Innovating Music

Innovating Music, hosted by Dr. Gigi Johnson, has spent years delving into the profound changes shaping the music industry from 2016 to 2023. We’ve explored how technology and social shifts impact music lives, collaborations, and distribution.

For anyone interested in music industry careers and understanding change our archive offers invaluable insights, especially regarding major streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

Discover:

  • How artists grow their careers by engaging with the marketplace and distributing music worldwide, including insights into balancing passion with business.
  • The critical role of playlist curation (both human-curated and algorithmic) in music discovery and promotion on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, and how to gain traction.
  • The use of data from Spotify for Artists, Apple for Artists, and other services to understand listeners and drive strategy, emphasizing the value of transparency in where content travels online.
  • Discussions on monetization, licensing, and managing intellectual property in the evolving streaming era, including new approaches to getting money to artists.
  • Insights into how companies are tackling challenges like messy music data and streaming manipulation using AI and blockchain, and building platforms for artists to showcase creativity without licensing complexities.
  • The evolution of platforms, from early streaming companies and iTunes to the rise of new content formats like short-form video and the creation of new genres. The podcast also covers how Spotify has impacted the industry.

While the Innovating Music podcast is currently on hiatus, we invite you to dig through our extensive archive to gain a deeper understanding of the music industry’s past and present. Our episodes capture the insights of the main professionals helping steer and make sense of these transformative changes.

 

Interested in continuing to explore these themes of music industry careers and innovation? We invite you to explore Rethink Next programs and events for future opportunities and conversations.

Your Host: Dr. Gigi Johnson

 

Dr. Gigi Johnson designs futures programs that help creators and organizations navigate AI-driven change. Through Rethink Next, she builds experiences and labs that blend systems thinking, creative practice, and agentic AI. She ran the UCLA Center for Music Innovation and co-founded the global virtual conference series Amplify Music. Earlier, she produced media foresight programs while teaching MBAs and executives at UCLA Anderson, after financing media-sector M&A at Bank of America.

Episodes

Music 3.0 with Vickie Nauman and Andrea Young

Vickie Nauman and Andrea Young joined us to talk about Music 3.0. Vickie had written an article for Rethink Music, a blog by the Berklee College of Music, about Music 3.0. Music 1.0 in this discussion was music sold as physical goods and Music 2.0 was the...

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Changing Mindsets in Music Innovation with Michele Tharp

To marketer Michele Tharp, innovation is creating a better way to do something, and working with an inner desire to make a change. She focuses - as we do - on changing mindsets -- new ways to work with technology, development, and platforms. She shares with us two...

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Reporting from the Leading Edge of Music and Tech

Cherie Hu has grabbed a front-row seat to tech and music change. Forbes grabbed her after graduation from Harvard, bringing her interests in music and tech to their own digital pages. She also brings that magic to both Billboard, Variety, Pitchfork, and Music Business...

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2019 — Future of Music in Los Angeles

Gigi Johnson invites listeners of this Innovating Music podcast to join in research, events, and conversations in 2019 on the possible Future(s) of Music in Los Angeles.  She discusses the Center's research so far in looking at tech's impact on live performance.  She...

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Music Beyond the Speakers

Gigi interviewed Adam Moseley, a long-time producer/mixer/engineer who is exploring new adventures in spatial audio, mixed reality, and sound technologies.  Adam also teaches at UCLA's Music Industry Program at the Herb Alpert School of Music. Adam shares the...

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SF Nurturing Music By the Bay

We were joined by Maggie Weiland and Dylan Rice from the SF Entertainment Commission to talk about how they work to nurture music in San Francisco.   Gigi had met them at an event hosted by Jocelyn Kane, who created many of the public policy rules and...

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New Songs for Global Singers

Jonathan Stone shares the adventures of Rocket Songs, which connects songs with singers from around the world to discover and perform. He talked about the past century or so of relationships between singers and songwriters, and the challenge of connecting those dots...

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Bridging Cultures — Translating Music Lyrics

Robert has been on a 14-year quest: to translate music legally between languages and cultures. Lyrics are the #1 search term on the internet and Robert shares the story of LyricFind's path to creating a legal marketplace in the US for song lyrics, up to nearly a...

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