Symphony Is Leading the Future of DIY Music Marketing

Jakob Wredstrøm

The last thing, things you know about Riverside, which is the platform we use, it streams, downloads, and uploads at the same time, which means I get high quality at the end, but which also means it might get a bit green. If it does, it doesn't matter for me if like there's lag or whatever. Don't, don't think about it because I won't see it at the end.

Megh

Sweet.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Cool. Then I will start in five seconds.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hey guys and welcome back to the Sound Connections Podcast. Today we have Mick and Chuka in the studio. Welcome.

Megh

How's it going? Thanks for having us.

Chuka Chase

How's it going guys?

Jakob Wredstrøm

I've been very excited about this episode and you guys, have founded a company called Symfony and we're going to dissect your career, your company's trajectory and your journey until now. But before we begin that, for people who don't know you, who are you and what do you do?

Megh

Yeah, I'm Meg, I'm the co-founder and CEO of Symfony. And I have been working together for the last 10 years, multiple companies now, but my day-to-day focus is really working on the development side, the product side of Symfony, working with Chuka and helping get the business development deal was done. Historically though, my background is in development. I initially was a developer engineer, moved to LA in 2016, linked Chuka and we were like, let's build dope stuff for artists. And 10 years later, we're still doing it. That's a quick background on me.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Chuka Chase

And, you know, similar to Meg, my background was in tech, was working as a front end designer with Techstars, working with a bunch of different startups. My career started in 2013, where I linked up with Childish Gambino right before his project, because of the internet. We helped him with a bunch of his rollout stuff across, because of the internet. The time we were, that involved building websites, a lot of front end development, as you could imagine in the blog era. And that led to kind of my fascination or our overall fascination with marketing records on the internet, you know, at the point of sale. And that led to me meeting Meg in 2016 where we started our first company, Intrugal Studio, which is an agency focused on marketing records on the internet. And through those learnings over the years that led to the birth of Symfony in 2020.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Amazing. And you guys work with amazing names and worked on records that's been Grammy nominated. And it's a really interesting angle you've had from tech to marketing, well, marketing and tech combined and now to something scalable for artists. But before we sort of go into the journey, could you maybe describe Symphony a bit better? What exactly do you guys do now?

Megh

Yeah, I'm sure Tuukka has his own way of describing it, but the way I usually look at it or talk about it is it's almost like... the one place for you to get everything marketing related done, if you're a creator, if you're a brand, if you're an artist online. This really came from, me and Chuka spent so much time at our agency solving these problems at hand, right? You have this artist, this brand, they have this, at least 10 different platforms of data out there generating data, they're expected to manage that, and then somebody has to use that to inform how you do your marketing, and your LinkedIn bio, and your CRM, and all these things. And so really, Chuka and I, I around like 2020, we were just, first of all, personally fed up with like all this management just to get marketing done. And then secondly, I think we kind of saw that independence of music and at the same time, this idea of a creator being a real business, both were becoming true at the same time. And we realized this skill that we had of just like pulling together data, synthesizing it, marketing it, plus our tech skills, we combine it into something that could help a lot more people, hopefully to the skills of millions of folks, right? As we look at like the next five or 10 years. There's going to be like 50 to 100 million people trying to make money online. Think it's like 50, 60 % of like Gen Z's intending to be freelance in some capacity. And so for us, it's just like we want to be their marketing tool, their one place where they can run ads, they can have Lincoln bio, they can have the email list, they can track their data. And very soon they can use AI to do it all for them.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Amazing it's a good description But when did you guys meet so I guess is that I know you guys started in music before but let me just start with where you guys met like how did that happen?

Chuka Chase

Yeah, that goes back to 2014. was working with Childish Gambino during the off season. Donald was multifaceted artist, so he was working on a movie. I was really just tinkering on stuff and put out a call to action on the internet. was just like, is there anyone out there that would love to hack on music tech? and really didn't have a specific project in mind. It was just like, hey, I have a bunch of different ideas. I think we had this concept that we were calling the label machine at the time. think Meg showed me a text not too long ago. It was like, hey man, when do you want to link up after your job at Hulu so we can brainstorm this label machine? just it was really, who knows what that concept even was. We laugh and joke about that till today, but. It was through these hangs over time, Meg would come in from his product job as Bulu after work and us just coming in hanging and it would be homies from TDE just hanging. Through these hangs, we found work and we're like, why don't we make an app for Schoolboy Q and do this thing? then they're like, you know what, let's go meet Top about this. And that unraveled and developed into us eventually working on what became CTRL. and kind of, you know, all of SZA's stuff subsequently.

Jakob Wredstrøm

No.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, of course, we started in 2014, which is also what I asked when you met. But obviously there's a big step from starting with music and working with Don and working at Google as a product guy. So what sort of led you into technology to begin with, both of you?

Megh

Man, guess my story is really interesting because I was very much immigrant kid, Indian parents, right? My path was like, all right, what are you going to do, doctor or engineer, right? And it was like, was in school in Seattle during the time of tech becoming very much a thing, right? I think before like 2012, 2011. It wasn't cool to be a founder. That was like a rebellious thing. You're not getting a job, you know? And I think in that era, like Y Combinator became a thing that people talked about and the startup hustle and venture capital and there was like founder, founder celebrities, you know? And it was a very interesting time where like Silicon Valley almost became this mecca for just folks that had new ideas that wanted to build stuff. And so I was like... Working I was like just like always trying to find gigs at a different startup when I was in school, right? Just to try and get like real-world experience So was like 19 working full-time as like a full-sack engineer like balancing school while like doing this real job like a startup You know just like try and get into the field, but I think around like 2015 for me personally and everything kind of turned because I got kind of Sick of tech and seeing how Silicon Valley culture kind of operated at that time. At least it's very hypey sometimes And at the same time, got really into internet music culture, like Noisy Bye Bye's. They were down in Atlanta with Migos and Chief Keef, and talking to them, and I like, this is dope, the internet can really story tell like this. And then on the other side, SoundCloud was blowing up for the first time. So me and my homies were all listening to Childish Caminos, listening to Chance Rapper, Acid Rap. It was a very early era in this internet music thing, which we now know as a foregone conclusion. But just getting deeper into that, was like, yo, I would love to use my tech skills to work with artists. And I don't know what that looks like. I've never really been to LA on any music stuff, but I just want to take this leap of faith and maybe not get this crazy job in tech after school or go to Silicon Valley. Let me just move to LA. And then around that same time, intersecting with what Chukot was saying, Chukot posted in one of these hackathon groups. Hackathons were really big, taking off early on back then. So Chukot posted.

Megh

I was like, who's this guy posting? Cause I want to work on music tech. And like, he had a photo with Chalice Gambino. Because I was working with him at the time. So I followed Zuka on Facebook. I just followed him. Didn't even add him. I was like, creative director at Chalice Gambino. Was like, this is dope as hell. I don't even think we even necessarily like tapped in, but I was going to go to LA to start working at Hulu that summer. And around January of 2016, I was like, yo bro, like I'm going to be in LA. Let's link. I want to work in music and work, build music tech stuff. And I think just like through that summer of working together, we ended up working with one of the craziest teams in music at TD and working with an artist like SZA. But it was very much like happenstance, you know, was like we met, start cooking, the right cook hit, and then that was the next nine months of building out CTRL.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. And Chukka, we'll get to your story in a second, but I do have a question. Because when I talk with music tech founders, know, there's many different stories and there's many different narratives. The prevalent narrative is the incredible struggle that is to be music tech, maybe compared to other tech industries. And again, when you sort of are associated to the odds as you are, is that just like easy or is there also something to like music marketing, music tech that is particularly difficult at this time? Or was it just like tech in general right now?

Megh

I think it changes a lot, think historically music marketing has always been a very... It's been a tactic. Tactics have shifted with the tide, so to speak, right? Like every two years something changes. Like early on was like SoundCloud was new in 2016. Streaming hadn't really taken off the way it's taken off. Physical sales were still outpacing digital streaming. And so it was a very interesting time then. With music marketing and music tech, it wasn't early, there wasn't even a concept necessarily of music tech in the way we know it today. So I think just the way I look at it from being a founder of music tech and the difficulty, I think we've always been in it for the love of the game. And I think music keeps climbing ladders to find what the next level looks like for that love of the game. Now we're music tech founders in an established field, but you could have been doing music tech before it was a buzzword or a real thing.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Megh

Music marketing wise, it's the same thing. We're in the field every single day, hand to hand combat, working with artists, teams, managers. So it's really just like coming from a place at this point of having done it, like been in the problem space ourselves, having the problem ourselves and then seeing other people have it. I don't know if I answered your question or not. Answered a few different questions.

Jakob Wredstrøm

No, well, to some degree, absolutely. I'm just trying to figure out basically how easy it was, how difficult it was. And I know there's nuances to that question. What I'm really trying to fetch for is I'm trying to understand. There's this sort of glorified picture of LA. sometimes, and there's a glorified picture, maybe less so right now, but it used to be, and working with artists, and especially when they're established, and I fail to believe that is the paradise it's sort of painted out to be. Again, it's for my own sake, and I'll hopefully also some of the...

Chuka Chase

I see what you're saying, J-Lo, and I could definitely talk, speak to this. I it's not been easy. I Meg also spoke to it too. Like it's not been easy. The tides are constantly shifting from a marketing level, right? From an operational, from, know, these are me as an executive, let's remove the... other facets of being an executive that involves navigating music tech, right? Like from an operational standpoint, in order to be on top of your game, you have to be ahead. You have to have to be ahead because marketing is, it's a door, right? What happens is one person, there's a tiny little crack, one person goes through it, boom, it amplifies. And then the next person sees it, they try to go through the same door and that door just gets bigger and bigger and there's less of an impact and there's more people on the other side of the door. And that's, that's how it works, you know, when you look at, you know, trends and ways that you want to position and present yourself. But then what you're indicating too is just like the actual, you know, social side of navigating, you know, especially as an entrepreneur where maybe you're not necessarily attached to an institution or a system, the networking is up to you. The deal making is up to you. All of that is kind of in a notoriously, this is often talked about too, it's an industry that's notoriously, you know, the idiom is the game is sold, not told. The game is to be sold, not told. Meaning, you know, coming from tech, where our idiom is pay it forward, right? Like, hey, like long before you could go and use AI to pay a program with yourself, it was very common for you to just be able to walk into, I grew up in Boston. You just walk into MIT and sit next to a somebody coding and asked them a million questions. And if it wasn't exam time, that person probably answered all those questions happily. It was that culture of paying it forward. Like, how are we going to help? How are we going to invest in the next generation with information? Information's free. Music is not like that. Information is a hard learned lesson. It usually is learned through mistakes or...

Chuka Chase

maybe signing a bad contract. Hear that story oftentimes from the artist side, right? That's when they have the knowledge, right? It's after you experience it. So I think, you know, to Meg's point earlier about loving the game, that has to be part of it, right? Like you have to love it to take those blows, to be punched in the face by Mike Tyson. Like it's gonna happen. Luckily for us, we literally went toe to toe with the heaviest hitter. Well, for one of our first biggest clients was TDE and- If you kind of know the industry, they're not the easiest folks to be in partnership with or do business with because they do it their way. And, you know, I think it was a blessing to learn from them and get that experience from them because, you know, afterwards it kind of felt like everything was a lot more easy to navigate and easier to navigate. Was it a cakewalk? No, but it was definitely easier to navigate.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. Makes sense. Where does that stem from? You need to buy it or it needs to be sold.

