The music industry didn’t change because it wanted to. It changed because the math stopped working.

In this clip from The Manager’s Playbook, Mike Biggane and I break down why major record labels quietly shifted strategy after realizing that traditional investments in new music, viral signings, and influencer marketing no longer produced reliable returns.

Using insights from the 2022 Goldman Sachs “Music in the Air” report, we unpack how the industry began moving away from high-risk bets on virality and macro influencers, and toward superfans, direct-to-consumer revenue, and sustainable fan monetization. The conversation explores why spending millions on moment-driven marketing campaigns failed to scale and why a projected $4 billion superfan economy caught the industry’s attention.

We also dive into how Spotify’s personalization and algorithmic distribution reshaped music discovery, how TikTok accelerated fragmentation through user-generated content, and why merchandise, touring, and DTC products became more attractive than traditional streaming-first strategies.

Throughout the clip, we return to a critical tension shaping the modern music business: human curation versus algorithmic decision-making. Why data alone can’t identify culture early, why taste still matters, and why many legacy marketing workflows collapsed under new economic realities.

This isn’t about panic. It’s about clarity and building inside the reality we’re already in.