confirmed speakers include:
Andy Apple, Founder & CEO, We Are Giant
Andy founded We Are Giant with the vision of transforming the relationship between artists and fans for good by building sustainable, healthy, and lucrative music communities.
Prior to founding We Are Giant, Andy was an investor at Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, a venture capital firm operating out of its fifth fund. At Sound, Andy focused his efforts on investing in early stage software and fintech companies. Andy was also on the incubation teams at two institutionally-backed robotics startups - Future Acres and Miso Robotics. Prior to his roles in venture capital, Andy spent five years at JPMorgan in New York, most recently covering early stage software, hardware, and internet and digital media sectors.
He is an advisor to companies ranging from AI music (DAACI) to Fintech (Trullion, +Purpose) to AR/VR (Fabric) with a focus on capital raising, business development and go-to-market strategy.
Andrew Batey, Founder & Co-CEO, Beatdapp
Andrew Batey is an accomplished entertainment and technology entrepreneur and early adopter of major industry transformations across music, social media, and web3. Over the last 15 years, The Peak’s 2023 Emerging Leader raised $100M+ for his own startups and filed 40+ patents in seven countries around artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, and data infrastructure.
At Beatdapp his focus is on helping DSPs, music labels, and artists combat artificial streaming fraud.
In the early years, Batey spent time helping launch multiple top 10 artists, lifestyle brands, and growth hacking web properties such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube before they were the marketing tools we know today. Away from work, he’s taught 4th-year Advertising and Marketing courses at multiple universities over eight years.
Edd Blower, Co-Director, Marketing, RCA Label Group UK
Edd has more than a decade of music industry experience. His journey began at Polydor and continued at Columbia UK where he was involved in leading digital campaigns.
Now at RCA, Edd focuses on developing strategic, audience-focused, and data-informed marketing strategies across the marketing, data and digital team. His approach combines creativity with analytical thinking, while always supporting each artist’s vision.
In addition to his role at RCA, Edd is part of Sony Music UK’s Sustainability Committee and when he’s not working, he enjoys beekeeping and drumming.
Kevin Brennan MP, Chair, APPG Music
Kevin Brennan is a Welsh Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Cardiff West since 2001. He is the currently the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Music.
In December 2021 Mr Brennan presented his Copyright (Rights And Remuneration Of Musicians) Private Member’s Bill to Parliament.
Kevin is also member of the Musicians Union and of the parliamentary rock band MP4.
Paul Brindley, CEO & Co-Founder, Music Ally
Paul Brindley is the co-founder and CEO of Music Ally. Since its establishment in 2002, Music Ally has become a world-leading knowledge company for the modern-day music industry.
Brindley has a background as a musician, having played bass guitar with The Sundays, an indie band that sold more than 2 million albums worldwide.
He also participated in the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think-tank where he wrote New Musical Entrepreneurs, a report on the impact of new technologies on the UK music industry published in 2000.
Brindley also worked in the private office of Rt Hon Tony Blair MP prior to the 1997 General Election.
Mindy Daeschner, Strategic Advisor, MediMusic
Mindy is an advisor, entrepreneur and expert in the field of healthcare and technology. She draws on a 20-year background of management consultancy, for some of the world’s leading global organisations.
Having founded several businesses (start-up and within multinational companies), she acts as a change agent helping shape and evolve business and solutions that actualise value and brings broad leadership, management and commercial experience working in Europe, Asia and the USA.
Having worked and met with many private healthcare providers across a broad spectrum of services, she has first-hand experience as to the complexity new care models can present and the opportunity they hold for transforming patient care and improving the healthcare economy.
Robin Davies, Chief Operating Officer, Amra
Amra is the world’s first global digital music collection society. Robin manages all operational elements of the amra business, alongside supporting licensing and commercial activities.
In 2022, he held a leading role in the sale of amra to Francisco Partners and has overseen annual collections increasing to over $150m since he joined in 2019.
Davies is part of the Group executive team responsible for achieving key objectives such as end to end cloud processing, increasing global licensing coverage and supporting songwriter causes through industry Board positions.
Gee Davy, Interim CEO/ Chief Policy Officer, AIM.
Gee has been working in the music industry for over 20 years across a variety of roles. She participates on a number of industry boards and committees, including at UK Music, IMPALA, WIN and PPL, with a focus on copyright, policy, technology and industry strategy.
Gee holds qualifications in law and is an accredited Music Sector Expert, having moved into music after an early career in Electronic Engineering. She believes passionately in creating positive change in the world, currently working with the UK’s Women in Music Awards and as a Trustee of young talent and education charity, UD Foundation.
Idan Dobrecki, CEO and Co-founder, Aiode
Rooted in music and music creation, Idan comes from a musical family which includes his uncle, a Grammy award winning percussionist.
