Dmitri and Tristra review the industry news of ‘24 and look into the music tech crystal ball of 2025. Dmitri envisions that gaming will no longer be considered a venue, but rather a central outlet for finding music. Tristra raises questions about how a trade war and a Tik Tok ban could influence 2025. Listen to these predictions and more musings of what the next year will bring.
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Episode Transcript
Machine transcribed
0:00:06 - Dmitri
Welcome back to Music Tectonics, where we go beneath the surface of music and tech. I'm one of your hosts, Dmitri Vietze, also the founder and CEO of Rock Paper Scissors, the PR and marketing firm that specializes in music, tech and innovation.
0:00:31 - Tristra
And Happy New Year. I am Trista Newyear Yeager, the Chief Strategy Officer at Rock Paper Scissors and your other host for today. So on today's episode, Dimitri and I are going to take out our little crystal ball and smash it against the wall and see what's inside. I hope it's tasty.
0:00:50 - Dmitri
Actually, we're going to turn the mics on each other. Tristra is going to ask me about news and trend highlights of 2024. And then I'm going to ask her to pick up the shards of glass to see where things might be heading in 2025. Ouch, Tristra, what do you have for me?
0:01:10 - Tristra
Well, it seems like the first half of 2024,. There was a lot of talk about music streaming audience growth plateauing, especially in more mature markets like Northern Europe and North America, so that the heady growth area is kind of starting to sober up. So how should streaming services be thinking about where to go next, in your opinion?
0:01:25 - Dmitri
Well, I don't know that I'm a full expert on this, but it's something that I definitely think about and you know the early days of streaming. There were a lot of interesting experiments. I remember Spotify used to have an app store where people could build experiences inside the Spotify ecosystem and there were a lot of fun, little like games or I don't know. I remember one that was like a, a map of the world, and you could click into the map and start to hear music from those parts of the world. You didn't have it, had this like interactive component, but also kind of like the Apple um, like the Apple app store or you know, um just any place like Roblox, where, where developers are creating experiences inside of Spotify and for whatever reason, they got rid of it.
Maybe it was too expensive or maybe it didn't have as much engagement as they wanted it to. Maybe they wanted to focus on product that would really grow for subscriptions, but it was a lot of fun and I think part of what was interesting is it had a social listening component to it as well. There was more where you felt like you could see what other people were up to, discover more from individual people, a little less top-down vibes, and I think we're seeing a lot of audiences across the board drifting to more social platforms. It could be the Instagrams and the TikToks, it could be gaming, it could be things that we're not even talking about or thinking about, but the kids are. But the point is like what's that?
Like Discord for example oh yeah, like Discord, yeah, or earbuds or you know, like there's all these different things where people are kind of playing with how music has to do with their interaction with friends and meeting people and discovering music and all that kind of stuff that doesn't really feel like it's happening on the streaming services. So I'm I guess, when I think about it, I feel like one of the the the battles that the spotify's of the world have to fight is what do we do about this social listening component? It does not feel like that's what Spotify and the streaming services are about now. So there are probably gonna be some more experiments.
I'm starting to see a little bit more getting introduced from the streaming services. It's a little less aggressive and exciting than it had been in early days, but it's almost like they're like okay, we've gotten to this certain point. We need to play with this a little bit, and I think it could also lead to things related to live performance. You know Spotify's experimenting with video, on-air social engagement, kind of like what Stationhead does, for example, and even things like social commenting. That was missing, you know, was included in the world of the SoundClouds and the AudioMax and things like that, but doesn't really exist in a lot of the mainstream listening platforms. So people, you know, want to be more social with their music in a way. So I'm curious to see if, rather than losing market share to non-music first platforms for those types of music listening experiences, whether we'll see more experimentation from streaming services.
0:04:25 - Tristra
Yeah, that would be exciting. I mean as a user, that sounds really exciting, I know.
0:04:31 - Dmitri
I feel like I used to see more of what other people were listening to and that's not really prioritized inside a lot of the streaming services.
0:04:38 - Tristra
Yeah, I have no idea where my friends' feed went, because I used to be able to sign on with something like Facebook and you would get all of your friends' listening habits right there in the web app.
