The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies Of 2015 In Music

FROM BEYONCÉ TO BIG DATA, THE ARTISTS AND "SUITS" KEEPING THE BEAT.

It's great to see SFX in the Top 10 Most Innovative list. A good overview of some of the most exciting companies out there. I'm a particular fan of Sonos and Next Big Sound.

7. SFX

For bringing order to electronic dance music. Since 2012, SFX has gone on an epic spending spree, gobbling up iconic dance clubs (Liv, Story), an online music hub (Beatport), a leading artist management company (TMWRK), two digital marketing outfits (FameHouse, Learned Evolution), a pair of ticketing agencies (PayLogic, ClubTix), and promoters behind some of the world’s largest EDM fests (Tomorrowland, Electric Zoo). The vision? Artists get a one-stop shop for all their needs, brands like MasterCard and Budweiser get what CMO Chris Stephenson calls "a rational, organized way of being able to connect with this audience" on a global scale, and with the recent redesign of Beatport, fans get a single EDM-focused community where they can stream, buy, share, and discuss music and live events, get news, and connect with like-minded friends. A two-hour weekly EDM radio show, the fruits of a partnership with Clear Channel, debuted on Top 40 stations nationwide in August. "The entire ecosystem we’ve been consolidating is really the soundtrack to the technology revolution," says Stephenson. "We’re creating the definitive platform for millennial culture."

While Beyonce gets the photo opportunity, Sonos, Next Big Sound, BOP and others are driving the industry forward.

While Beyonce gets the photo opportunity, Sonos, Next Big Sound, BOP and others are driving the industry forward.

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