I had the pleasure of being the keynote speaker at New York University’s Annual Alumni Event for its music business department. Big thanks to Larry Miller, a professor and director of the program, for inviting me. It was a free-flowing conversation focused on how technology is reshaping the music industry from top-to-bottom. We’re well into the streaming era now, but some of the second-order effects are barely starting to ripple — particularly the oversaturation of content. It’s easier and cheaper than ever to release music, which explains how tens of thousands of new songs are uploaded to Spotify on a daily basis.On one hand, this has ushered in a golden era of independent artists making a career without the backing of a label. On the other hand, value is increasingly accruing to the superstar artists. Most of these superstars were “grandfathered” into this new era as they were already household names before streaming took off. Reaching that same superstar status is harder and harder for new artists due to the industry’s oversaturation. Larry and I dove deeper into the issue during our conversation. Students also hit me with Q&A about burning topics such as ChatGPT, botted streaming numbers, and much more. Here’s what you can expect to hear on this episode: [2:02] Introduction from Larry Miller [5:09] Superstar artists like Taylor Swift and Drake shining brighter than ever[10:22] Too many hits, not enough superstars[17:23] How Curren$y “niched down” to break through[24:18] Tradeoffs of going independent or the major label route[26:47] Industry takeaways from Spotify and YouTube’s billions playlists[30:32] YouTube’s competitive advantage over Spotify[34:09] Evolving Trapital’s own business model[39:43] Music’s bot problem in streaming and ticketing[42:07] Is the music superstar dead?[44:19] Picking a platform(s) as a new artist[46:24] How oversaturated music landscape impacts listeners[49:03] Is New York drill music the next wave?[50:48] Pros and cons of AI musicTrapital’s first-ever Cultural Report for 2022: https://trapital.co/culture-report/Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co  Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo.TRANSCRIPTION[00:00:00] Dan Runcie: Both Spotify and YouTube generated a tremendous amount of revenue for the music industry. I believe Spotify had last shared that they generated 7 billion for the industry. YouTube generates six or seven, I think it's 6 billion. The last thing that I had seen them put in. So that is a sign. Okay, great. You know, you tie that back into the numbers you shared before. You can do a little bit of backwards math to see how much of that is responsible for the overall industry with where it is now. So you see that, and then you also know that like anything else, the most popular songs drive most of that revenue. So you can kind of get a good idea to be like, okay, what are the songs that are driving? The music industry right now. [00:00:46] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Dan Ruey. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:01:04] (Intro) Dan Runcie: This episode is a fun one. We're sharing the audio from a talk that I recently gave at NYU. I was the keynote speaker at an event there for several hundred alumni and students. For the music business program, it starts off with a 10 minute talk by me where I'm giving an overview on the lay of the land with where things lay right now with streaming and music and social media, and how artists are doing their best to navigate all of the noise that's happening right now. And then it pivots into a conversation. Which is a f