[Software] Troy Carter and Suzy Ryoo’s music tech startup Q&A launches software group, Venice Innovation Labs

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Troy Carter and Suzy Ryoo’s music tech startup Q&A launches software group, Venice Innovation Labs

 

Q&A, a startup developing tech for the music industry co-founded by industry insiders Troy Carter (Lady Gaga’s first manager) and Suzy Ryoo (Carter’s longtime collaborator), has launched a new suite of software products through a division called Venice Innovation Labs.

The new tools are designed to help record labels beta test songs, manage artists, and distribute music easily and efficiently, the company said in a statement.

The first releases from the new division are StreamRate, which provides sentiment analysis of new songs before they’re released; and Venice For Labels, which tracks splits and payments among different artists, manages and monitors music distribution, and helps labels keep track of their rosters.

The company is also providing a human touch through a strategic marketing and advisory “Premium Services” team led by Ray Kurzeka in North America and Matt Ott in the UK.

“Technology is rapidly changing the way music is consumed, yet our industry’s infrastructure remains underserved. We’ve been quietly building beautiful and intuitive tools that labels will love, as well as services that move the needle. Our vision is to create an authentic community to empower brilliant artists and the labels that support them daily,” said Suzy Ryoo, President of Q&A.

 

I think for a lot of us in tech, we’re a bit stuck. On one hand, these technologies have produced jarring amounts of wealth in the tech industry, but they have also caused a large number of harms. What do we do next?

Let me start by saying that the general framework of the solution is about what I call the four levers: money, code, norms and laws.

Money is the business models, which create the incentives for how the advertisers on the platforms and the users behave. Code is how we design the platforms and the algorithms underlying the platforms, which I go into in great detail. Norms are how we adopt, appropriate and use the technology. And obviously, laws are regulation.

In terms of solutions, I think the entry ticket for solving the social media crisis is creating competition in the social media economy. Platforms that lack competition don’t have any incentive to change away from the attention economy and their engagement-driven business models, nor do they have any real incentive to clean up their negative externalities in our information ecosystem, whether it’s hate speech or misinformation or mani[CENSORED]tion.

Now, when I say competition, the first thing on everyone’s mind is always, “Oh, you mean break up Facebook.” But the point I make in the book — and I take a very clear stance on this — is that breaking up Facebook in this economy doesn’t solve the problem. This economy runs on network effects. The value of these platforms is a function of the number of users on the platform. Economies that run on network effects tend toward concentration and monopoly.

So, if you break up Facebook, it’s just going to tip the next Facebook-like company into market dominance. What we really need is structural reform of the social media economy, and that involves social network portability, data portability and interoperability legislation.

Let me push back on this a bit though. Terms like “data portability” always sound nice as a solution, but have we ever effectively used this tool to open a market?

This isn’t the first time that we’ve done this. During the AOL-Time Warner merger, we forced AOL’s AIM product to become interoperable with Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger. And it went from a 65% market share to a 59% market share one year later, down to like 50%, then it ceded the entire market to new entrants three years later.

Another good analogy is number portability in the cell phone market. It used to be that you couldn’t take your cell phone number with you when you switched from one cell phone provider to another, and then we legislated that they had to let you take your number with you. That was akin to a social network at the time, because all of your friends knew to call you at that number.

Research has shown that number portability created about $880 million of consumer surplus every quarter for years and years after it was instituted in Europe, and it created a lot of competition. We should have something very similar in social networks, around social network portability and data portability, so that we could create competition.

Now, if you break up Facebook after these kinds of structural reforms to the market, that’s a different question, but breaking up Facebook without structural reforms to the market economy is like putting a Band-Aid on a tumor. It’s not going to solve the underlying lack of competition that the social media economy has.