Pivoting from Marketplace to Infrastructure: A Data Play

In this episode of The Future of Consumer Marketing, host Andres Figueira interviews Filip Strömsten, Co-founder and COO of Chapter Two. Chapter Two is solving one of the music industry's most foundational problems: royalty data is completely broken. While catalog acquisitions from artists like Justin Bieber and Bob Dylan make headlines, the underlying infrastructure for understanding music earnings remains opaque and fragmented. Chapter Two is building the data infrastructure that will enable proper valuation of music catalogs, starting with a transaction platform that has already facilitated sales for legendary producers like Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins (Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston) and Bankabooom (Blackpink's main producer). By cleaning and standardizing earnings data across hundreds of different royalty statement formats, they're creating transparency in an industry where creators literally don't know where their money comes from. Topics Discussed: Building AI-powered data infrastructure to clean fragmented music royalty data across hundreds of formats Facilitating music catalog transactions for creators seeking liquidity on their life's work Navigating the challenge of explaining complex B2B infrastructure problems to non-industry audiences Using AI to understand and standardize non-logical data structures before applying advanced analytics Managing the tension between financial valuation and cultural/emotional value in music assets Pivoting from a marketplace model to solving foundational data problems first The impossibility of predicting music virality and the randomness of TikTok-driven breakout hits Why blockchain doesn't work for music rights without fully decentralized consumption platforms