The Business Model Independent Music Is Missing

Thierry Ascarez

Just a couple of weeks ago with Riverside, yes.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Okay, yeah, so you know it. But basically I get full quality at the end. So if it sort of gets grainy or anything like that, that's perfectly fine. It sort of downloads on your side, uploads, and I get full quality at end. We also use some noise suppression tools, which means if there's somehow is noise in the background, you don't need to mind that. And really the only thing that you should be aware of during the interview, and it's basically the quality of the episode is oftentimes very...

Thierry Ascarez

Okay.

Jakob Wredstrøm

affected by it is that if we do a lot of dialogue based. So I might ask some questions that might lead to a long winded answer naturally. But if you can try to be aware of like trying to break your answers into shorter answers instead of like a long story thing, that just gives a more interesting dynamic because we're in video, it's more difficult to interrupt. Like example right now, when you said something, if that was in real life, that would have been felt more natural. But on video, it's a bit more turn based.

Thierry Ascarez

Yes.

Thierry Ascarez

Yes.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And then of course, you know, it's my personality, I'm Scandinavian, I don't interrupt too much.

Thierry Ascarez

Okay, but feel free to interrupt. I won't be offended and I'll try to keep my answers as short as possible.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Perfectly. Yeah, it doesn't need to be overly short, but it's a...

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, I understood. I understand the principle.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Cool, if you give me one minute, I'll just pull up all my notes. I was a tiny bit late for something else. And then I'm ready to go. And then maybe you can get some coffee or water or whatever you need.

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, cool.

Thierry Ascarez

I have water so I'm fine, I'm good.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Just give me one minute.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Sorry my computer's freezing, that's why it's taking more time than...

Thierry Ascarez

That's okay.

Thierry Ascarez

And you're based in Copenhagen, right?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Originally, so now I live in Norway. I found a nice Norwegian girl and she brought me here.

Thierry Ascarez

That sounds very interesting and good. Nice Norwegian girl.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, so we get enough to get three kids together and we live here in like a quiet town where her family's from which is perfect like I get to Yeah, do you have kids as well? three as well. Okay. Yeah

Thierry Ascarez

I have tricky

Thierry Ascarez

Three as well, three boys.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Okay, I have one girl as well, so that was... How old are they?

Thierry Ascarez

Okay. Now there are 15, 13 and 10.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. Okay. I have six, three and two. yeah. 10, 10 years later. yeah. Cool, man. I have everything I need, up in front of me. So I'm excited to get going. I usually have a fairly informal start where I basically indirectly ask you to introduce yourself. I'll, that's going to feel very natural, but, but just so you know, and then I just jumped into it and we'll use the agenda as like,

Thierry Ascarez

Okay, yeah.

Thierry Ascarez

Yes, ten years later.

Thierry Ascarez

Let's go.

Jakob Wredstrøm

like a guiding post, but you know, we'll probably go in different tangents, different interesting conversations. Yeah. Cool.

Thierry Ascarez

Okay, sure.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And I do pronounce it correctly, win up, right? Yeah. Perfect.

Thierry Ascarez

Yes, that's perfect.

Jakob Wredstrøm

There we go. I will start in five seconds.

Thierry Ascarez

Okay.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hey guys and welcome back to the podcast. Today we have a really interesting episode and while I was doing my homework, got incredibly intrigued about the journey of this company, but Thierry, welcome.

Thierry Ascarez

Hello, hi. Nice to be here.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Tiri, yes, it's very nice to have you here. Tiri, you come from a company called Winamp, and maybe you can introduce us a tiny bit about the company, your role in it. So basically, who are you and what do you do?

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, so, okay, my name is Thierry. I'm originally from Belgium, born and raised here. And I'm currently the Chief Business Officer for Winamp. Winamp is a music company. It's been there for three decades now, but today we do something different than the player that maybe all the listeners of your podcast will remember. We do the player, a new version, I can explain more about that, but also a platform for independent artists. monetize, manage, control their music basically.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Because the company starts its history way back as far as I could remember in 97 and as a of a freeware tool which still is like what you guys provide. So maybe just for setting a bit of the context of the company and the services that you do now to us, maybe tell us brief about the history of the company.

Thierry Ascarez

Yes, so the history of the company. So it was born indeed in 1997 in the US. The founders had a company called Nullsoft and Nullsoft created two companies, Winamp and Shoutcast. And Winamp, since the very beginning, has been a player, an audio player. So it was able to read any format. So we're talking about pre-streaming era. So we're talking about the era of MP3s. And basically Winamp helped to make MP3s popular. It was the only player reading any formats including MP3s. And across the world there were almost 300 million users using Winamp. So it was a big success up until 2004, I think. It was acquired by AOL in the US. And that's when the streaming came in. And the goal of AOL was to build something similar to Spotify, so a DSP, digital streaming platform. But basically they failed because of Apple Music, Spotify, and so on. And so we had the opportunity a few years later, 2013, to acquire First of all, Shoutcast, because we were in the streaming business, but AOL said if you acquire Shoutcast, you acquire the sister company Wynum. So 2013, we acquired Wynum.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Okay, and then you have a new sort of path in the history of the company that you're pursuing now.

