From Musician to Founder: How Sleeve Helps Artists Earn Real Income

Jakob Wredstrøm

Bar. Maybe 10 seconds. They moved it. They moved it. It's under people. So if you press people you should be seeing your percentage. It did come in the...

Anna Lidell

When recording is done. I stick around. Do I have to do something?

Jakob Wredstrøm

No, I just want to see. Okay, I just want to see if your internet was strong and it is. So it's all good. Great.

Jakob Wredstrøm

That's it, I'm ready.

Anna Lidell

Great.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Are you ready? Last thing. If you have any devices, put them on do not disturb. Yeah, you've already done it. Great. Then I will start in five seconds.

Anna Lidell

I'm ready.

Anna Lidell

Yeah, I did.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Center my computer. Hey guys and welcome back to the Sound Connections Podcast. Today we have Anna in the studio. And I actually met you many years ago and I don't know if you... Yeah, I guess you do remember. I used to try to be a songwriter and you were a producer and we had a songwriting camp and I guess it's close to 15 years ago. But here we are, both founders, and I'm very happy to interview you today. Anna, for the people who don't know you, who are you and what do?

Anna Lidell

Thanks.

Anna Lidell

Well, I'm a musician. I've been a musician for many years, like you just said. I have more than 20 releases, but also done... I did a Netflix Scam Italia series and also TV games, those kind of things. And then from that, I moved into advocacy. So I've been chair of the Danish Association for Songwriters and also chair of Cura, which is the Danish CMO. And then a year ago, I took the leap into starting Sleaf. And so I'm the founder of Sleaf.

Jakob Wredstrøm

We've had a really fascinating journey and I've been following you for many years and I think it's really interesting entrance into being a founder. You basically have been on the creator side, on the artist side, and then on the highest level, on a national level, of the representation side. So you've seen a lot of angles of how the music industry works and what doesn't work and I think that's a pretty good market research, I guess, to start a company. But could you maybe explain to people who's listening to the episode, what is sleeve?

Anna Lidell

Yeah, Sleeve is a direct to fan platform, so for music only. So musicians get to, you know, I like to tell musicians that if you have this funnel where you have a cold audience and a lukewarm and a warm audience, you know, there are places to get discovered, but once you want to retain your audience, you take them to Sleeve. And we help, we have the tools to warm up that audience. So, you know, you could say it's kind of a sub-stack for music with... know, early MySpace vibes is something that Atas tells us, which I find a big compliment. Yeah, that's a short version.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And even though you relatively early in the startup journey, you have had a lot of traction and you already have a lot of very successful outs on the platform that are gauging. So can you tell me a bit about what's happening on the platform right now? What are you seeing?

Anna Lidell

Yeah, I we just opened it up quietly here in Denmark from January, February and then now we're opening up also globally and we have more than 200 artists on board and 3,500 fans and we've converted like around 150 to paying members so far. So we really like tested the thing and we've been iterating, you know this, you start thinking that is one solution and then today it's very different from what we thought just a year ago. So we're still in this beta phase where we really have a lot of, you know, we do things that don't scale, like have a lot of conversations with artists and how does it feel and, you to try to make it as good as possible in terms of what we want to achieve.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And as the podcast has grown, we traditionally speaking have become less and less founders on that are early in the startup journey. Frankly, because we have access to a lot of amazing founders that, know, early in sound connections, oftentimes it's 10,000s of users. But what I thought was very, very interesting with Sleeve and having conversation today is really because of you as a founder and your angle into it and your perspective, which ultimately often is where success is found over time.

Anna Lidell

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

It's like, you have a unique perspective? Do you have a unique mission? I would love to dissect that today. I don't know the full story. We've spoken a few times and I've sort of followed you in the LinkedIn world and whatever news media wrote about what you said, which I have always found very fascinating. So for the luxury of the listeners, let's just go through that, your journey and try to sort of go back and forth to the concept of direct to fan and fandom. So how did you get into music and... did you sort of find your professional career there?

Anna Lidell

Mean, I got into music when I was four and started playing the violin, so that was early. And actually when I was six, I saw this woman play on the street and I asked my mom if I could play on the street too. And it's just like an experience that stays with me because it was Christmas, so I was playing Christmas carols in the cold in this small town, Aarhus, in Denmark.

Jakob Wredstrøm

You

Anna Lidell

My sister was selling some Christmas cakes next to it and just the connection with people was really amazing. Everybody was smiling. I'm sure it didn't sound great but I was cute, you know, being six years playing the violin and I earned more money than I've ever done maybe in the music business just for half an hour.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Thank you.