Chuka Chase

I think there's a piece of it too that's like the roots of the industry itself. It seems like I'm getting a knock back there. But we can ignore that for now.

Jakob Wredstrøm

We can edit it out, there's no problem. You can open the door and I can ask the question again afterwards.

Chuka Chase

Okay, just a second.

Megh

like real time, I see it real time uploading. It's pretty crazy.

Jakob Wredstrøm

It's really good. Even, you know, I have talks with people around the world, like Africa as well, and like actually being able to navigate like really poor internet and still have good, good-ish quality at the end is quite incredible.

Megh

It seems like a real all-in-one tool.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, I know, it's good, like it's really good. Super cheap, it's like $30 per month. And you can, we don't do that, but you can do editing and everything. So it's like, yeah.

Chuka Chase

of all times, did a random fire inspection right now. But,

Jakob Wredstrøm

Amazing. Okay. I can just reiterate the question and I'm going to edit in my old question and then your new answer. okay. So, where does it stem from?

Chuka Chase

Think everyone has their own theories, to be honest. I'm not going to speak for the whole industry, I think it's very obvious to me, if you look at the roots of this industry, at least the commercial music industry, the record business, it came from the mafia. It came from that street code of Omerta, of the mob is like that. We don't really talk. Everything is sold, but not told. I think when you go back to at least the American recorded music industry of the artists performing in the classic speakeasies and the jazz clubs and then them figuring out that they could print the records and sell the records and who were those first distributors? It was the mob. Don't know. Think, of course, when it boomed, it wasn't the mob. But I think when you look at the DNA and the roots of just like... How it started, it was predatory. It was very much like, we're going to keep the artists out of how this thing fully works, right? Because they just want to perform and they just want to be in front of the crowd. And we just give them a little bit of the pie and they'll be happy. And that kept going long after the mob was kind of pushed out of it or whatever. Now we're in this time where the artists are now the central source of truth, right? You have successful artists now. adopting the tech culture, like, of paying it forward. Like, you know, we've seen artists do everything from post their little contract, I don't know what happened. You know, this is our legacy artists. I don't know. They saying I'm not getting paid, guys. This is my contract. What do you think? Like, you know, we've seen that we've seen, you know, we've seen artists tell artists, know, this, this is don't believe this. It's cheat codes. You know, right now there's an open conversation around whether or not monthly listener counts should be shown.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Chuka Chase

And that was an artist started that conversation. And I think that is all kind of pushing against the cultural grain of how this thing started. So there is hope for sure. But yeah, man, to your point and to your question, the roots of it was very hush-hush and predatory.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Meg, was this a surprise for you? Because as far as I understand, you didn't come from music, music per se. You came from the tech side and I would love to work with artists.

Megh

I mean, I kind of jumped in knowing of your grind, to be honest. Think when you see so many of the, you know, like behind the scenes at a lot of these places, you start realizing why it is the way it is sometimes. I think from the outside, the music industry has this pristine kind of idea or aura around it, right? It's like, oh, it's like music, they're making art, there's artists. And like now I think it's very different too, just like given how the internet has given much more of a voice, but.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Thank

Megh

I don't know, I kind of came in expecting it to be rough. I think what I realized is that, it's like actually very different behind the scenes, you know? Like, people are just operating in different ways than I expected, but I don't know, I kind of expect the journey to be something we just learn along the way, and myself personally. I didn't think it'd be a cakewalk.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Thank

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. Amazing. And we'll cover your studio in a moment, but Chuka, I still do need to understand, like, you know, 2014 working with Charles Gambino is, not something you just stumble upon. So how did you get there in your music journey?

Chuka Chase

Man, I won't lie, my favorite movie of all time is Slumdog Millionaire. I talk about it a lot, but I really feel like there's a lot of parallels with that movie in my life just because I was at the right place at the right time, man. That's the best way I could put it. I was working with startups, with tech stars in London at the time. And the reason why that's significant... was, you know, I was really young, was 18, first time out the country and first, just getting my, really my first real projects under my belt. But I was in Europe in 2013 and the biggest startup in London was SoundCloud. Like every Friday, they had this massive office at Old Street and Open Bar, they were booming. Like Meg said, it was their height, right? And like, So just being around that energy, our office, Silicon Roundabout was what they called it those days, right? And so like our office was right down the street from SoundCloud and seeing that, and then we had this massive coworking space where some of my early friends were at Scandinavian startup called Driver. It was the early days and they had early access to this brand new streaming app because only the Scandinavians had it. And that app was called Spotify and like it was 2013. And like, what was I doing in Europe? I was just at the right place at the right time. And I think a lot of that tech spirit of writing, I was doing a lot of writing about this stuff and Tumblr was really big and being public about that and just engaging. don't know how it happened, but Donald Glover definitely found my paper trail online. And it was very much open about talking about desire to build things and where I kind of saw music and tech and... wanting to build stuff, like even being his biggest fan, like, you know, everything, right? I, so I don't know if he read all that stuff or whatnot, but you know, I got a cold email one day from his manager, who's still a really good friend of mine. And it was just like, Hey, like, you know, let's hop on this doom. I couldn't honestly, I was like, this is a prank, you know what I mean? And, you know, I was in Europe at the time and, you know, it was, and

Chuka Chase

Just like that, we just started working. like, hey, I want you to take over my Tumblr, ChildlessGangBand.com. And it really didn't start as a rollout or marketing or any of these words that are like, I really speak for Meg and I now and half of the industry. But it was just really like, man, let's just get this other opinion on the internet. And that's kind of how it started organically. we threw hackathons. We worked with WordPress. you know, companies like that. you know, Donald was one of the first people to shout out a bunch of tech people on a mixtape that got published on TechCrunch. And I think it's crazy now because it's the meta, right? Like you see like Kendrick talking about Jack Dorsey and stuff like that. it's dope. But I think it's just like, you know, just kind of being in that energy kind of kicked it off. at the time, I had no idea how the music industry worked. I had no idea how anybody made money. I thought...

