The State of the Market: Social x Music x Tech
With building Pearl Music, my market research brain is always on. I like to think my market research skill set has come from my love of pop culture & specifically, Bravo TV shows. See in order to keep track of the Bravo-verse, you have to be tapped in to multiple different sources, not just the show you are watching. You have to track the different behind the scenes relationships, follow the Bravolebrities on socials, listen to podcasts dissecting the shows, follow the crossover dynamics between people across different shows. All of which I have been phenomenal at over the years. If you would ever like me to give a presentation on the lore of Vanderpump Rules, Summer House, or RHONY… I got you.
My market research for Pearl is a weird crossover where I have to focus on multiple different domains. It isn’t just the music industry. I also have to be tapped into the live event industry, the tech industry, the state of social platforms. These are four of the loudest industries out there, so I do have to cut through a lot of noise. Similar to cutting through rumors when it comes to Bravo.
It isn’t just about the noise that is associated with all of these industries though, it is also about the tension living within all of them. I am constantly needing to hold space for so many truths at one time when researching or analyzing these industries. Right now, it would be so easy to say that our whole world has gone to shit & that we are doomed. That is simply not the case. All of these industries have started from well-intentioned places & we have seen what happens when capitalism infiltrates them. That is the tension happening within all of them. You have the passionate humans that are working & creating in all of these areas, then you have the capitalistic machine that has completely soured the whole fucking thing.
The clear trends I’ve seen compounding over the last year across all of these industries all tie back to this idea that the pursuit of efficiency & scale within these industries is imploding upon itself.
AI is changing the way people work & create.
Anybody who hasn’t been living under a rock has heard a million takes on this topic. It’s true, AI is changing the way that people work & create, but not in as drastic of a way as people are making it seem. The barrier to entry to create a simple version of different digital mediums is much lower (whether it be an app, website, song, essay, post, etc).
The people behind these tools haven’t changed though. You still have humans with different skill sets, traits, points of view that are the ones who need to prompt them. The rhetoric around AI allowing anyone to create anything is silly & overblown. It’s ignorant too. Anyone who is talking like that, I automatically don’t take them seriously. I’m going to be so frank about that, because it is clear as day that they are not actively using the tools or understanding workflows that it takes to produce any of these mediums.
In tech, there is a reason there are people who work at big companies, in set roles, it’s because they are specialized in that area. They have real life experience that allows them to understand it in ways that other people wouldn’t & that AI wouldn’t. I’ve been hearing about bigger tech companies forcing all roles to use ‘X’ amount of AI tokens in Claude Code, whether they are a designer, engineer, PM, engineering manager.
Designers, they understand user experience, they understand niche design patterns or actions of humans, they know how to go through a creative process, outside of just creating designs.
Product managers, they understand the user in different ways. They have personality types that can work with customers, designers, engineers, sales. They know how to make decisions that are going to drive a product forward. It requires a lot of emotional intelligence to balance all of that.
Engineers, they can think about technical systems in ways that account for scalability, niche edge cases, security. Engineers are the ones who can understand technical limitations, they have their own perspective on users.
In music, the artist, the producer, the band, they all have their own distinct roles that go into producing something. Is an artist going to have to produce their whole album? Is a producer going to start having to sing & play instruments?
While some of these roles aren’t mutually exclusive, are they all going to be expected to be able to turn their brain on to produce everything within these industries? What is the real expectation here? It takes creativity & brain power to manage these tools. People hit a bottleneck in how many decisions they can make or information they can oversee & understand. Who gives a shit how many tokens or agents you have?
For the humans behind these tools, in their specialized roles or fields, it is great for the way that it does improve their workflows when it comes to tedious things that otherwise may have been a big time suck. It is about the ways that these tools help the humans behind them. If it causes them more stress, more responsibility, overwhelm… then what is the point?
Big tech. The hero that has now lived long enough to become the villain.
Most of the giants in big tech, were not created with the idea that they would be what they are now. They started with founders who were obsessive about a problem & created innovative solutions to those problems.
What happened was the lack of regulation & the scale that these companies were able to grow. Tech has been driven by data, efficiency, scale. Digital worlds seemingly don’t have the same restrictions as the analog world, the bounds have felt endless so people & companies kept pushing further.
How could you possibly tell someone that Facebook, a social platform that set out to connect people at Harvard, then became a company called Meta that tried creating the Metaverse? Zuck has just kept going… because he could. They quietly shut down the Metaverse operation this last year because nobody wants to live in Zuck’s digital world, which would be used to serve ads, steal our data, manipulate our attention spans & mental health. You aren’t so sly these days.
Excerpt from Mood Machine by Liz Pelly
Now let’s talk about Spotify. I don’t even want to say that the Spotify founders were obsessed with music & that is why they came up with Spotify. No, their original intention actually was to have a platform that would drive traffic for ads & music streaming happened to be a good model for that. The founders were ad-tech guys, who have been cosplaying as people coming to save the industry. Mood Machine by Liz Pelly is a great read on this if you want to go deeper. Nonetheless, they did create the top music streaming company in the world that has radically changed the way the entire industry functions.
They gave more people access to music, which is powerful, but in order to do something like that the way they did, they sacrificed artists, curators & are trying to play God with the way that they think they are in charge of music. Music is something that is bigger than us & they wanted to control, manipulate & cheapen its users relationship with music so that they can grow the profit & metrics for their company.
