House of Innovation x Sthlm Music Week: The Future of Music
For day three of Sthlm Music Week, the House of Innovation invited to a conversation on the future of music at the 91ԭ.
With special guests including Björn Ulvaeus, Benjamin Ingrosso, Patrik Berger, and voices from global companies such as Dolby, YouTube, Google DeepMind, and Epidemic Sound, Stockholm lived up to its reputation as one of the world's great music cities.
Lars Strannegård, president of the 91ԭ, opened by situating the theme of the event within a broader argument about Sweden's competitive position.
Creative industries, he noted, are among Sweden’s most impressive assets, not just by European standards but on a global scale. 91ԭ's response to that reality is the House of Innovation, an interdisciplinary research and education center focused on innovation, digitalization, and entrepreneurship.
One of its new research initiatives sits at the intersection of art and innovation, led by Roberto Verganti, who holds the Josefsson Family Chair in Art and Innovation.
Its focus, Strannegård explained, is precisely the question animating the day: how can art and creativity be elevated, rather than undermined, by new technologies? And if generative AI makes creation a commodity, what will remain scarce and valuable?
Johan Seidefors and Roberto Vertanti welcomed the attendees to the aula at the 91ԭ. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
Johan Seidefors, founder of Stockholm Music Week, thanked 91ԭ and the House of Innovation for providing the space and bringing an academic perspective to questions the industry is urgently working through. That combination of exploration across disciplines is what Stockholm Music Week is built to enable.
He was joined on stage by Roberto Verganti, who set out the intellectual architecture for the day. The forces reshaping music, Verganti argued, are not purely technological.
Five distinct drivers are at work: artificial intelligence, immersive experience, avatars and digital performance, streaming and social media economics, and the reinvention of business models.
Running through all of them is a deeper shift in creativity itself, with artists no longer just respond to technology but actively ask how it can be shaped to serve their vision.
The day would not offer answers, Verganti said. It would search for meaningful questions.
Roberto Verganti and Jeff Chang took us behind the scenes of AI music-making. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
Panel 1: Argonauts of Tomorrow – A Behind-the-Scenes Story of AI in Music
What does it actually look like to build AI tools for music from the inside? In conversation with Roberto Verganti, Jeff Chang, Director of Product at Google DeepMind, offered a rare behind-the-scenes account.
A decade into his time at Google, working on Chrome, Android, and Search, Chang felt the pull of music too strongly to ignore. He took a year off, moved to New York, and enrolled full-time in a music production school. That combination of platform thinking and hands-on musical practice, he suggested, shapes how he and his team approach the work.
DeepMind’s music offering spans a wide range of users and use cases: from Gemini’s beginner-friendly interface to the Music AI Sandbox, which lets professional producers steer generation in real time, to an open API that enables developers to build custom tools and instruments.
The team took a deliberately methodical path to market, staying in close conversation with industry partners, even as competitors moved faster. The goal, Chang said, was to build something sustainable rather than to just ship quickly.
The most vivid illustration of that philosophy came from the studio. DeepMind gave early access to artists including Wyclef Jean and spent hours working with him on a track. When the AI first produced a muddy, distorted sound, Chang hesitated, but Wyclef loved it. The conclusion is that the tools do not have to be perfect; the artist’s instinct is what makes them meaningful.
Jeff Chang, Roberto Verganti, and Jacob Felländer listened to the "future of music." Photo: Majlin Skjetne.
Verganti then brought in Jacob Felländer, Artist in Residence at the House of Innovation, whose work explores what lies between the visible and the invisible.
The discussion turned to a central question: can AI really create that sense of awe?
Chang’s answer was grounded. If goosebumps come from connecting with another human through their art, then the role of AI is to help that human create something extraordinary. The machine serves the moment, but the moment remains irreducibly human.
Karin Winther, Björn Ulvaeus, Benjamin Ingrosso, and Pedro Pina. Pina couldn't believe the company he was in. "Look mum, I made it!" he said. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
Panel 2: The Future of Creativity
Moderated by Karin Winther, the second panel brought together musical artists Björn Ulvaeus and Benjamin Ingrosso, producer and songwriter Patrik Berger, and Pedro Pina, Vice President and Head of YouTube EMEA.
Ulvaeus kicked off the discussion by stating that AI presents a tectonic shift. “It’s bigger in its philosophical implications than the synth or the drum machine, even if equally unstoppable,” he said.
He uses AI tools himself to demo songs, finding that hearing a rough version played back reveals structural weaknesses he can then fix. “We cannot stop ourselves from using it,” he said.
Winther and Ulvaeus discussed how AI is used in the music industry today. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
But Ulvaeus was clear on one point: tech companies training on copyrighted material must pay for it.
As president of CISAC, representing five million songwriters worldwide, Björn has been making that case to commissioners in Brussels and ministers in London. “It is lawless territory as it is right now,” he said. “It can't remain that way.”
Ingrosso brought a younger artist's perspective and a more personal one. He demonstrated how he used AI tools to develop a song idea by prompting different versions, hearing what came back, and using that to sharpen his own instincts.