Jakob Wredstrøm

you

Chuka Chase

It was kind of like the behind the scenes of WWE. You think all the wrestlers are friends and they're all just hanging out backstage, right? And that was kind of like the moment where the veil kind of was revealed for me. But I think the slow learning, learning and learning and being a student of it and watching the industry kind of evolve and understanding that everyone's also making stuff up as they go helped a lot.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Amazing. And Meg, you guys started a studio together doing marketing for Autists. You just decided, okay, it would be Label Machine, but it would be something else. And that's how it started. And then you got these first clients. How did that actually roll out in your lives?

Megh

It was very serendipitous, I'm not gonna lie, to Chuka's point. I think we were just cooking on stuff. I go to Hulu in the daytime, I go to Chuka's apartment in the evening, just seemed upon ideas, start working on this app for Schoolboy Q, and I actually had a year of classes left, right? So was at Hulu as an intern, so I a full year of classes left in Seattle. So I was about to go back to Seattle for my last year classes and I was like this is dope like I want to do this thing and I cook with cool people and like just build things for artists. I remember like I was actually in Vegas with my friends like I drove down from Seattle to LA which is like an 18 hour drive right so I stopped over in Vegas and Chuka calls me he's like yo bro like why don't you make this a thing like let's just do this for more people and I was like I have like school in Seattle he's like nah just move down to LA let's just do it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

you

Megh

I remember I was like, damn, that sounds super dope. I would love to do that. So I actually drove back up the 18 hours to Seattle. And then I was like, you know what? This is actually, I just want to work with cool people. to work with Chuca. We're already working on cool stuff. I'll just drop out. So I told my parents, and they're like, you're not dropping out. You're actually not dropping out. That's crazy. You're four years in. You have a year left. You got to finish your classes. And so was like, you know what? Let's make a deal. I'll finish school, but you got to me move to LA. So somehow I made them agree, know, they just saw the passion, I guess. And then moved to LA and that was like around the time we officially started integral. And I would fly back up, you know, working with SZA on this project and I would fly back up for midterms and fly back down. Like there's this funny anecdote where I had like a Psych 101 midterm, like very early elementary psychology class just to get my credits, to get it out the way. And it was the same day we dropped SZA's website. Like she tweeted it out. And it was crazy because we dropped in, were like, yeah, this is dope. I walked in, 50 mans, boom, did my thing, walked out. Bunch of texts, bunch of texts, bunch of calls. They're like, oh, the site crashed, the site crashed. It's like, oh, wow, okay, this is kind of crazy. I just finished a midterm, but let me just go and do this little thing on the server. And yeah, this was super cool. We were just cooking on things and it wasn't ever promised, to be honest. Chuka was out there selling. We were working on concepts all the time. We'd send out a lot of pitches. We both bought augmented reality apps and 3D apps. just for the pitch. A lot of them turn into no's. But I think you just need a few things to hit. Right place, right time, right people. And it just became organically a thing where we started becoming the go-to for lot of these labels out in LA to build really cool digital experiences. And I think 2018, it was this very interesting pivot for us personally where it was like, we've done all this cool stuff. We have all these great clients. But actually, we're not making rent right This is actually not a scalable business. What else can we do with our skill set?

Megh

And digital marketing was like first on the list because we were doing digital marketing essentially not running ads necessarily but we building these websites, putting together this data and we were like why don't we just package this up and sell it to these people in a way that actually helps them grow. And so that was kind of I guess, pivot in a sense of integral that led to this long journey into becoming just full-stack digital guys to turn to the symphony essentially.

Jakob Wredstrøm

That makes sense. you know that this is limits to what you can do just to people or even just more people like the services kind of business. was it was it what was it in particular that wanted you to scale beyond what you could just deliver yourself? Like what was the was that impact? Was it money? What was the thing?

Chuka Chase

think our bank accounts were the first signal, right? Telling us that, like we could all, like, you know, it's like, all right, we were, you know, we started the company when we fairly young. So we were all living together. We had the artists over. It was nice. But then it was like, okay, guys, how do we like build families and have kids out of this? Right? So that was the first signal. And then also just, I think naturally, right? Seeing the industry change, being first of like,

Jakob Wredstrøm

you

Chuka Chase

This digital thing this new thing we were those guys like here this new thing guys and even like, know There'd be times or big labels would call us and be like we have all this data or this person went viral like why can you guys like do the detective work and figure out what happened, you know says before they had real analysts right at the labels and so it was a wild west and basically I lost my train of thought for a second.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Well, what was the motivation behind it? And that's where you're getting at. Yeah.

Chuka Chase

Right, right. Exactly. So basically, watching it transform from that Wild West, literally of just like, do we do? We don't have any answers. We're still dumping all this money into radio, into PR, into traditional marketing. And then 2020, all the lights went off for everything. The daily commute, the numbers that the daily commute did to radio, just from that year, I just remember

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Chuka Chase

how much our phones would rank, you know? And TikTok blowing up. was just like, you know, we would have Meg in one room explaining it, you know, TikTok to an artist, myself in another room explaining it. It was insane. So it was like, all right, this digital thing is becoming the main show in town. It's not like, it's no longer this like side thing on the side. Like even the digital folks at the labels are exhausted, right? Are over, even till this day are. of overborn, it's an overbearing task to conduct the orchestra of digital that is the stack of digital at the right time, the right sequence, the right signal testing. And so was like, I looked at Megan, I was like, need to make, of course at the time we had internal processes. This is kind of a winded way or disconnected way to say it, internally we had already built some software. that was helping us scale up our processes because back to the bank account, it was either hiring, and you're analogy earlier, it either hiring more people or build technology to help us scale out our processes. So internally we had ways that we could spin up campaigns really fast, ways that we could pull audiences fast, ways that we could surface and report really fast, right? But it became a thing of like, all right, well, this is like, this is past our technology. Like we need to let people just go in and run it themselves. and test things themselves and test theses themselves because it's moving faster. that was kind of where the main motivation came from Symphony, like from a customer demand standpoint, kind of seeing the signal in the audience too. And then also just thinking about DIY, right? Like Billie Eilish won Best New Artist and Album of the Year in 2020. That was the year, that was the same year. She was the, you know, technically a brand new artist. The year she broke. It was the album of the year. The album was executively produced by her brother. That is like peak DIY in the show. I looked at Meg and I was like, yo, the next Billie Eilish is going to be from home all the way. What are they going to use? And that was when we really kind of went down this path of like, all right, let's just give everybody the tools and like completely stop the gatekeeping that is like the industry, right?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