0:04:51 - Dmitri
Yeah. So I don't know if that's enough to drive engagement retention on subscriptions or growth on subscriptions, but it certainly seems like something that's missing from the music listening what I would now call the traditional streaming service.
0:05:08 - Tristra
Yeah, and we'll talk more about some of these things in just a second, I bet, but I want to talk about an issue that's really important to the Music Tectonics podcast and to many of our listeners, namely investments. So this year, you interviewed a lot of investors on the podcast, dimitri, and at our events. So what have you picked up about where the investment market is going and how that will impact music tech going forward in 2025?
0:05:32 - Dmitri
Yeah, I feel like this year was a lot of learning for me about the investment side of the music tech business or the music industry and I've tried to bring that to our community of listeners and attendees and that sort of thing. And I think what I've learned from this year and especially investors who spoke at the Music Tech Comics conference back in October is that in order to seek investment for music tech startups, music tech companies as a founder you have to think more broadly, you have to think more in terms of entertainment, creator tools, media and tech culture and you kind of open up the door to more potential investment if you're thinking in those broader terms. Why? Partly because I think some of the 1.0 and 2.0 investors in music tech tried some stuff, took some big risks, invested a lot of money and didn't see the return and the perception might be well, music doesn't return enough, or music tech doesn't return enough. The that's the. Either the total addressable market's not big enough, or um, uh, or because of how music has been devalued or undervalued in the current era, it's been tough to generate revenue on top of music tech platforms within the music space. But what I did not hear was that investors aren't interested in investing in music or music tech. It was more that they want to make sure that there's a potential bigger market that I can play to.
So I think one of the things that we'll see is music tech companies will continue to, because those that are seeking investment will have to. They'll continue to kind of widen their scope of who they are and what they do. Instead of being like just a music fan engagement platform, they'll need to be a broader type of fan or consumer engagement platform, and it doesn't mean that these companies won't get invested in. They just might get invested in investment companies, might be invested by investment companies that are thinking bigger and, as a result, they also are going to have to think bigger about what their market is and what their product is. Yes, it's music related, but it's not solely music.
Now there's always the chance that, because investors are investing less in music tech, that there will be opportunities within the music tech space that everybody's ignoring because they've created this new rule or this new sort of ethos of what they're willing their you know what their theory is, what their hypothesis is of what should be invested in.
All of a sudden, there could be opportunities where something really cool and disruptive happens that these investors were not paying attention to. So there's always the possibility that somebody maybe from the music tech space or maybe not maybe another type of VC or angel or fund of some sort will find the right disruptive music tech companies to like make a bigger bet on. Because the truth is things are not going to stay the same as they've always been. Like we can pretend like that, but if you look back over the history from you know playing music around a campfire to wax cylinders, to vinyl and cassettes and eight tracks and downloads and ringtones and streams it does shift. There's no way it's not going to shift. I don't think there's. I mean, you know, till the end of time, are we really going to be taking out our phones to listen to apps and that's how we're going to get our music? Probably not.
0:09:00 - Tristra
We don't know exactly what it's going to be, but something will come along.
0:09:03 - Dmitri
Yeah, yeah, something will come along. You know, for a while people thought it was going to be smart speakers, and there are certainly a lot of people that just use Amazon Prime because they've got an Echo speaker and it's built in and they barely have to do anything. They might have to listen to some ads. You know, you look globally and you say, well, youtube is one of the biggest music streaming providers, but nobody kind of puts it in the same bucket as Spotify because there's so much other content there. So there could be like a larger ecosystem play too.
But I have a hunch there's going to be something disruptive that none of us can actually predict at the moment. That will, you know, will generate a lot of revenue and will, because it has a lot of fan engagement, a lot of listening. So it could be in the gaming space as well. But I guess I do think there's going to be a large trend in 2025 for thinking wider. And then, because people are kind of ignoring music, something big will happen in music and some investors will regret that they made such a strong rule against investing in music tech.
0:10:01 - Tristra
I'm wondering if we can. I mean, I think the biggest rounds in 2024 were probably Zuno and Udio. Does that sound right to you?
