We held a forum in New York investigating the changing shape of the music industry

Disruption in Music, was the final event of Internet Week New York, hosted at Red Bull Studios New York. The forum brought together a panel of industry big hitters to discuss the current state of music. Jesse Kirshbaum, the founder of Nue Agency, kicked off proceedings asserting, “The old model doesn’t work. Streaming is the next and possibly the last great format of our time”.

Jesse was joined by Michele Santucci of Spotify, Chinua Green of Downtown Music Publishing and Songtrust and Nico Perez, the co-founder of Mixcloud. The panel discussed how social media and digital music platforms are allowing artists to create, promote and distribute independently but there is still a place for labels within this industry. “The access model is new," said Santucci. "The way artists are signing with labels is also new- completely different from the way it was fifteen years ago."

Mixcloud's Perez continued; “[Curation] is the cornerstone of what we do. Algorithms are great at a lot of things, but humans are still better at curating music.”. Curating playlists is altering the way users are interacting with music and allowing for growth within the streaming space. When asked about music curation and streaming platforms such as Tidal, Green agreed that while it may be under some heat within the last few months, “the bigger point is that people are actually talking about streaming music”.

"Brands are realizing that emerging artists have hugely engaged audiences," says Kirshbaum. Curation extends beyond just artists or influencers in the industry. We can now expect to see brands also creating their own projects within the music space.

Following the forum, Protein hosted the official closing party for for Internet Week NY 2015, with music from Ma Nguzu of Future Brown, VR films from Squarepusher and Warp Records, and the US premier of We're Gonna Be Lords by Robert Lopuski.