It's so interesting and that's one of the things that... Well, frankly speaking, confuses me the most because maybe you can dissect this for me because I do see the DIY movement and I do see assets breaking at scale, but I don't necessarily see the power of the majors sort of disappearing. You know, there's no good or bad to that statement. But where do see that dynamic now? Like five years later, do you see like that the power is in the DIY or is it still an infrastructure like a whole thing you need to go through?

Chuka Chase

think there's levels to it like anything else. before, I think prior to the game, especially because of like the way it worked, know, going back like the Mickey Mouse Club is the analogy I always use, right? They used to pick our stars and the stars were set up. Everything was preset up. The business, the format, everything was preset up and then the audience was built in and then that was it. And so... everything felt like larger than life, regardless of whatever the reality was, right? There were just these super mega stars, were super mega rich, they came out super mega rich, they came out big, And that kind of really affected or affects the way that artists and creatives think about development, right? The desire was never like, know, very, now we're in this era of like, can just be a business, like I could just be a touring.

Jakob Wredstrøm

you

Chuka Chase

recording artists and make as much as a dentist or a doctor, or I can make 250K a year, I can make 500K a year, and people are, it's a desirable goal. It's like a real aspiring thing to achieve today. And I think before, the hours before, it was never that obvious. This middle tier, this middle class, it even exists, it would exist, but these stories weren't. They weren't as widespread. You would hear of artists like Tech N9ne, who was historically one of the biggest independent artists in America and has owned his own touring fleet. Everyone knew the story, the legend, but you wouldn't see that on Billboard, right? But now you're starting to see the big X of plugs. you're talking, everyone knows about Russ. Everyone knows La Russell. And so I would say- The power of the labels to your point though, it hasn't completely faded because there's the levels, it's levels to everything. So there's like, if you still want that superstardom level, a real shot at that, I would say, yeah, you're probably going to reach an inflection point in your business or where it makes sense to get an investor or a partner that can help you go to that next level. But if you're fine with being at whatever that inflection point is, That doesn't necessarily mean that you could have a long career. Some would say, what happens is oftentimes now, the rocket ship stuff that goes all the way at the top, it's kind of the curve on it. The charts end up being like this hype cycle and then it just drops off. But the more steady builds and then maybe they have the big moment ends up being more sustainable. So it's really about how you want to build your business now as a creative, I would say.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm. No.

Jakob Wredstrøm

That analogy also fits to your trajectory, I guess, and also like where you go. Like you were that inflection point. Like I had a reflection yesterday with my colleagues, so Amplitude Ventures, we were around 70, 75 people in our venture studio. And, you know, we've scaled and pivoted a few times ago, but like honestly, a year ago we were three because we had just scaled down again. And, oh, sorry, I need to remove those emotions.

Chuka Chase

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So now we had like a client yesterday and basically they needed something and they didn't really need what they thought. So we were like, consultancy is the only thing and we're counting on it. Like even if I price myself at, you know, a few hundred US dollars per hour, which, you know, a year ago for me would be amazing. Like then, then I can really make a living. Now it just doesn't make sense anymore because I'm playing a different game now. Like, and it's not that's not valid. I'm like, I would love that for myself a year ago, but. But now that does not make sense at all because I'm trying to play a bigger game. And it doesn't mean that, you know, I'm in a much better place now because you're playing the big game. need to pay people salaries. But still, that inflection point was not where I wanted to be. I didn't want to, you know, be dependent on my own, you know, services being provided hour by hour. Like that's not where I wanted to be. And I guess that's also what you felt about, well, one thing is impact. Of course, you want to go beyond that.

Chuka Chase

Exactly.

Jakob Wredstrøm

But that is a transition and that comes with pains, I guess. So, Mac, how did you go about it? Did you just go out and try to raise capital or was it more organic approach?

Megh

It was definitely like finessing check by check early on, I'm not gonna lie, because especially when we're coming in too, you gotta think about just... The creator economy is blowing up, 2021. I still think the music industry, even today, Like I think music tech still has this kind of shadow on it when it comes to VCs and how they think about it. And that was before music tech became a category that like it is today. And so we're just going to these rooms, pitching these VCs and they'd be like, oh, like there's not enough artists in the world, know, for sustain this thing. We're actually pitching a marketing tool that anyone could use. But I think our pitch at the time was very much like, We're going after artists, and we're trying to run this, take over music. And think a lot of it did come to fruition in different ways. But early on, was a bunch of doors shut in our face. A lot of folks were like, this doesn't make sense. This isn't a VC-backable business. And slowly but surely, we got some managers on board. We got some customers on board. got some mentors from the industry on board. And then we our first institutional check. It hasn't been the easiest thing though to like figure out the fundraising piece of this just because there's this, from where we're coming from, we're coming from the music industry, right? So it's like a very different world that we're stepping into sometimes. The arena's a little bit different. But I think you just got to get it how you can. That's like the one thing I've learned, right? You just got to get it how you can and like, you'll see, I feel like for a lot of founders, they'll see like, oh, like this company raised 20 million at this valuation. And then you go behind the scenes and it's like not set up to actually be a real business over time. So I think Juca and I too, just coming from the side of building like a proper business, like we've all just been cognizant of like how do we build this correctly? How do we raise money from the right people in the right places, not raise too much hopefully, so we can build this into something that actually grows in the way we want it to.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And was that done while you were still running your existing business? what was the timeline there?

