Okay, we're getting ready to go. Quick disclosure statement, for important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at morganstanley.com. If you have any questions, reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales rep. I'm Ben Swinburne, Morgan Stanley's Media and Entertainment Analyst, and we are really happy to welcome back to the conference from Warner Music Group, Robert Kyncl, Chief Executive Officer. Robert, thanks for being back.
Thank you so much for having me.
Absolutely.
Good to be here.
Absolutely. It's been about a year, right, as CEO?
Yep.
Lots happened, both inside the company and in the industry. You guys have been busy. Maybe you could just step back for a minute, Robert, and tell us, you know, sort of how you'd summarize the year and what you guys have been able to accomplish so far.
Yeah, so, yeah, about a year and 2 months.
Yeah.
but who's counting?
Right.
So, I'll kind of break it down into two things. One is the music ecosystem in general, and the other is our company. Because one of the ways that I can make a lot of difference in the value of the company is actually to focus on the ecosystem. And so I'll start there. A year ago, we had no price increases for 15 years prior to that. We had the same payout model for 15 years, no change. And we had the looming threat of AI. And if you fast forward to today, we have lots of positive changes on all three fronts. So there's been a ton of work. I've focused on that quite a lot. And you know, and also my colleagues, obviously, in the other companies. And so we made a lot of progress.
It's all in early stages, but it's amazing to see positive ecosystem evolution that's happening. I actually think this has been probably the most amount of change in 15 years.
Yeah.
Right? So it's really good. But lots more to do, a lot, a lot more opportunity. And then on the company front, you know, when I joined, one of the things that I focused on is organizational structure. And obviously, I've refreshed the leadership team, roughly half of it, brought in lots of new blood, different thinking, so created a, you know, expanded the culture, basically, inside the company. That is gelling quite well. And that's what allowed us to start focusing on sort of very intentional strategic projects. One of those outcomes was the restructuring that we announced about a month ago that allows us to set up the company for operating leverage for the future. We worked on an investment framework, and all of those things together. And so it's amazing to see it all come together.
And then last but not least, we started to have real success with music on the charts. You know, Zach Bryan, Jack Harlow, Megan Thee Stallion, all chart toppers. So it's been sort of really great to see that the core business started to, you know, improve sequentially. Because, as you know, when I started, it wasn't so great.
Yeah. We'll talk about that.
In the first quarter. So it was great to see the team really executing against it and driving it. So lots of change, both on the ecosystem front as well as on the company front.
That's a great overview. And we'll certainly talk about all that in more detail. I just wanted to ask you, you and I have chatted a lot about trying to bring technology and creativity together. I think that's something you're quite passionate about.
Yep.
and you, your background at YouTube and Netflix, sort of lend itself to that ambition. How's it going at Warner Music at this point? You guys are trying to bring, I think, a lot of technology resources and tools to creatively driven executives. That's, you know, their success is super important for the company.
Yeah. So, yeah, you're right. I've had experience with it from Netflix and from YouTube. In both cases, we were bringing creativity to technology companies.
Yeah.
and the teams that I worked in. So I've been kind of straddling Silicon Valley and Hollywood for well over 20 years. So kind of well-versed in both languages and both cultures. So here, we're doing the opposite and bringing it together. The first thing that I want to say is that a, you have to focus on having a company of equals. And if I think about Warner, you know, Warner is excellent at discovering artists and kind of bringing them up from the cradle up, right? So, Cardi B, Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa, Bruno Mars. It's like all of those we discovered, you know, when they were very unknown. And so we had A-list talent for talent discovery inside the company. We didn't have equivalent talent on the technology side, right?
So obviously, that made the company a little bit lopsided. We now have that. We have the equivalent of that in technology. And then, so when you have that, then you have to set up the right processes for people to actually collaborate together. So, because everybody has to have a voice, people have to have a voice in what's getting developed and why and how it's measured. So we focused a lot on the processes, on bringing people together, which then allow us to, you know, set the roadmaps together, agree upon them, agree on how we're going to measure it, and then just start delivering against it. And, you know, generally, people, you know, people ask me this question quite a lot. And I think it always comes with, like, do the music people really want technology?
And what I say is the answer is yes, because they have it in their personal lives. Everybody has an iPhone or Android phone. They got all the apps on it. They're, like, perfectly digital personal lives and everything, ordering on, you know, Uber and Postmates and everything. And, you know, and many other things. They just didn't have it in their professional lives.