0:10:09 - Dmitri
Oh, I mean, yeah, definitely there's that. I mean there was also some big catalog acquisitions too. I usually don't think about them, like when I'm doing the rock paper scanner or newsletter, I'm not usually posting about $200 million for Pink Floyd or something like that, just because it feels like a different category. And in some ways, those tech plays maybe you're right, those are the wider plays where they don't feel as music centric, even though they are about music creation and so forth. But yeah, those are definitely some of the big ones.
0:10:39 - Tristra
So let's talk about fandom, right? That's been another really hot topic this year. It's like suddenly the music industry rediscovered that there are music fans. No, that was me. That's me being a little bit facetious here, but seriously, fandom was on everyone's lips, whether they were saying this is the next big thing and everybody needs to be thinking about this, or saying everyone's overblown this and it's not going to work this way. Where are things going? Do you think like what do you? What have you seen in the world of fandom, dimitri, and how are you thinking about it moving forward?
0:11:11 - Dmitri
Yeah, I mean it's actually interesting because there was so much last couple of years has been so much talk about fandom and in some ways I'm like well about this, like it hasn't fandom always been a thing? We're just trying to figure out, like, how do fans want to interact differently? Some of it's about the balance of power, where fans are sort of saying we want more of something, they want more um influence, they want more engagement, but really it's just I think they have access to like the tools of amplifying their interest in a particular artist and um, and I think there's things that are shifting, but I don't know if it's totally different from the past. It's just because the medium in which people are engaging with music is so much different that these new types of interactions and engagements are emerging. So I actually think that artists at all level will continue embracing in listening, fan engagement, direct-to-fan e-commerce and, to some extent, do it on their own artist-specific domains, so it could be their website, for example, or they could have an app, etc.
Some of this may have a little bit to do with the evolution, or possibly even the breakdown, of artists' record label relationships or contracts. That there's a sense that you know when you become a great record label and you're really good at marketing and distribution and monetizing, you sometimes focus in on specific things that are going to return the most investment and sometimes, when you do that level of focus, it's really good for creating revenue streams, but not always really good for what the customer or the listener ultimately wants. So I think part of what's happening is artists are also renegotiating how direct of a relationship they should have with fans and it starts to split apart the role of distribution versus marketing of music. Right, record labels get the music to all the places, but then marketing exists off of the new retail, which is the streaming services, or even the ticketing and live events. There's other types of fan conversations that are happening elsewhere, and so either record labels start to realize there's an opportunity there and they start to facilitate that relationship between fans and artists, or artists say my label is not really doing enough of this, so I need to do it myself.
I need to figure out how to have these direct relationships with fans, just be building their own almost like label-like functionality for having a more direct relationship between the artist and the fan, and so I think we're going to see more and more attention paid to the direct-to-fan models. What will those look like? And that will drive what we're talking about around fandom. You know, having a group of fans pop up on some third-party platform doesn't necessarily do anything for the revenue of an artist or a record label, depending on what they do.
But it does create momentum and it can build audience. That audience could be saying I'm more engaged with this music and with this artist because I have a community around it. It could ricochet or reverberate within that community and then, as a result, maybe they buy more merch or they stream more or they buy vinyl or they buy tickets or they go to concerts, things like that. But I think the real thing that we're in the kind of final evolution of is what does direct-to-fan e-commerce look like when an artist is actually running their career? And it could be post-label, it could be pre-label, it could be parallel with labels as well.
0:14:52 - Tristra
I don't know, does that make sense? It makes a ton of sense and the direct-to-fan stuff does feel like it's maturing really quickly, with everything from TikTok shop to a bunch of other services and platforms that are starting to launch their own Shopify-like experiences.
0:15:08 - Dmitri
Yeah, and I'm curious about, like on the long term, what that means in terms of how fans segment from different platforms. You know, like, if you're going to engage with fans through your own website, what does that mean for Spotify, is it, you know, will we go back to? I mean, there's always this lifelong or this, I don't know, this era long question of do you put all your music everywhere or do you make something exclusive just for VIP fans or for people who are paying, or you know, in different places to sort of engage fans either in a more profitable way or in a way in which you can contact them again, you know, so you can maintain those relationships. So I think there's a question about that what happens with more direct to fan engagement as it relates to what it means for platforms?