Megh

We kind of like almost had a hard transition. Like there was a moment in time when Truca and I were like, oh, like we got to split focus. I think it maybe like a year in. And yeah, we were like, all right, Truca, Truca is gonna like take over like the artist facing business and like the agency side stuff. I'm gonna shepherd these like early developers we hired from these angel checks and to build the MVP of this thing so we can even show people what it is. But yeah, it was a very conscious decision where it was like, all right, shut off this side of my brain. Chuka leans in with one foot on this side and most of the time on the other side.

Jakob Wredstrøm

What was your risk perception at that time? Did I feel like this is maybe a bit dangerous for you guys?

Megh

I mean, you wanna say something?

Chuka Chase

Everything's dangerous without a plan, but we definitely put a really good plan in place that we felt good about. We waited out. It was like, okay, do we shut down the agency fully? Those are real questions. But we have, we're SZA's agency of record for as long as she's putting out music. We have artists that we knew when they come and when they're ready, we're probably not going to be able to... be able to just turn the other cheek at it. Like it's a relationship. Those are our friends, right? So we were weighing that with this also just like, all right, even if we're gonna do that then, knowing what we're really trying to do here and signing up for, what does this transition plan look like? okay, who can fill in, right? Like if Meg steps out, how do we fill that gap in the agency, right? When I step out now, who's gonna fill that gap, right? and really just making the transition plan. And I think it worked out. It didn't happen overnight. I think the mindset of being the intention is what matters the most of just like, we're doing this and knowing this is what we're doing. yeah, I mean, it took like eight months, eight to 12 months and like, studio is doing really great still. It's being run by a great, great CEO. in Fredo and the things that you're always super anxious about sometimes in business, you just have to go in and do, right? Like the biggest thing for me was like, who's going to do the relationships? But like all of that stuff has transitioned smoothly. So it's great. Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

But obviously there's, you know, you mentioned relationships. There's a big difference between your previous model and then what you're doing now. Like, you know, you can't scale on relationships the way that you need to if you build a platform. So how did you navigate that?

Megh

I mean, I think it's something we're still figuring out how to navigate like in the best way. I think there's obviously people that come to us from word of mouth like Juka and I are talking to teams every week that we see on the platform, you know, we just see that their name pop up in the email list sign out, a of, you know, signed up emails. But sometimes it's very interesting where like something will just go be going crazy and like we see a symphony link in someone's bio that has a song going wild and like, there's symphony, that's crazy. So a lot of it sometimes is like just reactive to people using the platform and having, you know, getting progress. And then we're like, all right, let's lean in and let's see if they need any help or best practices strategies. But I think it's something we're still, at least from my side, I'm still trying to figure out how to balance that. Cause I think there's great points and feedback and conversations coming in from our friends and word of mouth and just connects in LA and New York all over the world. And then there's just organic things happening. Like we was talking about Billie Eilish earlier in 2020, right? Like the next Billie Eilish. The next generation of artists will be using something like symphony, if not symphony specifically, right? Having a tool to do all this for you. And so I think we're also trying to get better at leaning in to our audience and being like, okay, who's in here going crazy? Who's bubbling? How can we kind of lend a hand to support as it continues scaling?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Chuka Chase

Yeah, I mean, know, as a business owner, you're never not talking to customers. It's the challenge is like, which feedback is the most, you know, like valuable to you as a business owner. So you always have to talk to folks, you know, it's just, yeah, you just have to like, discernment is like even more, even more important at scale, because it's like hundreds of thousands of people that would love to give you a piece of their mind. Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

in.

Jakob Wredstrøm

have a question which might be a bit weird, so you come from a business model studio where you would have what I would believe to be like, know, hype moments like meeting with a Nazi love or, you know, being a part of something incredibly interesting release and it's all these sort of external motivators stimuli that's sort of in your life and very exciting and also very prestigious. to going to a tech platform. And I can imagine the contrast being quite big because I don't know the depths of the journey, but journey speaking from speaking with lot of founders, that's really lonely and less reactive and it's a totally different game. How do you navigate that dynamic?

Megh

I mean, from my side, guess it's been different. I'm not going to lie. It's definitely been different. I think it was really dope because, remember, there was this year where we'd have a list of the 20 biggest artists that year and they were on our client list. And that'd be back to back to back to back for like five, six years straight. And then moving into symphony where it's like the winds are different. The winds are different. The true north of everything we're doing is different. think there's a

Chuka Chase

I'll speak for Mass at... or either.

Megh

There's more at stake, but there's also higher volume opportunities to touch more folks and have more of those moments. I think for us, it's really been rallying around product and taking these ideas we had and things we hear from people and just turning them into products. We're getting better at it, but we try and be very product-led, where if you'll ask artists or ask folks around about symphony and what symphony is about, it's about just dropping cool new stuff all the time. So for me, at least, that's been the moments that kind of evoke that past era. Oh, we got the biggest artist in the world this week working with us. I think it's just like, oh, we dropped something that like a hundred thousand people can now use like this. And we blast them an email and it's like, oh cool. It's like we make our own wins versus having to sometimes work with someone else to be attached to their win.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. Yeah, and I see that. But again, there must still be some sort of aspect to it that is negative in a way, I guess. Because, like, again... Okay, go for it!

