We invited Rian Liebenberg, CTO of Kobalt Music and Stephen O'Reilly to share with us their views on the fasting changing world of music.

What is Kobalt Music? It has taken off as streaming music has gone mainstream across the US, Europe, and East Asia. In the final quarter of last year, it represented the artists behind 38 of the top 100 songs on U.S. radio. Impressive!

Rian is the CTO at Kobalt Music, a technology-focused music "scale-up" focused on empowering creators in a rapidly changing industry. 

Prior to joining Kobalt, Rian was the CTO at Schibsted Media Group, served as CEO for a 3D mapping and location services startup, having previously worked as Director of Engineering at Google, and before that led all Engineering initiatives for lastminute.com. Rian studied Computer Sciences in Cape Town, and served as an Officer in the South African Navy."

Stephen O'Reilly

A veteran of the digital music business Stephen O’Reilly is head of marketing and a director at London based management company ie:music and managing director at ie:ventures.

ie:music was established in 1992 by two industry veterans, David Enthoven and Tim Clark. The company is focused solely on the management of artists and its philosophy is that their artists’ interests are paramount. ie:music manage artists including Robbie Williams, Passenger and Lily Allen amongst others.

As digital technology throws the music industry into turmoil, ie:music believes that great opportunities come from disarray. The company embraces digital technology as an extraordinary facilitator of artist – fan communications, as a means of encouraging transparency and of making everything from ticketing to downloading and streaming more effective and efficient.

Clark and Enthoven’s mantra: the artist and the fan are the two most important parts of the music industry, everything else is just the gloop in the middle!

Join us and come learn from the experience of Rian and Stephen and come hear their vision of where the music industry is headed.