Building a Music Career Fans Can Emotionally Invest In

Jakob Wredstrøm

So the way that Riverside works if you haven't used it before is that it streams downloads and uploads at the same time, which means if there's any lag or decreasing quality of video, you don't need to be concerned about that because I get full quality at the end.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I was just gonna ask you because sometimes your video gets...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, but the same thing with audio, if there's lag or something like that, when it comes to the actual results, it's not going to be affected. A tiny thing, that your angle is fairly good, but if there is a possibility to maybe raise your computer like 10 centimeters, I think the angle would be, no, it's more raising the computer because right now it's like angling down to up. Yeah.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Okay, sounds good.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Let me try again.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Any better now.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, so then if you angle it a tiny bit down, slightly better. It could be preferable if you get it a tiny bit further up. Know I'm a bit ahead you, but is it possible to get even more under the computer?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Find cardboard boxes to basically stack it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

It's not a big issue, it will help kind of aesthetically.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Is it too much now?

Jakob Wredstrøm

See.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Is it like a bit too much? No, I wouldn't say so.

Jakob Wredstrøm

No, I wouldn't say so if you just back a tiny bit up.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

No, didn't. I was just sitting a bit straight here.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Did you take your chair up by any chance? And then if you... Okay, and then if you take the angle a bit down, and then if you can do it a tiny bit further away, can you push the computer away?

Jakob Wredstrøm

There we go, now we're getting really close. No, I think that's appropriate. Perfect. Great. Sorry, it's just that most people watch this on video, and I've been listening to podcasts for, I don't know, 17 years or so. So for me, video podcast is like a foreign concept, but most people do that, apparently.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Are you seeing bigger viewership on YouTube than Spotify? Interesting.

Jakob Wredstrøm

A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And I also know that's actually a general thing for most podcasts, but I think it's something to do with a lot of people associate podcasting also to clips. And there's some sort of like, especially from the younger generation, consumption on video and audio belongs together. For me, podcast is always in motion. Like I've never sat down and listened to podcasts. It's like I'm traveling, I'm running. Yeah. Okay, great. Well, the way that I start these podcasts is pretty simple.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Yeah, yes, never, yeah.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Mm-hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I like them to be quite conversational. So I'll do a very brief introduction when I say Larry, it's very brief introduction. And then I'm going to talk very briefly on the topic we'll talk about today, which is your journey. And then I'm going to ask you, who are you and what do you do? You can explain for like 30 seconds or so. And then I'm going to ask about round. And then you could maybe describe that for one or two minutes. That just sets the scene. And that what I usually do is I.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

So Sada, who are you, what do you do is pretty much getting into round, right?

Jakob Wredstrøm

I guess, I hope there's some difference between you as a person and the company you lead. But yeah, it's very closely related. That's why I do it as a follow-up question. And then I'm probably gonna take sort of your founder journey as the timeline. So imagine the rest of the 40, 50 minutes we talk together. We're gonna talk about sort of a journey into founding round and like everything there. And then...

Vishal Ramakrishnan

AYE

Jakob Wredstrøm

Then I'm going to take out snippets of what you say and talk about specific things. So it's not because it's going to be chronological biography kind of style, but I always use that as like a timeline almost to build towards, which retention and storytelling, that sort of works quite well.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Cool, sounds good.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Cool. Are you ready? Your device is that Undo Not Disturb. Do you have water? Everything you need?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Yeah, I do have water. Phone's not near me, so be fine.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Great. Then I will start in... I'm just putting up my last notes here.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Year round they are ready.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And I do pronounce it round, right?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Okay, I will start in five seconds.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hey guys and welcome back to the Sound Connections Podcast. Today I have Vishal in the studio. Welcome!

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Hey, lovely to be on this podcast. Been hearing all good things about it, been watching the videos as well. Great to be a part of it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Thank you, man. I'm very excited to talk about you and your company today and your founder journey. Round is your company and you're doing incredibly interesting work in this space. But for the people who don't know you, who are you and what do you do?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I think like most of the people working in music, a huge fan of music started off as a musician and then somehow ended up on the business side of music and not on the creative side. So who am I? A person who really loves consuming music, a person who engages with music, likes to play with music. Apart from that, I've been spending the last sort of... half a decade or more building around figuring out what could work, what doesn't work, how do we make this happen? That's sort of a bit more about me.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And if you could describe round, like what do you guys do?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Think, Rounds, a marketing technology company where you are able to interact potentially with your fans, which is what we're aiming to get to. But right now, Rounds basically a centralized marketing technology company where we activate influencers, help with advertising to make sure the songs are being heard by the right group of audiences and we're able to break songs the way the internet's heading right now.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And obviously this is not like an early stage product. You guys have huge clients and huge artists you work with. But could you maybe paint the picture? Like how would a typical use case look like for an artist or label that works with you?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

