Conference Presentation, Fireside Chat, Interview
Epidemic Sound’s Oscar Höglund on the future of the music industry
- Anticipates a fundamental shift of the internet to a video-centric medium within a 5-to-10-year timeframe, driven by the anthropological efficiency of video over text and picture formats.
- Predicts a "renaissance" in content creation for the next 5 to 10 years, where the creator-to-viewer ratio dramatically shifts from approximately one creator per million viewers, expanding the Total Addressable Market through democratization.
- Expects the user base to grow across Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, and millions of individual creators as music becomes a pivotal element in avoiding "empty calories" in content.
- Plans to leverage a 100% ownership of intellectual property rights to scale subscription SaaS capabilities, utilizing a massive, uninhibited music catalog as a data barrier against startups and legacy owners with fragmented rights.
- Projects that music distributed by Epidemic Sound creators will increasingly reach mainstream platforms like Spotify, Apple, and Deezer, creating an indirect artist launch pathway while maintaining a 50/50 royalty split to fuel a flywheel of growth.
- Forecasts that near-term AI applications will prioritize recommendation and adaptation over generative music, specifically by matching video frames to historical data to help creators "buy success" in specific scenes.
- Identifies AI as a net beneficiary for the business by increasing operational efficacy in signing, agreements, and tagging, while simultaneously addressing a "rigged lottery" structure in the traditional music industry where 90% of content lacks distribution.
- Expects AI to accelerate the convergence of short-form and long-form content models with Western advertising and Eastern fan-driven commerce, marking the end of general experimentation in these areas.
- Acknowledges risks regarding super short attention spans and the abundance of AI-generated content, while maintaining confidence that industry guardrails will eventually resolve challenges related to safety, intellectual property, and attention economy limits.