Yeah.
Right? So inherently, it's there. They want it. So of course, they want it because it's going to supercharge their skills. But so now we have the ingredients to deliver on it. So yeah, so I've been very much focused on making sure the cultures mesh. And you know, it's been going quite well.
That's great. You mentioned before, you know, that we've started to see price increases. I wanted to ask you just about kind of framing the opportunity for the music industry in streaming sitting here today. You know, there's certainly maybe some caution out there that the business is maturing, at least from a user growth perspective. When you think about the long-term opportunity to grow the business, you know, what do you think that opportunity looks like?
Yeah. It's a little bit, like, some of the thinking that went into my decision to take the job.
Sure.
In the first place, right? Because I had to believe in the space.
Right.
So I worked across all media, right? I understand it quite well. When you think about music, I think it's in a class of its own at this point because we are growing in consumer engagement. By the way, we're very, very high in consumer engagement. We have huge amounts of reuse of content, right? The amount of times that you listen to the same song over your lifetime is incredible. Therefore, value of library continues to increase. The number of people that are engaging with music is growing. The monetization of it is growing. Obviously, certain markets are going slower because of large numbers than others. But all of that continues to grow. Secondly, we're aligned with some of the underlying consumer trends, which is a lot of move towards short-form consumption.
When you think about music, it's embedded in long-form movies and TV shows through sync deals. Music itself is consumed through DSPs, right, in that format. It's consumed through music videos. And bits and pieces are consumed in short-form content. We're everywhere across every spectrum of content that exists embedded in it, which keeps us relevant forever, all the time, which is incredible. This is the hardest thing to do. Because if you're in an industry, let's say, movies and TV shows today, the opposite is happening. When you have contractions in subscribers, you have contractions in overall usage and growth. No matter what business moves you make, you know, it's a lot harder.
Yeah.
When you have the tailwind of the user engaging with you, and you're in all the right consumption patterns and the streams, it's incredible. So I would say that in itself gives us the canvas to deal with problems. So I'm not saying there are not problems. There are many different problems to solve. But the underlying wind that's blowing is the right wind. So that's what makes me believe in it. And, you know, I've spoken last year here and throughout the whole year about the monetization opportunity and, you know, how much, obviously, you know, prices haven't moved in 15 years prior to last year. There's a lot of opportunity to capitalize on that in the next 10 years, doing it gradually, responsibly, no herky-jerky behavior around that, right, so that there's just ongoing growth. But that is an opportunity.
Whatever we left behind in the last 10, 15 years, it's ahead of us. And we just need to structure things correctly so that we capitalize on it. And again, that doesn't exist, let's say, in movies and TV shows. The users and ARPU were maximized. For us, they're under optimized.
You mentioned you had to believe in the space to come take this job. I wanted to ask you about the believing in the role of the music label, you know, in general. That is still also a debate. You know, you think about you've been around disruption and disintermediation a long time.
Yep.
Investors will occasionally ask you, well, why don't artists just go direct to TikTok, YouTube? What do they need a label for? So what is the role of the label? Why is it durable, in your mind?
Yeah. So two reasons. One, catalog, very, very durable. But separately from that, for new, you know, for artists, songwriters, well, three reasons. One, catalog. Two, publishing. Very, it's a very actually very difficult craft, when you when you think about it. And it's a very durable revenue stream. And that one is very difficult for anybody to administer on their own, because it's collecting lots of pennies and lots of countries all around the world and doing it incredibly well and increasingly so with technology. And then in terms of recorded music, artists, et cetera, I would say the, the closest analogy is actually the advertising space, where, you know, in the year 2000, somewhere around then, when Google launched AdWords, everybody was predicting the demise of advertising agencies. Because, you know, everybody can go to google.com and click on AdWords, sign up, go direct, and market themselves.
Guess what happened? Over the following 20 years, the world got so complicated, and the internet presented so much opportunity that brands actually pushed more business through the agencies. And the agencies became Google's largest clients.
Right.