So typically what happens is let's say you're the artist, Jacob. So you come in and email me saying, hey, I've got this release. Can you let us know how you can push or market this release? Typically like every other marketing company. So then we look at the sound. Let's say we look at the TikTok snippet, we look at the Instagram snippet or... and the full song then we hear it we identify we ask you for who are your audiences so you look at let's say Spotify YouTube whatever your biggest sort of platform is you tell us okay I'm looking to work my way through to the UK market I have a massive let's say Berlin market already so then we identify okay what are the similar songs that exists that sort of are in the parallels let's say you're a rapper and let's say you like Kendrick, like Drake. Then we look at, how has Drake's sounds performed in this market in the UK? How do we identify the right sort of creators and communities that have used Drake's sounds pretty successfully? Are there any sort of templates or data points that we can look at to replicate something similar for you? This doesn't necessarily work, but the approach is basically a very data-driven approach rather than saying, hey, we will give you 10 creators. They will post about your music. It's not that. It's a bit more targeted. That's typically what you get from us.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. And we'll dissect that a lot more and talk about sort of how you go about it and what you're building towards as well, because it sounds like there's like a really interesting progression in your company as well and where you're heading. We'll discuss that, but I just need to understand, like, how did you get into entrepreneurship? Because you said you started with music and it slowly turned into business. Like, what was the journey into that?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I think it born brought up in India. Not much of music business outside of the film music that existed. Anyone who comes in as a music composer or a pianist or whatever. I started off as a pianist and then... technology curiosity sort of kicked in and then I started playing around with software which then led to me realizing okay potentially could be a composer but then the avenues are not as much as you see in the UK US markets because that's a more growing emerging market so you either become a film composer or there's no music outside of that pretty much there is but it's sort of really small and no real support. So you spent about, I think between 2012 and 2017, spent five years going around every sort of production house saying, here's my CD. Can you take a look at it? Will you give me an opportunity? That was pretty much five years. But then quickly realized as I kept doing that, were projects that I've done as an ads composer, scoring for films, scoring for commercials. All of that has happened, but not all of them released, which basically meant those opportunity cost here because you're spending three four years learning about how the film industry works and then getting curious about okay now I'm going here where they release music my music becomes big but then when I release music on my own why does it not happen there's so many other artists there so it's sort of a journey based on a lot of curiosities and questions that I needed answered for because I couldn't really make it into the film industry which meant I released music on my own. That basically means I have to sort of get how do I release music? How do I then market my own music? This because you're competing with a load of big films which have songs in there and that gets marketed. So that was pretty much the phase where I actually was forced to learn about.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Releasing music is step one, marketing is step two, then advertising is step three and then whatever it is memes, playlists, how are people using this sound way more on YouTube but then they're not caring about any of the other works. How do I get that? So that curiosity basically turned into me at least gaining knowledge about how do I do

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

In 2017 when you sort of stopped doing that, did that come from like a failure perspective? You felt like, now I've spent too much time on this or what was the reflection?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

It's actually quite funny because mentally I was like I'm done because I don't think I'm either good enough or I don't have the influence to be able to push my way through it and in that period I also released music on my own, parallely, which meant I had a fair understanding of what it means to release music back home, what it meant to actually advertise a market. That's this point of time was fairly confident. I wasn't going into music full time. But you know, this little artist in you always says you should try again. So went to London. That's when I came to London 2018 to do my masters at London College of Music. Again, it was in music composition. So I necessarily didn't give up. But then the knowledge curve in parallel kept going on as an OK, how are people doing this? How are people doing this? How are people doing this? But there's sort of.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Moment really happened in 2018 where it six months of me going hard on okay let me see if I can get any piano sessions in let me see if I can get it And then the cost of living in London, all of that made me realize quickly that the dissertation should not be in music composition. It should be on the journey that I had been through the five years as to how you release music in the modern day. How do people survive? What are the skill sets that you really need to be as a musician? Because just making music today doesn't really get you anywhere. You need to learn the other bits around it. So the dissertation quickly turned into how do you release music for the modern day? That was pretty much the turning point.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Which is a very difficult topic. I've been quite around the music industry in different roles or being active in many different companies, either as an advisor or builder or whatever. And we also recently did a podcast episode on digital marketing. And it's still something that I really struggle with because I've personally also done a good deal of digital marketing for usual products or something like that, which is for me, seems like there's a... there's more of a natural way of thinking about it, but the music, it's just because there's like, there's no ROI directly. You can't do like, okay, this is the, you know, what it costs to our customer. It doesn't like work that way. And it's much more long-term. It's much more, you know, not related to usual marketing. So what was the culmination of that thesis? Like, what, did you sort of come out with?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

You

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I think if I have to look back on the thesis now it was a bit below average. It worked while I was at uni. Looking back at it I wouldn't even read a page of it. What it really spoke about was how are people looking more at numbers today versus actually the music because today music is consumed based on numbers. The more numbers you have the more you're being pushed.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Okay.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Which meant there are a lot of people there were a lot of people back then botting streams and things like that right it's not it's not something that's hidden everyone knows a lot of people are doing it. So it spoke more about, in today's world, once you're done with a piece of album, then how do you go about setting up your Facebook ad account? How do you go about finding the right memes? Your music meme friendly? How do you identify that? And how do you go about finding your creators or your core group of 50 people who you know actually listen to your music very the first time when it releases? It really spoke about those things.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

And those pretty much came from me while I was trying to get into the film industry. Was consulting for labels as well because I wanted to know how the other side of the business works. So you as an artist, you release music, you try to market it, you spend $50, $20, whatever money you have, do something if it works. Then you have you look at the labels, they're spending 100,000, 50,000, 30,000 pounds, dollars, whatever. Where do they put those monies into? Can we do that with a thousand pound budget? If I had that budget. So that was that basically was all inside the dissertation as to how do you spend money if you have a 500 pound budget if you're doing this genre of music where could you be spending money on? If you had this genre of music how different would it be? So some genres like dance music is very playlist driven so how do you identify third party players as a bunch of apps now?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

How do you reach out to them? How do you figure out? Then if you're doing audience development, you run ads. That's more consistent, longer term play rather than short term streams. So this is sort of what it covered. And then I also spoke about how botting is happening with so many tracks, insane amount of streams, insane amount of views. Even Google ads, these people spending 100,000 pounds day one just to get the numbers up. But then you see the engagement views ratio. So you're competing with pretty much all of that. So that pretty much was there on the dissertation.

Jakob Wredstrøm

If you want to of assume out from the story and just go back to round, obviously there was something, some value that you found you wanted to build a company around. So what was the particular thing that you found that you believe was unique enough in the market to build a company? I would assume also raise some capital and build a team around.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

We didn't raise capital. We haven't raised capital. How round happened was again, so the dissertation I submitted, one of my professors son had just funded round.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Really? Okay. Excited to hear. Yeah.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

So that was pretty much him listening to my music and then saying you should probably meet Vishal. And the coincidence was that Aaron, who's the founder of Round, was working at an agency where he was seeing money go from billboards into Facebook ads. And he was there as part of the paid media team figuring out ad setups, how do you scale it. And I was pretty much doing similar in India.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

But then he had this vision of, okay, I'm sitting here at an agency. There's probably tens of Excel sheets that we go through. There's a plan, ad planner. Who plans ads and then that Excel sheet gets passed on to this person who actually executes then another Excel sheet is being sent to another person to report on to the client. Is there any way we can centralize all of this as a single tool that way an artist when they're spending money with us they get to know what they're spending it for immediately and from a workflow point of view anyone and everyone can pretty much look at one dashboard. Pretty much centralizing all of the data and efficiently building a platform that combines sort of data, campaign details and execution into an ecosystem. So it wasn't really a large problem, it was basically a personal problem for him that we were solving for. But then the idea has always been music, when you look at music, when you look at all sorts of marketing and things that are going on, it's just a bunch of sheets flying around here and there. Here is the report from radio. Here is the report from influencer marketing. Here is the report from advertising. The core idea was how do we centralize everything?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. Which is one of the really difficult things. We work a bit in the digital marketing space as well. Like the amount of data and cross data and performance data you need to understand and then translate into something customers can understand is really difficult. Like even from the marketeer side. So the concept of sort of putting that together in dashboard, like how did the market react to whenever you came to that place where that was realistic?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Think that at that point of time, NotStar was building the dashboard. The way we looked at it was step one really was how do we make our lives easier? Because the client, even if you give them the dashboard, the dashboard has to be in a way that data has been broken down that they can understand because you have to think of it from a marketing manager's point of view. They are looking at a load of data across their artist roster and then we are giving them a new piece of data to look at.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

But then for us, was how do we optimize our workflow, which can yield better returns for us when we are setting up ads, planning it and strategizing it. The final product as a dashboard, when someone looks at it, it's just easy to see we've spent $500. This is what we've targeted. This is the results that we've got. That's it. So there were that the first couple of years was pretty much figuring out what types of data do we need in there? How do we integrate Google Ads?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Integrate Facebook ads, how do we integrate Snapchat ads because that's what that was the time when it was moving in. So the first iteration was really just a line item where you see this is the name of the campaign, this is the amount of money being invested, here are two little boxes that says we are targeting these sort of similar artists, we are targeting these remarketing audiences and here is the results click to download. That's it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

That was pretty much the first iteration. Then as things evolved, we started this around 2020, right? So this was the time where we saw the ads problem. But then because of COVID, the whole creator economy peaked. That was when we started thinking beyond ads. Said, what if we can bring in now it's clear that everyone's going to be investing in memes, everyone's going to be investing in paying creators, everyone's going to be investing in ads. That's when the actual sort of growth started, actual sort of longer term thinking started because initially it was just a small problem for one guy who wanted to, who thought it could work, it has sort of worked.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. And it's interesting. Think a lot of healthy entrepreneurship journeys is really about solving that one problem. At Amplitude, we see a lot of cases, I would say more than a hundred cases per year that we go through, a lot more than that actually. And oftentimes when people build startups, including myself, by the way, it's about this like very large problem, very hypothetical. Like it's going to take a while to get to somewhere where you actually can make money in a business. And then you have the other category of businesses, which I see a lot in the music industry, which is like very like pragmatic. Like we're already doing something. Here's a problem. Let's try to solve it. And then a lot of good businesses gets built on that. Oftentimes that's also businesses that doesn't take in capital for several reasons, doesn't need to, or that's not the part of the mentality. So would you guys define yourself like as a tech startup now, or is it like more the agency? Like where do you define yourself?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