0:15:59 - Tristra
So for years our buddy, mark Mulligan, has been talking about music's competition for attention, talking about other platforms, the competition for attention from other entertainment and media spheres. So what areas should the music industry be keeping an eye on in that regard? Where are the like potential zones of peril for the music industry that they shouldn't sleep on?
0:16:20 - Dmitri
Yeah, I think that you know there's lots of possibilities here and there's just so much competing for our attention right now, which is what Mark talks about a lot, and I guess the space that I think is still not fully reached maturity for the music industry would be what I think of as digital third spaces. You know, there was this huge move towards social media and all this video creation and activity, engagement, commenting and so forth that's happening off of the streaming service, kind of like what I was talking about before, when we're saying where is the social listening happening? But what I'm seeing is the growth area and this is not, this is not breakthrough information that I'm sharing here. But, um, I'm starting to think about video games and what were formerly known as metaverses as the future of social media. So it's not just hey, gaming has this huge market. Music should think about gaming the way music has thought about sync, like there's this audience, there's engaged digital media users who are out there. Let's go get our music into the games, which I think there's been a certain amount of that, where it's like a concert inside of a game or a soundtrack inside of a game or composing music for a game. That's kind of like take sync or take live and apply it to video games. But if you start to think differently in terms of this is actually where people are gathering that in 10, 20 years, the kids these days, instead of just staying up all night to play a game, that's actually where they meet their friends, that's actually where they hang out with their friends. But as they grow into young adults, that's where they're going to be listening to their music. Still, they're not necessarily going to sign off of Roblox, minecraft, fortnite etc. And log into a music platform. Their social life is going to exist within games. So then, starting to think about what does that mean for music If social media is no longer posting videos and sharing videos and watching videos and commenting on videos, but it's actually like engaging in this digital experience, what does that mean for music and what will the future of music listening look like inside of those spaces?
Right now I think it's still early days. You know like sure you can listen to a radio station inside of um grand theft auto, or you can go to a concert or an experience inside of roblox or fortnite, um, and there's even some music creation like splash, that exists inside the roblox ecosystem where you can actually make music or dance to music, etc. But what happens when it deepens another generation? And I don't know exactly what it looks like? Is it? Is it back to the metaverse, virtual musical experience, or is it something else? I have a hunch it's. It's more social and that's the. That's the thing I think people aren't actually kind of like yet wrap their hand around what that means for for music I think you're right.
0:19:16 - Tristra
I mean when I when I see younger folks, for instance, playing online games.
A lot of times they're actually broadcasting music via the chat um so, and a lot of, you know, younger folks discover music by just listening to hearing, hearing a track played over and over again, um, that someone is like turning on instead of doing like a voice chat on a on a first person shooter game with multiplayer. So it's, uh, it can get. It can get. It's good. It's pretty wild out there and I think there's going to be some spaces like that that the music industry hasn't really figured out how to, how to license and make money from. Um, going to be really, really interesting. So this has been great. We're going to take a little break here and we're going to be right back when Dimitri gets to ask me all the questions.
0:19:58 - Dmitri
You want to stay on top of the news about music and innovation. I know, but how do you focus on the stories that matter when there's a firehose of information coming your way? That's why I launched Rock Paper Scanner, a free newsletter you can get in your inbox. There's a link in the episode show notes to get the latest edition and a fresh one every Friday morning. Every week, I'm scanning hundreds of news stories from the music trades to the tech blogs, from the music gear mags to lifestyle outlets. I handpick just the things music innovators need to track. All right, that's bitly. Slash rpscanner in your browser. Get the news in your inbox. All right, we are back. Now it's time for me to turn the tables on you, Tristra. I've got some questions for you, but let's just dive in. Is 2025 the year of the smartphone as music creation engine? I'm curious to. There's been so much talk about, you know, the laptop musician, the bedroom musician, but now is it shifting?
