The most important lesson of the year was structural. The industry continues to confuse distribution with leverage and visibility with value. Optimizing for fleeting moments instead of building repeatable systems produces unstable business models and short-lived outcomes. Technology alone does not fix this. Judgment without systems does not scale. Over the course of the year, it became clear that progress follows when decision-making is consistent and reinforced by systems designed to support it.
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Recently, I heard an executive from a major music company repeatedly refer to artists as creators. While that is true, they are not the same, and it got me thinking about why we make that distinction, my own perspective on music and the business around it, and how we choose to run our company.
Read MoreThe recent clash between Universal Music Group (UMG) and YouTube creator Rick Beato is a perfect example. It highlights how intellectual property frameworks, built for a physical world, are colliding with a digital ecosystem defined by platform ubiquity, creator empowerment, and cultural liquidity.
Read MoreThe Punk Rock and DIY principles have guided every major decision in my career and remain unchanged, whether the stage is a garage, a venue, or a global business.
Read MoreYouTube has reached an all-time high, commanding 11.6% of total streaming viewership. That’s a staggering share when you consider the sheer volume of content being consumed globally—more than one in ten minutes of streamed content happens on YouTube.
Read MoreEvery music release follows a strategy—whether you designed it deliberately or fell into it by default. If you find yourself constantly asking, “What do we do now?” or scrambling to adjust your approach mid-campaign, it’s a clear sign that the strategy wasn’t solid to begin with.
Read MoreTechnology is just a tool. It's only meaningful when it changes behavior.
Read MorePricing in the music industry isn’t determined by the effort put into creating a song, the cost of production, or how much the artist values their work. Instead, it’s dictated by the listener’s perception of value and their ability to pay.
Read MoreAI isn’t just making music creation faster—it’s reshaping how content is made, distributed, and valued. The industry is splitting between mass-produced, AI-driven content and high-value, human-crafted work—artists, managers, and labels must decide which side they’re on.
Read MoreNo album, campaign, or release will go exactly as planned. You will fall short of some expectations—and exceed others. In that sense, you’ve already failed.
Read MoreLuck isn't some mystical force. It's a manufactured outcome. People who consistently "get lucky" are usually the ones who create the right conditions for it.
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In the wake of Universal Music Group's lawsuit against Believe alleging the distribution of fraudulent content, Ten2 Media's founders break down the debate around distribution fraud.
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To effectively leverage the power of short-form video, it’s important to understand the unique strengths that YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok offer, because each platform caters to a different aspect of the short-form video landscape.
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Bilaterally across consumer and creator, short-form video has fundamentally transformed the way music and audience engage. At baseline, the prevalence of platforms like YouTube Shorts, TikTok, & Instagram Reels have made bite-sized content a powerful medium for musicians to market their music, even informing what artists create and dictating how they engage with fans.
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YouTube's multifaceted nature seamlessly blends the interactive features of a social network, such as comments, likes, and subscriptions, with the expansive content repository characteristic of a Digital Service Provider (DSP).
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YouTube Analytics is one of the most valuable tools musicians can access for always-on, real-time, & accurately in-depth insights about how their content is being received by their viewers. Those exact insights can, in turn, be used to build an omni-channel marketing strategy. In short, by leveraging the data that YouTube is already providing, musicians can create more effective, 360 (comprehensive) marketing strategies that span across multiple platforms/channels.
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