Songwriters Global Digital Streaming = . . . with Joe Conyers III

Dec. 31, 2018

At MusicBiz in Nashville in May 2018, Joe Conyers III shared his thoughts and experiences about a wide variety of international and domestic songwriter royalty, rights, markets, and metadata issues. For more than 150,000 songwriters and more than 20,000 music publishers, Songtrust has been collecting songwriters’ royalties, creating systems that were ready for streaming’s global growth path. Joe Conyers commented that Songtrust was ready perhaps 5 years too early for global streaming’s current growth. We talked about Songtrust’s global operations, which includes their headquarters in New York and offices in Tokyo, Sydney, Los Angeles, Nashville, London, Amsterdam, and Paris. Tokyo and Sydney were added in the past few years, and we spoke on how Japan is “just about to” take off. We spoke of the impacts on streaming growth from cheaper smartphones in urban markets in China, India, the Middle East, and Africa, and growth in Latin America from the telco side. We then spoke of the challenges of “ancient infrastructure” and legacy systems from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s at the collecting societies, and the impacts from playlists having such global reach. We wrapped up with discussions on the futures of Alexa and terrestrial radio, with an optimistic spin on the opportunities coming from the “normalization” and “glorious years” of streaming in the future.

Guest: Joe Conyers III, Co-Founder and General Manager, Songtrust; VP Technology, Downtown Music Publishing

 Joe was named a Digital Power Player by Billboard Magazine in 2017 and 2016. At Downtown, Joe oversees digital/new media licensing, product management, and other technology focused initiatives. In addition to his role at Downtown, Joe leads its Songtrust rights management platform, an online service that helps music makers and rights holders collect their royalties. Since joining Songtrust just after the launch of its prototype, Joe has led its growth from under 1,000 to over 100k writers with works recorded by Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Bruno Mars, Selena Gomez, Frank Ocean, other GRAMMY winning/nominated artists. Joe advises a number of startups directly, through downtowns portfolio, as a Techstars Music Mentor and others less formally. Prior to entering the music industry, Joe worked in a variety of startup to large technology, media, and finance companies in strategy, product and analysis roles. Songtrust: https://www.songtrust.com/ Downtown Music Publishing: < https://www.dmpgroup.com/ Personal website: https://joeconyers.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeconyers/ Twitter: @JoeConyers


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Transcript