0:21:14 - Tristra
I really think we've reached this pivot point where there were phones, you know, and people's use of their phones has gotten to this place where making audio on your phone like sometimes really really sophisticated audio is both possible and interesting to people. So, for example, we've been noticing you know, bandlab as a client, as you know, dimitri and we have been noticing a lot of young artists who are kind of bubbling up out there saying the phrase BandLab on my phone. They're specifically talking about using their phone to make their first tracks, and sometimes even their hit tracks that are charting and, like I don't think this is purely a function of BandLab, as wonderful as it is. There are a lot of other ways we're starting to see phones emerge almost as these, like the beating computer heart of a bigger musical experience, or that you know, if you think about, say, a drone, right, when you fly a drone, you often like if you get a DJI drone, you put your phone in there and that's like how the drone controller functions. Really you can't do it without the phone, at least not the models that I've used. So I think we're seeing a lot of musical instruments and other things like DJ controllers that are being built around phones Almost as, like I said, like the way the laptop used to be where you'd like, you know, change your sound card, get a mic in there, you know, connect a MIDI keyboard.
Now we're starting to see more and more compact things that are all phone based, and you know this isn't like a totally new trend. A lot of very interesting apps and hardware has been created for the phone, but we've seen everything from this year what like flute simulators, all sorts of really wild things you can do on a smartphone that I don't think people were even thinking about two years ago. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how this tiny little I mean relatively tiny little computer becomes the beating heart of music creation and even more than you know, the phrase democratization has. You know, I have some questions about that, but this, you know, a laptop is pretty expensive, right, and a sound card is pretty expensive. So this is like the cheapest possible way someone could make music and they can make serious music now with it. So 2025 is going to be interesting for phones.
0:23:33 - Dmitri
Yeah, it's interesting that you bring that one up because, um, I think that, uh, you know, I've always wondered what, what's it going to take for, um, music creation to become more mainstream, the way that photo and video did with Instagram, youtube, tiktok, um, and the missing piece might be the phone?
You know, like the whole, the reason there was this mass adoption of those visual forms, um, which led to the invention of new types of forms, like the video skit or the prank that are like, or different types of dance videos and all that kind of stuff, is that, um, you know, you had the means of production in your pocket at the time, and I think that's what's interesting in terms of whether you want to call it democratization or not, but, like, the opening up of access for more people to just create music. I will say I think one of the reasons music has been tougher to do that with is because creating music from scratch is just really hard. You know shooting video. You can shoot video all day long and then eventually, if you have enough time, you can find a piece of video that actually is useful for some purpose. But with music like, you can play a lot of notes before anything sounds good.
0:24:46 - Tristra
That's true Again, the way things are being set up for people. I think there's a lot more framework being built and like scaffolding for people to get started and then, as they gain more proficiency, they can throw away the scaffolding and do more from scratch and with everything from like humming something and converting it to MIDI, like all these really cool workarounds that are tapping into people's innate musicality in a way.
It's really, really cool, and people are using audio on their phones really differently than they were. Even maybe two years ago, though some of these trends were farther along in other parts of the world outside the US. But voice memos like all of a sudden everyone is sending me voice memos. I don't know why.
0:25:29 - Dmitri
They got lazy.
0:25:30 - Tristra
Yeah, exactly, it's easier than even yelling in your phone and having it completely garble what you're trying to say as a text, so voice memos. I think that kind of habit will make it. It's going to get easier and easier for people to imagine doing interesting things with audio, because they're using audio all the time as a communication method.
0:25:51 - Dmitri
That's a really good point and, you know, making music is one way to interact with music, but there's also all these other ways to sort of play with music as well, and I'm curious, given all the different ways people are using music. Now, is this year that just passed, 2024, the year that music licensing has changed?
0:26:10 - Tristra
You know, I would love to hear what someone like Vicki Nauman says to this, but I do think there has been a real thaw when it comes to licensing and a new openness, especially on the part of major rights holders, to some of these ideas that were completely off the table or very, very difficult to get across. So you know, I'm thinking about, for instance, you know, folks who were trying to license DJ sets eight years ago, for example. They had a real uphill battle and now we have a whole flock of different interesting apps where you can make your own mashups, where you can remix things, where there's karaoke apps, where you can make your own mashups, where you can remix things where there's karaoke. You know you have something like Audio Mac where you can, you know, basically do like slow and reverb on different tracks and share them within the app. So, while there are some pretty strong guardrails in place that are supposed to keep things from just bleeding out all over the internet, right, there's a lot more licensed opportunity for just an ordinary person with no musical music making background or skill to just start playing around with music and seeing how they like it and doing what they want.
