John Bolton

John is a business builder with 20 years of experience working in music and technology. He has co-founded and built several successful companies including Muve Music (acquired by AT&T), Flipagram (acquired by Bytedance/TikTok), and Super Hi-Fi, the groundbreaking AI platform that powers next generation listening experiences for music services, such as iHeartRadio, Peloton, and Napster. He has held executive roles leading strategy, business development, product development and marketing from early stage startups to large public companies.

At Flipagram, John pioneered the social music video use case with the first app to scale UGC video with popular music clips (300mm+ app downloads). There he architected and negotiated a landmark global music rights package with the major record companies Universal, Sony, Warner, and the indies, as well as hundreds of publishers and global performance organizations. Following the Bytedance acquisition, John led global music licensing for and helped launch TikTok. Prior to Flipagram, John founded Muve Music, a carrier bundled streaming service that grew to become one of the largest music services in the US at the time (2.5m+ paying subs) and then later in Brazil.

John currently advises companies at the intersection of tech and music on strategy, music licensing , business development, product development, and marketing. John lives in Nashville with his wife and their four children.