Then you have Live Nation & Ticketmaster in the live music industry. We’ve all seen the headlines… they have been held liable for operating as a monopoly. They inserted themselves perfectly into the center of the live music infrastructure… where they could just skim off the tops of ticket sales, booking fees, venues, parking, etc. Another company that found an entry to exploit & they got greedier & greedier. At the cost of the pockets of artists, fans, & venues.
They have become the villains. We used to be excited about these platforms & what they meant for society, connection, accessibility, innovation. They were cool… until all of a sudden… they were predatory & exploitative. They are still trying to play it off like they are the cool guys & it’s just so clear they aren’t. They got away with it for awhile though.
AI slop & bots flooding all channels.
Just because the barrier to create is lower… doesn't mean people should. BUT they are.
Streaming platforms are getting slammed with thousands of AI generated songs a day, which completely disrupts their ecosystem. Deezer recently reported that they are getting 75,000 new AI-generated songs a day.
Last week, the top song on iTunes was from an AI artist. I looked up this artist page & I was like “you have to be kidding me”. All of the artwork is the same generic color scheme, it is so clear there is no actual artist there, but this got through. I am finding myself googling artists now when I hear a new song from an artist I have never heard of before.
The App Store & Play Store are getting flooded with vibe-coded apps. In the beginning of the year, it took over 5 days & an expedited review to get a small update approved for Pearl Music on the App Store. It usually takes less than 48 hours. I googled & this was a broader problem. In Q1 2026, there was an 84% year-over-year increase of submissions.
Algorithms are turning into things that are being gamified & formulaic. What is going to happen there? People are going to use AI to create mass amounts of templated content so that they can break through the algorithms with sheer force.
Bots & scalpers are buying up all the tickets & reselling at a higher price. It’s quite demoralizing to be in a queue for a presale for your favorite artist & then realize you can only go if you buy a resale ticket at an insane price.
These marketplaces where companies have wanted to be the middle men in order to scrape off the top at every layer, while being able to scale at masses while forcing creators into their world, is now going to come at a cost. They are now going to be the ones who are responsible for defending it against AI & bots. The irony is not lost on me.
The priceless value behind authenticity right now.
I find myself now looking up artists elsewhere when I see a new song from an artist I haven’t heard of before. If there is not a way that I confirm more about their life or story, then I couldn’t care less about one catchy song. I am interested in finding new artists, not just songs, there are plenty of rogue songs that are out there on streaming platforms. I care about the story the artists are telling through their art, the intention behind it, their natural talent to be able to produce it.
Every human has their own unique lens & story, there is room for all of them. There is not room for people who are pretending or faking it or performing anymore. The markets are flooded, the barrier to create something formulaic is low, people’s trust has been compromised. This new age is increasing the discernment of humans.
This is not just digital music, it is software, tv shows, movies, blogs, articles, books, written content, short-form video content. It is everything that is creative. You are not going to be able to create these things with real fans or users & a career built out of it, without being able to create a genuine connection with people.
One great example is Kid Cudi… he is a multi-disciplinary artist with a consistent through line in everything he produces. When you consume something of his, you know you are in his world & mind. It can't be replicated the way he does it. I would put myself in the bucket of a superfan.
In the last year, his album he released told a story that I connected to. His song Salt Water was my top played song of 2025 & this album is now one of my favorites of all time. Kid Cudi also wrote a memoir that felt like you were having a conversation with him. I watched the animated series that he created on Netflix, Entergalactic. Watching it, you knew you were in his world. Not only that, he started painting & had his first gallery in Paris. Seeing the art, it can’t be mistaken for Cudi. NOW, he has a podcast that just fits through the entire through line again.
This is the extreme, because Cudi has been doing this for a long time now, he has connections & resources to do things at this scale with his vision & world, but with anything someone is creating, make people feel like they’re in your world & mind. Make it unmistakably YOU. That’s where the thing being produced is coming from, regardless of the medium. Authenticity is the only signal left towards something or someone being human & it’s something people can sniff out.
All of these companies who came in to shake up these industries & swing the pendulum super far to the digital side, while not respecting the human experiences associated with them, are now seeing the downside of this. They created their digital worlds & everyone is realizing there is no fucking soul to it anymore.
They can have that. They can have their datapoints & their vanity metrics that sort of mean nothing anymore? They’ve created their own simulation. What do streams even mean anymore? What do views or likes mean on social platforms? What do lines of code written even mean? What does number of AI tokens used mean? What does any of this mean when we can’t map it back to a real person? When any of these things can be bots or inflated?
You can scale infinitely in a digital world with bots, but with humans you hit limitations. Creativity & art & human connection were never supposed to be industries purely driven by quantitative data. Humans are not supposed to be measured by that.
We are watching the consequences play out in real time. The market is crumbling, but in doing so, it is creating fertile soil for creativity & people to build anew. That's why these markets aren't doomed… their current structures just aren't working anymore.
It just needs to be built with the lessons of this current collapse. Efficiency & scale aren’t bad, but they are when there is no ceiling or limitation. Healthy amounts of efficiency & scale are going to be key. Respecting our human experience is going to be key.
🔗 https://connoreschrich.substack.com/p/the-state-of-the-market-social-x
