music biz
In 2025, the annual Music Biz conference will be held May 12-15 at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel.
The conference attracts more than 2,300 music industry executives each year and has been held in Nashville for nearly a decade. The 2024 conference kicks off this week in Nashville, running from May 13-16.
Music Business Association president Portia Sabin announced the new dates and venue during her address during the Music Biz Brunch at the Music Biz conference on Tuesday morning (May 14), held at the JW Marriott Nashville.
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Sabin previously told Billboard that the conference’s move from Nashville to Atlanta was inspired by the September 2022 start of the Music Biz Roadshow program, which has previously traveled to cities including Atlanta, Dallas and Miami.
“With the Music Biz Roadshow, we bring our members to different cities across the U.S. for free educational programs for artists and musicians,” Sabin told Billboard. “We got inspired by doing that because there are so many great music cities out there in the U.S.”
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Beginning in 2025, the Music Biz event will revert to the way the conference had been scheduled when it was then-called NARM, when the conference frequently shifted to a new city.
“We will be on probably a two-year schedule, staying in a town for two years before going to another town,” Sabin said. Sabin noted that the conference could potentially be hosted in cities including Miami and San Diego in the future.
The Music Biz conference’s panel lineup for Tuesday (May 14) includes a wide range of topics currently impacting the industry, including neighboring rights, metadata, catalog sales and the growing popularity of Latin music in sync.
In 2013, the organization formerly known as the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) rebranded as the Music Business Association. The conference spent four years in Los Angeles before relocating the conference to Nashville in 2015. The Music Business Association headquarters continues to be based in Nashville.
The annual Music Biz Conference will move from its current Nashville home to Atlanta in 2025.
Specific dates and venues for Music Biz 2025 will be announced later. The conference will continue in its usual May timeframe.
Music Biz, which attracts more than 2,300 music business professionals each year, has been held in Music City for nearly a decade, and returns this year, from May 13-16.
“We’ve had a wonderful 10 years in Nashville. We love Nashville,” Music Business Association president Portia Sabin tells Billboard. “It’s been such a great place for us to grow and we are so appreciative and are very much looking forward to this year’s conference in Nashville.”
The move was inspired by the September 2022 launch of the Music Biz Roadshow program, which has traveled to cities including Atlanta, Dallas and Miami.
“With the Music Biz Roadshow, we bring our members to different cities across the U.S. for free educational programs for artists and musicians,” Sabin says. “We got inspired by doing that because there are so many great music cities out there in the U.S.”
Atlanta felt like a natural evolution for Music Biz. “When we first brought the conference to Nashville, it was a smaller version of what it is now. We feel like Atlanta has that growth potential,” Sabin adds, noting that music industry professionals from more than 30 countries attend Music Biz each year. “Atlanta has that great international hub airport, which will make it easier for people from abroad to get to [the conference]. We are excited to showcase another great American music city.”
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In 2013, the organization formerly known as the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) rebranded as the Music Business Association. Following a four-year stint in Los Angeles from 2011-2014, the Music Biz conference has been in Nashville since 2015. The Music Business Association headquarters continues to be located in Nashville.
Beginning in 2025, the Music Biz event will revert to the way it was scheduled in its NARM days when the conference frequently moved to a new city.
“We will be on probably a two-year schedule, staying in a town for two years before going to another town,” Sabin says, noting the conference could potentially be hosted in cities such as Miami and San Diego in the coming years.
“And I’m sure we will be back in Nashville at some point,” Sabin adds. ‘Nashville’s a fabulous city and we are so grateful to have been here for 10 years. We’re looking forward to this year’s conference in Nashville. Atlanta has so much going on in terms of the music industry there, and I think it has somewhat been overlooked in general. It’s a great spot to have the conference and have this important group of people showing up to do business there.”
Last year, Pandora started to get suspicious about the streaming activity of a prominent act. “This is a top artist by every measure,” George White, senior vp of music licensing at SiriusXM and Pandora, said during a panel at the Music Biz conference in Nashville on Wednesday (May 17). Some of the interest from Pandora users was clearly genuine. But at the same time, the platform picked up “abnormalities” — “lots of quick skips,” White noted, and “very unusual ratios of radio listening to premium listening” — along with “social media sites actively posting tutorials for how to game the Pandora system and teaching potential users how to drive those streams even higher.”
“This is challenging and more difficult to detect because it’s under a background of legitimate activity,” White continued. And he said that Pandora is seeing more of this type of behavior around “established artists.”
