The Future of What

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!

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 perspectives on why Atlanta is the perfect place to bring our Annual Conference, ranging from its status as an international business hub & large artist community to its bolstering presence in the music tech space & growth as a home for venture capital in the last decade.

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 look beyond the need for mental health resources and instead analyze how access to these resources impacts those who receive them. In our latest podcast, we talk with Amber Health’s Dr. Chayim Newman and MusiCares’ Theresa Wolters about how both organizations support the music industry ecosystem, the need for robust mental health resources for music professionals, and the groundwork for this new research initiative!

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 seeks to mitigate these ethical issues by putting artists’ needs & concerns first and foremost. This month, we talk to Senderoff about Jen's origins, the platform’s role as a companion tool for artists, the ways the company has involved & aimed to compensate artists since its inception, and much more!

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 Annual Conference and all the things that make Atlanta’s music industry so special. Up first, we’ll hear from Tobago Bonito from local record store DBS Sounds & founder of the F.A.M.S. (Forever a Music Store) Coalition!

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 evolution of the music publishing sector, what changes in the industry as a whole have contributed to publishing’s importance, what the future may hold, and much more!

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 industry in the year to come!

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 & revenue streams managers need to be aware of, advice for those looking to break into management, and beyond!

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 about the initiative’s origins and goals, as well as the immediate outlook on AI’s impact on our industry.

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 identify AI-generated tracks uploaded to streaming services, and much more!