If you’ve been following us, you know our investing journey leads us to some very interesting places.
We’re constantly exploring new topics, ideas, and ways of investing our time and money. We like to carve a path through the woods, and take you all along for the ride.
One of the ways we do that is through our investor trips. Earlier this year, we organized our very first trip to Mexico: A tequila-themed journey to Jalisco 🥃
Here’s the thing about that trip: It was terrific. Easily the coolest thing we’ve ever done. It went so well that we decided we couldn’t wait until next year to do another.
So we’ve planned our second one. This October, we’re doing a music-themed journey to Nashville, Tennessee 🎸
The fact is, these trips are so unique, so different than anything else that other companies are doing, that they deserve multiple dedicated issues.
So today, I’ll explain what this upcoming Nashville adventure is all about: How it all works, what we want to learn, and what we’re trying to achieve.
Let’s roll 🤘
Table of Contents
Many options, one winner
Looking back, one thing that amazed me about the Mexico trip was how quickly we all realized this was something we should do again.
I remember chatting with Miguel from House of Rare and Jim from Untapped. We were sipping mezcal at the bar of the Quinta Real in Guadalajara, discussing the pros & cons of hosting investor trips in different parts of the world.
This was just a few hours into the experience, and here we were; three folks who had never met in person, already discussing the pros & cons of doing more investor trips in different parts of the world.
After the trip ended, we polled the Altea community to help think about where we should go next.
🇻🇳 Vietnam was one option. Similar economic development to Mexico, with its spectacular scenery and startup investment landscape. But we wanted to have the trip in October — which is smack in the middle of monsoon season. Not happening.
🌴 Bali got lots of votes, which is unsurprising. But we felt it would be a bit thin from an investment standpoint. Eco-tourism is a great theme, but we should try to go broader. (We’ll go there someday, just not yet.)
🏴 Scotland came in 2nd place. Lots of people got excited over this idea, and a whiskey-themed investing trip to Speyside is still very much a 2025 option.
Ultimately the winner was Nashville. 🎶 🎵 🎶
Here’s why it’s perfect.
Why Nashville?
What comes to mind when you think of Nashville?
Country music? Taylor Swift? Dolly Parton? Boozy bachelorette parties?
Those are all part of the rhythm, but there’s much more to the symphony.
Nashville has become the global center of music culture, production and innovation.
Not New York, not London, not LA. Nashville.
The legendary city is oozing with music culture, including countless famous venues, recording studios, museums, and festivals.
While country is the fastest-growing genre of music in the US, Nashville isn’t just for country; its music scene is extremely diverse. Rock, hip-hop, bluegrass, you name it. It’s the place to be.
A big part of that is thanks to Nashville’s music infrastructure.
Other big music cities may have the culture, but they don’t have the same infrastructure:
We do the writing, the production, the creation of the tours. It is all here. The lawyers, the business side, the PR. It is a big, complex industry, and Nashville thrives.
– Nashville Mayor Karl Dean
Music tech startups 🎤
Naturally, the city is home to a litany of music tech startups, including some you may have heard of, and others who’ll be joining us:
- Pitch is a collaborative platform where musicians create, edit, and share their projects with a suite of advanced production tools. Founded by Eric Fortaleza, who moved to Nashville from Australia. We’ll be hanging out with them on Oct 22.
- MySet empowers live musicians and DJs to accept paid song requests from the crowd. We’ll see the tech in action at a live show with founders Sam Miller and Logan Martin.
- Artiphon designs and manufactures alternative instruments that cater to the digital age. Really cool stuff.
- JKBX is a music investment platform that allows investors to own shares in royalties like they were stocks. Although JKBX is not based in Nashville, founder and CEO Scott Cohen will join us for the trip.
It’s affordable to live here, and that makes all the difference.
– Artiphon founder Mike Butera, on his decision to establish his music startup in Nashville instead of Silicon Valley
Exploring music royalties 🎵
Music royalties are one of the most sought-after alternative investments, yet one of the least understood.