20 years, you know, for 20 years. And that's it. It's the biggest thing. And I actually think the same thing is happening here because democratized distribution means everybody can publish. But it doesn't mean that everybody's going to be hurt. When anyone can publish, the noise level is so high that it's really difficult to stand out from the clutter. It may happen randomly. If you have certain platforms that have random algorithms, suddenly it can spike you. But if you want it on a sustained basis, it takes a village. We're that village. We're a global village. We have teams in 45 countries around the world, global infrastructure to activate artists. Two, it takes actually advice, whether it's creative advice or creative business advice. There are many artists who do things on their own. They succeed for a year.
Then they'll make a bunch of difficult, or maybe, you know, not great decisions. Suddenly, things go sideways. It's really good to have experts who can help you make the right decisions along the way. But then, you know, the other thing that's happening is that for the music industry, in the past, the largest distributors used to be companies like Walmart, who was the largest distributor, and then, you know, Tower Records, you know, companies that had, you know, millions of users, 10 million users, and market caps of maybe tens of billions. Maybe, you know, I don't know what it was at that time, how big Walmart was. But today, our customers are trillion-dollar companies.
Right.
Right? The largest companies in the world. How much chance do you have as an individual, against trillion-dollar companies? What you want is experts who are expert dealmakers understand technology to work on your behalf and, and set the terms for how you compensate it. And, the stakes are bigger than ever. And AI is actually a great proof of that. You know, then you overlay that, not just commercial terms, but new technologies. And again, how does an individual really know what to do with that versus when you have an incredible team on your side, doing that? So we do. That's why I believe in it.
That's a good defense. I like that. Let's talk a little bit about the strategic priorities you guys laid out or you laid out on your earnings call or the last earnings call. So grow engagement with Warner Music, increase the value of your music, and evolve how you work together.
Yeah.
So let's start with engagement. You mentioned it before, so I'll bring it back up again. A year ago, the streaming revenue growth at Warner was disappointing the market. And that was, I think, your first quarter out of the gate as CEO. The numbers have gotten better than. But I would argue the stock is still suffering a bit from a hangover from those, you know, that kind of six-month, nine-month period. How do you grow engagement and, in particular, increase the return on your investment in content so that we don't have those sort of dips in the future?
Yeah. So, over the last, so there's multiple things. One is how we're putting money to use. And then the other one is how do we help streams, basically, you know, do we get more streams? So I'll focus on the first one. How do we put money to use more intentionally? So, I mentioned, I think, that we, you know, for the last six months or so, we've been working on a new investment framework. So that we're very intentional about where we're putting the money. One way to think and that's all with the eye towards more predictability, stability, and faster growth. When you think about our capital expenditures, you can think about, OK, what's the ratio between recorded music and publishing? What is the geographic distribution of our capital allocation?
Which countries will have run-up in GDP per capita, therefore higher conversion to subscriptions, therefore increased ARPUs of subscriptions? Where, where do streams travel? So let's say if you have Indonesian content that's traveling to America, it's a smart place to put money because it's from a low ARPU country to high ARPU streams. So we're getting sort of intentional in those ways. So there's the asset level one. There's the geographic one. And then also within the assets is how much do we put towards new release versus shallow catalog versus deep catalog? And looking at those cohorts, you know, they're basically different risk levels.
Yeah.
And how do we invest in that? And again, different risk levels and also different predictability and stability. So we've developed a framework that we started to implement. And obviously, it takes time for that to percolate through the system and, you know, and show up in the numbers. But to me, that's a very, very important thing to do in order to engage, to increase engagement with our music. Because then if we put the chips in the right places, that in itself is going to yield better results. The second part is how do we optimize our content on DSPs so that it streams more? And it's like, well, let's if we could do that across everything, that would be fabulous. The challenge is that when you're large and you have millions of songs, it means you have to optimize millions of assets.
That's a very difficult thing to do with people because it's just, you know, a manual task. Therefore, it's very useful to have people who can help us solve it with technology. So certain things you do manually and certain things you do in automation. I'll give you one example, which is, like, emotional art on thumbnails, let's say, on Apple Music. We've noticed that it was, you know, whenever we had it, it was delivering higher growth rates, our stream rates, so let's say by 1% than the rest. We said, OK, how do we change it across our entire catalog? It's not an easy thing to do. But we're now using AI to actually do that and to create it and then update it.
Those are the kind of things that you have to work on to incrementally keep on improving the engagement with your music. So one is where we put the, you know, capital allocation framework. And the other one is operational efficiencies in terms of optimizing on the DSPs. And then the third one is how do we market our content better in general? And obviously, that also comes with lots of systems that we build for attributions as well as upgrading skill sets of our team.