I don't know this generation of teens, for example, grew up with garage band on a device right like on a tablet or something like that, often the tablet they got from their school. If we're talking about the US, so again you've got a whole bunch of people that are way more used to being able to mess around with audio at least a little bit, and you know the industry is kind of caught up to that in a way that I'm sure there's more progress to be made. And again I would love some feedback from people who've either tried a really radical thing and it hasn't quite worked out from a licensing perspective, or from experts like Vicky, who we've had on the show many times. But it feels like something's changed and I've heard that from folks who are trying to champion these new apps and approaches that things are much more possible than they were even a couple years ago. So it's kind of exciting. I think we're maybe we're going to have a breakthrough in 2025 where this becomes much more normalized I agree.
0:28:19 - Dmitri
I feel like I'm hearing about more startups that are successfully licensing music for their apps their platforms and, um, I don't know that the prices have come down necessarily and it could be a little bit that startup founders have kind of sobered up to the fact that if they're going to pull this off, that's, that's one of the, you know, that's the, that's the cost of entry, but they it definitely seems like the pace of the conversations can also change the ability for somebody to license the music. If record labels are at least willing to keep those conversations going and move things a little bit further. A little bit further that you know a startup can run out of runway before they can even pull off a license. If you know, if it feels like it's going to be 10 years to pull it off, well, why would they spend 10 years of their lives taking this kind of risk? But it does seem to be moving. It's not like lightning fast, but definitely moving faster and I think that helps as well.
0:29:13 - Tristra
I think there's also an understanding that an app doesn't need to launch with a catalog of 100,000 songs, that even 10,000 is more than enough for a lot of applications, and maybe even 1,000, maybe even 100 songs, depending on what you're doing. So all of these things can really make it a lot easier to get across the finish line, I think, and labels are much more open to doing these kinds of deals from what I hear.
0:29:38 - Dmitri
So yeah, I think there's some agility in what a license looks like, like doing a smaller catalog or making your use case very specific. So, yeah, great points. So widening out to some other things that are going on in the universe. I'm curious if you think and I have no idea, so that's why I'm asking you, put you on the spot Do you think we're going to see tech, or even music tech, take a hit in a trade war in 2025?
0:30:06 - Tristra
Yeah, this I don't know. I don't want to freak anyone out, and I again I'd love to hear what y'all out there think about this, but I'm seeing some rumblings. I mean, there's always there's been tech related rumblings between China and the US for the past what 10 years, and they've really heated up a bit lately around chips. But there's some other levers that both the US and China are pulling. For example, china recently banned certain kinds of minerals that are essential to batteries and some other very, very important pieces of tech, and as the new administration in the US comes into power, we're going to probably see even more saber-rattling on both sides.
And what that can mean, I'm wondering will that mean a real new amount of complexity for the supply chain? If we can't go to the go-to manufacturers in, you know, mainland China, who else is out there? Are people going to be scrambling to try to figure all this out? And if we're talking about hardware and new devices et cetera, that's a big question mark and I think it's something that needs to be taken into account. But you know, we'll wait and see. I'm sure it's not going to happen overnight, but there seems to be a lot of indication that things are going to get kind of ugly.
0:31:29 - Dmitri
You're saying that, in response to the idea of tariffs, china is banning the export of some of these materials, very basic commodity level minerals that are necessary for technology, for manufacturing and development.
0:31:42 - Tristra
Yeah, these rare earth minerals. So you know, china and Russia control most of the world's supply of certain very specific rare earth minerals that are really really important, especially for batteries. So you know, that's just one example of all the possible shakedowns that could happen between these big trade partners. But China is really important and right now many people in the US are doing all they can to sour relations with the place where a lot of music tech stuff gets built. So it's an interesting, we're looking forward to an interesting year in 2025. And it may all come to nothing. Here in the US we're used to certain people spouting certain things and then not really coming to much, but this seems to be a serious pillar in what the incoming administration wants to put forward. So we'll see. We'll see. Get your stuff now if you're going Get those orders now the holidays?
0:32:40 - Dmitri
Yes, Get now if you're going Get those orders now the holidays, yes, yeah, so we got to take a quick break and when we come back I want to ask another kind of policy related thing. We'll be right back. Are you headed to the NAMM show in Anaheim, california? Let's meet up at the biggest musical instrument convention On Saturday, january 24th, at 1130 am to 1215 pm. We're gathering all the musical instruments, software and app innovators at NAMM. Come join us at the MIDI Association Showcase in Hall A, that's booth 10302.
