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.