You mentioned capital allocation and having to be more intentional. When we listen to the earnings calls of all the majors, everyone's focused on geographic expansion.
Yeah.
Focused on high-growth markets. How do you do that in a way that you're not just trying to basically outspend, you know, Universal or Sony to go find, you know, the artists in these high-growth markets like, like the Middle East or Africa, et cetera?
Yeah.
What can you do that's differentiating?
So, by the way, there are two answers to this, kind of similar to the first question, which is there's the ecosystem. And then there's how we compete with each other.
Yeah.
Because we can also benefit tremendously from the ecosystem itself. And I'll get back to that on the Middle East because I was just there. But how do we not just basically price compete, right?
Yeah.
So, one, we have a really good history in finding talent early. And it's, it's truly like the, the heritage of the company that has continued to proven to be true even to this day, right? Benson Boone, Zach Bryan, who we would bring from, you know, from the Navy. Like, it's incredible what, what's happening and, and how we are managing to find amazing, new talent. Same thing is applying around the world, by the way. But I just go back to the investment framework. It's not just geos. It's asset types and also how do the streams flow? So for me, it's more, can we get better and more deep and more thoughtful about data science to really understand these things, right, than if we're just constantly better? I would say Google does it with search queries.
I have a team focused on it, making sure they're optimizing that for the last 10 years. They've done an incredible job. That's what we're doing here. And so I hope that, you know, every quarter and every year, it just accrues. And over time, create, you know, creates a competitive advantage for us.
And Robert, if you're successful with all these initiatives, do you think you can have a more consistent streaming revenue growth rate? And I ask that because it seemed like last year, as you as the company and this was, you know, before you took the job.
Yeah.
Probably had a bit of a new release, you know, sort of, I don't know, light slate gap in performance, however you want to describe it. And it seemed to actually impact shallow catalog. So it became almost like an amplified effect, you know, I guess choosing a music word for a second. Does success in these initiatives allow you to sort of mitigate that risk in the future?
I think so. I mean, and that is my goal, right? I'm very much focused on making sure that we drive stability and growth and, you know, accelerate growth and stability. That's like I'm very, very much focused on. As you can see, already having an investment framework. It took a while to develop it.
Yeah.
Already have it. That is a big contributor to it. And even if we didn't get it right right away, the fact that we have it, that we follow it, and then we find out what doesn't work, and we just iterate our way to it, the point is we'll find the right way, and we'll get there.
Yeah.
That's it. That's very much focused on that.
You mentioned at the outset, you know, that the industry has started. The ecosystem is starting to raise prices. I think the market's starting to figure that out. Where do we go from here? Do you think there's like, what's your degree of confidence that price increases at the DSP level is a recurring event and that sort of there's real momentum and incentives that are aligned here?
So, again, you know, we're a wholesaler, so we don't control retail. But what I can tell you is I'm not a status quo person, and the status quo for the industry wouldn't be good or acceptable, right? We, we have to evolve it. It's happened in many industries. I'll give you an example in television. Broadcast networks used to pay radios, local TV stations for distribution. And then it turned around, and it changed. And then they would pay for retrans, you know, the TV stations would pay for retrans to the broadcast networks. It's like literally 180 flips. Like, you know, it's you, you can't ever just accept status quo and, and, and keep going with it. So, so that's one. Two, I think it's important for us to take lessons from other industries, right?
I think we've been kind of very much focused on, like, this is how it works in music. And I think it's really important to have much wider aperture in evaluating these things and what's possible. There are models, by the way, even today. I'll use China. There are no family plans in China. It's only individual subscriptions. They're upselling content on top of the subscription. Like, so, there's innovative models already in place. And I think then, for us, we're determined to evolve this in a way that is gradual and friendly and accretive to both DSPs and us because that is the only way to ensure, again, stability and growth.
Yeah.
For the long term. I think, again, the fact that we haven't done it collectively in the past 15 years is giving us a huge opportunity to capitalize on that going forward. I can give you some examples of how these things could go, which is, you know, today, we all work on revenue-sharing basis. We could switch to cable fee model. We could get pay per subscriber. That's a new model. It worked very well for 60 years on television, right? There's no reason why it couldn't work here. I would say that catalog is probably even more valuable than new release content today. So you could have DSP subscriptions that are for new release only. And then if you want the entirety and completeness, you end up paying extra for catalog.