Aiode was founded to revolutionize music production and ideation, by allowing musicians around the world to model their own unique AI versions that are then offered to music creators, all while sharing the company's profits with its musicians.
Idan comes from a diverse background that includes advanced physics & mathematics, law & business administration, all the while not neglecting his love for playing the piano. Aiode is his second venture working on connecting people and creating accessibility through technology.
Prior to his entrepreneurial career establishment, Idan worked at top law firms with large corporations and startups, focusing mainly on tech and capital markets.
Kerri Fox-Metoyer, Head of Entertainment Service, GABB
Kerri is an accomplished business strategist focusing on music, film, television and the tech marketplace. Kerri has spent her career at the intersection of entertainment and technology with executive roles at The Walt Disney Company, Sony Music, Sony Electronics & EMI Music.
Career highlights include building and launching a music streaming service for Gabb Wireless, a safe tech for kids company, running Strategic Partnerships/ONE SONY for Sony Electronics US, building a music partnerships department at a top US talent agency, and working alongside music icons Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood to launch innovative music initiatives.
Kerri was named one of Billboard Magazine 2018 Top Branding Power Players & recognised as one of Nashville Business Journal's 2018 Women in Music City award honorees.
Ella Hartley, Head of Artist Strategy, planet
planet is a membership platform focusing on Live audiences. It builds custom memberships for artists by using fan and platform insights as well as its own experience of music and fan culture to provide both the tech and full service.
Ella works with partners across both artist management and labels, leading a team that specialises in identifying, rewarding and growing audiences that show up in real life again and again. She is currently working with leading artists and their teams including Aitch, Cat Burns, Caity Baser, Kaiser Chiefs and many more.
Before planet, Ella was at O2 for five years running music partnerships with the likes of Live Nation and Universal Music Group, and delivering their Priority Tickets program, artist campaigns and Academy Music Group venue partnerships.
Morgan Hayduk, Co-CEO & Co-Founder, Beatdapp
Prior to founding Beatdapp, Morgan led enterprise growth and partnerships for ZipRecruiter, was the Director of Federal Government Relations for TELUS Communications, and a consultant for Canadian government relations firm, Crestview Strategy.
As a consultant, Hayduk specialised in entertainment and technology, representing Music Canada (the domestic trade association for Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music) and Hasbro's entertainment studio eOne, along with Facebook, Uber and TELUS.
Hayduk was part of the team that led to the passage of Canada’s signature music copyright protection legislation, which extended copyright from 50 to 70 years.
Olivia Hobbs, Founder, Blackstar Agency
Olivia Hobbs is the award-winning founder of UK & US-based Blackstar Agency, the marketing & digital agency of choice for a range of acts including Andre 3000, Arlo Parks, Nine Inch Nails, Perrie Edwards, Myke Towers, Olly Alexander & Afro B
Marlen Huellbrock, Head of Marketing & Audience, Music Ally
Marlen heads up Music Ally's Marketing Strategy Services department, supporting management and label clients in running effective and innovative digital marketing campaigns. She's also part of Music Ally's Training team, where she develops and delivers digital marketing training to a wide range of industry clients such as members of the MMF and BPI. Before joining Music Ally, Marlen worked within Universal Music's brand partnerships team in Germany and Switzerland and completed an MA in Music Business Management at the University of Westminster.
Ilā Kamalagharan (ILĀ), Artist & Director
Multifaceted artist and producer, ILĀ's work traverses ethereal non-binary vocal timbre, dense sonic textures and quantum data sonification. Their work explores fluidity from personal identity through to socio-economic systems with a focus on physics, philosophy and emerging technologies. Their upcoming film MURMUR is a collaboration with Ai-Da (the first humanoid robot artist), Imogen Heap, Guy Sigsworth, Bishi and Portrait XO created using pioneering AI tools.
ILĀ has performed globally with recent commissions/collaborators including Turner Prize 2023 winner Jessie Darling’s MISERERE, and Kent Refugee Action Network (Little Amal).
As co-founder and director of legendary choir London Contemporary Voices, ILĀ has worked with over 20 Grammy winning artists including Alt-J, Imogen Heap and U2.
In 2022, they co-founded Trans Voices, the U.K.'s first professional trans+ choir.
ILĀ sits on the Ivors Academy Future Sound Experience Council, is a member of Earth/Percent Music Committee, a Redcliffe Advisory ambassador and a PhD supervisor and research partner (AI & Music) at University of Sheffield.
Pete Maginn, Managing Director, Commercial Insight, Beano Brain
Pete has over two decades of kids, teens and families insight experience, having spent his own teen and young adult years leading peers across a number of residential camps, tours and social action projects as teaching in a Nursery.
His wealth of agency-side experience includes working for global, blue-chip brands and businesses helping them understand, explore and strategically plan around kids’ and families’ behaviour and attitudes.