Anna Lidell

And then what happened was that I wanted to buy hot chocolate for my sister and my mom So we went to the cafe nearby and I just took all the money, know a lot of coins on the table And the bar owner was asking me like where does that come from? And I said, oh I was playing on the street and he said why don't you play in here? It's warm You can have as much hot chocolate as you want and then I'll take half of the money and it's just like Still today, I don't know if he was trying to help me or exploit me yet, you know. To me, it's a good picture of music business sometimes when it's like you want to have those collaborators because you can't do everything yourself, but it's so hard to know when people are really helping you or exploiting you in this. That was an early experience of that one.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Wow, okay, wow, that's a really, really good image. I guess you've told it a few times, I would assume. Wow, okay, fascinating. Maybe for my own sake, sort of fast forward a bit to when we met, and I believe that was in a songwriting camp. Oh, I'm gonna say 14 years ago or something like that. So at that point, you had already been a few years in the industry. How did you get to that place as a producer, an artist, and releasing music?

Anna Lidell

Yeah, I mean, actually. Actually, we started on the street again. I had a band with my friend and we were 17 around that time and we played on the streets of Belgium and this producer came by and he was like, I love the songs. I want to record it. And we didn't believe him, but he drove 10 hours from Belgium to Aarhus to Denmark and recorded the things and we came back and it was just on the end of when you booked a studio, a full studio for 10 days with a full orchestra playing and everything. So that was really my jump into the more professional scene, then you know, which is something that's symptomatic, I think, but we got a new manager and the manager and the producer became, started fighting because the manager spent all the money that the producer had, you know, personally, like kind of crowdfunded in his network. So when the CD was done, like nothing happened, like the project just fell apart and they ended up in a trial together or something. But for me, it was really interesting to go through that journey. You know, like I think my friend who I had the band with, kind of felt it was more of a failure, but I felt it was like I got curious about behind the scenes and why this would happen. All of sudden I started seeing that you it's not enough to just do good music, you need the right team, the right timing and all of these things have to come in place.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And soon you also transitioned, I guess, your efforts into producing and becoming this very holistic musician. How did that go about?

Anna Lidell

I mean, and I was never good at the violin, so every time I had to practice, I wanted to practice other instruments. So, you know, I had like a basement with the drums and the saxophone, piano and all these things. So for me, when I got the computer in my hands, I was like, that's the orchestra that I've been missing. And it's a good thing that I can play a little bit of everything without being a genius in one instrument, you know. So that was really, that was really my entrance into the whole electronic scene. And, you know, I had an eight bit, also eight bit band. which was a lot of fun and a lot of like underground thing we had Nintendo's live on stage and stuff so it was just if it just felt fun to use the computer because it's like limitless in terms of what sound you can make

Jakob Wredstrøm

Amazing.

Jakob Wredstrøm

You jokingly said a few minutes ago that when you played the violin that was perhaps the most you've ever made for music. What do you mean by that? Is that it never really took its full commercial form or what did you mean by that?

Anna Lidell

You

Anna Lidell

I mean it was just like in half an hour I got like a hundred dollars or something that's a pretty good hourly rate I might still get that sometimes but you know I think it just it was a very direct thing you know I started I played for half an hour I got some money like for the rest of it is always this big thing where you have a lot of cost and you have some income and

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Anna Lidell

It's never... I've been living for music for a long time. It's a patchwork of things, so it's not that I don't earn any money, but I never took the big commercial route, for sure.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And I guess that's also one of the key things if you want to turn it a bit into a sleeve and I think that could be a very natural transition to talk about the financial reality of artists. Because as you say, it is a patchwork and it's never that I meet up for work and I get paid and I go home, which is, know, what I would assume more than 90 % of jobs in the world, at least in our part of the world. So what is the financial reality of an artist? Maybe take yourself as an example. Like how did you make your money?

