Topic
Live Music and Ticketing
Concerts, festivals, touring and the ticketing technology behind live music. 25 conversations with founders, investors and experts, newest first.
Episodes (25)
Freddie Moross, founder of Myndstream, explains how owning music assets powers functional soundtracks for spas, hotels and wellness spaces.
Rob Abelow of OpenStage explains why artists should super-serve their closest fans first, since that visible fandom pulls in everyone else.
Jan Willem, co-founder of Momants and Paylogic, describes his five-year ticketing exit and why he still bets on founders.
Stager's Mike van Gaasbeek and CM.com's Yannick Corbeau on why ticketing startups get bought, why signing fees are loans, and who really sets the fees.
Lauriane Saint-Denis of Music Tech Hub explains why festivals struggle to use audience data and how smaller festivals can start building their own.
Armada CEO Seamus Menihane, who turned a screen-printing hustle into a 170-person merch company, explains how tour and e-commerce merch deals actually work.
Jody McKinley, founder of Eleven75, explains how fractional specialists help early-stage music companies with revenue, product and licensing needs.
Christine Osazuwa, founder of Measure of Music, explains why the music industry lacks a career meritocracy and how investing in talent could fix it.
Yvan Boudillet, co-founder of Music Tech Europe, explains how AI can reshape live music, from stage design to fan data, and why venues are labs for experiences.
Entertainment lawyer Priyanka Khimani of Khimani & Associates explains India's independent music ecosystem, copyright legacy and market entry for founders.
Dr. Tom Fritz of Jymmin explains how agency, cross-cultural music making, and human connection can keep live music relevant as AI grows.
AI Jake explains how Warner Music Group grew streaming revenue 10.2% in Q2 2024 through major hits and strong digital partnerships while rivals slowed.
AI Jake from Sound Connections summarizes the 2024 Luminate Midyear Music Report: streaming growth, indie gains, vinyl demand, and live music's local impact.
AI Jake reports on Blackstone's $1.5 billion acquisition of Hipgnosis Songs Fund, covering 40,000 songs and a $2.2 billion enterprise value.
Josh Greenberg of Green Mountain Lodge explains how superfans are defined by engagement and how artists can build recurring revenue with productized offers.
AI Jake reports on Warner Music Group opening its first fully-owned office in Lagos to boost A&R, operations, and marketing in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Martin Berg, CEO of DX, explains his super ticket concept, why NFT scalping fixes are overhyped, and how fan data could reward an artist's true fans.
TikTok's Michael Kümmerle and CTS Eventim COO Alexander Ruoff explain how their new ticketing partnership gives artists a direct sales channel in Germany.
Dmitri Vietze, founder of Rock Paper Scissors and the Music Tectonics Conference, explains why music tech startups struggle to attract investors.
WISE founder Philipp Grefer on bringing German and Chinese music scenes together since 2007, and this year's conference debate over AI-generated music.
AI Jake reports independent artists and labels earned $4.5 billion from Spotify in 2023, half of its payouts and four times their 2017 earnings.
Hannah and Lena, co-owners of Sørveiv, explain how their Norwegian festival and conference connects artists, labels and music tech companies.
Jørgen Iden, co-founder and CEO of Crescat, explains how collaborative software replaces outdated riders and running orders in live event production.
Turo Pekari of Music Finland explains why music runs on personal relationships, how he built his own network, and why Music Tech Europe is launching.
Sondre Pedersen, CEO of Mintix, explains how blockchain ticketing lets venues and artists earn a share of the secondary ticket market.
Questions these episodes answer
Why does Myndstream own its music instead of licensing from other rights holders?
Moross says Myndstream's whole model depends on owning its music catalog rather than licensing tracks from others. Owning the assets shapes how the company can price its software affordably and gives it a lean cost structure it could not run if it had to clear commercial licenses for every track it plays.
What problem did Myndstream find in spas before it built anything?
Spas were often still running CD players bought fifteen years earlier, or staff used free Spotify or YouTube accounts that let an ad interrupt a paid treatment. Moross says that guest experience, being advertised to in the middle of a massage, is what convinced him music needed a dedicated commercial solution.
How does Myndstream make the same brand sound different across hotel locations?
Myndstream treats the soundtrack as part of a hotel's brand rather than generic background music, so a chain can make one property sound geographically and culturally different from another while staying commercially licensed and on-brand. Moross says this branding layer also opens paid pre and post-treatment rituals as an upsell.
Why do wellness travelers matter commercially to hotels and spas?
Moross cites Global Wellness Institute figures putting the wellness industry at $6.8 trillion, and says wellness travelers in hospitality spend 40 percent more than other guests. He frames wellness customers as people investing with intention, which is the commercial case hotels and spas need beyond guest experience alone.
What advice does Freddie Moross give founders building in wellness music?
Asked where the next opportunity sits in wellness music, Moross says he would avoid generative music because volume is not the industry's real problem, there is already plenty of music available. He would focus instead on distribution, on getting the right music to the right listeners once that infrastructure exists.
Why should artists focus on their superfans instead of chasing the algorithm?
Abelow argues that artists should stop chasing reach from the top down and instead super-serve their closest fans first, since a visibly thriving fan world is what pulls in new fans. He calls this an inside-out model rather than a funnel, because loyal fans create a flywheel that keeps generating fresh attention.
How did Radiohead grow its known fan base so quickly?
For their first tour dates in nine years, Radiohead required fans to register through OpenStage, which validated each person as real. That single campaign tripled the band's known fan base within one or two days, turning a decades-old act into a band with a much larger, verified contact list.
Why is bot detection important for artist fan platforms?
As artists offer more exclusive access and early ticket opportunities, bots try to grab that access to resell it, so platforms have to confirm a real identity before counting someone as a fan. Abelow says this problem keeps growing and requires constant work like two-factor checks and anti-scripting tools.
How does Western fan culture differ from K-pop fandom?
Abelow says K-pop fans are comfortable with open gamification, competing publicly to help an artist win. Western fans, especially in indie and alternative music, resist feeling gamed or told what to do, but they still want to be recognized and rewarded for years of loyalty rather than treated the same as anyone else.
Why did Paylogic build a white-label ticketing platform instead of competing directly with Ticketmaster?
Jan Willem says Paylogic saw that big ticketing companies charged high fees and owned the relationship with fans that really belonged to event organizers. Paylogic let organizers sell tickets on their own website to their own audience, which most visitors already trusted, and its fintech background let it handle huge peaks like Tomorrowland that other ticketing systems could not process.
From: The 5-Year Exit Nightmare: Surviving My Acquirer's Collapse
What happened when Paylogic's acquirer SFX ran into financial trouble?
SFX had bought roughly 25 to 35 companies at once and did not pay for all of them, so Paylogic was legally sold but not really run by its new owner. When SFX neared bankruptcy, new debt investors took over, kept Jan Willem on to run and protect the company, and the eventual sale to French company Vivendi did not close until 2018, five years after the first deal.
From: The 5-Year Exit Nightmare: Surviving My Acquirer's Collapse
Why did Jan Willem start The Chorus at Amsterdam Dance Event?
During his Paylogic years Jan Willem started Founders Dinner with two other founders, because talking to founders in the same phase helped more than advisors could. When Amsterdam Dance Event's tech stream folded, its organizers asked him to rebuild a startup community there, which became The Chorus, a place where startups connect with big companies, investors and each other beyond competing for a prize.
From: The 5-Year Exit Nightmare: Surviving My Acquirer's Collapse