If you're looking at the NAMM app, everyone gets the mic in this networking session. Give your 30-second introduction, connect faces to names around the room, then break to network one-on-one Leave with connections to collaborators, customers, allies and friends. Shaley and I will be there making sure everyone gets a chance to connect. Come say hello at NAMM. Okay, we're back. Trish, I'm curious what you think. You know you read a lot of kind of scanning of media, and so I kind of use your brain and your radar as an indicator for how I should be thinking about things. Will the new administration's policy tank efforts to make AI work for rights holders?
0:33:52 - Tristra
Ooh, this is a really interesting one. So it kind of depends where you stand in the discussion of how AI and copyright should play together. But there are a lot of concerns, both in the US and in the UK, that there's sort of increasing pressure on the governments of our countries to change the way. Up until now, it feels like copyright is like you know. People say, like, well, copyright is copyright and you can't use copyrighted materials to train things. That was sort of felt like that might be the majority opinion Again. Hey, lawyers, holler at me if you think I've gotten this wrong. But now we're starting to see more and more like wait a second, actually it should be allowed, it should be fair use to train on certain kinds of maybe copyrighted things.
And when it comes, when it comes to AI deregulation, which is on the table right now in the US for the incoming administration, and when you have somebody like David Sachs who is, you know, going to be heavily involved in determining how this deregulation occurs, you're looking at a situation where rights holders could really end up getting shut out in the cold. I'm sure that there are people who are going to fight tooth and nail, as they should, for their rights to sort of have copyright honored under these new AI regulations or this new AI copyright regime. But if we look at some of the ideas proposed in the uk just recently, um, and you know, if you want to, if you want to get a full breakdown from the rights holder perspective or the pro rights holder perspective, um, ed newton rex of fairly trained, has a really, really great view of this, but you know, we're not looking at people who are particularly sympathetic to musicians, record labels or publishers. Um and um, you know I think that's an important thing to keep in mind that there is a bit of a shift going on right now, and how that all plays out in 2025 is going to be super, super interesting. I, you know, I do think, I personally think that we're going to end up with a good, with a situation that honors copyright, but how exactly that works, and are there going to be carve outs and are there going to be like?
Is it going to be more like you have to opt out, which is always a really difficult thing for everyone to do? Are you going to have to enforce your rights, like with a takedown type regime? I don't know. It's going to be a really? And how do you take something out of a model that's been trained right? Like that's a hard question, like you can't like just pull out one song and be like nope, at least you know, maybe you can, but it's not technically difficult or common. So, yeah, it's going to be a weird year.
0:36:38 - Dmitri
Yeah, definitely, and it's so interesting to think about how so much on the policy front could be shifting. That's impacting this, whether it's this, you know, trade wars, whether it's policy around AI and crypto and things like that.
0:36:53 - Tristra
that's going to have an impact on our industry, which leads me to another one which has been talked about for a long time, but now is it coming to a head. I don know. What do you think is going to happen to tiktok? Oh god, almighty, um, it seems like every, every, every day, there's a new story about an appeal or about a lobbying effort. Um, on behalf of tiktok in the us. Um, I don't know, it's that, I have what. What's your bet? I mean, it's like heads or tails right. We got a 50 chance of being right. Is it going to be banned or not banned? I'd be really shocked if it ends up being banned yeah, what do you?
0:37:27 - Dmitri
think yeah I, I mean, I've gone back and forth on it um, just because you know trump's um origin or his earlier campaign was so strident about getting rid of it and and's control of what people are content, they're watching and also what data they're collecting and all that kind of stuff. But I but it's, and then he used it for his own campaign, so so and now he's hanging around with the CEO.
Yeah, yeah, I just don't know what to believe from, from whatever's being said publicly.
I I think it's interesting like between the between the trade war conversation and the mineral bans you were talking about for export and this um, which is really both focused on china.
Um, it feels like there's there's conversations that could shift where all this goes, but it also could be positioning specifically for negotiating power and it may or may not actually have the end results of what Trump's calling for.
