ABOUT
Andrew Stess is the Founder and CEO of StessCo Consulting Group, a boutique consultancy specializing in business development, strategic partnerships, go-to-market strategy, and U.S. market expansion for global music-tech and rights-management companies. With more than 25 years at the intersection of music, technology, and media, Andrew has built a reputation as a trusted connector, revenue generator, and dealmaker who helps companies scale and turn relationships into lasting commercial partnerships.
Through StessCo, Andrew works as an extension of his clients’ commercial teams by not simply advising on strategy, but actively building pipelines, opening doors, negotiating partnerships, generating revenue, and closing deals. Beyond traditional commercial and business development responsibilities, Andrew is well-versed in expanding and introducing international music and technology companies to the U.S. market and building new business entities from the ground up.
His current and past work spans the music-tech ecosystem, including LyricFind, Music Story, Ingenta, Tuned Global, Professor of Rock/Classic Rock U, and ventures across metadata, lyrics and rights licensing, royalty accounting, streaming, publishing, automotive entertainment, and media.
Andrew began his career in the early days of digital music, serving as the first non-founding member of the executive team at CDDB/Gracenote, where he helped pioneer the licensing of music recognition and metadata. He later served as Vice President of Consumer Electronics at AllMusic/All Media Guide, CEO of MusicIP, and Founder and CEO of AmpliFIND Music Services, which Sony acquired just two years after launch. He also served as CRO of LyricFind and currently serves as Entrepreneur in Residence at investment bank Daniel and Company.
A frequent moderator and speaker at music, technology, and media conferences, Andrew brings an operator’s perspective and decades of firsthand experience navigating the evolution of the digital music business.
Beyond the boardroom, Andrew is a lifelong musician—an accomplished bass player and songwriter whose music has appeared on primetime television.
PANELS
AI Detection: Who Gets Paid When the Machine Learns
Generative AI transforms how music is created, distributed, and consumed—but it also raises fundamental questions around authenticity, copyright, attribution, and trust. As AI-generated music becomes increasingly sophisticated, AI detection is moving beyond research into real-world adoption across the music industry. Labels, publishers, distributors, DSPs, and rights organizations are beginning to integrate detection technologies into their workflows to support fraud prevention, provenance verification, content evaluation, and rights management. This panel brings together leaders from across the industry to discuss how AI detection is being deployed today, why organizations are adopting it, and what implementation timelines and standards may look like over the coming years.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 4:30 PM