This is a truly complex world; one that we have only scratched the surface of. While some of our early explorations in this space have been well-received (and even positively recognized by the SEC) it’s time to really dive into the mechanics here.
I believe that in order to understand this world, you can’t just pump out a few bland, timid “Music Investing 101” or even “102”-type articles — you need to spend time with the experts themselves.
One such expert who will be joining our adventure is Scott Cohen.
Scott is a music industry legend. In 1997, Scott co-founded The Orchard, the world’s first digital music distributor. He sold it to Sony, then became Chief Innovation Officer at Warner Music Group, one of the big three recording companies.
His latest venture is JKBX, one of the most important music startups of our time. JKBX (pronounced. “Jukebox”) is a music investment platform that allows investors to own shares in royalties like they were stocks.
Dan Wiseman will also be joining us.
With 15 years as a trusted music industry advisor, Dan is a Principal at Bernstein Private Wealth Management, and is a regular contributor to music media companies, like this Billboard piece on the impact of rate hikes on the music catalog market.
Bernstein is one of the top independent investment research firms in the world, and they have a special Forecasting System for music catalog sales. They have offices in 53 cities and 25 countries, but their global HQ is in Nashville.
Dan is also a prolific startup investor, with multiple exits and early checks into Dollar Shave Club, Liquid Death and Athletic Greens. He also co-founded the luxury shoe brand Buscemi, which was acquired by Lion Capital in 2016.
The expertise doesn’t stop there. We’re also finalizing arrangements with two more music royalty executives at top record labels. Stay tuned.
Music memorabilia 🎸
Music memorabilia is hot.
Similar to how game-worn memorabilia & photomatching are picking up steam in the sports memorabilia market, stage-played instruments are helping fuel the music memorabilia industry.
So I’m delighted that Cristy Barber will be hanging out with us in Nashville and guiding us through this ecosystem.
A Grammy-nominated industry veteran (she has produced music for Jay-Z, Pharrell, and many others) Cristy has held senior positions at Capitol Records, Columbia Records, Elektra and Def Jam/Universal, where she was the President of the Marley Family owned labels.
Today, she is the Vice-President of Pop Culture at Julien’s Auctions, and runs their new Nashville office.
Julien’s has some incredible music memorabilia. Their highly anticipated music auction last November, Played, Worn & Torn, was a big success, featuring groundbreaking finds from across the music industry.
And their recent May 2024 auction showcased dozens of stage played instruments, including a Prince guitar and a John Lennon guitar that sold for $2.8m.
Lots more to come…
As a music lover and big collector of vinyl records, it’s hard to overstate how excited I am for this trip.
But it’s impossible to do more than scratch the surface in a single issue — especially because we’re adding new stuff each week.
(Seriously, at the rate we’re adding new speakers and events to this trip, soon our biggest problem will be figuring out what not to do.)
So, over the course of the coming months, Wyatt and I will be digging deep into all sorts of interesting music investment themes.
How to stay updated:
- Learn more about the Nashville trip. The trip page is updated daily.
- Apply to join the trip. We have 12 spots available (and 5 are already taken!)
- Know someone who may want to join? Forward this to them. If they join we’ll send you $250.
- Consider becoming an Altea member. It’s not a requirement to join the trip. However, Altea members get upgrades, benefits & perks. And only Altea members can invest in deals that we create.
- Add music investing to your preferences.
- Have specific questions about the trip? Have an experience or speaker to recommend? Want to get involved in some way? Let’s chat. Book a call with me.
There is so much more to come on this music investing journey…
If you can join us, great! If not, you can still follow along.
As always, we’ll take everyone along for the ride 🤘
That’s all for today.
Reply to this email with comments. We read everything.
See you next time, Stefan
Disclosures
- No companies mentioned in this issue have paid for any placements or promotions.
- This issue contains no affiliate links