White was one of 11 different speakers across a two-hour, three-panel fraud extravaganza — which covered a lot of ground, jumping from bot farms all the way to thieves falsely claiming publishing ownership on songs to collect money that belongs to someone else — at Music Biz. The tone stayed upbeat, though the message was glum and occasionally paranoia-inducing, with lots of talk about cybercriminals hacking into the accounts of innocent unsuspecting users for nefarious purposes.
“We’ve been seeing lately that as technology advances, the fraud is supercharged,” said Mona Simonian, a partner at the entertainment law firm Pryor Cashman. It’s important that “people start really recognizing how much money is at stake here,” she added. And as Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google’s former “click fraud czar” (real title: head of global product for trust and safety), put it: “It’s always a little bit scary before you get your arms around the problem.”
While some panels stay general, these three sessions (an interview with Ghosemajumder about the ubiquity of fraud, “52 Flavors of Fraud,” and “Fraud Use Cases: What Can We Do?”) brought some hard numbers to a fraud conversation that often remains frustratingly diffuse, because the behavior is difficult to quantify. White had his Pandora case study. And Andrew Batey, co-founder and co-CEO of the fraud detection company Beatdapp, came armed with numerous examples and a boatload of graphs.
There was the account that recorded 33,500 plays in one week. (“The average user has a few hundred to a thousand plays a week,” Batey said.) There was the user with 96 devices “playing from 47 cities in 17 countries in the same week,” a geographical impossibility for even the most devoted jet-setter. There was the group of thousands of accounts all targeting the same songs with 155-ish plays a week, and the batch of 53,000 accounts playing around a dozen acts to camouflage the one artist whose numbers they’re actually trying to inflate.
If this behavior continues undetected, it represents “billions [of dollars] that are being sucked out of this industry,” Batey said. This sentiment was echoed by Christine Barnum, chief revenue officer of CD Baby: Fraudsters are “diluting the pool for everyone.” (She spoke about ways for companies to improve their fraud detection capabilities on a budget, including using ChatGPT to help write programs that can detect anomalous activity.)
Why the upbeat mood, despite the grim news? For years, many music executives, especially in the United States, were unwilling to publicly acknowledge that fraud was a problem. The fact that there was a 120-minute block — enough time to watch two episodes of Succession, quipped Beatdapp co-founder and co-CEO Morgan Hayduk — devoted to the topic at a major music business conference is indicative of an attitude shift. “I’m so happy there’s a room full of people talking about fraud,” Barnum said.
White was similarly optimistic. While recent studies have concluded that around 80% of fraud is financially motivated — grifters running bot networks to white noise recordings, for example, rather than the work of actual artists — White said, “We’ve seen enormous strides in identifying that [activity] really early.”
“I won’t say that’s in control; it’s an issue that requires ongoing investment,” he added. “But it’s at least something we feel like we have a handle on.”
In a presentation at the Music Biz conference in Nashville on Wednesday (May 17), MIDiA Research’s Tatiana Cirisano revealed the company’s predictions about the future of music streaming. Namely, the firm suspects that music streaming revenue growth, which has been in the double digits for years, will slow to the single digits, eventually cooling off from about 10% growth in 2024 to 3% growth in 2029.
“We’re in a crazy time for competing for consumer attention,” said Cirisano during the presentation, titled Where Does Streaming Go From Here? She noted that after the pandemic subsided, content providers of all kinds — from music to gaming to video — have had to accept that more traditional, in-person activities are absorbing large amounts of time for consumers once again. “The era of build it and they will come is starting to come to a close,” she continued. “You need to give people reasons to spend time on your platform.”
As part of the return to in-person experiences, MIDiA Research has found that background consumption of entertainment is on the rise, with 18.1 hours of background consumption in the first quarter of 2021 having escalated to 20.6 hours in the second quarter of 2022.
Traditional streaming services — Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and other competitors — also face competition for users’ attention from “non-[digital service provider] streaming,” or platforms where music is part of the experience but not its sole focus, such as Peloton and TikTok. “We are starting to learn that non-DSP streaming is not just additive, it might actually also diminish the cultural capital of [traditional] streaming,” said Cirisano.
While the cultural capital of streaming reached a fever pitch as Spotify editorial playlists, like Rap Caviar and New Music Friday, became many listener’s go-to source for music suggestions, MIDiA’s data suggests that that “soft power” is starting to wane, giving way to sites like TikTok which promote what Cirisano called “lean-through” music consumption.
This can be a positive thing, she explained. While “lean back,” or background, consumption — such as pre-programmed playlists and radio play — is on the rise, young people are also more likely than ever to not just “lean forward” (meaning they program what music they listen to themselves) but to “lean through,” which Cirisano defined as creating social content, curating content and re-creating content with music. MIDiA has found that the average 16 to 19-year-old spends 3.7 hours per week creating content as of the fourth quarter of 2022. More than ever, young people want to be actively playful and interactive with their music, not just listen to static playlists on streaming — though that form of listening will still surely persist.