Chuka Chase

I will man, I got you. I got you on that. I got you. It's been tough, man. It's been an adjustment. I'm gonna be real. It's been a straight up adjustment for me. Because I knew, Mentally, I was like, all need to, my mentality needs to shift and be in this place. And LA is very for building a business in all relationships. Like you described, right? In the agency world and being the sales face. I was like, I can't be in LA because it's just... whenever I'm there, it's access. People are used to me just being around and hanging out and doing this and this is not the same mindset. So I was like, I'm going to intentionally move to Austin and it's not going to cut off all the relationships, but it'll serve as a filter because there is a lot of fluff and a lot of just kind of a hand waving relationships, right? That comes with networking in big cities like LA and New York. So, you know, to your first earlier point, man, it's lonely. It is immediately, especially when your every single day is stimulated by people. Most of the time I'm trying to dodge a meeting for the last few years. It's like that. Or hoping something falls off the calendar and then you come here and it's very different culture. Austin's a very big tech city. For the most part, they're not here unless they're employed in tech usually. And it's usually sales, marketing, engineering, and they're really wanting to talk about work in the same way LA is like, you know, everyone wears the Boy Scout badge or the Girl Scout badge. Like my work is like my identity out there, right? So you come onto a plane like this, there's like your ego dies immediately because no one wants to talk about that. There's new music Fridays over. Friday's just a regular old like, we going out to the bars Friday? No one cares if a playlist hit or if you have the new song. Chances are they're not playing it. They're playing top 40s hits. But that was the difficulty that knew I was going to... It was the medicine I knew I had to take. Why? Because it allowed me to one, now I have like my whole POV is washed, reset, a hard reset. And now it allows me to think like my customer. I can think like the folks that are...

Chuka Chase

running their labels and they're just trying to be operators or the people that are getting up and just going to label and doing their job or the regular old artist that just needs to make it from Austin, Texas and needs to figure out if I was in Austin, how's the fastest way I could just get and grow out from here. And even more importantly, it's made me a fan again because being around the industry is, it's like.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Chuka Chase

It's different, right? You're listening to what most people are listening to. You're trying to know what the cool thing is that everyone's listening It's like the irony in the art of A &R, right? Everyone wants fresh blood. They want someone that's outside or maybe they're just from college. It's because when you become part of the amoeba, you just join it and everyone's literally talking about the same artist, the same signings, and then you leave it. I'm like, man, I love music again. I'm like... listening to stuff that no one's listening to and I don't care. It's exciting again, but man, the journey, the ego death to that, painful. If you can survive it, beautiful on the other side. But yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

It's so interesting and you know it really brings some thoughts up that I've been reflecting upon lately that there is like a big disconnect between music and music tech in the actual reality of the execution. Like a small, was actually just, you a few hours ago I was talking with my brother-in-law and obviously I've been in music for a while, pretty much my whole life. and I've been audio engineering and doing festivals and booking. Like I also come from a heavy music side. And I've been doing that for 14 years or so. And I was going to a festival tomorrow and he asked, so have you been at the festival before? And I actually realized I've never, this is my first time ever to be at a festival as a guest. Like ever, like I've had it.

Chuka Chase

That's an experience. That's a whole experience too.

Jakob Wredstrøm

My point is, even though I've been in the industry, there is a disconnection between being in music, being in tech, being in the industry, being a consumer. Even though it seems like the same thing, and it sort of is in a way, they are disconnected. And that's also the beauty, but also maybe the danger and what people don't realize about music tech once in a while is like, it is not that glorious. you know, I get to hang out with amazing industry people. Some of my guests and some of people I know in private are like, you know, some of the globally leading entrepreneurs in music tech. How many artists do I hang out with? Zero. Like it's that dislocated for me and I'm fine with that. But it is not the same, even though it touches the same. Does that make sense?

Chuka Chase

Right, Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So I think it's just interesting. was that a shock for you guys?

Chuka Chase

I don't know, kind of felt, you know, because tech, There's like, music tech specifically, I don't know. I think there's a new class coming up. I'm not going to act like, we're the coolest kids at lunch now. I think there's a new class of music tech founders coming up though, that are like, the younger they're going to get, because the internet-ness of it all, the younger they're going to get, they're going to be like, you might have dudes like, you've seen them some, there's music tech founders that are like doing art. the music tech founders that are managing artists. So there's going to be like a younger class of folks that are tapped a lot more culturally tapped in. I think the balance of like how the balance of how much technologically fundamental, like how much of the tech fundamentals they have is going to be like CBD. you know, I mean, the tech world is so disconnected, man. it's, it's like, I've always kind of known that. And like, I think I'm lucky because I saw it first, right? And I always tell the story of the analogy of like, you know, like, you know, one of my first jobs, I was an intern for this party. And it was like a demo party in the Bay called SF Beta. you know, like some of the guys that would come to these things, some of the VIPs that would come to these things, we would get to hang with them on very much like music. There was like a green room set up and like a little backstage area. And I'm not going to name anyone's names, but these were like CEOs, CTOs of public companies, right? And like, People think that they're not as culturally similar. We're all kind of nerds in our own way, but we're just nerdy about doing things. The tech guys are backstage and I remember we had a party that was like vampire themed. And we had a dude coming in that was just making custom fangs, had the inlays. Basically, if you've ever seen someone get grills before, an artist get grills before, it's the same setup as like... when the grill guys at the house, like literally it's the same setup, but he's making like custom fangs. Cause these guys are like all want to be like track it out, right? Like this is a real thing. And I'm like seeing this is like before the party and like they're getting fanged up. And I'm like, okay. And then like years later, I'm like doing the same thing, but with rappers who are just getting grills, I'm like, man, this thing is like literally the same, but different. Like it's crazy. The actual folks like are very similar.