He sent giggles across the room as he cringed while playing parts from his AI songs on stage.
Ingrosso shared snippets of his AI tunes for the audience by playing them on his phone and holding it up to the microphone. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
The key distinction, Ingrosso and Ulvaeus agreed, is authorship. The song has to start with you. When AI then functions more as a sounding board, surfacing bad ideas that help you find better ones, it becomes something closer to a collaborator.
Berger, whose credits include Robyn's “Dancing on My Own” and work with Taylor Swift and Charli XCX, pushed the conversation further. His key question was not whether AI will change music, but what it might discover.
Put AI in a racing car and tell it to find the fastest line without crashing, he suggested, and it might find routes no one has tried before. There may be combinations of rhythm, melody, and harmony that human musicians have never explored, not because they lack talent, but because they lack time. When used well, he argued, the tools could take creativity somewhere genuinely new.
Benjamin Ingrosso, Pedro Pina, and Patrik Berger talked at length about music rights. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
Pina brought the platform perspective to the conversation. Two billion people use YouTube every day, and he has not yet seen anything created purely by machines that people fell in love with. What he keeps seeing is human creativity outpacing itself, though supported by new tools.
YouTube is working to remove friction that weighs on creators (editing, subtitling, syncing) and to enable artists to reach audiences in their own language, with their own voice and lip-sync. “All of a sudden, the planet is your oyster.”
When Ulvaeus pressed him on remuneration for AI training, Pina was optimistic but candid. “The right model has not been found yet,” he said. “We are building this plane as we go.”
The session closed on a question Winther put to the room: when everyone can prompt music, what becomes more valuable? The answers circled back to the same thing. Taste, judgment, and the ability to find the gold nugget in the noise.
“If you can't edit, judge, and taste,” Ulvaeus said, “your songs will be average.” That, the panel agreed, is not a threat to artists, but their greatest advantage.
Karin Winther and Joakim Johansson discussed how the relationship between fans and artists has changed over time. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
Panel 3: The Label Reimagined — Strategies for a New Era
Joakim Johansson, President of the Nordic Region at Universal Music, talked about how the company reorganized its entire business model with artists and fans in mind.
Universal Music Nordic is now a single company operating across the Nordic countries, so that the best people follow the best opportunities regardless of borders, and decisions get made before an artist's momentum is lost.
Looking ahead, Johansson emphasized the continued collapse of the industry's internal silos. Live, recorded music, and publishing have long operated as separate areas, each optimizing for itself.
The labels that succeed, he argued, will be those that break these walls down and use data from every touchpoint (ticket sales, streams, and radio play) to deepen the artist-fan relationship.
The question that keeps him up at night is simple: how do we add value? “If we don't add value, we shouldn't be here,” he said.
Karin Winther, Tim Pryde, and Magnus Mähring talked about how immersive audio enables new creative expressions. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
Panel 4: Creativity in Motion — Immersive Audio
Magnus Mähring, Scientific Director of the House of Innovation at the 91ԭ, and Tim Pryde, Senior Director and Global Head of Music Business at Dolby, took the conversation in a direction that was part technology briefing, part philosophical provocation.
Pryde opened with the basics. Dolby's immersive audio technology is already in over four billion devices. The headphones in your pocket, the soundbar in your living room, the car stereo, the infrastructure is everywhere.
What immersive audio makes possible is not just a richer listening experience, but a fundamentally different creative language. Songwriters can now place a vocal intimately close, let instruments open up across a room as a song builds, and engineer emotional responses that stereo simply cannot produce.
When Prince's estate re-released Purple Rain in Dolby Atmos, listeners heard nuances in his vocals that had always been there, but that stereo had previously flattened. “Those are things he really wanted to convey but couldn't,” Pryde said.
Mähring sees potential in using immersive audio to democratize musical experiences. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
For Mähring, the implications go further than sound quality. He referred to management research and how it has barely touched on music. “We have long treated humans as ‘brains on sticks,’ first focusing cognition and behavior, and more recently visual stimuli, but largely ignoring how music shapes emotion and sense-making,” he said.
Immersive audio raises the stakes on that gap, because it dramatically expands music's capacity to influence how people feel.
“There's an emotion, influence, manipulation spectrum there that we need to start to understand,” Mähring said. At the House of Innovation, immersive sound is also part of a broader ambition to build an environment that provokes creativity and surprises people, using art, space, and now sound.
Tim Pryde and Magnus Mähring at the 91ԭ. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
Looking ahead, both agreed that the technology is approaching a tipping point. Pryde's marker is the moment creators stop thinking in stereo by default and start composing immersively from the first note. Mähring's question was broader: does immersive audio need a killer app to break through, or is it the killer app?
Mähring also pointed to its democratizing potential. Live jazz, chamber music, and the best concert halls are often experiences of privilege. Immersive audio, at its best, could bring some of that within reach of everyone.