Generally, people, when they're thinking about memory lane, they value that more and have a higher propensity to pay than for new release. So there's different ways to slice it. The only thing that we shouldn't do is remain in status quo. So we're very actively engaged in this.
I mean, I don't want to lead the witness here. But it feels like compared to when we sat here a year ago and nothing had happened, you know, that first step might be the hardest step. You've now had.
Yeah.
Price increases across a number of DSPs. Seems like artist-centric models.
Yeah.
Multi-models are changing. So I, I don't know. I don't want to, again, overemphasize where we're going. But a year from now, could we could we still could we continue to see real substantive improvements in the way the incentives are set up to drive change?
I think, I think a lot of a lot of these changes are the way I think so either we can make incremental improvements in the existing models, or we can make more radical changes as well. More radical changes are generally, from my experience, usually take 12-18 months to play out. But then you have to coordinate the whole industry. So, so it's like these things are not quick if you do something radical. But the really important thing that we have is that there are two things that you mentioned that already happened, which are positive. And they're happening. And then we can just lean into those incrementally. But I think the opportunity is far greater than that for both us and the DSPs.
Right.
We can get more radical about it too.
You signed a Warner signed a new TikTok deal last year. You guys obviously wouldn't have signed it if you didn't like it. Universal and TikTok are in a pretty public dispute. I know you can't speak for Universal. But.
Or TikTok.
Or TikTok for that matter. But let's go back to your deal. Like, why, why do you believe the deal you signed with TikTok is the right deal for not just, you know, Warner Music, but for your artists who obviously care about monetization as much as you do?
Yeah. Look, I run Warner Music Group. We represent artists and songwriters. Our goal is to always maximize value for them. That's our job, right? That's, it's the number one job. I'm also very public about my three priorities, right, which I put out in my New Year's letter, one of which is to always increase the value of music and whether it's ad-supported or subscription, right? That's it. So it's squarely in my focus. And it was last year. It's this year. And it will be for the next 10 years, always. It just has to go up. And so I can tell you that we achieved that last year with our deal. And it's what we do in every single deal now forever.
OK. So I am asking you to speak for Universal. I mean, it's kind of counterintuitive that two labels would look at seemingly similar terms and have such different conclusions. What am I thinking about that?
Well, I don't know what their terms are. So I don't know if they're similar.
Right. Right.
That, that's you know, like, I think everyone out there in the market is speculating. But literally, nobody has the information.
Right.
It's a bit of a waste of time for everyone to speculate, right? Like, it's.
Right.
We don't know.
Working with imperfect information. Welcome to our world.
You.
OK. Let me ask you about Superfans. I feel like this has become a big thing in the last.
I'm your Superfan.
Yeah. You, you talked about Superfans. You also talk about, you know, sort of product development and, and Superfan apps. What, what can you guys do? I mean, you're, you're again, you're not a direct-to-consumer company today. But what are you thinking are the opportunities here around monetizing Superfans for your artists?
So when you, you know, think about how to grow our company, how to serve artists and songwriters, one of the most important things is to figure out a direct relationship with the most valuable fans because it's not only important to monetization and new revenue stream, but it's also important to launching new music, which is the core of what we do. When you do that, you don't want to compete with large platforms and 2 billion users, et cetera. You want to focus on a much more condensed set of users, the ones that matter the most. For large platforms, that's a subscale activity, subscale behavior. For us, we're, you know, we can do that. One of the things that I think organically sets us up well here is that music is ubiquitous.
Before, I described how we're in every stream of consumption, from long-form to super short-form and everything in between. We're across every platform. If every distribution platform creates products for Superfans, it's very hard for artists to adopt it because then they have to optimize for that one platform. But that's not what they want to do. They want to be across everything. And, so I think it's organically and structurally, we're in a better position to do something like this than any actually large, distribution platform today. So, one, we have a technology team that can deliver now, which is not what we used to have in the past. So we have the capabilities to do it. And, we have artists and songwriters that we have deep relationships with so we can seed the platform, with it.
It's very, it's as adjacent as possible to what we do today.
Yeah.
Other than it's the expansion and, you know, in technology and direct-to-consumer. But, so it just feels like a very natural thing for us to do. Now, it's speculative. We have to figure out what the MVP is, et cetera. But, it's an effort that's worth undertaking because, again, it not only touches on new revenue stream, but also on more effective launching of new music.
Is there a way? I mean, maybe it's too early to give us more of a tangible sense. So one of my kids is a big Dua Lipa fan. Let's call her a Superfan for the.
Yeah.
Kind of this conversation. Is this another subscription? Is this another app? Is this another what? What does this actually look like from a consumer point of view? Or is it.
Yeah. It's another app where she can interact with Dua and have all kinds of benefits. You know, I don't want to speculate on the offering yet, what's in it. But yes, another subscription would follow.
Yeah.
with that. It makes sense. And, you know, when you think about Superfans in most industries, so let's say gaming, 20% of users represent 80% of the revenue.
Right.
You know, if you look in music, if you look at ticketing, right, and concerts.
Yeah.
It's a $20 billion business. People get in their car, drive somewhere, get on the planes, fly somewhere, buy expensive tickets, do that. But the band has to or, you know, the artist has to come to your town, or you have to come to them. There's nothing in the digital realm.
Yeah.
And it should be. So we think it's a great opportunity. And so we're focused on that.
Great. Well, we're looking forward to see what you guys bring to market. OK. Let's go to the last of the priorities, which is sort of evolving how the company works together. The night before you reported earnings, you guys announced a $200 million restructuring plan. And you've indicated that's really around, you know, freeing up resources to accelerate your growth. Can you talk a little bit about where those savings are coming from and sort of how they'll be realized over the course of the next couple of years?
Yeah. So it's from multiple areas. One of the more immediate areas was our divestiture of our owned and operated websites, media platforms, which were driving revenue or advertising revenue. The insight is quite simple, which is we're here to serve our roster, our artists and songwriters. When you're an operating platform like that, you can't really bias for other companies' roster because otherwise you lose credibility in the market and in what you do.
Yeah.
So, therefore, it's not in the service of the roster. So it doesn't have that strategic component. The second one is it's really more focused on brand sales. And, you know, that's an area that is not growing so much. It's very high touch, very lumpy, unlike direct response. You know, if you look at, you know, YouTube, TikTok, Meta, et cetera, they're growing really fast. Why? Auction-based advertising, direct response, all of that, which is the opposite of what we were doing.
Yeah.
We participate in all of those through our deals. It's so great. But, you know, we don't necessarily need to do this one. And three, it was a margin drag. So when you put it all together, it makes sense. We focus on the core of the company, which is music, and make sure we focus on artists and songwriters. So that's really the more immediate thing. The second part of it is that I mentioned, you know, us coming up with organizational structures around operating leverage to set the company up well for growth. So we're coming up with investment framework, growth initiatives, and the right organization structure to underpin that so that as we grow, there's leverage to that at an increased impact, right? So it's quite a few things to manage. But that is really what we focused on.
And all of this is like, the way I think about it is it's making us stronger. And it's making us leaner and stronger at the same time. And it's giving us optionality and gunpowder, you know, for the future to invest according to the investment framework, geographies, assets, risk types, and all of that.
If you're successful in reinvesting in music and tech company.
Faster growth, you know, for faster more profitable growth and stability, right? That's like what I'm focused on.
Yeah. That makes sense. OK. Kind of my last topic that I wanted to ask you about, Robert. Again, a year ago, we were talking a lot about AI. We were in the throes of the Fake Weekend, Fake Drake, you know, sort of panic in the market. That seems to have settled down. But AI is not going anywhere, as evidenced by this conference and every presentation over the last three days. So you have strong views on this. How do you avoid the sort of downside risk of what AI could do to catalog and copyright and also turn it into a real tool to drive the business?
Yeah. So a year ago, I think some companies put us in a basket of losers.
Wasn't us.
Yeah. Of AI.
We would never do this.
Yeah. And obviously, that hasn't played out. So first of all, people always want, when you think about AI, it's a tool. People will use the tool. And they'll use sort of branded content, right? They'll, they'll—there'll always be they'll try to emulate somebody famous, famous song, famous artist, et cetera. So us delivering on the core of our business is really important for the age of AI. I think about our constituents in three different ways: the platforms where the content is consumed, the tools that create the content, you know, the OpenAIs of the world, and three, governments. And I ordered them on purpose in that stack rank because that, that, that is my prioritization effort.
Right.
