Guest
Megh Vakharia
Megh Vakharia is Co-founder and CEO at Symphony, as introduced on the show.
Episodes (1)
Megh Vakharia and Chuka Chase, co-founders of Symphony, explain how their artist marketing agency became a DIY tool for every creator.
Questions these episodes answer
Why did Megh Vakharia and Chuka Chase shut down their marketing agency to build Symphony?
They had built an agency that worked with major artists like SZA and Schoolboy Q, but by 2018 the business model of doing custom creative and marketing work for each client project by project was not making them enough money to live on. So they packaged the data, marketing and reporting skills they had built for those clients into software instead, which became Symphony in 2020.
Why were investors initially skeptical of Symphony?
Vakharia says many venture capitalists they pitched argued there were not enough independent artists in the world to support a standalone marketing platform. Music tech was not yet seen as a real investment category, so Symphony's early funding came slowly, through managers, customers and mentors before the first institutional check landed.
How did Billie Eilish's success shape Symphony's vision for independent artists?
Chase says Billie Eilish winning Album of the Year in 2020 with a record her brother produced at home proved a major artist could break through entirely outside the traditional industry system. That moment convinced the founders that the next breakout artist would build from home too, using tools like the one they were building.
What is Symphony trying to build with AI for independent artists?
Vakharia says Symphony wants any creator worldwide, even someone with very little money and no marketing knowledge, to describe a goal in their own language and get a usable marketing plan back. Vakharia gives the example of a kid in Mumbai with just enough money to promote a record, talking to the system in Hindi instead of English.