Anna Lidell

Yeah, I mean it is a patchwork of things because it's like I had that one song as a title track for a Netflix series. Obviously that made a lot of money, but that's like one song out of 300 songs that didn't make it to there, right? So it's always this always have this kind of lottery feel. And I think my duo Teen is Love with an American woman, we played maybe 500 shows, you know. So in the end you earn money from it because there's a lot of smaller shows, right? And also had that experience that, you know, I think NPR used it on a podcast episode. We got half a million plays in one day, but it didn't convert into Facebook fans or anything. It was just kind of, whey, amazing, and then what? So it felt like we can't bet on these things. Everybody tells us to go viral and do these things, but it doesn't really translate into neither income or fandom, like fan connection. It always ends up being like those house concerts, we did a lot of house concerts just for 20 people. And then those 20 people come for the next bigger shows we have, but then they bring their 20 friends. And that's kind of how we made it work. And that's where I still see that community as being that thing that

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Anna Lidell

Needle for artists, you know.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, because the way that I see the music industry from an artist's angle is that there's basically three categories, roughly speaking. There's the people who want to have a career, then it's the people who has a career but is more in the midsection, and then you have the more scalable mainstream artists. The sad reality is that the people who aspire to become artists don't really make money. And the people who are in this midsection have so many costs associated to making music that they don't really make money either. And then there's mainstream artists that depending on marketing and stuff does make money. So even though you move up the value chain or you move up your success because the costs are so much higher also, it doesn't necessarily mean that you make money or anything that you live from.

Anna Lidell

Yeah, totally. And that's what I saw when I was advocating, you a lot of our members and colleagues who I found very successful every day and would know their name, you know. And when I asked them what they made in Spotify, was like they don't know because it's so little. They don't care. Like, it's not that's not where they make their money. So I like there are these three things that I see right now, which tells me that something is broken, which is, you know, streaming.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Anna Lidell

It's not a bad thing. It's great for discovery, potentially. It's great for consumers. But it's less than half a cent per play. And that number is just going down. So you need not just millions, but billions of plays to actually make this a viable business, right?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, was listening to this very, very fascinating podcast with one songwriter that I followed for many years and now for the life of me, I can't remember the name, but a male songwriter that's done billions in streams and he sort of broke down in his songwriting rights, you know, after the co-writers, after the publisher, the admin rights, even from a billion streams as a songwriter, he could not afford a living in LA.

Anna Lidell

Yeah. I mean, that's and then it's like, is success? So it's a redefinition of what is success? And then a lot of people used to say touring is where you make your money. So release on streaming to be able to tour and have a fan base. But that also has changed, especially after COVID, where it's like, you know, inflation has gone up, expenses are really big, but also arena tours is becoming bigger and bigger. So most fans or listeners have already spent their tickets on, you know, the big ones. So it's just we see a lot of mid-sized venues closing down and then It's like the third thing I would say is social media, which is like that's where you can connect with your fans But that has also become changed a lot just within the last year I mean and it's become this pay-to-play system where you have to boost to reach your own followers And I mean I read that less than 5 % see your post unless you boost it even though they already follow you It's like okay, so I have to pay for my own audience. It's just not working

Jakob Wredstrøm

It's definitely not working. And I just really quickly mentioned that was Justin Trenter I was talking about. So I just want to give credit. But it's very true. I've done my fair share of failures in the music industry. And I've done a lot of things, like really like everything from publishing, live promotion, booking, technology, like really been all over it. But I would say I've promoted at least like 50 shows as a promoter.

Anna Lidell

Great.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I think maybe three times I've made a profit after everyone got paid. And I think some I've lost a lot. Like it is so incredible, incredibly hard for anyone to make money on live music as well. And I have friends who've sold their... promotion companies and I hear about the numbers like it's really not that much like the margins are so slim and you just need to have one bad show to ruin the whole party so it's no one is really making money unless you really get at scale but then some other dynamics go into it so one of the things that the music industry has really talked about the last couple of years which is obviously also what you're focusing on is monetizing that fandom. So the connection between the artist and fans that might already be existent to some form through social media or other channels, but is not monetized properly. And since there really is no viable way to make money unless you hit it really, big, that seems to be...

Anna Lidell

Mm-hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

theoretically one of the only ways that you repeatedly could potentially make money. So if you look at Sleeve and you look at that business model, try to dissect to me, what is it about money satiation of fandom that makes a difference and how would you go about doing that?

