Music Ally Connect keynotes: Kobalt, SoundExchange, AudioSalad and more

Our coverage from last week’s Music Ally Connect conference continues with this wrap of some of the keynote sessions from the two-day event.

Starting with Kobalt CEO Laurent Hubert, who was interviewed by Music Ally director of marketing and strategy Marlen Huellbrock.

Hubert talked about the growing complexities of music publishing in the streaming era, with “an explosion of diverse income sources with different monetisation mechanics”.

However, there has also been “an explosion and the fragmentation of consumption” as well as the challenges of shifts in songwriting dynamics.

“It’s not uncommon to see today on a hit song to have five, six, seven writers. So if you look at a global hit, you may be looking at literally billions of transactions that you have to manage. That’s a fundamental shift,” said Hubert.

He also talked about how Kobalt has sought to educate investment firms who have bought publishing and recordings catalogues in recent years about the complexities of the business.

“This is not just about collecting a coupon! You have to have a party that is able to monetise that properly,” said Hubert, noting that the ability to manage relationships with the likes of YouTube, TikTok, Spotify and Apple can also be underestimated, initially, by investors who are new to the catalogues market.

Kobalt is, like all music rightsholders, getting to grips with GenAI and its implications for human musicians and their catalogues.

It signed one of the most interesting licensing deals of 2025, with ElevenLabs, including a commitment by that company to treat publishers and labels equally in its royalty payouts.

“If you think about AI, you really have three building blocks. You have the training component, the prompting component and the streaming component,” said Hubert.

“On the training aspect, we believe that unlike the master side, you cannot substitute the publishing. You cannot substitute the lyrics and the notes. As such, we felt that a 50/50 label-to-publishing ratio was the bare minimum for us.”

“For those that view AI purely as a threat to their craft, it’s a more complicated conversation” Laurent Hubert, Kobalt

More broadly, Hubert believes AI will be “generally positive” for Kobalt and its musicians, while acknowledging that it will bring challenges.

“I think AI is an opportunity. I think it will grow the pie, as opposed to shift the pie. I think it will increase consumption, and from that perspective, we are generally quite positive.”

The ElevenLabs deal is an ‘opt-in’ agreement for Kobalt’s songwriters: their work will not be used by the AI firm unless they have specifically said it can be, rather than an ‘opt-out’ approach where it will be used unless they say not.

Hubert said that this decision has given Kobalt an opportunity for frank engagement with its songwriters, explaining its strategy and why it thinks the deal can be positive.

“There is a journey here in terms of education, and those conversations go from ‘I will never participate in an AI platform in any form’ to ‘Yes, let’s go and let’s do more’. You have to really navigate those different opinions,” he said.

Hubert added that in general, songwriters have been “generally inclined [to opt in] but with strings attached” – finding out what those strings are and how to cater to them is what’s happening now behind the scenes.

“For those that view AI purely as a threat to their craft, it’s a more complicated conversation, and in some cases, it’s a conversation where you lose the argument, because for them, it’s very, very personal,” he said.

“One thing we need to understand… is that something that for us is transactional is very personal for a writer, and you have to put yourself in those shoes and understand the fear around perhaps the threat to their craft. So it’s a process.”

Another keynote interview at Music Ally Connect saw SoundExchange CEO Michael Huppe fielding questions from Creative Counsel Law director Julia Montero.

Among the topics was SoundExchange’s 2025 partnership with Music Nation, which focused on collecting and distributing neighbouring rights in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“The Middle East is a fascinating territory in all sorts of ways, and the UAE, among other countries, is making a very deliberate effort to switch away from the oil-based economy, realising that ‘black gold’ in the ground is maybe not the future 100 years from now,” said Huppe.

“Many of the countries over in that region are deciding very deliberately to create an entertainment hub, recognise IP rights, support musicianship and create tourism.”

Huppe noted that other entities are working on collective management in the UAE and surrounding region too, citing Esmaa and EMRA, and highlighted the opportunity that they all see to create brand new licensing structures.

“If we all could create the licensing regime from scratch [in the west] it probably wouldn’t look the way that it looks today. The UAE was the chance to do that,” he said.

“It’s a very new and fresh approach to create the way an industry might work more efficiently. And the Middle East is obviously one of the growing areas in our industry.”

Starting afresh brings hurdles, of course. “You’re dealing with ministries that are that are doing this for the first time, so that can create some challenges. But the upside is there’s no baggage: no legacy system built around a sales model that isn’t really what the industry is about any more,” said Hyppe.

“It also helps that there’s a little less bureaucracy in the UAE with the government than I’m used to in the United States. I’ll just say that if you get the right people doing the right thing, it can happen pretty quickly!”

The conversation widened out to neighbouring rights more generally, with SoundExchange estimating that it handles 42% of global collections in this space – but that the overall market is growing excitingly.

“You see private companies creating neighbouring rights divisions. There are major labels now that have neighbouring rights divisions. There are major publishers too, and you see some of the data and monitoring companies really focused on the neighbouring rights space too,” said Hyppe.

“It is a growing area, and from an investment standpoint, it’s definitely worth the industry investing in it.”

The conference also included a keynote fireside chat between Iain Catling, CEO of AudioSalad, and Gee Davy, CEO of UK independent-labels body AIM.

The conversation focused partly on mergers and acquisitions within the music industry, and inevitably on the deal that has been provoking plenty of rows over the past year. Catling pushed back on some of those arguments.

“What we’re seeing with Downtown and UMG right now, I don’t feel personally and professionally that it’s anywhere near as bad as it’s being made out to be,” he said.

“I’m not saying I’m for it. I’m not saying that I want it to happen, because for years I’ve really enjoyed competing with [Downtown subsidiary] FUGA… I will miss out on keeping that level of competition with them the way it’s been.”

“But in any industry, you need the choice to sell your company, to move it in a direction that can encourage innovation… And I think the gaps that this will create will allow other companies to move in,” said Catling.

However, the loss of Downtown Music as an independent firm does raise another concern in his mind, which is about that company’s history as one of the acquirers.

“Downtown has been a great M&A partner to the industry. They have acquired a number of smaller companies over the years, and I do think that that’s going to be a loss to the independent sector for a period of time,” he said.

“As an organisation, they have helped create that healthy movement of companies and the growth of smaller companies that I’m championing. So I think that’s going to be a loss, but I do know that that will come from other companies that are truly in the independent sector as well.”

Catling returned to the arguments about whether UMG’s Downtown deal should be approved or blocked by regulators, suggesting that too much involvement by the latter in the music industry could store up trouble.

“That movement is what creates a healthy ecosystem, and I never want to see that restricted in any way,” he said.

“Once you bring regulation in and you start to make it too difficult, you send a very negative message to the entrepreneurs: the people that are helping drive that innovation and starting new companies.”