Because no matter what happens, people will want that content to get views or streams. Therefore, our focus has to be on the consumption platforms and to define the rules of the game and what is the attribution, what is the monetization, and what are the controls. And the reason I say it this way is because that's exactly what we did with YouTube back with user-generated content. I was exactly in those shoes with the whole world coming, you know, after us. And we had to figure it out. So we've done that. This is just the same problem on steroids, different tools, faster speed, maybe greater precision, et cetera. But it's a little bit more ambiguity. But it's a similar problem. So it's been solved before. We can solve it now. That's why we're focused on that.
That's why we're participating in the Dream Track test with YouTube, right? It's allowing us to be under the hood. And you know, secondly, with the you know, and like, for instance, in case of YouTube, obviously, under the same Google roof is Gemini, it's forgetting the name now, DeepMind and Gemini, right?
Yeah. Gemini.
YouTube. So you have both the generative AI engine and the consumption platform under the same roof. So that's actually quite useful to be engaged with a company like that. But now, that's the same thing with TikTok and Facebook, et cetera. So you have companies with large consumption platforms also having the agents together. And on the regulatory front, we're very active. And obviously, we think there's a lot to be done to protect not just artists' name, image, likeness, and voice. It actually should really apply to any human being.
Right.
But we're representing artists and songwriters. So we love the fact that the ELVIS Act just passed in Tennessee. Our team was actually the driving team behind that. So this is a first state legislature that just passed. And we're using that for momentum on a national level, with the two acts, both in the House and the Senate, that are there. But no matter what happens with regulation, I think it's important to work with the platforms to make sure that they do the right thing. You know, all of those efforts together will yield the right results.
You always seem like a pretty relaxed guy. Are you worried at all? I mean, what's your level of panic at all in this AI risk conversation? You're pretty confident it can be harnessed versus threatening the business?
I'm pretty confident because, I mean, I have so, like, I have a response and a plan for whatever scenario there is.
Yeah.
Like, it's, there's so many different ways to deal with things. Well, this thing is happening. Well, we'll up the fees this way. You know, like.
Yeah.
It's if you have large catalog and you have a lot of artists and songwriters. It gives you quite a lot of power over time because no matter what that wealth, because of the uniqueness of music and the fact that people want to go back and use it over and over, it gives you a tremendous amount of strength.
Maybe we'll end there with the uniqueness of music. And you touched on this a lot already. But I thought it would be a good way to end. You mentioned in the last earnings call music being a unique asset class. And I sort of like that description.
Yeah.
Maybe, maybe just summarize that for us as we finish this conversation. Why is it not only unique, but maybe uniquely attractive for investors?
So I'll give you. I actually promised to tell you about Middle East. So I'll, I'll use that example. There are, there are greenfield markets like Middle East that will see quite a lot of value appreciation. Why? Extremely young population across a very large number of people. Two, no collective societies. They're getting formed. There's new revenue streams that will come in that don't exist today at all, high GDP per capita in a whole bunch of the countries, which will, lend itself to, you know, higher conversions for subscriptions, which don't exist today, right? They're very, very tiny. So you look at that market alone, you say, wow, there is so much opportunity to not only drive number of subscribers but also pricing over time and new revenue streams through collecting in ways that doesn't exist today. That's just one.
Sure.
One little part of the world. Two, before, I mentioned in the beginning, we're in every possible mode of consumption. And we're not getting disrupted by shifting behavior, which is pretty incredible, right? To me, that's like, you know, when I have lots of different problems that will keep me up at night, but every time I say, but the users love our product. And that is like absolutely like that's, that's the godsend. And three, we have the – I don't want to use the word neglected ARPU opportunity because actually, it was the right decision for everybody to do that.
Right.
But the unrealized ARPU opportunity, that's there. That's also incredible, right? Versus if I was in movies and TV shows, say, wow, we already maxed it out. Now, it's only going down. So when you look at all of these things, there's a lot to do. The really important thing to think about is that we have to step outside, only think about what has worked in this industry, and just look broader. And how can we monetize in different ways? How can we change the models? How can we invent new revenue streams? Because we have this incredible engagement with users, it gives us the permission to be innovative and drive new models and new revenue streams. And that's kind of fun to do.
Absolutely. Well, we'll see what the next year holds. Robert, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for having us.
Thanks, everybody.
Thank you.