No, think right now we've always looked at it as a tech startup because we have enough sort of SaaS products that sort self-serve on their own and the idea is to get to a marketplace. That's where we're building towards. So we started off as the agency. That's the only way one, you can actually make money.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Number two is be able to fund your business. There's people who build tech, there's people who build services and then build tech on top. We started off the latter because

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

We are two people who have never raised money. We two people who had a very personal problem to deal with and I didn't have a sword first hand. So we were just building for it. There was never a not star or thinking, okay, this is the vision. Whereas if you ask me to think of something now, I'd be like, this is the larger vision. Then that also becomes a problem because you start small and then it's better to go step by step there. So that's precisely why we've had sort of no capital, looked at a small problem, started going with it and then reached a point where we can invest the money into tech and right now we see ourselves to be a full-scale tech company over the next sort of three to six months with our current roadmap.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. But what's been the sort of the... personal reflection of that? Because like obviously that's probably not what you guys signed up for when you started working towards this. Like that, that obviously that has been some sort of gradual progression, but like from being a, let's call it for the sake of this podcast, failed film composer to then study music to then being interested in marketing, then turning a startup founder or co-founder or like building this whole thing. Like what happened for you mentally? Was that, was that a positive thing, a stressful thing? How did you feel?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I think I like these sort of challenges because if you look at me and the type of person I've always been, it's always been curiosity that has gotten me to the next step. And when you actually start building something, it's just a curiosity that takes you to the next step, then the next step and the next step. So it's probably something I would keep doing over and over again. Same thing with the others as well here. So I think it's had a very positive impact on me. Wouldn't really say that you have your struggles. There's so many challenges when you're actually going through so many months where you've

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

done okay how do we sort cash flow because we pay out salaries and then the way the way the industry works is you get paid later but then you have to the costs immediately which meant things like that you learn in the process again technology you to learn in the process because I don't come from a tech background neither does Aaron nor does the others as well so that's pretty much been the learning is as we go every quarter there used to be a problem

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

that we need to find a solution for. There's been times where we couldn't ship the best product out as well. Even now we have our own challenges, but yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, that's the real difficulties. One of the blessings and curses by having investors is that you can fake the scenario of building something. Personally, I'm a founder that fails a lot and that's sort of become my secret weapon because I'm very resilient and I have a good way of helping people be patient with me. So like my whole model is about, well, not on purpose, but that's how it is. I'm just failing a lot. And then once in a while I'll find something gold that I build a business on. And I have that luxury because I have... rich investors. When I fuck up badly, there is a way out. It's not always great, it's not always pretty, but there is a way out. When you're startup that's splitting tech products, have employees, have salaries, and if something goes wrong, I can imagine there's very little safety net.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I think we've always put services first hand because we know that's the heart of the business. Without services, others wouldn't really exist without capital. So it's always been services first, client servicing first. The whole culture around everyone we have in the team is let's satisfy the client.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

client comes first, if there's a query, let's get that over the line first. That's literally the DNA right now and will always be. That basically meant you have the luxury of being able to invest in innovation. Whereas if we had and partially I think that progression from building services first made us realize a lot of problems which we wouldn't have realized if we went tech first.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

because you're very hands-on granular. So building doesn't mean building a massive SaaS product. Building also means a small automation for a marketing manager at a label, which makes their life easier and want them to work with us more, right? So sort of building those small bits which then leads into something larger, which also means we do a managed service throughout.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. I think that's so smart. And I think also the markets are changing when it comes to sort of capital availability for traditional businesses. Everything is changing every single month. So I can't even make a statement on what works and what doesn't work. But one of the things that I've come to realize is that the core services model is becoming very, very interesting to build upon. Like Amplified Ventures, that's what we shifted a year ago to services model first. And I've never wanted to do that. Like I don't have a passion for services. I've come to like it, but it's just necessary if you want to innovate, especially in a space where there's a lot of risk and limited capital and maybe also limited purchasing power. Like it is almost impossible not to do services because you need to run the engine independently on what investor markets define as a viable. So you and your partner, what was the conversations going on when you started building out the tech side? It's like, did you feel like you guys knew what you were doing? Was it just a trial and error?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Luckily, Aaron's brother, Jacob, was a tech person. That's where our pain sort of slightly reduced, I should say. Because, so I was in India, I didn't meet Aaron for the first two years. Yeah, pretty much COVID period. Was pretty much in India doing this on calls. And then by the time I moved here, we already had about six, seven people, I think.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

So pretty much that initial phase was just me on the phone, mostly Aaron and Jacob figuring out the tech part of it. I had a couple of designers in India who were helping because we couldn't fund someone in the UK to come in and do it. This was the more obvious way to try and end other things. So his expertise on technology sort of helped a lot really because we could tell him what we wanted and then he would be able to understand it from a tech point of view and them being brothers just made life a bit more easier because they could speak at any given point of time. So that I should say that solved for a lot of problems as well. So I think that's pretty much how I would put it because

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Without his sort of help in the early days of building that tech, would probably have been a slightly slower trajectory towards us building technology versus where we are now. Now we have an understanding because we've done it for five and a half years. But back then, I think to kickstart the engine, there's some amount of self-learning plus him sort of helping us to get this to life.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

you

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. So what are you building towards? Again, if you're a startup that haven't taken in external capital, is some, you know, you guys have a freedom when it comes to external expectations. So when you're building this tech stack, this more scalable model, self-service, to what end do you see this happening?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I think we're chugging along as much as we can without raising capital. It doesn't mean we wouldn't raise capital because you can scale so far with capital after which, especially right now, right? The whole sort of... The whole sort of roadmap to building technology has now become so much more easier with AI coming in and tools coming in that today things are being built in three months which used to take eight, nine months before. Which means people's go to market times have reduced drastically. So we do not have the same luxury of taking time to build something like in 2019, 2020, 2021 to now. So that's why I wouldn't say

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm-hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

we wouldn't take capital if we were to start up right now we would sort of look at the raising capital even though it's easier to build tech it also means you need to market it a lot more because someone can come and catch you up very quickly. So what are we building towards? We are building towards a larger marketplace where there's this buy side and the sell side, two-sided marketplace. On one end, there's a lot of labels, brands looking at coming in here. The product having smaller creators, larger creators, communities. Data around each of these people, centralization of all the campaign data, centralization of all the creator data as well and the sound data which basically means you come in here you know who's used your sound who's mashed up your sounds, remixed your sounds as well because they come under different names on platforms. And then you're able to even reach out to people that you would be able to target those people who have used sounds that you like or think are very similar. So sort of a centralization to build efficiency of seeing data, activating campaigns and staying on platform to even pay out people. That's where we think the longer term plays.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, and there's a really interesting intersection between music and creators now. But as you see also, the social media space is getting flooded by so many different content creators or AI creators. Everything is changing right now. What's your outlook on the creator economy when it comes to your particular intersection? What's going to happen?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I think the speed at which it's moving is very alarming right now. So if you looked at five years ago, was five, six years ago, ads was something people are spending a lot of money on. Then COVID hit, a lot of money went into creators and it started with large macro creators, celebrities, macro creators. That hit saturation because you only have a certain amount of demand. And supply for these larger creators so you can saturate very quickly that then went to one step lower which was mid tier creators where you have slightly larger pool and then you wouldn't saturate as much then it went to micro influencers

Jakob Wredstrøm

Thank you.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

which was basically people under 100,000 followers where you go in and then commission them to do something or give away something for them to post things. And then suddenly the whole advent of AI and then we're looking at how can I get 10,000 faceless accounts to post my sound within three days. And then how can I get a bunch of AI content going on? So suddenly we've gone from a curated era to a volume era where curation and targeting takes a step back and then you have volume coming in and suddenly the same people who cared about very focused targeting start talking about, okay, it's okay to be white, but can we get more UGC?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Right. So I think in the short term, I see volume picking up because it's more music volume, more UGC volume. It's natural for you to compete on the algorithm. You're going to have a lot of people pushing your sound. But then I think longer term, it'll again come back to, OK, how do we find the right people? Because you have done 100,000 AI videos on this one, but then we've not had much success on streaming or whatever. Think it's a circle that sort of keeps going around.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, one of my own reflections lately, and I might be off since you're the expert, but is, well, standing out has always been important. You know, and we've talked about this very much in the podcast. When it comes to new music, what I do, I see a lot of TikTok is still the platform I enjoy the most. I'm not really present on any other platforms. And in feed there's a lot of new music, sort of, you know, supporting trends or music in itself. And for me, what keeps returning is like sounds with new sounds, like a new angle to a genre, a new mashup or combining popular elements in a new way. And that's where I see now much more before a few years ago, where it was more about like sensation and entertainment. Now I see a lot more like, this is new. And that's why it's catchy because like I'm intrigued. Is that also what you see when it comes to

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Absolutely, I'm extremely bullish on two things. Again, this happened because of voice AI. The moment voice AI picked up, you could see SpongeBob singing a lot of songs. You could see Bugs Bunny singing a lot of songs. Like there's like a famous cat as well that's been singing songs. Like all of this picked up. Like they sound really awful sometimes on songs, but people consume it because it's just new.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Thank you.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

And then that then has now shifted to remixes and mashups. There's so many platforms coming in saying mash up two songs, put it out. Suddenly you have a Kendrick beat with a different rapper on it. Just feels nice. A pop song. I think consumption is more is more from passive to active gamification. How do I consume it in a way that I like? Can I take this song and this song and bring them together?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