Anna Lidell

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, what I hear from this kind of, I would call it mid-tier artist and lack of better names is that they sell a lot of merch, for example, and they sell a lot of vinyls. And I read that last year, half of the people paying, buying vinyls didn't have a vinyl player, which is so telling to me. It's like, that's just because they want to support the band. They want to like have something physical to show I support this band, right? And it feels like it could be better. So what is between the concerts? What is between the releases? And that's where Sleeve comes in. So the idea is you don't need a million streams, but if you have those hundreds of 1,000 people who really value your music and who matters, and you start catering to them, because that's the other thing when I was... advocating for songwriters rights, know, one of the questions was like, why would people pay for it if everything is free? And it's kind of a banal realization, but I was like, yes, so they put everything for free on Instagram. You can hear it with ads on Spotify. So it's basically also for free. How can you sell something if everything you give out is for free? Right. I that's kind of basic business. 2.0. 1.0. So I think the change of behavior from the artist side is like what do I have that I want to give to just the supporters so that could be early access to you know most people have a release coming up and it's ready half a year before so give that access to the fans who care or most musicians have like a huge drop box or whatever folder with all these unreleased songs that never made it but have a lot of quality you know so we have one of our artists on the platform she shared a song that she never released but a line in the song became a line in one of her most famous songs. So that song was almost like giving birth to the famous song. And so she shared that just, you know, with the paying members. And that's something that people really reacted positively to, you know.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, and I think people sometimes miss the power of this really and how little it takes.

Anna Lidell

Yes.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I tend to read LinkedIn quite a lot. think there's a lot of interesting stories. There's one company out there that's called Even, for example, that I followed with a few of those use cases that I think is really interesting. I can't remember the specific examples, but they were talking about new artists dropping some albums and then pre-releasing it with them and seeing the amount of money they can get for that versus the whole catalog on streaming. It's just like, it's three times more. basically it's just a digital release. It hasn't cost them anything extra to produce it. But the hunger and the under pressure from fandom actually provides the financial viability that they need in order to do something. And I think one of the big issues with all this is basically taking the DX scenario. Like how do you get access on the platform to attract the fans and how do you create an experience that actually is attractive for both parties? So how do you create that? Like how do you create that environment where it's attractive?

Anna Lidell

I mean that's what we're learning and iterating and the most recent change we did is that we can basically use Sleeve as a newsletter. So you can even import your newsletter list and start from there. So you don't have to start from scratch. And then every post you make that is public just goes to their email like a newsletter basically.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Anna Lidell

Also because you know a lot of artists are like hitting the threshold. I think it's like when you have over 500 people it costs a lot to run a newsletter, right? So you start you don't start from zero We just did that two weeks ago and we're seeing a big change in that We also have you know, lot of artists are using this like link and bio thing So we have that feature too So your sleeve link is basically a link and bio with whatever you want to focus on but then there is an email sign up and once people do that they sign up to the artist so there is

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Anna Lidell

less of a I sign up for sleeve and more of a I sign up for the artist that I love already. And I think that's one of the things that makes the entry much easier.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, it's very clever and it's also like a lot of the startups that I meet in this space, like that's the really difficult thing is like how do you actually get users to use it and vice versa, how do you get access to use it to attract access? And this thing needs to be more than just like cleverly marketed product. And I would assume this is also, you know, a lot of the access on your platform are. national but they're really interesting national artists with a big fandom. So I guess you would also have been using your previous career to sort of draw on your network to say okay this is something we do together.

Anna Lidell

Yeah, I mean, we basically spend zero money on marketing so far. we like, we're still in that word of mouth organic thing, know, beta, but we definitely want to change that during the fall here and turn up the marketing. We're, you know, fully bootstrapped till now. So it's just the three of us.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So what would be your sort of, if you can give me some hypothetical example or practical example of what would ATSIS see from this? What would be the financial upside? How could it change the current situation?

Anna Lidell

I mean already now we have an artist with 130,000 monthly streamers on Spotify. She has 60 people paying on sleep and she's making more money than she is from Spotify. I think that's a very like one-to-one example, right? Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, that is the dimension, right? And I think that's the really interesting part is it doesn't take that much to double the, I wouldn't call it passive income, but double the income associated to things you already do to some degree. And I think that's...

Anna Lidell

Yeah. Yeah, and it's interesting, we also have like an upcoming artist and she has only 50 people following her, but 20 of those are paying, you know. So that's quite a lot because they want to support that she's new in this business. And since we have the mail sign up, also, one artist told me yesterday she had a concert and just had a, you know, old school paper run around where people put their email. And then she imported the emails and sleep and made the customized things like, thank you for signing up at this concert. Now you can join me on sleep, you know. So it's really like making sure that connection stays

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Anna Lidell

because once you're playing for it, like that connection at a concert is always the most magical connection I think.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. was, know, was, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I was running my own math on these kinds of cases, you know, years back. And one of the biggest issues that I see in this mid-tier access layer is that a lot of these people make money, but they don't make quite enough money to be full-time, which can be very dilutive to career opportunities, that kind of stuff. And I think there is like a...

