Music Tectonics

If anyone could see the immediate deluge of concert cancellations when COVID-19 became the planet's immediate reality, it was ubiquitous concert-discovery platform Bandsintown's co-founder and managing director Fabrice Sergent. Listen to his conversation with host Dmitri Vietze, as he describes how he watched 100,000 concerts get canceled in just a couple of weeks. He translated his team's passion for helping performing artists to raise money for artists in need, re-build touring revenue losses, and leapfrog the past barrier for live music video streams. In just a week, Bandsintown has had artists add listings for over 20,000 hour of live streamed concerts, regardless of what platform they choose to use. Fabrice talks about a new type of intimacy that is emerging and believes that this new form will not replace concerts but become an additional revenue stream and a new experience with staying power. The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Visit MusicTectonics.com to learn more, and find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Let us know what you think!

Imagine you are editing sound for a TV program. You work together with the show runner, music supervisor, and director to get the sounds just right. You play portions back together several times discussing how every note and every effect should be timed with the video. But what happens when those teams are immediately dispersed for weeks thanks to COVID-19? Ameen Abdulla had already created a platform for just this type of remote collaboration. It's called Soundwhale. He schools Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze on all the tools you need--from video chat to remote synced audio-video review--to keep the work flowing, even when team members are far apart. The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Visit MusicTectonics.com to learn more, and find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Let us know what you think!

The founders of SoundStorming join Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze to talk about how their music collaboration app cracks open the song making process. Their vision is to allow fans and artists alike to collaborate at the point of creation. Capture an initial musical idea on your phone and before you know it someone across the ocean will add a layer that makes you think about your snippet in a whole new way. SoundStorming is already being used as an A&R tool to find up-and-coming artists or for collaborators to find each other and cut a record. The company is also finding traction with schools, where students from afar can record and archive their progress over time. While other collaboration apps are half instrument, half studio, SoundStorming is specifically for creativity for anything you can capture on a mobile device. The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Visit MusicTectonics.com to learn more, and find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Let us know what you think!

Long before COVID-19, Ivan Talaychuk pivoted from artist to tech startup founder because it was such a challenge to collaborate with his bandmate in Kiev, Ukraine. He was tired of the tangle of emails, Dropbox, Google Drive, and text messaging to share and comment on music tracks while they were in process. He literally traded his synthesizers to fund his company Pibox at first. Now it's one of the favorite collaboration tools on the web. Now that everyone is on lockdown due to a worldwide pandemic, Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze interrogates Tavaychuk about the features Pibox offers to musicians, educators, and industry teams as they are thrown off course and forced to collaborate remotely. Find out about commenting on waveforms, in-line chats with cloud storage, and folder integration that makes sense for talks between band mates, artist and label, or teams and clients of production libraries. And hear tips for any artist looking to collaborate remotely for the first time on this timely episode in our series about remote collaboration, live streaming, remote education, and more. The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Visit MusicTectonics.com to learn more, and find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Let us know what you think!

Now that the concert industry has come to a screeching halt, the live music industry is turning its attention to livestreaming. A little startup formed in 2009 called Stageit is seeing an unprecedented surge in performances and revenue. They grossed $500,000 in 2019 and in just three weeks have seen $850,000 roll in. Listen to Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze talk to Stageit founder/CEO Evan Lowenstein about how artists are using Stageit to sell tickets, get tips, and engage their fans. Evan goes on to talk about a cultural shift that he thinks will last far beyond the current health crisis. The stigma of asking for money has been replaced by seeing that fans yearn for a connection with artists and are used to paying for things online now. And artists are no longer expecting to replicate an in-person performance online, but instead are creating a new type of intimate online performance experience. Find out why Evan thinks now is the greatest time to try live streaming for the first time.

Industry journalist Cherie Hu joins Music Tectonics host Dmitri Vietze for a conversation about her research and summary of live streaming music platforms. The two discuss the big picture of the music field's response to COVID-19, approaches of specific artists, and dive into how this moment might lead to leapfrogging some of the past barriers for music tech use cases like performing on a screen, virtual reality live performances, or collaborating remotely. Listen to the two compare audience engagement in live streaming versus in person shows and go down the rabbit hole of what makes artists feel like it's harder than ever to make a living in music. The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Visit MusicTectonics.com to learn more, and find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Let us know what you think!

There is a new generation of apps and platforms for listeners to become musicians and many of them allow you to collaborate remotely. What will make them reach the next level? A worldwide quarantine! Sounds like a perfect time to launch an app, right? Tim Exile — electronic artist turned tech founder — rocks out some tunes on this episode, jamming across oceans, while he explains to podcast host Dmitri Vietze just how looped collaboration sidesteps the latency challenge of working across the planet. He tells how users from four countries formed a band and even though they have never met in person are about to release a new record. He describes how artist Flux Pavilion is sharing an Endlesss track a day for the month of March. And he says that while some people are wasting away their lives playing Candy Crush, others are obsessively making music for the first time on Endlesss. The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Visit MusicTectonics.com to learn more, and find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Let us know what you think!

Touring screeched to a halt with worldwide social distancing. But you know what to do: live stream! Luckily platforms like YouNow have been brewing with fan-building and monetization tools for several years. On this episode host Dmitri Vietze talks to YouNow president Jake Branzburg about the skyrocketed growth they are experiencing during the COVID-19 crisis. You'll learn about the diversity of creators on the service, how to engage in reciprocal performances, and what it takes to bring or build your fan base when live streaming. If you simply want to transfer the one to many concert performance experience into the online world, you'll probably fail. But if you want to learn the new art of monitoring chats while playing or bringing a fan on stage virtually to have a conversation, you... will... win! Listen to Jake and Dmitri get into the specifics and give you the context you need to grasp the world of live-streaming in the era of isolation. The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Visit MusicTectonics.com to learn more, and find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Let us know what you think!

Amper's AI-powered music composition tool, Score, helps content creators make music tailored to their projects, whether they're seasoned musicians or novices. Amper Music CEO Drew Silverstein places Amper and AI music in context of a long history of algorithmic music, and an even longer history of increasing accessibility to the means of music creation. How will AI music composition technology transform the jobs—and careers—of musicmakers? What makes Amper's sample library different from all the rest? How does Amper address the thorny legal issues around rights and splits when humans and AI collaborate? And if Score sounds like a powerful tool, wait until you hear about what Amper's API can do! Note that this episode was recorded in early March, before many music industry events (including Music Tectonics Meetups) were moved online, postponed, or cancelled. The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Visit MusicTectonics.com to learn more, and find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Let us know what you think!

Emma McGann returns to share what every musician needs to know right now: how live streaming can keep fans connected and replace income lost to cancelled gigs. When her U.S. tour had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, UK-based singer songwriter Emma McGann drew on 6 years of experience live streaming on YouNow and replaced every tour date with an online concert. Through sales of virtual tour passes and perks, she's been able to recoup her losses. Emma tells Dmitri everything artists need to know to get started live streaming: What do fans want from the live streaming experience? How is performing on live stream different than playing in a venue or shooting a video? How does monetization work? Get Emma's practical advice on how to set up your live streaming space, choose the essential equipment you need, and build your live stream community. The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Visit MusicTectonics.com to learn more and find links to all Emma's projects. Find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and let us know what you think!