AI is on a collision course with the music industry. Reservoir's Golnar Khosrowshahi thinks there’s a way through it

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Today I'm talking with Golnar Khosrowshahi, the founder and CEO of Reservoir Media, a newer record label that I think looks a lot like the future of the music industry. As Golnar explains, Reservoir thinks of individual songs as assets, and after acquiring them, the company sets about monetizing those assets in various ways. This is a copyright-based business in an age where copyright is under a lot of pressure — from TikTok, generative AI, and all of the now-familiar threats to the music business.

If you're a Decoder listener, you know that I love thinking about the music industry. Whatever technology does to music, it does to everything else five years later. So paying attention to music is the best way I know to get ahead of the curve. I also just love music. Golnar is herself a musician. She obviously cares about music a lot, and she's clearly given a lot of thought to what happens next. So this was a great conversation.

Links:

• Drake’s AI clone is here — and Drake might not be able to stop him
• Hipgnosis made mega deals for song catalogs. Its future Is unclear.
• Reservoir acquires iconic Tommy Boy Music for $100 million
• Ed Sheeran wins copyright case over Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’
• Spotify is reportedly making major changes to its royalty model
• Hipgnosis shareholders vote against continuation of UK-listed music investment trust
• AI can actually help protect creativity and copyrights
• Google and YouTube are trying to have it both ways with AI and copyright
• No Fakes Act wants to protect actors and singers from unauthorized AI replicas
• ‘Glocalisation’ of music streaming within and across Europe

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23702539

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

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