the time that are actually coming up with ideas and there's, there's a certain philosophy that I have to say, who am I to actually decide if an idea is good or bad?
I mean, if I could do that, I'd certainly be a different business run. Innovation comes from. The start of an idea and being able to grow that idea through with many mistakes along the way and, uh, and that, and we love that. We love doing.
Dmitri: Yeah. Well, since we're talking all sorts of big picture things about streaming and you've, you've brought it up a little bit. We, we might as well try to tackle monetization before we wrap up here. Do you expect to see shifts in monetization and streaming, [00:17:00] and what do you think the impact will be for artists and rights holders?
You've mentioned it, but I'd like to get your full take on that.
Con: Yeah. When we look at monetization, I would say inertia often keeps things the way they are. And we saw that through the period of vinyl and in the period of CDs where, you know, there was, there was challenges to the change because at that time, you know, there was cash cows coming out of those areas. I think as streaming innovation and slow down in revenue like.
Recently, UMG reported a 30% drop in streaming service growth, right? Everyone to get on the same page with understanding what are the new models that we can take advantage of, whether you are the rights holder or whether you are the streaming service Now. We actually sit often on both sides and understand both sides of that equation, and we get it.
Both sides have challenges in that area. Uh, a streaming service has very little net profit to play with at the end of the day to actually be [00:18:00] able to make some dollars, especially when they're not at very large macro scale. But I think. The innovation that we've spoken about, whether it's social interaction, whether it's other features, whether it's what I spoke about earlier with Spotify putting out that they'll, this new LE level of service will have a 5 99 additional tier to it.
The more difficult question becomes how we get together with both the rights holders and the people who are innovating and find the right split of that revenue so that we encourage revenue growth, which is that we encourage research and development. And I don't think it's simple enough just to say, you know, that the pie grows and the rights holders continue to get the entire pie.
While I understand you need to protect that as well. So I do think that that's probably the biggest. Challenge I would personally throw out to [00:19:00] the industry to say, how do those discussions occur to say this is really ripe for innovation. And from innovation, we are gonna grow something that can scale more like a TikTok than perhaps limited to where we are scaling through at the moment with music.
I do think the ubiquity of music is going to just greatly expand. I talked about the TAM before in the total addressable market. I think when you look at how music is consumed today in all different areas of our lives, and as we move into more digital elements and we move into areas where we. Different types of entertainment, whether it's direct entertainment or indirect entertainment.
I think all those areas, uh, really are rife for growth in revenue. I personally don't think whether it's a pool based model or as user centric model is gonna make all that much difference. I think we have to look for innovation that we can actually put into a music [00:20:00] service and actually say, great.
People are willing to pay for that.
Dmitri: Yeah, that's it. That's the catch at the end, right? It doesn't matter how much people are getting paid out if nobody wants to pay for it,
Con: Exactly
Dmitri: but I, I love the optimism of this. Further growth of the market overall. I think you're right. I'm working on a theory on my own, in my head a little bit about what's the next platform or the next format after streaming, right?
You watch it go from from vinyl to to cassette to cd to downloads, to streaming, and then you start to see things like the UMG news you said about growth. It's not that. Revenue has gone down, but growth is starting to plateau in streaming and then you say, okay, well what comes after streaming? There was talk about blockchain and Web3 and all this stuff, and there's talk about generative ai.
But then I start to say, well, maybe it's that. It's music's actually gonna get appreciated everywhere. That now that it's been the digital side of music has matured, we're gonna get to a place where, like [00:21:00] you're saying, Khan, there's gonna be so many other places where music can be, whether it's passive listening or, or lean in, whatever, and that should raise the value of the whole market.
Con: Absolutely. So, you know, is it more attribution, whether it's in an AI model or whether it's in a music consumption model that actually allows much more payments to occur because you can successfully attribute the listening to it. Perhaps.
Dmitri: Yeah. Or new use cases as well. So yeah. Awesome. Oh, Kahan, this has been great. Thanks so much for coming back on. It's always great to hear your perspective. Like I said, you've got this, this global view that few others have. 'cause you're tapped into so many places and because people come up to you and say, can you do this?
Can this be done? And you're like, ah, yeah, let's try.
Con: exactly right. Great to be part of it. Thanks for Thanks, Dimitri. Really
Dmitri: Yeah. And we'll see you soon.
Con: Thank you. Bye.
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Maurice: Hello Music Tectonics. This is Maurice, founder of Punchline Connect. punchline to bridge the data gap between our favorite audio tool companies such as Doll and plugin vendors with the customers that use their products. do this by integrating with DO and audio editing software vendors. To capture a data snapshot of [00:23:00] all brand and product attributions during export, copy of that product data is notarized to the blockchain analyzed, and a dashboard experience of utility metrics is delivered to audio tool companies and creators. I first came across this problem when working as an audio engineer. I realized the only item that comes out of an audio export is an audio file. all the data about what took place in the audio software remained isolated, dormant. The thing that nobody else was working on is making use of any audio provenance data, such as do and plugin data the way there are credits for creators.
There's no credential system for brands and products. used to create the audio. provide value to audio tool companies by providing detailed metrics about how their customers use their product and additional products per audio file, which is [00:24:00] proven to lead to better ROI on product development and increase certainty on future updates.
Future creators gain additional revenue opportunities with the option to sell their data our native marketplace. I'm especially proud of our team and advisors for continuously believing in each other and our shared vision of becoming the leader of collecting and delivering audio provenance data. Some of the results we've gotten so far include getting product validation from some of the biggest names in music tech completing our first phase of development. Thank you. Music tectonics.
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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.