Basically, it feels like in both cases there would be so much resistance that it would almost take too much public will to bend to some of these policies. And I think in the case of TikTok, it has such a strong user base in the United States and even if it was banned and it had some sort of shell company in America that was running it, it's hard to picture that it would really change the impact ultimately, whether china has control maybe. I mean, it feels like that's what that's sort of like the intent. I don't know whether it's actually just some latent xenophobia or racism rather than an actual shift in economic policy to say we don't want this much kind of data and information control across national borders. But I guess, if I had to bet a dime right now. I'd probably bet that it's not going to get banned and it's not going to disappear.
0:39:33 - Tristra
All right. So if so, listeners, dimitri and I will send you a dime if, if we're wrong, if TikTok gets banned just one of you.
0:39:40 - Dmitri
Just one of you, one damn dime.
0:39:42 - Tristra
What am I saying?
0:39:43 - Dmitri
One damn dime, one tiktok gets banned.
0:39:50 - Tristra
just one of you just one of you, one damn dime. What am I saying? One damn time, one damn time, all right. Well, this has gotten heavy, man. I know I don't. I didn't mean to kick off the year this way, but I knew that the music industry was going to be, was going to be, embroiled in such difficult, um international intrigue.
0:39:58 - Dmitri
Yeah, and you know it's a lot of its question marks. It's just so unpredictable right now. Hopefully it'll all turn out better than the worst case scenarios here. And it's just hard. It's really hard to know. There's just so many question marks. Things are so different now.
0:40:14 - Tristra
Well, one thing I can say for sure is that there's going to be a lot of great music in 2025.
0:40:20 - Dmitri
Definitely, absolutely.
0:40:23 - Tristra
That's the one thing we all know in the industry is there will be, good music.
0:40:28 - Dmitri
Yeah, yeah, cool. Well, there's music tectonics.
0:40:29 - Tristra
Right, there's gonna be another music tectonics oh yeah, absolutely.
0:40:33 - Dmitri
Oh yeah, yeah, no, in terms of what, what to look out for from us, rock paper scissors and music tectonics. Our conference is definitely coming back. It's going to be fun, it's going to be exciting. There'll be a reason to not talk about all these things and instead get some business done in the sun, november 4th through 6th, in Santa Monica and at Rock Paper Scissors. We have a lot of upcoming cool things going on as well.
We're going to be launching a membership program for companies that want to benefit from both the PR, the network and the expertise of the Rock Paper Scissors team people like Trister, our chief strategy officer, as well as our publicity team. So there's an opportunity to build a cohort. We'll train you around PR, we'll do some PR for you and we'll also help you build your network in the music industry. So look out for the Rock Paper Scissors PR Club, which will be launching in 2025. We've also partnered up with some incredible marketing partners as well that we brought into the team, whether it's influencer marketing or Kickstarter marketing and management.
But also we have a video production crew. Now they can do your video editing. They can come out to you, fly to you, interview one of your execs for a couple of hours and create six months worth of content, or even do a product video, whether it's software or musical instrument. So we're launching a lot of new services rock paper, scissors. We're trying to be as agile as required in the music industry in 2025 as well, and we are widening out. We'll continue to be focused on music tech tech, musical instruments, music making, software licensing, distribution, all that kind of stuff, but we're also, you know, moving into the consumer electronics world, sports tech, wellness tech, um, gaming. So, um, I'm really excited, Tristra, for the new year. We're going to keep applying the easy pants creativity to what we do and keep serving this community, no matter what happens.
0:42:23 - Tristra
All right, Happy New Year everybody.
0:42:26 - Dmitri
Happy New Year. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to Music Tectonics. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on your favorite podcast app. We have new episodes for you every week. Did you know? We do free monthly online events that you, our lovely podcast listeners, can join? Find out more at musictectonics.com and, while you're there, look for the latest about our annual conference and sign up for our newsletter to get updates. Everything we Do explores the seismic shifts that shake up music and technology the way the Earth's tectonic plates cause quakes and make mountains. Connect with Music Tectonics on Twitter, instagram and LinkedIn. That's my favorite platform. Connect with me. Dmitri Vietze, if you can spell it, we'll be back again next week, if not sooner you're listening to 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.