This includes working with clients such as LEGO, Mattel, BBC, Disney, Netflix and Sky, and specifically for Spotify and Sony Music in the music space.
His perspective is cross-generational and has helped clients and organisations understand the nuances of kids’ media behaviour whilst also preparing them for macro changes in the media ecosystem.
Declan McGlynn, Journalist and Consultant
Declan is a music technology journalist and consultant, specialising in how emerging technology is shaping electronic music creation, consumption and culture.
Over the past 15 years, he’s worked with everyone from Google, DJ Mag, Splice, Resident Advisor and Universal Music Group to Rolling Stone, TIDAL, DAZED, and more.
More recently, Declan has become heavily involved in reporting on and working with AI and machine learning within music production and DJing tech, collaborating with respected research platform Water and Music on a series of reports, and writing multiple guides for leading publications like MusicTech and DJ Mag.
He’s now the Communications Director of Voice-Swap, an ethical AI voice cloning platform that pays artists royalties for the use of their AI vocals.
Kara Mukerjee, Innovation & Business Development, Warner Music Group
Kara is an industry-recognised innovation & marketing specialist. With over 17 years in recorded music and the tech sector, she has made significant contributions in commercial music technology and artist digital marketing, across the UK and global markets.
Focus areas include voice tech, spatial audio, creative metadata, AI and immersive gaming. She works across catalogue and frontline, delivering artist and label projects for RIOPY, Coldplay, Pet Shop Boys, Bring Me The Horizon, Jean-Michel Jarre, Dan and Shay, the Beatles and Bowie estates and more.
Today, Kara pilots new technologies and strategic partnerships at Warner Music Group and specialises in classical artist projects.
Kara is ambassador for UK music education charity Restore The Music.
Ed Newton-Rex, Founder, Fairly Trained
Fairly Trained is a non-profit that certifies generative AI companies for fair training data practices.
In 2010, Ed founded Jukedeck, one of the first generative AI startups, which was acquired by ByteDance in 2019. At ByteDance, Ed led the AI Music lab, then led Product for TikTok in Europe.
In 2022 Ed joined Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion, to lead their Audio team. His team launched Stable Audio, Stability’s music generation product, which was named one of TIME Magazine’s best inventions of the year in 2023.
He resigned from Stability in November 2023 due to the company’s policy of training AI models on copyrighted work without consent, and in 2024 founded Fairly Trained. He is a published composer of choral music.
Jonas Norberg, Head of AI, Tuned Global
Jonas is an award-winning entrepreneur, inventor, and product-focused leader passionate about music and technology.
Jonas is best known as the founder and former CEO of Pacemaker, a groundbreaking music AI platform that won numerous accolades, including the Apple Design Award.
With a background in rocket science and tech startups, Jonas has dedicated his career to creating new and exciting music experiences for consumers.
As Head of AI for Tuned Global - a B2B music and streaming solution for brands - he continues to lead the ex-Pacemaker team, using his expertise in product innovation and user engagement to drive the future of music and audio streaming in several industries including MedTech, Fitness, Entertainment and Telecommunications.
Mag Rodriguez, Founder & CEO, EVEN
Mag boasts 12 years+ of experience in the music industry, with over 1 billion streams as a manager and producer and 7+ years as an entrepreneur with an extensive background in artist development, startups, and community development.
Mag has helped independent artists generate $5M+ in revenue and 1B+ streams during his career. In addition, during his time at VC firm gener8tor, Mag oversaw $600k in grants to artists across the Midwest.
In 2022, Mag launched EVEN, an innovative direct-to-consumer platform that empowers some of the world's biggest artists to sell their music directly to fans before releasing it on streaming platforms.
Hazel Savage, VP, Music Intelligence, SoundCloud
With 15 years experience in the industry, Hazel is a music-tech lifer, guitarist and former CEO/Co-Founder at Musiio. She started her music-tech journey as an early employee at Shazam and spent time understanding the pain points of the industry at Pandora, Universal and HMV before launching Musiio in 2018 and then selling the business to SoundCloud in 2022.
Hazel travels globally speaking at conferences and talking to catalogue owners about the value of artificial intelligence integration and digital transformation in the music industry.
As a female founder in the heavily male-dominated industries of music and tech, Hazel seeks to offer insights with interesting and humorous anecdotes, as well as easy-to-follow explanations and use cases of artificial intelligence technology.
Sarah Seukeran, Learning Operations Manager, Music Ally
Sarah develops Music Ally's learning hub courses on marketing, technology and business for the music industry in addition to delivering live/bespoke training to a wide range of clients like Chrysalis Records, Sony Music Australia and Berklee College of Music.
Prior to her role at Music Ally, Sarah built up experience as a musician, songwriter, producer and digital marketer operating in Trinidad & Tobago and Canada leading her to a smooth transition into training and mentoring in her current role.
