Ghazi
South by Southwest has revealed its initial keynote and the second round of featured speakers for the 39th edition of its annual Conference, scheduled for March 7-15 in Austin, Texas.
Leading the charge is the Conference’s Keynote Speaker, IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna, who will lead From Sci-Fi to Society: The Next Era of AI and Quantum Computing as he looks past the “sci-fi hype” surrounding the titular subjects and instead focuses on their real-world advantages.
“Exploring the benefits of new advances in technology while addressing their potential challenges represents a core part of the SXSW experience we curate each year,” said Hugh Forrest, Co-President and Chief Programming Officer in a statement.
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“We are excited to announce Arvind Krishna as our first Keynote Speaker of the 2025 season. His session on the convergence of AI and quantum computing will cover what this monumental shift in technology will bring to humanity.”
Krishna’s addition to SXSW coincides with the announcement of Featured Speakers, which include founder and Chief Trend Curator at The Non-Obvious Company Rohit Bhargava who will lead the 7 Non-Obvious Secrets Of Understanding People To Predict the Future session; founder and CEO of EMPIRE Ghazi; director and social media strategist Alex Haraus; author, Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy, and a Horn Distinguished Professor and Endowed Professor of Public Policy and Public Law at Texas Tech University Dr. Katharine Hayhoe.
The list of speakers also features CEO of Bumble Lidiane Jones; activist and astronaut Amanda Nguyen, WNBA Champion, WNBA Finals MVP, 2x WNBA MVP, 2x Gold Medalist, WNBA Rookie of the Year, and broadcaster Candace Parker; author and music attorney at Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman Donald Passman; and author, speaker, teacher, advisor, podcast host, and futurist Rishad Tobaccowala.
Many of these speakers will also be involved the featured sessions which have also been announced today, which include Spill the Tea: A Strategic Guide to Office Gossip with Contributing Editor at the Harvard Business Review Amy Gallo; Cleaning Up Our Atmosphere: Carbon Removal Prepares to Go Mainstream with Climeworks COO Douglas Chan and the aforementioned Dr. Hayhoe.
This new announcement of speakers complements SXSW’s previously-revealed first round in September, which included Dr. Peter Attia, Johanna Faries, Douglas Rushkoff, and more.
SXSW will take place from March 7-15 in Austin, Texas, with full details regarding their newly-announced speakers and sessions available via their website.
EMPIRE is not for sale, said company founder/CEO Ghazi at the Trapital Summit on Thursday (Oct. 3) in Hollywood.
While appearing on a panel titled “The Rise of Independent Music” at the inaugural edition of the conference, Trapital founder Dan Runcie played a short game of over/under with Ghazi, asking the EMPIRE head how many calls he’d recently received about selling the label/distributor.
“You run a music company that has done well from a business perspective and many companies that are your peers in this space are being acquired, they are selling, they are raising money,” Runcie said, adding that EMPIRE is an attractive company to acquire at the moment. He then asked Ghazi if he had received over or under four phone calls in the last 12 months poking around to see if he would sell or allow investment.
“I haven’t gotten any phone calls,” Ghazi said sternly to the audience. “Because everybody knows I’m not for sale. Period. I am dead serious. I am living my purpose. There’s no price on that.”
The declaration comes as independent music distributors like Stem, Downtown, ONErpm and Believe have begun fundraising and exploring acquisitions from major music companies and other investors. Earlier this year, Warner Music Group looked into acquiring Believe (talks between the two ultimately fizzled out) and later hired Goldman Sachs banker Michael Ryan-Southern to lead its search to buy a distributor.
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While EMPIRE would be an ideal acquisition target for the majors or private equity, Ghazi said that’s not an option.
“I’m one of the very few people that I don’t give a s— about money. I care about money that I can share with other people within the livelihood that I get to create,” Ghazi said at the one-day conference. “I used to tell people when I started EMPIRE, ‘I want to be the Robin Hood of the music business.’ And I think that I’ve stuck to my principles. People will always poke around and it never gets to me.”
Ghazi explained that he has brushed off any inquiries that have come his way and has tried to keep his eye on the prize. “We’re helping thousands of people. We’ve created micro-economies all across this planet we call Earth and, for me, there’s nothing more special than that,” he added.
The EMPIRE CEO’s declaration comes as client Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” continues its No. 1 streak on the Billboard Hot 100 with 12 weeks at the summit to date.
“Did you ever think that one of the biggest songs you would have would be a country song?” Runcie asked during the conversation.
“I didn’t think it wouldn’t be,” Ghazi responded. The CEO went on to explain that about five years ago, EMPIRE set out to find stars and that in every genre they explored — including hip-hop, country and Afro music — they found someone special. “A lot of it just has to do with having the right taste, your thumb on the pulse and approaching the culture with understanding what they’re trying to do,” he said.
Music business entrepreneur and EMPIRE founder/CEO Ghazi Shami announced the launch of a new, white-label distribution platform called Supply Chain today (March 15). The product, which is available now and is separate from EMPIRE, will allow brands, labels, distributors, service providers and retailers to make use of the platform to distribute music to any service provider and integrate distribution into their own products and offerings.
“With Supply Chain, we have built the most comprehensive distribution platform in the music industry,” Shami said in a statement. “Brands and services can now tap into the power of Supply Chain and offer a full set of distribution services to their customers.”
Supply Chain will offer SaaS and API solutions to allow companies to tap into digital tools to allow them to offer distribution to clients for service providers all over the world. The new offering comes at a time in the music business when there is a heightened interest in services and distribution, with new companies flooding into the arena to offer new solutions for independent artists and labels and existing companies pivoting their business models towards non-ownership services offerings. Unlike many of those services, which sign deals with artists or allow them to upload to digital service providers for a flat fee, Supply Chain will allow companies to integrate its distribution offering into their own services, providing a back-end basis for their own offerings.
“The new Supply Chain product provides a tremendous amount of power, but does so with a very simple approach that is both flexible and recognizes that many partners will not want to build out their own UI,” said chief product officer Stephen White. “We have focused on making the product easy to integrate while not sacrificing any of the powerful functionality.”
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