Mark Johnson

The people who created this mess will eventually pay a price for their carelessness and greed.

And then what happens?

The last people standing might just be the musicians—and, of course, those fans who genuinely care about music. If we’re lucky they will build something new on the ruins.

Taking a cue from the adoption of CDP (Customer Data Platform) technology in other industries, an “FDP” or “Fan Data Platform” is needed, combined with an open ecosystem of plugins to integrate data from many sources to give a complete profile of each fans interaction with an artist. Essentially, Segment.com for the music industry, if you are famil... See more

Being a phenomenon of the attention economy, streaming platforms rely both on vast quantities of content and a competitive, almost gambling-like environment to attract artists who hope to go viral in the playlist ecosystem, particularly on Spotify. This leaves an opening for various commercial parties to double down on the incentives that are float... See more

The creative industries, more often than not underpinned by copyright, are not easily measured (nor captured) by economists, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter. Indeed, ample evidence shows they matter most, and one of the best case studies to explore is music.