So that's where we are heading and that's where a lot of the, think, scale is going to come through with UGC is mashing up remixing.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And does that also account for like access releasing music that they need to think about that? Okay. If that consumption behavior is more interactive, I need to make music that seems interactive in the way that it's created. Like how would you unfold that?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Think that's interesting because if you look at mashups that are currently going around now, funk music has been blowing up on Instagram and TikTok and a lot of them are funk mashups as well, right? So funk music, the way that basically is internet music.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Not a lot of people have yet performed any of those, that's under 21, under 18 young kids liking that remixing it. So I think from a production point of view, people already started thinking about, this be TikTok friendly?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Now they've started to think about this will be mashup friendly. I think that we still haven't gotten that far. People are still thinking about will it be TikTok friendly? It's a matter of time before they think, OK, this will be really cool to mash up with the song. So I'm going to put this out and actually create a mashup myself and then see if any of those get picked up.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, I'm sort of getting throwbacks to the YouTube era 15 years ago, and I'll explain a bit why. So I used to be an avid YouTube... Listener also have my own YouTube channel and did way too many maybe 100 plus videos myself when I did music But I was following these sort of YouTube personas for people who are my age like David Choi Kina, Grannis like a lot of these Musicians that basically made like, you know cover versions of songs and that was like a whole era What I see now on tik-tok, for example is creators that are just being extremely creative and interpreting certain things So it's not so much about covers like but yesterday night when I was got to sleep. I found this musician It was basically doing like these very R &B funky covers of like very famous songs and his whole fee was about interpreting his sound. And it was just so intriguing, so captivating. And this is what I see across like a lot of music. It's like, if you can take something and really make it your own, you sort of build this relationship with a creator the same way that it, I felt about it like 15 years ago, if that makes sense. Do you recognize that as well or is it just my feed?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I think it's really true, right? For example, you take, let's say you take markets like South America, India. For example, right? India on its own has so many different languages and different subcultures inside. Then you take an artist from the West who goes into India. The first thing they would start looking at is how do I get creators to make an Indian twist of that song, which then resonates a bit more? And that's pretty much what you're talking about, right? This creator. It's exactly how you can enter into a new market. And that's a strategy really in today's world is how do I enter into this market or how do I take my song

Jakob Wredstrøm

Okay.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

And take a really popular song in that market and mash it up from a content point of view only and then get people to know about it. So it's something that people are actively thinking about and actively having it as part of their marketing strategy.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. And I can imagine as round that's also difficult space navigate because I can only imagine that you have clients that maybe haven't caught up to that sentiment and they're promoting music that maybe isn't as much what we describe it right now. And you still have a job to help that become well, further and farther in exposure. How do you reflect upon these?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I think with Round, the majority of where the industry is really figuring out where their fans are and where authenticity comes in terms of if there's a sound, how do I get the right fans and the right creators to use that sound? Because you know there are fan communities, there are fan groups for a lot of these bands and acts. They can easily spot anything that's inauthentic. Very easily right which basically means you need to be really careful about who's talking about your song and do that at scale

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm, very easily.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

And that's where we've been focusing on because that's still where the majority of the market still lies is how do we get a track in front of creators who have used the same artist track before or similar artist track so that it doesn't really sort of go out of their lane and then get them to do their content. This basically means going into data, being able to view a lot of the sound data, seeing who are the creators, bringing them into different clusters and then getting them

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

In front of this sound.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, you sort of touching upon like mutual integrity from both the creator and the assets like you want to Play on what the community would support naturally That makes a whole lot of sense. And I think that's one of the most interesting things happening music is authenticity being authentic I didn't know the word for that one is key, well it's been always I think at scale, but like especially in this mid-level artist, I think that was forgotten for a long time, that integrity needs to be key. And obviously still artists who have had their own sound and focus on community have succeeded. I think it just, in the busyness of the industry, which it often becomes. That usually would not like the first and foremost focus, but I feel like there's alignment now, okay? There needs to be an integrity, there needs to be continuity. And as you expressed, there also needs to be integrity and continuity on the influences side. They're not hurting their brand, and also if they weren't aligned with their brand, it probably wouldn't be that effective.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Yeah, I think that's where it came to last year. We launched this product called Microwave, which is essentially micro creators like a wave. That's why the name, the idea was really is how do you target and get volumes of creators under a hundred thousand following. And the thesis being

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

If let's say a massive celebrity posts something on TikTok about a television, you know for a fact it's paid pretty much, right? That's not authentic anymore. Whereas if I or someone else come and tell you saying, hey, dude, look at this, this is really cool. You should probably look at it. You would actually consider me seriously because I, you know, I'm not paid or at least come across as I'm not paid. The authenticity element still exists. So that's what we've seen a lot in the last sort of six, eight months. And that's why we built that, which basically gives us the ability

Jakob Wredstrøm

No.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

To target different sounds that you think are the right fit for your type of song and the types of creators on each sound pick them and then get them in front of your song so they can jump on it