Anna Lidell

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

a threshold that if you read as an ATSIS where you can make just enough money to be full time that other things are unlocked. And I guess maybe one of the things that these kind of platforms or SLEEVE in general is maybe can help ATSIS to let's just talk about the mid-tier level where things turn from a struggle to like, okay, now I can actually do it. Does that make sense?

Anna Lidell

Mm-hmm.

Anna Lidell

Yeah, totally. mean, the goal is really to unlock this kind of financial independence from the ground level up. And that's what we like. That's when I talk to artists. like, what is the hope a year from now? You know, and a lot of them do say not to have that halftime job, because if I could just do my music, you know, that would be amazing.

Jakob Wredstrøm

and

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, I think it's a sad reality in general that you need to have a job in order to pay for another job. And I think there's a lot of great music, there's a lot of culture, there's a lot of experiences in life that can really benefit from that being a non-subsidized experience for artists, that they can actually fully focus on their craft and their storytelling and deliver that.

Anna Lidell

Yeah, yes, that's a way to put it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

What is, and this is maybe a hard question, but I think it's interesting. Why is music even important? Why is the thriving of artists important than being able to do something?

Anna Lidell

I'm

Anna Lidell

Yeah, I mean for me extremely, you know, of course I'm biased but also when I look at the landscape it's like it's the thing that every people use every day, know, it's still music. It's still the thing that people identify with, you know, like there's so much identification in music and I think especially now a lot of people are telling me with this global landscape of political, what do you call it? You can call it political conflict. know, music is the thing that combines us, that put us together. Like even like an artist from the States said, like she, they only talk about music now because they have different political views in the family. So if they have to talk together, they basically just talk about music. So music have this thing that really, you know, is, more than language or any of these things. And if we don't make a space for that to survive, of course we can always have a lot of great AI music running in the background, but it's just.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Anna Lidell

Music is always where, like a new generation found their voice or where you can mirror yourself in ways you don't necessarily understand.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, the sad commentary to that is the value of the recipient from a cultural perspective if you have this like really the snurfing of music that people gather around and then the financial reality associated to that for the creator is just so disproportionate. I have, you would know many of these people, but I have so many friends who are so successful in the public view with their music.

Anna Lidell

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And they're struggling so badly financially. And sometimes it's because of deals, sometimes it's because of lifestyle, but most of the times it's just like, it's just not viable. Like the payment's just not viable. So one of the things that I love is that there's so many movements towards fandom. But if you were to think, and maybe this is a hard question, why... The Western world hasn't succeeded reading its scale yet with monetizing fandom. What would be the reason for that?

Anna Lidell

Hmm? Why? You know, I think that there is attempt at doing this and I know that is, you know... How to put it? I think you have to be with artists. Know, like the fact that the 200 artists we have on the platform now, I meet them regularly, I talk to them, you need to have that connection. If you build something with majors or labels or something, that's great. They have great insight, but they don't know how it is to be a musician on a very day-to-day basis, you know. And so we have seen, think Substack is a great example of someone who went in... made something for journalists that really changed the game, you know, because they're like, the ROI on just posting on Twitter didn't match up, right? So they made Substack and it really works. And there are musicians on Substack too, you know. It's just not made for music and music is this specific category where you want to make sure one thing is like one of the, none of the other platforms have this called DRM, which is a little nerdy, which means that if you upload a song or a video, it can't be screen recorded or downloaded or anything.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Anna Lidell

The only platform who does have that is actually OnlyFans, which in itself is interesting, I think. But, you know, having that, being able to play your music in high quality, being able to do all of these things, I think is what really matters for musicians. And that's why us catering just music, like just the music vertical of the greater economy is what makes the difference.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. That makes sense. Interesting. So basically what you're saying is, it's hard to find a model that would scale, at least immediately until like, is that what you're saying? Like that's difficult?

Anna Lidell

I think it's more like nobody's tackled this head on with music only. Like there are people who've done it with like Bandcamp have done it, even have done it, but it's very focused on the release, right? Not so much on the relationship. And so Josh, who's, you know, the coder of Sleeve, he worked at Patreon from the very early years and he worked there for five years and did a lot of the infrastructure there. And he just saw it doesn't really work for musicians. You know, it works great for podcasters and YouTubers, but...

Jakob Wredstrøm

At least

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Anna Lidell

Musicians are this specific species where it's also about the branding really. It's like, want to be at a place where it is about music, you know? And where there is like, have rich liner notes, for example. It's just that gesture is important for musicians, but also for music fans, right?