Chuka Chase

And I think that is why there is, when you see folks like Jack and Kendrick Lincoln, do, because the actual founders is a lot of similar DNA with the artists, because artists are founders, low key, right? The most successful ones are. So there's a lot of similar DNA there, but it's weird. Music, tech, Oftentimes founders are very, very removed from the culture. And it's weird because... The internet has shifted now. There used to be this time where you could be, you know, you really could be like, you could make culture, you could just like, culture was kind of wide open and writable, I think, where like, as a founder, you could just kind of like, make things that change paradigms, right? Like Reddit completely changed the way people digest news, right? And like, you know, and socials with Facebook. I just think now that we're all on it, like the rest of the culture has now been on ramped. to the internet through these first wave platforms, gonna have to be in it to make the next one. And we've seen, that's why VR is struggling to adopt right now, right? So as much as I love VR, folks like techies like us clock in hours in VR, but when is that gonna arrive for everybody else, right? To your point, the disconnect, so.

Jakob Wredstrøm

We had a guest on the podcast called Mike Cullen, you might know, manager of logic, and he really described something that I've been thinking for couple of years, and that is that the next generation of OTSIS and how they're going to operate. His assumption is they're going to be... business and music are going to be the same thing. It's going to be incredibly intertwined. When you grow up with music as a music producer, creator, artist, business is going to be such a vital part of how you think and how you execute. And also to the point of symphony, I guess that's also sort of what you're enabling, is that enabling that next, well, obviously currently access to people who are successful, but also the next generation of access where data and fandom and marketing is gonna be totally intertwined with music and creativity. Is that what you see?

Megh

Yeah, I mean for sure. I think it's always been about respecting people with a passion that are trying to monetize online the same way you'd respect any other economic category, right? I think that's like the key insight in how we've kind of built where like You know, you do have kids out there that are putting out music and making 50k a month, just like that, right? Or like a year, whatever. Like that's the internet we live in today. And I think for us, it's always been this concept of like, cool. Like these folks will need real business tools the same way like we as a business pay for HubSpot, the same way another small business might pay for Gusto or whatever it be. I think this class of like content driven businesses, they're putting out music, podcasts, videos, Twitch streaming, whatever. They're very much businesses and I think for us to think about the artists, it's like how do we give them these tools that help them go from zero to one, or at kind of support them every step of that way when it comes to the marketing side of things.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So where are you guys going with symphony? Where are you guys as a company now and sort of what's the future for?

Chuka Chase

think making it easy, for me, I think making it easier, as easy as possible for you to come into our app with an outcome in mind and just reaching that outcome, whether you want to grow, whether you want to sell your tickets, see your tour, sell your merch, sell your new product, drive people to capture your data or just analyze your data. It's like the three things, right? Data capture, data analysis, and execution.

Megh

Right?

Chuka Chase

We want to make it as easy as possible to do all of that. And, you know, we really love the way that we've seen the adoption of all these AI tools now. It's becoming very easy to instantiate and execute, at least pull information with voice, with text, with, you know, I think we're entering this era of native prompting. Like, you know, the next generation of kids might even speak in prompt, who knows, right? So. I'm really excited about that and exploring what it looks like to just be able to execute right from, you know, as easy as possible from idea to live. You know, maybe you won't even need to come with content. So, we're really excited.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And it's happening already and it's amazing to have tech sort of addressing that. Again, I'm going to end the point soon, but I was talking with my partner today. We had a client meeting and sort of, we had just closed and we were doing a sale and I was debriefing my team afterwards of the meeting and I spoke in a certain way and my partner just sort of wrote me like, Hey, why did you talk like that? Like that was, you know, it seemed like super basic. Like these guys are pretty talented. I'm like, no, actually I was just, I was talking to the AI note taker. because I just wanted to make sure that I could prompt this afterwards. already now, like I'm more obsessed with communicating in a way that I know that I can make AI outcomes after than actually to my team. And that struck me like, actually like my, again, and I think it's valid because my time as a CEO with a lot of people responsible, like it's pretty valuable. So I need to communicate in a way that, you know, serves the long-term mission. But again, I had already.

Chuka Chase

You

Chuka Chase

Yes.

Megh

Thank

Jakob Wredstrøm

change my communication style because the AI note taker was there and I felt that was more important to get that down. But to your point, things are changing incredibly fast and the way that people interact with technology is going to be very different.

Chuka Chase

I'm excited. I love that footnote. I'm like, yeah, like I love that footnote. mean, it's only going to get interesting, right? They started teasing today the device that's on AI, made with A, but open AI. So I think this world of like always listening, always on, it's only going to get crazier. You know, I mean, you know, this is, it's, you know, it's definitely starting to look Orwellian a little bit, but I'm excited about it for sure. Yeah.

Megh

Yeah, we've definitely been tinkering in really deep ways with voice and video and images and just text-based large language models. think, yeah, it's kind of crazy. Just playing with these things and giving it just tools that you can use. You can really get a lot done in this next era just off of this text box. And we're really excited by that from a product place and a technological place, but I think, too. Solving this problem, Like, Symfony as a marketing tool. We want to be everyone globally, you know, everyone's marketing platform, right? Everyone across the world, different languages, all that. And I think to what you were saying too, like, we're thinking about ways of like some kid in Mumbai, India, who doesn't speak English, but has 50 rupees to market his record in some way, can start talking in Hindi to this system that we built out. and then gives him or her a marketing plan, and lets them execute it without any knowledge of marketing, without any accesses besides the Simphe and our agent. I think that's where it gets really exciting, bringing this knowledge we've been training ourselves on for like 10 years to a million more people all over the world in it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I think that's it. That's the key for the DIY industry and the industry at large because the majors or the big independents, don't really have these tools either. We need to create it now, which you're doing. So guys, it's been an honor to hear your story and I really look forward to following you for many years to come. You've already made a pretty big splash in the industry and you're doing well, but I know every single journey as a founder is just incredibly long and fun and hard. stuff. So I'm very interested and very excited to follow the journey.

Megh

Appreciate you, Thanks for having us.

Chuka Chase

Thank you, Diego. For real.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Thanks guys, we'll talk soon.

Chuka Chase

Thanks, everybody. Peace.