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. Do you, from a, let's say from a labels perspective or a manager's perspective who wants to advertise their odds, do you believe that there is a comparable ROI from advertising strategies 10 years ago and now, and just the mythology has changed? Or is it more effective or less effective?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I think that's the biggest downside today is if you're a marketer, you don't get access to streaming data. The assumption is if the label comes to us the second time, they've seen something that's happened that they're coming to us for the second time. We've seen people come and tell us this has worked, this is great, can we double down on it? We've seen people come and tell us, hey nothing has happened on the song, even though we've had 300 creations, nothing has moved, we want to stop it right now. So even though we talk so much about data, we talk so much about all of this, there's no real golden ticket here to say you do this, you'll get streams.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

So I think that's again the fragmentation around data. If you can get access to it, then you should be in a position to say, okay, this has moved here or the number of pre saves has increased, the number of saves has increased because it doesn't directly impact streams. If you see algorithmic streams go up on Spotify, that means there's something that's worked on what you've done. It doesn't necessarily indicate this is from TikTok.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

No. And that's the most difficult part, know, especially now as the music industry really focusing on the value beyond streaming, the focus on that for a while, but also just the realism of what it takes to invest in music and deals and infrastructures like that needs to be other revenue sources. So the fractionalized, well, the data that isn't easy to access gets even harder when the importance of many other revenue streams are being counting in as more important. I guess. What is, do you think there's going to be like some sort of consolidation in the future, either from companies doing it or the industry agreeing to it? Like do you see this happening?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I think it's more of a artist management role to be able to say can we get access to all of this because they are in the center between a marketer and a label. The label will have their... own sort of KPIs because for them it's a business so the more streams the more views they get they will only optimize anything to do that. The artist management will think how do I get 500 fans to be constantly using or interacting with me and my artist so that's a different KPI we are looking at and then the marketer is in that corner trying to sort of make the best of both these happen because there's something that we did right so with Shakira

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

We worked on a Lambo giveaway, the car Lambo giveaway. It was super interesting because it wasn't a standard influencer campaign. It was basically us building a website for her. And then the best part about this was she was engaging with the campaign directly. So this real authenticity here because the artist is engaging. So the artist does posts on Instagram and TikTok or platforms basically saying I'm giving away my Lambo to the best creative post that I'm going to see for people using this sound. All you have to do is sign up on this website or go to this website, add in your TikTok sound link or whatever. And then in the back end you get the actual fan data. There's a lot of GDPR around it. We had to go through the hoops to make sure the terms and conditions and all of that are right. But where you end up with was we had over a half a million people who visited the website or I think about 180 to 200,000 contestants just uploading content. The best part about this, if you look at this, this is the best thing one can do, not I'm saying this is Shakira, she's huge, they can do it, but people at a smaller level also should be doing that 50 people, 75 people, right? The best part about this was suddenly you have email database of let's say half a million fans. And you can speak with them right now. So you have a new song coming up, you can send it out to your half a million fans or text them depending on however you plan to engage and that means you're controlling your data because it's yours because they are following you as an artist.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

So I think that's where the world is heading is how do we centralize all of it in one space? So you run an influencer campaign, here is all the influencer sound data, can we reach those influencers? Or here are people who signing to your newsletters. How many people have signed to my newsletters? How many people have signed up on my influencer campaign? How many people have organically used that sound? Are there two of the three boxes that take them? Those are the people I should be speaking with way more.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. That makes a whole lot of sense. I think, you know, data has for decades now been the core value of tech companies. And that's also why they haven't willingly shared that data, which makes a whole lot of business sense. So basically getting back to not getting back, but actually owning that data and understanding who your fans are is a, probably a long journey for most artists and managements.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Yeah.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Okay, we still haven't even touched the ticketing data here. Super fans, you talk about super fans and all of that. Tickets are the biggest fan passes one can ever have and it's always been the case since music was born, right?

Jakob Wredstrøm

No.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. But still it's an industry that really hasn't consolidated a flow of data. Like we've been working a bit conceptually and also practically in the ticketing industry and even like medium sized players that has like, you know, might be market leaders in small countries does not work with data in any particular manner other than direct marketing. Like there's not like any sharing or revenue sharing or like collaborations. Like it's very, very basic use.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I don't think it's a bug, it's really the feature of the way the industry has sort of done is that's when they can attract you again and again because, I've done three events with them. It could be, oh, I've done five campaigns with them. I should go back to them because they know how I work. That's more of a feature than a bug.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Thank you. Yeah, so it's like, it's more like some like small scale gatekeeping to something. That makes sense. It makes sense. And again, it's, everyone has a business and they have mouths to feed, they have employees to feed. So just because there's a greater good in macro movements and music does not mean that's the reality for small businesses or medium sized businesses or even large businesses. So, so it is incredibly difficult to know how to navigate that change.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

The only thing we most likely know is that having access to data and knowing how to utilize data is positive for revenue for artists. How to get there is very difficult to know for sure. So what do you believe is gonna be the most important thing for creators, managers, and labels to think about when it comes to the future? I know we've touched upon it with aesthetics and consumer behavior, but if you want to point out one thing, then you say this is where your eyes are.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