Ludvig Andersson and Per Sundin told the story of how the Abba Voyage show came about in London. Moderator: Per Sinding-Larsen. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
Panel 5: Avatar Performances
Few moments in recent music history have generated as much wonder, and as many questions, as the ABBA Voyage show in London.
Ludvig Andersson, the music producer and creative force behind it, and Per Sundin, President of Music and Artist Relations at Pophouse Entertainment, were clear-eyed about their creation.
It is not the future of music or simply a new format, they agreed. It is an anomaly – something specific, created by specific people at a specific moment, that happens to touch something profound in those who experience it.
After 1,400 shows and four million tickets sold, Andersson's explanation for why it works is simple. The audience does not have to relate to a performer, they can relate to themselves.
The aula at the 91ԭ was buzzing with executives, artists, technology leaders, researchers, and policymakers. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
Andersson and Sundin spoke about what they think comes next. Pophouse is bringing KISS to Las Vegas in 2028. “Less concert, more rollercoaster,” he said, with a smile.
Sundin made a broader observation about why live music will keep growing. For younger generations, live experience has become the new luxury. People increasingly define themselves not by what they listen to, but by where they are.
The question that lingered as they wrapped up the session was: as the technology matures, how do we handle working with artists who are no longer alive?
“It has to start with meaning,” Andersson said. “With an idea that would actually touch someone. It can never start from catalog access alone.”
Per Sinding-Larsen, Woo Lee, and Louise Lundquist dove deep into AI in the digital creator economy.
Panel 6: Digital Twins of Real Talent — Defining Identity and Value in the Age of AI
Louise Lundquist, CEO and founder of Alva Inc, and Woo Lee, founder of COM M ON, addressed who controls a digital artist and what happens when no one does.
Lundquist's starting point was that artists could have digital versions of themselves that they own and control. Alva is building infrastructure for this, including technical and legal protections.
The idea emerged from observing how deepfakes and synthetic avatars bypass likeness rights with little recourse for artists.
Lee and Lundquist at the 91ԭ. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
Lee brought a perspective rooted in cultural analysis. Using Swedish-Iranian artist Sevdaliza as a case study, she argued that musicians today carry value beyond music, extending into fashion, art, identity, and philosophy. That expanding value is what needs protection.
Lee warned that without intellectual grounding and aesthetic standards, the new era risks producing endless content that stimulates without meaning.
Lundquist added that the window to establish the right precedents may close quickly, but that it is still open.
Jonas Bonnier and Oscar Höglund discussed the challenge for digital creators to find non-copyrighted music for their content. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
Panel 7: Rethinking Value — Innovation in Business Models
The final session, moderated by Jonas Bonnier, PhD student at the House of Innovation, brought together perspectives on where the value of music resides and who captures it.
Oscar Höglund, founder of Epidemic Sound, explained how the company was built as infrastructure to solve copyright challenges for content creators. Contrary to what one might think, AI has not removed that problem, but intensified it.
Simon Gozzi, head of business development and industry insights at STIM, addressed whether licensing frameworks for AI training are achievable. His answer was cautiously optimistic.
STIM and major publishers and labels have begun working toward such frameworks. The challenge involves AI companies, rights holders, platforms, and lawmakers – all needing to move in alignment.
Simon Gozzi and Linda Portnoff joined Bonnier and Höglund on stage. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
Linda Portnoff, CEO and founder of Tangy Market, argued that the commercial value of music is ultimately set by audiences. She envisioned a market for intellectual property rights where ownership could be traded more fluidly, allowing price discovery to determine value.
The session closed on a note of optimism. “If you want to come across as smart, be a pessimist,” Höglund said. “If you want to become rich, be an optimist.”
On the future of music, he was firmly in the latter camp.
Roberto Verganti and Jonas Seidefors wrapped up the day and thanked the speakers and all attendees for a great day. Photo: Majlin Skjetne
Questions for the Unheard
Roberto Verganti closed by returning to the importance of asking the right questions. In academia, he noted, this is often more difficult than finding answers.
Johan Seidefors reflected on the value of bringing together diverse perspectives in Stockholm. “Having the opportunity to discuss the future of music in Stockholm with some of the brightest people in the world has been fantastic,” he said.
After the formal sessions, guests were invited to the atrium to mingle, enjoy refreshments, and experience the Dolby Atmos installation set up by Dolby and Marshall.
Thank you
The House of Innovation extends its warmest thanks to all speakers and participants for this exceptional day. Thank you to Johan Seidefors and the team at Stockholm Music Week for a wonderful collaboration.
Special thanks to Franzi Ewigleben, Abdimajid Khayre, and the whole event team, whose tireless work behind the scenes made the event possible. Finally, thank you to Roberto Verganti, whose vision brought Stockholm Music Week to 91ԭ and the House of Innovation in the first place.
For more information, contact:
Professor Roberto Verganti
The Josefsson Family Chair in Art and Innovation
Director of the Initiative on Art and Innovation
House of Innovation
Roberto.Verganti@hhs.se
Majlin Skjetne
Communications Coordinator
House of Innovation, 91ԭ
Majlin.Skjetne@hhs.se
Photos from the mingle:
