Yungblud Joins THR, Frost School of Music for Future of Music Event

Music industry professionals joined The Hollywood Reporter and the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music to look ahead as they co-hosted the inaugural Future of Music event on Thursday night.

Yungblud, who was recently nominated for three Grammys, was the evening’s keynote guest, speaking in conversation with THR music editor Ethan Millman about the resurgence in the popularity of rock music. The 28-year-old rocker had the crowd the laughing and cheering along.

Myman Greenspan Fineman Fox Rosenberg & Light partner Audrey Benoualid, Frost School of Music’s vice dean and chair of the music industry department Serona Elton, Range Music managing partner Evan Winiker, Isabel Quinteros, svp of marketing industry relations at Jen AI, and songwriter and producer Roahn Hylton also took part, speaking on the Future of Music panel.

The group dove into the realities of artificial intelligence in the music industry and what the landscape might look like in the future; how far away the industry is from a monetization model in the age of AI music was a hot-button topic during the panel. Quinteros brought up Suno, the AI music platform, having recently raised $250 million in funding, and that she believes private equity firms will soon join the conversation.

“Over $20 billion has been poured into music acquisition over the last six years. Private equity now owns a lot of the music catalogs that are trained on,” she said. “I think that depending on where we land here over the next year or so, I can see people like BlackRock and other big private equity firms that are going to come in and get in the fight, because now they have skin in the game.”

The big question for the gathered industry execs was whether AI will lead to a better or worse music industry in the next few years. The entire panel seemed optimistic about the future. “I think we’ll start seeing all the tools become licensed and we’ll be talking more about how the monetization’s going to work, as opposed to if that’s what’s going to happen,” Elton said.

Later, Yungblud brought his signature high-energy approach to speaking about rock and its place in the future of music. The 28-year-old singer has had a banner year that’s resulted in three Grammy nominations including best rock album, best rock song and best rock performance. “I was at that point in my life [where] I was so tired of trying to be just a little bit less of what I am,” the rocker said. “I made [latest album Idols], and it could have gone fucking pear shaped, but it fucking didn’t.”

He stressed that he wanted to make a classic rock album in the modern age, and the reasoning for leaning fully into rock, as Yungblud explained it, was pretty simple. “I didn’t like the sound of my third record. I thought it was like diluted fucking [soda],” he told the crowd, met with laughs for his frankness.

In terms of the resurgence of rock music’s mainstream popularity, Yungblud pointed to several factors on why he felt things were going that way. “We always, as a group, go like, ‘Who’s going to save rock and roll?’ We always kind of pinpoint it’s going to be one person,” he said.

“The reality of the situation is every time it has reared its head again and dominated or kicked the mainstream’s ass, it’s always been when it’s spherical. It’s multiple scenes going on at once, and it’s multiple scenes being highlighted by the freedom of the internet,” he continued. “I think with rock music, it’s not going to be one person.”

The singer also lamented on the fact that historically, the media part of rock music has made people become in competition with one another, as opposed open to collaborating or touring with acts they enjoy. He noted that the genre hasn’t been as open to admitting when they’re taking inspiration from music they love, citing hip-hop and rap as genres that have succeed in that way.