Jakob Wredstrøm

What would be the reason why people wouldn't want to connect with fandom? Like is there any like societal consumer behavior that you see again and again? It's hard to convert people into paying for stuff.

Anna Lidell

I mean a lot of people are not used to pay for music and that's why I think the important thing is that we allow people to support instead of say they have to pay. So it's very much up to the artist to figure out what do I want to give out for free and what do I want to pay like get paid for you know and so for some like we have one artist who want to put everything out in the open but then say that if you support me you support the music and you make sure I can make music so it's more of an altruistic way you know.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Anna Lidell

And then we have others who are like, you know, I have this documentary or this release and it's exclusively on Sleeve for those who pay. So it's a very one-to-one, I get something when I pay something here, you know. And I think it's, that's what we're learning now. It's very interesting how different artists are using it differently in that space.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, and I have a business partner called Taj and he doesn't come from music, but he works a lot with me in music and he has a saying that music sells anything but music. And I think it's really fascinating because it's also so correct.

Anna Lidell

Yes, very true.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And it's a hard, hard problem to tackle is like getting people to value music in actual cash.

Anna Lidell

But actually, I mean, that's a good way to put it, where it's like, you know, what would TikTok be without music? What would a film be without music? Or what would a store where there was no music, you would think that it's closing, right? So it's like all these other people are benefiting from music of the value chain, but the musician. And I think Sleeve is like trying to take that back and give that control back to the artist and say, I actually get to earn the money around the music, you know, which is...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm-hmm.

Anna Lidell

And I think also, I know that Spotify is trying to upscale, you know, have like a Spotify Pro thing. But like, I don't think fans want to pay more to Spotify, knowing that it's not gonna go to their artist. I think knowing that more than 80 % goes directly to the artist that I like, I think that's a differentiation.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, and can imagine. Obviously the big question in anything in startup land is like, so how does that grow big enough to have a good business? Because ultimately I think there's a lot of businesses that's put out to the world with very capable founders, with very good products, really a product market fit artist founder relationship, but really struggles with the product market fit with...

Anna Lidell

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Audience and the finances behind it. And I think that's the biggest thing to unlock for these things to really have the breakthrough potential, really make a difference is like, how do we make this attractive for people to pay and consistently pay? And I think that's also one of the reasons why these platforms have not succeeded at scale on this particular thing is that's a really hard thing to crack. And I think it can be cracked. And I think, you know, one of the ways that you described it as you basically said have a very, very focused relationship with ATSIS to help them bring that in is one of the ways to do it. But also...

Anna Lidell

I mean, most artists have that relationship already with their fans, so the fans would do whatever they say, right? And so we just have to... And that's why the economic argument from our side to artists is so appealing. That it's kind of a no-brainer to go on sleeve and start using it. And then they bring their audience and their fans that they already have. So that's how we're gonna grow it. And of course also with referrals and other stuff.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

If you were to, and this is just a hypothetical exercise, so just take it as that, but if you were to predict why Slave wouldn't succeed because of consumer behavior, what would be the things in people's minds that wouldn't change over time? The negatives in how people look at music.

Anna Lidell

Thank

Anna Lidell

That's so hard to answer. Mean maybe it would be that they've gotten so used to lean back listening that they don't care. Which I find hard to be true though because it's like...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Anna Lidell

We also have, I mean it's food, we have a lot of fast food stores but we also have very fine dining. I mean there's just different people who have different needs and I think thinking that something like streaming fits, is it like one size fits all? It's just the wrong premise from the beginning on, you know. So I think this is what we're seeing now, it's more of a differentiation. So there are listeners who will be fine just listening, even just listening on YouTube with ads, you know, and not paying anything. But then there are those people who want more and who...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Anna Lidell

Craving that extra connection. And the good thing is we don't need everybody. Like, we're very aware of that. You know, we just need the ones who care.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I believe that to be very true and I think one of the false perceptions, this is my own opinion about startups in the music industry, is that you need to scale the way that you see other tech products scale. Like in reality, music is a niche market, so you need to treat it as such. So, but again, if you look to other industries, like niche markets can be very, very lucrative and attractive and good. But you need to treat it as such. So I think one of the things that I see founders do wrong a lot in this space is that like, think about this platform entirely that can just scales with thousands of artists and I don't really believe that will have success. Know, as let's just go back to how music currently works. So. Currently in any national, present major label, you usually say one or two artists earns back the investments of 10. That is how the whole music industry works, basically. And oftentimes it's much less than that. And that's basically it. That's the metrics. You just need a few amount of artists being very present, doing very well, and that will carry it. Of course there will be ripple effects and you know... small, my biggest movement to see if that's there. I don't know how to say that English. There's lot of small streams of income and fandom will also happen, but at the end of the day, you know, 80 to 90 % of the revenue will come from the few players that does it really, really well.

