Is TikTok Ruining the Music Industry?

James Pumphrey and Jesse Wood helped build Donut Media into one of the most influential YouTube brands of the last decade. Then they walked away and started over. In this episode, they join us to break down what they learned building inside a YouTube incubator, what changes when ...  Show more

We recorded this episode from Big Sky, Montana at the annual Spotter Creator Summit - four days with some of the top creators in the world talking about where this industry is actually headed. And one idea kept coming up over and over again: We’ve officially entered the era of ab ...  Show more

Today we’re breaking down Universal Music Group. As one of the largest music businesses in the world, UMG is home to many of the world’s greatest artists, including Taylor Swift, U2, and The Beatles catalog. A discussion on UMG requires a deep dive into the history of music itsel ...  Show more

If you’ve been scrolling TikTok recently and noticed influencers are now dancing to video with no sound, silent disco style? Yeah - that’s actually the fallout of a complicated licensing battle between two giants: TikTok and Universal Music Group. The breakdown of licensing negot ...  Show more

Streaming hasn't just changed the way we listen to music, it's changed the way that pop music sounds. After years of losses due to the death of the CD and the rise of file sharing, the music industry has finally found a profitable business in streaming services. Streaming has ove ...  Show more

On TikTok, pop stars — Halsey, FKA Twigs, and Florence Welch among them — have been complaining a lot lately about their labels forcing them to make TikToks. As people spent the early part of the pandemic staring at their phones instead of flocking to concerts, the short-form-vid ...  Show more