Joe Sparrow, Editor, Music Ally
Joe is a writer and broadcaster who lives in Berlin. He is Music Ally’s Editor, and has a particular focus on emerging music technology. Joe also creates and presents the Music Ally Focus podcast. He has worked with music-tech platforms including The Hype Machine, and guides emerging artists in their career development, marketing, and strategy.
Joe also ran the music blog ‘A New Band A Day’ for nearly a decade and has worked in UK radio, music PR, and radio plugging. He’s helped organise and operate live events at SXSW, The Great Escape, Most Wanted: Music, and Tech Open Air, and teaches at BIMM Berlin.
Oleg Stavitsky, CEO & Co-Founder, Endel
Oleg innovates at the intersection of technology, art, and wellness. In 2018 he founded Endel to make AI-powered mindfulness accessible to all. The company’s core technology Endel Pacific creates personalized, adaptive soundscapes to reduce stress, improve sleep, and boost productivity — all backed by neuroscience and the science of the circadian rhythm.
Prior to Endel, in 2013 Stavitsky co-founded BUBL, a brand that applies digital art methods to kids apps. Along with an elite design and coding team, Stavitsky has built seven BUBL apps, all of which have received an App Store Editors Choice award.
Oleg also founded the award-winning V3 Agency, which he grew to 40 people and sold in 2016 to Berlin-based fintech company Aureum. V3 built apps for some of the biggest Berlin startups, including Kitchen Stories (acquired by Bosch) and Memorado, and also won numerous awards, including the Google Design Award, iF Design Award, and German Design Award.
Casandra Strauss, Director, New Digital Business & Innovation, Universal Music Group
Casandra joined UMG’s Innovation team in April 2022 to work with tech startups and the wider accelerator ecosystem. In this role, she drives new business opportunities and supports entrepreneurs developing music projects.
Prior to UMG, Casandra served as Director of Innovation & Special Projects at the BPI, UK’s recorded music industry trade body, where she spearheaded the Music & Tech Springboard Programme and developed partnerships in this space.
Earlier in her career, Casandra held roles at INgrooves and Sony Music, developing digital partnerships and supporting music partners including Apple and Spotify, among many others.
Ben Turtel, Founder & CEO, Kazm
Ben is the Founder & CEO of Kazm, a gamified community engagement platform for Web3.
Previously he founded Rivet, an AI-powered reading app for kids, within Area120, and spent 6+ years building applied machine learning solutions at Google.
He advises startups at StartX and The Garage @ Northwestern, and writes about philosophy, technology, and Web3.
Dr Jo Twist OBE, CEO, BPI
Jo was appointed CEO of BPI in 2023 after heading up Ukie, the trade body for UK games and interactive entertainment.
Jo has a 25-year background across interactive entertainment, technology, education, creative media and youth culture.
She sits on several boards and advisory groups including the UKRI AI Strategic Advisory Team and Creative PEC Board. She was Chair of the BAFTA Games Committee (2013-2022).
Jo is also a Visiting Lecturer at the Dept of Computing, Goldsmith's University and VP for games accessibility charity SpecialEffect, a Wiggin Foundation Trustee, and a BRIT Trust Trustee.
In 2016 she was awarded an OBE for services to the creative industries. She was awarded her Doctorate in online communities, young people and identity in 2001.
Olivia Walker, Vice President and Co-Founder, Magic Star (a division of The Orchard, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment)
Olivia has 18+ years of music industry experience primarily within Sony Music Entertainment across Artist Marketing and Multi-Artist Compilation campaigns with over 8 million album sales, 10 UK No.1 albums and a Music Week Marketing Award.
In addition to working with high profile artists and DJs including Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, Fatboy Slim & Pete Tong, Olivia spearheaded music projects with brands from the BBC and Nickelodeon before co-founding Magic Star in 2019.
The current roster includes Hasbro (Peppa Pig, My Little Pony & Transformers), MGA (L.O.L. Surprise!, Rainbow High) and Spinmaster (Paw Patrol, Unicorn Academy) and elevates music strategy globally across The Orchard's vast range of kids' partners which include Bluey, Pinkfong and The Wiggles.
Sarah Wilson, Head of TuneCore, UK/Australia/Canada
As Head of TuneCore, UK/IE/AU/NZ, Sarah is responsible for managing and building the company’s artist roster in her regions and supporting local artists through partnership opportunities and marketing initiatives.
Sarah’s experience lies solidly within the music industry, having worked at Universal Music UK as Vice President, International Marketing, and at The Orchard in Artist Services. She spent 13 years at Beggars Group, rising through the ranks within the international department, beginning as Sales and Promo Manager, and ascending to Director of International.
She has worked with Beggars Group’s most celebrated artists including Adele, Radiohead, The National, MIA, and Bon Iver, and across labels like XL, 4ad, Rough Trade, Matador, and Young Turks.