Ep. 180: Music consumption today is borderless, but the systems that manage it have historically been national. Now, collective management organisations are undergoing their most significant transformation in decades.

On one hand, they are becoming global infrastructure players, scaling systems, data and partnerships to match worldwide music consumption. On the other, they are redefining their relationship with creators whose ways of making, monetising and collaborating are changing just as rapidly.

We're joined by Caroline Champarnaud, Sacem's Director of International, and Julien Dumon, Director of Digital. They talk about how CMOs are evolving into interconnected, global infrastructure players. We explore the challenges of global metadata, why international partnerships with organisations like ASCAP and GEMA are more vital than ever, and how Sacem is scaling its systems to match the explosive growth of music streaming in emerging markets.

SACEM: Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music

This is the third in a special series of Music Ally Focus made in collaboration with Sacem, exploring the evolution of collective management in the modern music industry – looking at technology, policy, copyright and more.

In the next episode, we’ll discuss the evolution of CMOs further, and how the global infrastructure only works if it ultimately serves creators, whose needs are evolving just as fast as the systems built to support them.

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In the first episode in the series, ⁠David El Sayegh, Deputy CEO of Sacem⁠, discussed how the organisation is defining the future of copyright.

In the second episode, we were joined by Julien Lefebvre, the Head of Innovation and Sacem Lab, to talk about its startup partnerships, and the strategic decision to open up certain proprietary technologies to all creators.

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This is a Music Ally Co-Labs podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠musically.com/music-ally-co-labs⁠⁠⁠.

Co-Labs content is created by publishing partners in liaison with the Music Ally Editorial Team. We work closely with partners to ensure that it adheres to Music Ally's high expectations of quality, thoughtfulness, and usefulness.

Ep. 179: It's a Very Special Episode of Music Ally’s Focus podcast in which Stuart Dredge and Joe Sparrow can roll up their sleeves and look at the impact that AI is having on streaming in 2026 – and there’s a whole lot of nuance, what-if’s, and context to rummage around in.

It's all connected to Music Ally's latest Insight Report (available to Music Ally Subscribers here: https://musically.com/category/reports) – and that report focuses on 5 “C”’s of AI and streaming. Stu and Joe picked two of the biggest: Crunch Time, and Creativity:

• Crunch Time: AI and the music industry are finally at a true inflection point where decisions need to be made and lines need to be drawn. So where’s that line: how much of a song can be AI-generated before it’s classed as “AI music” – or is there a dawning reality that this is not even a distinction that can be made any more?

• Creativity: If it’s not realistic to divide songs into “AI” and “not AI” piles, should we instead not be asking “is AI truly creative?”, but “how will people be truly creative when using AI?” And is the pie being grown when a poet adds their words to an AI-generated song, or a teenage producer samples AI-music they generate?

It’s a spirited, feisty and opinionated conversation (i.e. Stu and Joe agreeably disagreed a little bit) – and it’ll help you to get up to speed with two of the key issues that we’ll all deal with in some way or another this year.