Anna Lidell

Yeah.

Anna Lidell

Yeah. I think that, I mean, like you say, it's a niche thing, but it's a global niche thing, which makes it really big. And I think there is very strong networks in that also from artists to artists, you know. So like a lot of artists, if they like this, why wouldn't they say it to their other artists friends, you know? And so there is a lot of networks that's also built on trust.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm. Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Anna Lidell

And of course that's a hard thing to measure, but that's definitely like right now what we hear a lot of artists, we just had an artist who had a thing taken down. She has a closed Facebook group of 5,000 fans and she posted something that was taken down. And it was like, how can I not control, like why can I not control this? And so I think there is also some momentum right now around the fatigue of social media. And the realization that you don't own your audience. I just talked to another artist who has half a million Instagram users and she's like, what if they leave Instagram? I don't know where they are. I think there's a new, there's also something about timing in this, where it's like, on sleeve you see the emails of your followers and you can take them with you to another platform if you want to. We'll make sure the product is so good you don't want to do that. But it gives you another level of control as an artist which is very needed right now.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm. No, I think that to be very true. So how do you plan on taking this further? What's your strategy?

Anna Lidell

I mean, now we feel good about the product and we have the case stories that we needed to show that this really works. So we're actually running our first race in this summer. So that's where we're at right now.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And what are you gonna do with that money?

Anna Lidell

We want to scale it, so we need another me reaching out to our artists, but also another coder. Right now, Joss is both developing and supporting, and he's doing really great, and people get an answer in the same day, so that's good. But once it takes off, obviously we need more people on board. So it's basically like GTM plan, but also developing the product.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Now it's really interesting and can you maybe comment on why you chose to be a founder? Like again, you had a really interesting progression as a musician, songwriter, artist, then in Denmark you probably have the highest seats of music representation as you can have. And then going to a very interesting... which is being a founder that I've been for many years. So why did you end up doing it?

Anna Lidell

That's a good question. Think, you know, was... When I re... I had a realization when I talked to an MP actually from European Parliament who was like, yes, it's true, musicians get too little. Like, we want to do something about it. But we basically can't, you know. So like, all of these high standing people who wanted to make a change in terms of law and stuff to make this thing. But it's impossible because it's so based on a private market. So I just kind of reached the limit of what we could do with lobbyism in my point of view and at the same time just you know kind of out of coincidence my very good friend from my high school students years her husband is Josh who's coding this and he's Canadian they met in Silicon Valley and he moved over here and had kids and so we were spending a lot of time you know with the kids and he was just kind of provoking me saying you complete you keep complaining about this you know about the music business being broken, but what would If build, if I said I could build it, what would it be? And that question was just such an interesting, as someone who's been out there yelling, it's such a constructive way of turning it around and a very difficult question. And then we came closer to an answer and he was like, if we want to be serious, we want to bring one more in. And that's when Jared came in and he's the UX designer. But both Jared and Jaws is also great musicians. So we just, all the three of us talked and we were like, there's something here. Where it's like, it's not Patreon, it's not Spotify, it's not Substack, it's not social media, but it's not a newsletter, but it's somehow, you know, a mix of these things that you need as a musician to be able to convert these, you know, fans who care.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And was that compelling enough that he just needed to do something about it? What pushed you over the edge?

Anna Lidell

I mean, we had half a year of just testing it and talking about it. And then we started building and people told me, this is going to take years, you know, to build something like this. But I think like Jared says, Josh is like one of these things where you can have a 20 coders or just Josh. Like he's worked Twitter 15 years ago and Airbnb when there was like 50 people. So he really knows his thing. And I just saw it, this is moving quickly. And I was trying to be also the chair, chairing stuff. And it was just, there was, there wasn't enough hours in the day. But also I was afraid of some conflict of interest or something where I felt like it just felt more clean to rip the band-aid up and just quit all of the other things and leap into this and take it alone and see what happens.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Amazing. I think that is the founder journey that needs to be taken. I've done it myself for many years and I've wanted to quit for many years, but obviously I can't just because I'm who I am. The reality is that sometimes you need the expertise in order to build something beautiful, but which also means you need to leave the good in order to pursue the unknown. How has your family reacted to that? Your partner?