To Mark Mulligan, MIDiA’s founder, this is a repeat of history, said Cirisano. Prior to recorded music, live bands’ music would be impacted by the audience in front of them. Now, this has taken on a new form in the age of social media, AI and at-home recording technology, signaling a return to interactivity present throughout the long history of music — and marking a change in appetite from the “isolating” and “hyper-personalized” nature of today’s popular music streaming services. “This new generation wants to be more actively involved in music… I think you’re going to have an advantage if you’re an artist that is comfortable engaging with your fans,” said Cirisano.
MIDiA Research has also found that with the emergence of hyper-personalized algorithms on streaming and social platforms, listenership fragments significantly. This leads to superstars having less of an impact, making it harder for that class of artists to earn a fruitful living from just streaming alone. In tandem with creating content and forging brand partnerships, however, these bigger names can capitalize on their fandom. This atomization of the mainstream is also pushing DSPs to differentiate themselves by, for example, focusing on genre, like Apple Music Classical, or targeting audiophile listeners, like Tidal.
In the future, MIDiA’s data suggests that next-generation platforms will create three-sided marketplaces that operate as self-contained virtuous circles. Audiences will consume music, some fans in the audience will also create using the music, and that consumption and participation will signal the algorithm and distribute the music to new fans.
UPDATE: This story was updated May 17 at 7:59 p.m. ET to note that music streaming revenue growth — not music streaming subscription growth, as incorrectly stated in a previous version of the story — is expected to fall to 3% by 2029. It was also updated to note that background consumption of all entertainment, not just music, is on the rise.
When executives from across the United States and international markets convene in Nashville May 15-18 for the Music Biz 2023 conference, they will connect with a trade organization widening its reach, with a leader boasting credentials that are uncommon in the music industry.
Portia Sabin, who became Music Business Association president in September 2019, brings to her role a Columbia University doctorate in anthropology and education and savvy that she gained from a subsequent 13 years as president of the respected independent label Kill Rock Stars and eight years as host of music business podcast The Future of What.
It’s no wonder that Sabin has cultivated an esteemed fan club of music industry professionals, including the heads of other trade groups.
“Because of her background and her personality, she’s got analytical and creative skills to put fresh ideas out there, and she’s not afraid to push the envelope,” says Mitch Glazier, chairman/CEO of the RIAA.
“She remains focused on educating and improving this business, pushing for growth and inclusion while helping others to navigate the challenges that come with never-ending technological and economic change,” says Michael Huppe, president/CEO of SoundExchange. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for Portia as a strong and insightful voice in the music industry.”
Highlights of this year’s Music Biz conference will include four days of panels and workshops, keynote addresses by Kobalt founder and chairman Willard Ahdritz and leaders of the Black Music Action Coalition, as well as the second Bizzy Awards to recognize companies and individuals who are making a difference in improving the global industry. The 2022 Music Biz drew over 2,100 attendees from across some 750 companies, with 8% of participants coming from outside the United States.
“Running a label made me get very interested in the business of the music industry,” Sabin says of the road that led her to her Music Business Association role. “I was also on the board of A2IM [the American Association of Independent Music] for 12 years, on the board of the RIAA for a couple years, on the Recording Academy Board of Governors in the Pacific Northwest for six years and I also started a podcast about the music industry in 2014, so I had a lot of interest in the business itself.
“It’s a fascinating industry,” Sabin continues. “There’s a lot to know, and it’s also one of those weird ones where everybody thinks it’s easy from the outside until you get involved in it. We really saw that in the tech boom, starting about 10, 12 years ago, when all these tech people came into our sector saying, ‘I don’t know what your problem is. We can make lots of money,’ and then one by one they have disappeared. The only ones who stuck were the ones who bothered to learn and respect the music industry.”
Portia Sabin
Nashville Corporate Photography
Originally comprised of music wholesalers, retailers and distributors, the Music Business Association had already begun to broaden its scope during the tenure of James Donio, Sabin’s predecessor — a shift indicated in 2013, when the organization changed its name from the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) to the broader moniker it has today. Continuing that expansion was one of Sabin’s early priorities.
“We’ve made a concerted effort to be inclusive, to reach out to companies that are coming in, like tech startups, that are doing cool things and solving problems that people have,” Sabin says.
The music business, she notes, is “an ever-changing landscape, and I think it’s one of those things you have to be comfortable with when you set out to have an inclusive trade association.”
