Music Ally has a mission to help the global music industry to thrive from digital disruption rather than fear it. In 2020 Music Ally launched a Creative Entrepreneurship Programme in partnership with Youth Music, enabling nearly 100 young people to develop music business skills free of charge.
What was the issue you were trying to solve with Music Ally?
We started Music Ally nearly 20 years ago with the aim of helping the music industry to deal with the challenges of new technologies. First MP3s and Napster, then legal download stores, and then streaming and the way it's changed how people build audiences and make money from music.
But right now the new challenge isn't so much technological as it is cultural. How can musicians and music companies make a living when 40,000 new tracks are released every single day onto streaming services?
There's a growing amount of knowledge and skills to tackle that challenge, but if you don't have access to that knowledge and those skills – often for educational or vocational reasons – you're in danger of getting left behind. That's also terrible for the diversity and health of the whole industry, even if it (sadly) doesn't realise that yet.
Why did you choose to work with Youth Music on the Creative Entrepreneurship Programme?
We'd been thinking about these issues and wondering what we could do. When we consulted Youth Music, we discovered that they had the same observations, so we worked together to create our Creative Entrepreneurship Programme as a first step towards tackling the problem.
We want to provide the same level of access to knowledge and skills to the young people who are trying to break in to the music business as we do to the global industry – giving them a foot in the door so that they can get the opportunities that their talent deserves.
What impact do you hope to have?
The programme isn't just about the young people learning from us. We expect to learn a lot from them, and their experiences of engaging with the music industry. They'll show us how we can improve this programme, and help the music industry welcome in its future innovators. It's just the start, and the whole Music Ally team is excited to see where it leads.