The Future of What

Episode #183 : In the few weeks since our last episode, COVID19 has changed the world and how we interact with one another, and that has had many impacts upon the music business as a whole. With venues and record stores closed to the public for the foreseeable future, musicians are having to find new ways to interact with their fans, and because of the quarantine, most of those interactions are happening virtually. To help with this transition to a digital-only reality, the teams at Facebook and Instagram are rolling out new products and initiatives to help musicians and their fans establish new types of relationships that will work in the new paradigm faced by us all. In this episode, we revisit a public conversation between Portia Sabin, Perry Bashkoff (Instagram) and Mayola Charles (Facebook) that was part of a MusicBiz Live! webinar that occured on April 6, 2020.

Episode #104: 2017 marks the 40th anniversary of iconic band The B-52s. It's also the year founding member Cindy Wilson embarked on her solo career, releasing her debut, 'Change,' on December 1st through Kill Rock Stars. On this episode, Portia talks with Cindy about her new album, adapting to today's music industry, and her advice for new musicians.

Recent months have shown an uptick in the frequency and variety of fraudulent music streaming practices, allowing bad actors to collect undue revenue by criminally inflating the number of streams for tracks they upload to DSPs. In the first of two episodes this Fall covering music streaming fraud, we talk to CD Baby's Chief Revenue Officer, Christine Barnum about the history of fraudulent behavior since the start of digital music sales, CD Baby’s participation in the Music Fights Fraud initiative, why there is a need for a coalition to combat streaming fraud, and what steps are being taken today to address the issue.

Shane Told (Silverstein, River Oaks), joins us to talk about his podcast, Lead Singer Syndrome, making it in the music business and more. Subscribe to The Future of What on iTunes: http://apple.co/1P4Apk0 Follow us: Twitter: http://bit.ly/2gOYMYM Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thefutureofwhat/ Instagram: http://bit.ly/1L6T8fl

In just a few short years, song lyrics have gone from a “nice to have” addition that music fans could seek out in liner notes or on the internet to a hot commodity on streaming platforms, graphics-heavy promotional videos, user-generated content and beyond. This month, we talk with LyricFind Founder & CEO, Darryl Ballantyne about the evolution of lyric-centric products, how his company liaises with labels & publishers to help support their needs, the renewed importance of proper song translations as music’s reach breaks cultural barriers, and much more!