Anna Lidell

Very supportive, that's great. Mean, my girlfriend is an actor also, so you know, I think we're both like, we don't have to earn a lot of money, things are ups and downs and it means a lot to have that support from home, especially when you have small kids and stuff.

Jakob Wredstrøm

She knows what it is.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. Well, I applaud it. You know, I think, you know, I have so much respect for you and your journey and how you're this. And I'm really interested to see how consumers adopt and adapt over the next few years as a reaction to technology, as a reaction to cultural shifts. And everyone knows what the fuck is going on in the world right now. I probably need to bleep that out for not being censored. But The world is interesting to say the least right now. I think that these, let's call it communities without lack, maybe a lack of a better word, are going to be a lot of, I don't want to say refuge, things that people need that they do want to spend their money on. And I think that really speaks for

Anna Lidell

It is, yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Why the time might be right in the Western society to pursue things like this because generally speaking, can't speak for all, like it's been a comfortable life in the West for many years. And it's hard to change mentalities about these things given the history of music when that's going on. But when things are disrupted, technology, wars, politics, unrest, I think it forces people to relook at certain consumer behaviors and make active choices.

Anna Lidell

Yeah, and be more active, like almost activistic in their consumer behavior, right? Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. And I, you know, I feel it myself. Like, you know, I, I no longer use social media at all. And, and that has not been a conscious choice at like, but I think as basically my story is like, I've been falling very close to the AI for two and a half years. And I did my first like ML machine learning project like six years ago. So I've been quite aware. And I think subconsciously whenever AI materials started flooding Instagram and whatever, I just

Anna Lidell

Great.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Backed out, really. It wasn't an active choice. It's like, okay, it's already diluted enough. I don't feel like I'm connecting with the people I'm connected with. And now I'm flooded with things. It really has nothing to do with me. And I just signed off of that. And I think that's what is happening at large. But we still have the need for why we were attracted to social media in the first place, which is, to some degree, connectivity. Or to some degree exposure to things that we're interested in. And these type of alternatives, I believe, are really interesting in the time we are in right now, if that makes sense.

Anna Lidell

Yes, it does. That's, I think, the same, you know. And I see the same already now. A lot of artists say that this is a safe space. Don't get hate. A lot of artists get daily hate messages. It's pretty crazy, but they do. And so to be in a space where people have chosen them and they know that they already like the music, it's such a different feel from having to... Also somebody said I used to edit my videos...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Anna Lidell

20 times because I know the whole business is looking, you know, like there's this thing that you have to be perfect. But in Sleeve, it's like people already know me and my music. So I just did a one shot and I was actually satisfied with it. And so I think there is this, you know, fatigue from both the artists, but also the consumer side where it's like, I want something real now. You know, it's been enough of the algorithmic change in a way, you know, I just want something.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Anna Lidell

Like Anastas put a PDF with chords for song and she said that would have never gone anywhere on Instagram but people really liked it and then they asked could you make a video of how you play it and she sat in the kitchen and you know just played the chords for a song and described how she would play it and something like stuff like that I just really love it when that happens.

Jakob Wredstrøm

None.

Jakob Wredstrøm

We want something real now. I think that's beautifully said. And I think that's the essence of the time we're going into now. And that's also maybe my worry about technology, AI, fake news, fake images, now with the new Google Vivo 3, you can't really see the difference. It's, it has gone beyond scary and just like now confusing. Like then what?

Anna Lidell

We do.

Anna Lidell

Yeah. Oh, and another thing is a lot of these artists have like daily, they tell me daily there's 10 new fake profiles that they have to complain about. Who are selling tickets for shows that's already sold out and stuff. You know, that's kind of crazy.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So we want something real now. Think that's the sort of the line, I think you said I want something, we want, but again, I'll stay with that line. We want something real now. And I think that I'll use that as culmination of this conversation because I think that is as timely as it gets in day and age and culture and consumption. And I hope that's gonna be one of the ways that Slave will succeed in what traditionally has been a really difficult market to work with fandom. And I love when I hear these stories where I see, the time is probably right. And that's what I hope to see.

Anna Lidell

Thank very much. Means a lot. It means a lot to hear from you. Obviously we believe in this, but it's good to hear from you too. Thanks. Bye.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And I thank you so much for the conversation. Thank you for the conversation.