In an interview with DMN, Richard Burgess recalls how he worked to reshape A2IM during the last decade. Burgess also shares his thoughts on the music industry not monetizing music enough, DSPs ‘leaving money on the table,’ and expansion into fast-growing global markets. “We need to make sure that we don’t kill the art of making music.”
Burgess recently announced he would be stepping down from his position as President and CEO of A2IM — after 10 years with the organization. When asked what he’s most proud of during his time at A2IM, and the legacy he wants to leave behind, Burgess humbly replied, “It’s really hard to look at what you’ve done and see it as a legacy.”
Burgess admits that the organization grew massively under his leadership, and is hugely proud of achieving diversification within the A2IM board and membership.
Regarding the A2IM’s improved coordination, Burgess said, “I’m big on trying to keep relationships open with other organizations. Sometimes, you have to collaborate with people even if you disagree on 90% of the things they want.”
“The relationships with the other trade associations have been a big part of what I’ve tried to achieve. I think we’ve done well with that.”
Another achievement Burgess mentioned was the ‘Protect Working Musicians Act.’ “With the PWMA, any group of artists, managers, labels, publishers, songwriters, etc. would be able to gather and jointly negotiate deals,” Burgess explained.
Before the PWMA, a small independent label had no leverage whatsoever. “It’s kind of insane. We’re negotiating with the largest companies of all time. If they want, they can divide and conquer a small independent label by just offering whatever they want to offer.”
Although the PWMA has been around for three years, Burgess expresses that legislation requires a lot of patience, adding, “It takes a while.”
Regarding the challenges of recorded music revenue generation, Burgess spoke passionately about the industry’s failure to grow revenue in proportion to ‘today’s massive audience increase.’
“The big challenge with the recorded music industry is that we should be seeing much higher revenue numbers. If you do the math by adjusted dollars relative to 1999’s revenue, we’re still down about 35 to 40 percent.”
Burgess notes that the industry is not seeing the revenue, and would like to ‘fix that.’ “I’d really like to see the music industry get back to not only the size it was, but the size it should be because the listening audience has increased massively.”
Although Burgess agrees that streaming has been an amazing democratizer in many ways, he believes DSPs are leaving money on the table.
“Music is one of those must-have things in life. People love music. But we’re not seeing the revenue flow commensurate with the amount of love that people give music.”
Burgess thinks that music subscriptions should be at par with video subscriptions — and makes an argument to prove his point. “When you look at surveys about subscriptions, consumers consider music the best value. It’s also the least expensive in the consumer’s mind,” he said.
“Look at what people are paying for Netflix and other subscriptions. I doubt that anybody watches Netflix as much as they listen to music.”
Speaking about other interesting new technologies and business models that could significantly change things for labels, Burgess praises the independent industry’s revenue generation from vinyl sales and merchandise.
“The independents make about 42 percent of their revenue from vinyl, CDs, and physical goods. The major labels are doing well under 10 percent.”
“There are a lot of opportunities there. And I’m seeing people developing technologies and business plans that fit into that kind of concept.”
Burgess also discusses emerging International markets and the massive revenue opportunities they present for the music industry.
Comparing the US streaming market to India, where 80% of subscribers are ad-supported and only 20% are paid, Burgess says, “[The revenue] is certainly a lot lower than the money that comes from economically developed markets like Europe and the US.”
“But we’re seeing those countries increase their gross domestic revenues, which will change things even on a free subscription.”
What does that impending growth mean for the music industry? Burgess says opportunities can be revealed by answering the questions: “What are [emerging markets] buying, and what are they listening to?”
A lot of American music — but also a lot of local music that’s going global now. “Because of streaming, we’re seeing a lot more acts from other countries that we normally would never have heard of.”
Burgess concluded the interview by highlighting that when it comes to revenue generation, the key is not whether people love music— ‘it’s about whether we can monetize it, so we can keep the musicians alive.’
The interview was taken at SXSW 2025 in Austin, during A2IM’s annual brunch networking event.