Today, the Music Business Association has several initiatives to more broadly serve the music industry. For example, the Music Biz conference has added programming that focuses on the touring and ticketing industry “because that part of our business has always weirdly been a little bit separate,” Sabin says. “I certainly found out when I was running a record label that that whole live side was sort of its own animal. The booking agents are over there, the promoters, the big talent agencies.”
But the pandemic highlighted the fact that the music business “is an ecosystem and we all rely on each other, and when one goes down, the whole goes down,” says Sabin of the live sector. “So we have made a big effort since 2019 to get those folks involved.”
The conference’s programming style has also evolved. “We have discovered the power of creating tracks for discussion,” Sabin says. “It helps people get more in-depth knowledge. If you’re going to do three panels on a topic, one right after the other and everybody is having the conversation together, that makes it stronger, so we’re doing quite a lot of tracks at this year’s Music Biz.”
MIDiA Research’s Tatiana Cirisano (center) at the UMG Mixer at Music Biz 2022.
Graham Dodd
Sabin’s desire for a larger tent extends beyond the types of companies that make up the Music Business Association. Achieving a more inclusive board “was a huge goal for me,” Sabin says. “It has taken us four years, but now we’ve gotten to 52% people of color on the board, 57% women, as well as a nice, wide range of diversity in company type. I think that’s also really important.”
“She formed a diversity, equity and inclusion committee pretty much immediately, so that was a core element of building and reconsidering the organization,” says Downtown Music Holdings chief marketing officer Molly Neuman, who recalls that Sabin’s early priorities included making the organization’s board more diverse and expanding the voices heard at its events. “That was in place when George Floyd was murdered and we had Blackout Tuesday and all the things that happened in the summer of 2020, so we already had this core unit considering these things for the industry, but we were also in a position to offer mutual support as well as long-term plans.”
That commitment to inclusion was illustrated recently when the Nashville-based Music Business Association issued a statement decrying anti-LGBTQ+ bills passed by the Tennessee Legislature.
Broadening the scope of the Music Business Association also includes an effort to increase the involvement of younger music professionals. “We have a programming track called #NextGen_Now, and we tried our first physical event with them [in March] in Nashville,” Sabin says. “We had a cocktail mixer and it was incredibly successful; they all had to be kicked out at the end of the evening because they were enjoying themselves too much, which is great.”
The association is also reaching students through its #NextGen_U initiative. Like its predecessor, NARM, the Music Business Association has continued to offer scholarships to help the next generation of music business executives.
“The programming that we did online for them was very successful over the pandemic and we continued to do those through as recently as February of this year,” says Sabin. “We think it’s easier for students to attend a two-day virtual conference for $39 rather than flying and getting a hotel room. We also have an academic-partner newsletter now that we send out monthly.”
Willard Ahdritz
Paul Brissman
Another recent Music Biz outreach echoes NARM’s almost-forgotten 1970s-era playbook — the Road Show.
“For the vast majority of our members, their clients are actually artists and musicians and Music Biz [previously] didn’t provide any forums for them to get in front of those people,” Sabin says. “So I put together what we call the Music Biz Road Show. We usually partner with a trade association in a city and go for a day and do a mini Music Biz, where we put on some panels, maybe a fireside chat and a cocktail hour. The local trade association brings a couple hundred local artists so our members get to get in front of their actual clients, the people who they actually want to meet. And we get to do educational programming for those folks. It has been very successful so far.
“We’ve had them in Atlanta, Portland, Ore., and Memphis and we have them coming up in Huntsville, Ala., New Orleans and Miami,” Sabin continues. “If my staff doesn’t kill me, I would like to have at least one a month.”
Amid such outreach, what are the priorities for this year’s expanded Music Biz conference?
“I think everyone is always interested in what’s coming next, so I think generative [artificial intelligence] is a conversation that people really want to have,” Sabin says. “Because our conference is crowdsourced, it’s really fun to see what topics come in over and over and which ones fall by the wayside.
“For example, we had the highest number of [programming suggestions] that anyone can ever remember receiving, like 326 proposals this year, and there was only one on [non-fungible tokens]. So you can tell that’s no longer of concern to the membership.”
But a perennial concern remains: “What are the revenue streams that are out there and how do we capture them? That is what the internet has done for the music industry; it has created boundless opportunities, with this scary downside of, ‘How do [creators] collect [revenue for their creations]?’
“I feel like the music business has always been playing catch-up to technology,” Sabin adds. “A new technology comes along and we spend 20 years figuring out how to get it monetized properly, and by that time another technology comes along. But it’s happening so much faster right now and I think that’s the central interest of our membership, and that’s really what we are.”
This story originally appeared in the May 13, 2023, issue of Billboard.
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