So what turns someone hearing a song into an actual relationship with the artist? That takes more than telling artists to post consistently. Consistent about what? What does the audience recognize? What’s becoming more distinctive? Does the next release deepen the connection or send everyone back to the beginning? — Danny Barros / Hitskope Music Group

Chartmetric and Base for Music have teamed up on a new playbook exploring how artists and music professionals can turn music data into more effective marketing strategies. — Emad Khatab / Chartmetric

Artists need to ask harder questions about the structures we pursue. Is this relationship reciprocal? Can I voice discomfort without becoming the problem? Does participation enlarge my creative life, or require me to become smaller? Am I still here because the community nourishes me, or because I have invested too much to imagine walking away? No award, festival slot, playlist, chart position, or powerful cosign can answer those questions for us. — Adeem the Artist

What would make virtual concerts worth sustained attention — huge attendance numbers, compelling performances, or meaningful income for artists? — Hypebot Editorial Desk

Music rights are now an international asset class, priced by institutional capital. The question is no longer whether music is an asset. It is who holds the data to price it, and who sits close enough to the repertoire to source it. This is a brief story of how that happened, and where it goes next. — Roland Kluger

“Today the role of A&R is too often defined as reading the data, making contact, constructing a deal – and then it’s up to the gods. “Young A&R people are significantly better at discovery than I ever was. But without providing value on the other end, you’re a scout. “Scouts are important, but the journey of an artist involves so much more.” — Tim Ingham / Music Business Worldwide

Max Lousada, co-founder, 26.2, said: “The music industry is about vision, creativity and the courage to do things differently. Cre8ing Vision has done this for years. Now, more than ever, having forums where people actually meet and talk about where the music business is has never been more important. Fresh ideas and the next generation of executive talent are often found in places like these. I’m looking forward to joining this year, sharing some of my experiences and having an open conversation about where the industry is heading and the opportunities that lie ahead. Cre8ing Vision has built something genuinely important, connecting ambition with opportunity, and I’m delighted to be part of it.” — Joe Barkman / Bleudawg

If you listen to or read the news lately, there are a lot of warnings about AI. It’s frightening. Bill Gates recently warned on Meet the Press that advanced artificial intelligence is powerful enough to drive events causing up to a billion deaths if placed in the hands of malicious actors. Even Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, the company behind Claude, has urged the industry to slow down so safety and regulation can catch up. — Joel Goodman

Chris DeVille stops by to talk about his excellent history of indie rock — Chris Dalla Riva / Can't Get Much Higher

Digital formats have been around for decades. So why is the music industry still struggling with sluggish payouts, metadata mismatches, and the accumulation of enormous unpaid tranches? According to mass payments processing innovators like Tipalti, most companies still struggle to shift from painfully slow processes to strategic automation, despite the enormous upsides. — Paul Resnikoff / Digital Music News

The US Copyright Royalty Board is reviewing what mechanical royalties songwriters and publishers should receive from 2028. It’s labels who pay mechanical royalties on physical records, and the major labels are keen to stress they aren’t colluding with the major publishers to keep the rates down — Chris Cooke / Complete Music Update

Not a tangle of dashboards, portals, browser tabs and logins. A genuine Music OS: one environment that houses the data, intelligence, assets, rights and workflows required to run a modern music company. Because the way much of the music industry operates today simply won't survive the next phase of complexity on the horizon. — Simon Wills / Absolute Label Services

The National Music Publishers Assn., acting on behalf of 17 major music publishers, is filing a federal copyright infringement lawsuit against Twitter for its failure to license and pay for the music widely available on its platform. — Jem Aswad / Variety