Scott Cohen on his optimism for the music industry – and JKBX's 'transformative' launch

Welcome to the Music Business Worldwide podcast supported by Voly Music.

Joining MBW founder, Tim Ingham, on this podcast is Scott Cohen, the CEO of JKBX.

JKBX is a new platform that enables investors (including so-called ‘retail investors’) to acquire royalty shares in hit songs. It will, in future, also allow you to trade those royalty shares by selling them to others.

JKBX launched in September and according to Bloomberg had over $1.7 billion -worth of music assets secured. Right now on the platform, JKBX is offering royalty shares in hit songs like Halo performed by Beyoncé, Rumour Has It performed by Adele, Welcome To New York performed by Taylor Swift, and many more.

However, as you read this, you can only reserve your acquisition of royalty shares on JKBX. Before it completes any transaction, the company is in the process of attempting to secure regulated approval from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (aka the SEC).

As well as its primary investor, Dundee Partners, JKBX has reportedly attracted strategic investors including Spotify, Live Nation, YouTube, Red Light Management and others. 

Things to know about Scott Cohen before we get into the podcast? He is the co-founder of The Orchard – which he co-launched with Richard Gottehrer in the second half of the nineties, before selling it to Sony Music for a total of around $250 million, partly in 2012 and partly in 2015.

Before joining JKBX, Scott was most recently Chief Innovation Officer at Warner Music Group, where he kept his ear close to the ground on tech such as artificial intelligence, the metaverse, and blockchain.

On this podcast, we ask Scott about JKBX’s prospects, the changing nature of technology’s involvement in music, and the lessons he learned building the Orchard into a $250 million company…