I think Innovation is something people have to be constantly looking at, even us or anyone absolutely under the gun with pressure saying, OK, suddenly you can do 10,000 posts today for sound. How can we offer that to tens of people from a management point of view? Be on top of OK, I have a new artist. This artist is not streaming massively, but if I get access to these tools or these sort of companies that are actively providing me these things, then how do I be on top of it because the biggest problem is every three months something new keeps popping right now because we're in the volume era this suddenly you wake up and then you can create content with one line of text and then you can get similar pieces of content multiply by thousand and then you can get those out and you as a creative if you're a creative from an artist point of view or a manager point of view it's really hard for you to be on top of this side because it's very techy

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Even from a marketer point of view, we could become irrelevant very quickly if we don't innovate. So I think that the most important thing is as we move from influencers into sort of micro influencers to volumes of creations, it's about.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

how you can make any of the volume stuff very relevant for you, not losing out on quality and authenticity because this will happen for the next six months or 12 months. Then it will come back to being OK. We've seen millions of content go out on our sound, but nothing's happened. So how do we get to actual creators using the sound again? And so I think it's about how you stay on top of innovation, stay on top of technology, because a lot of things you could do it on your own as well today.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. Yeah, and it's true. I, you know, consumer behaviors have always been fast paced. Um, and without being an expert, but just like a consumer myself, I can imagine that it's faster now than ever. Uh, and I seriously doubt at this time and age that without having proper tooling or partnerships that you can be effective of knowing how to navigate this change. Because at the end the day, also maybe like the essence of our discussion is it's about the relationship between the consumer and the fan and having a relationship that sort of belongs together. But consumers will also move even though they do belong together. Like your fans will move in their behaviors of consumption and trends and understanding.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

If not something has changed over fandom, it's really how consumption has changed. Back in the day you had mail orders or whatever. Now you have people... The whole concept of casual and passive listening never existed because you had to buy a vinyl, you had to listen to it. And today, okay, I'm listening, I'm working, so I like this sort of music, but I don't know who the artists are. And then I'm at a pub drinking with a bunch of my friends. I like that music. I don't know who the artists are. So there's always migration between, okay, I see a trend, I'm going to jump on it. I know that song, I know the artist, I don't know the other songs of the same artist, right? So how do you go from bandwagon jumping into a bandwagon trend to actually becoming a casual listener?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Okay.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

then becoming a social fan, then to sort of becoming a super fan attending event. That whole migration becomes absolutely important and we have to find a way for people. As an artist, you have to find a way for artists, for yourself to be able to do that with your fans.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm-hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, I've myself had like an interesting reflection lately and that is I've started to run a lot and I really, used to love running and I run a lot now, 50, 60 kilometers a week. So like a decent amount. And I listen to music half of the time and

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

because I'm so confused with everything that's happening in the world and changing, I just go back to what I know from sort of like my nostalgia days like five to 10 years ago. And that's of course a traditional movement. As you get older, you sort of have preferences to what we're young. But I think when I reflect upon it, I don't think it's as much that. I don't think it's because I loved these artists back in the day, so that's what I default to. It's just like, I don't know what to play. Like I'm so overwhelmed by new stuff. that yeah, might pick out like a few people that I think is really intriguing, not being Sabrina Carpenter or like that kind of things, but if not, I'll just go back to my oldies. And I think it's also because a lot of those relationships were built on this long-term brand storytelling. And as everything gets confusing, that's what stands out or that's what's left. So for me, there was this really interesting reflection that yes, I'm getting older, so there might be a part of nostalgia, but I think it's also just because...

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

That's my safe space. In the overwhelmed, I default back to what I have in actual relationship. I was at that concert. I remember that show. Like for example, Half Moon Run, it's a band I listen to. I literally do not listen to it because I have a particular preference for that song. It's just like when I'm out running and I don't have too much focus on what to choose. It's just like, yeah, I was at that concert. That was great. I'll just put on that music. Do you get what mean?

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Same thing for me, there's this Linkin Park show, right? There's like a massive YouTube video and then there's like a drum solo in between and then Chester announces it and then the drummer does the solo and then they go back to playing the song. You have that, you're so connected to that every time I think of something, okay, let's go just listen to Linkin Park, it's easier. And then something you relate to.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, and I think it's so interesting because that's basically, several times today I've been referencing back to YouTubers and now Nostalgia of Music Listing, but it all comes back to that was actually brands and relationships being built in real communities. And that's what we do falling back to, which I think is interesting. Vishal, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your journey here. It's incredibly interesting and confusing to make you working, which also makes companies like yours even more relevant because there needs to be a way to sort of discern what you need to spend your money on, what's effective, because at the end of the day, if there is not a very significant clear ROI on your investment, need least to make sense on metrics. And that's what you're working towards.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Yeah.

Vishal Ramakrishnan

Thank you for taking me on this podcast. Pleasure speaking with you. Love the conversations. I think there's a lot to look forward to. And with this pace that's keeping on growing, I think it's going to be a challenging one for us to as well. Keep innovating and staying on top. Thank you. Thank you.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Absolutely. Thank you, Michelle. Perfect. I'm just stopping the recording.