The Future of What Music Business Association

Merch sales is one of, if not the primary, revenue generator for artists at certain levels of their careers. Tie this into the fact that merch proudly worn or displayed by their fans helps spread the word about their music, and it becomes all too essential for today’s artists to have a strong merch strategy. This important need is what led Vanessa Ferrer to found Merch Cat, a POS & inventory management tool that helps artists track what merch they sell each night on tour, easily identify what merch items & types of products are most popular among their fans, and unify sales across the merch table and a fan-centric shopping app. We spoke with Ferrer about Merch Cat’s story, the importance of using sales metrics to understand your fanbase, why every artist should have a holistic approach to merch sales, and beyond!

With almost a decade of experience securing copyrights for artists & rightsholders, Cosynd identified that music producers were being potentially priced out of registering their backlog of work with the U.S. Copyright Office. This led them to develop a new group registration service, allowing producers to save time & money by registering groups of beats and other musical elements instead of individually registering each element. We spoke with Cosynd CEO, Jessica Sobhraj about this new initiative, the company’s mission of supporting creators’ legal protections, the importance of registering music with the Copyright Office, and much more!

While looking into higher-ed music business programs, David Fritz and Steven Ship found that the segmented approach to curriculums was helpful for new students, but it did not help artists and songwriters who needed to know the ins-and-outs of how the industry works for their already established careers. This led them to start Creative Intell, which offers practical classes that give students insights and step-by-step guides on everything from recording and releasing a cover song to tracking all of their income streams. In our latest podcast, we discuss the platform’s founding, the feedback from early users, future plans for expansion and updates, and more!

With more artists creating and releasing more music now than ever, there is a major need for new revenue streams and funding options to help artists take their careers to the next level. This month on The Future of What, we speak with two representatives from companies that do just that: Nick Struzenski of Vault, a bespoke catalog brokerage & artist funding service, and Matthew Tilley of beatBread, which provides funding for artists & labels alike powered by data science. Tune in for conversations about their companies’ offerings, why the need for funding is so prevalent right now, how new technologies like machine learning are making it easier to provide funding, and more!

RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities) was founded in 2021 as a collective of artists, performers and music professionals with disabilities seeking to raise awareness of disability culture in the music business. Since then the organization has worked to advocate and create opportunities for disabled music professionals and ensure they have access to inclusive & accessible spaces, including partnering with the GRAMMYs to make the annual awards event more disability-inclusive. This month, we spoke with RAMPD’s founder, Lachi & President, Precious Perez to learn about RAMPD’s story and what the group is working on in 2024!

Sync placements have become a highly lucrative revenue stream for artists and rightsholders alike in recent years, as the production teams behind tv shows & movies constantly search for the perfect tracks to set the scene in their latest project. With that expanded attention to this part of the business comes a lot of extra paperwork, something that until recently sync licensing teams did not have help with. This month, we spoke with Trevanna Tracks’ CEO, Jennifer Freed and COO, Selina Meere to learn more about the company’s origins, its all-in-one solution for logging & organizing complex sync project data, and the importance of centralizing this data to increasing sync teams’ productivity!