Thierry Ascarez

Yes, so we were very interested by the brand Wynam. It's an iconic brand. It has always been. It was huge. Everybody globally today you ask if they know Wynam. Most of them they know it and it brings of nostalgia because it's that brand you are used to play music. You could... customize the player with skins, so it's a very iconic brand. So we believed when we had the opportunity in 2013 to acquire Winamp that there was something to do with it. But it took us a while because we were focused more on the streaming business with Shoutcast, so we had a radio station company helping radio station to stream with Shoutcast and also advertising insertions, so we didn't do anything with Winamp for eight to nine years and up until 2022. And that's when in 2022 that we decided to build a new platform. And the vision has been since then to help independent artists monetize, manage their music on top of streaming. Because our belief is that streaming is not enough today. The promise of streaming that you will make money and it will save piracy for independent artists. Now you're back on track making money. Hasn't, you know, been there for up to the promise they said it was. So we believe with Winam there is something to do with a new platform to, you know, diversify revenue, collect revenue and help independent artists basically become business owner and get organized.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. That's a really interesting proposition. Think before we dive very deep into that, I think it's very helpful to set the context of the group because you're not just players that come in with like, let's start a new company. You have a very rich history in this space. So maybe explain a bit about the group that's also changed names a few times just so we understand the context.

Thierry Ascarez

Yes.

Thierry Ascarez

Yes, indeed. So I am 47. I started in the music industry in 2005, so 22 years ago. And I started my career at EMI Music. So EMI Music back then was one of the four majors. So there were four majors. There was Universal, Sony, Warner, still today. But there was a fourth one, an English one, EMI. So that's where I started my career in the music industry. For five years and then the decline of the CD came and I thought okay, something else should happen, something else is happening, I wanna be there. And so in 2010, I joined an entrepreneur here in Belgium, his name is Alexander, and he created a company called Radionomy. And Radionomy was a software to create your own radio station. Basically the same as YouTube to create a video channel but a radio station. So we were six at the time and quite quickly we had the huge traction across the world. We had at some point 200 to 300 radio stations created every day. So in 2012 we decided, okay, let's go to the US. I moved to the US and that's when we started really expanding that business but... When you are in the radio business, you're connected to the music industry, obviously, because on the radio station you play music. So we've always been around the music industry. And so we were in the US and then, as I said, in 2013 we had the opportunity to acquire software enabling radio stations to stream, Shoutcast, and AOL asked, okay, you acquire Winamp as well. So that's when we acquired Winamp, 2013. So that's the history. And then we also acquired another company called TargetSpot. And TargetSpot was a sales house for advertising. So we were selling advertising for audio streams. So that was a core business. Had Spotify as a client selling audio ads into streams. So that's the group around 2015. And we called the group Radionomic Group at the time.

Thierry Ascarez

It was called Radionomic Group and Radionomic Group on Shoutcast, Winamp and TargetSpot. So that was 2015. Then we had the opportunity to sell the whole group to Vivendi, a French conglomerate. Back then, because today I think they only own 10 or 15 percent of Universal Music, but back then they own much more shares in Universal Music. So they were very interested in RadioNomic Group because of their music activity with Universal. And so 2017 we sold the whole group to Vivendi. And the idea was to have those... synergies between the Vivendi group with Universal Music, but also with Havas, which is a big advertising corporation, and to have all those synergies. That's until 2017. And then it didn't work. Sometimes when you have acquisitions, it doesn't work out. So it didn't work out. We had disagreements.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Thierry Ascarez

And so in 2019, we decided to reacquire everything to Vivendi to again, you know, be the owner and control the group. And in 2019, that's when we reacquired everything from Vivendi. We had the company public. It was still called Radionomic Group. But then the TargetSpot activity advertising took more and more space in the activity. So that's when we renamed the whole group Audio Valley. So it was called for some time Audio Valley. And then three years later, 2022, we decided to have the focus on Winamp. And we sold everything, Radionomy and Target Spot to a Dutch group. And so we renamed the group Lama Group, because Lama is the mascot of Winamp. So that's when we called the group Lama Group.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Thierry Ascarez

And this year in 2025, we thought with a big ambition, Winamp is such a strong brand, let's rename the group Winamp Group. So that's in 2025, the group is still publicly traded on the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange and it's called Winamp Group. I hope this was clear. I tried to make it clear.

Jakob Wredstrøm

For me, it's super important because it sets the scene for the reflection of why to pursue something in this space and why you're pursuing something. If you want to look over the model that Winamp, the creator side of Winamp is pursuing right now, at first glance, it seems like some model that's already existing. So what was the reasoning behind pursuing a new venture into this space? What made you think, what you're doing right now with VINEPCREATOR, that's worth pursuing.

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, and it's important to say also that we are an audio tech group for the last 20 years. So we have deep expertise in audio and tech and music and tech. So we still have the same team. We still have the same CTO. I'm on board since 2010, as I said, we have the same CEO, the same founder. So, you know, at core, we have audio and music and tech here in the group. And after doing a lot of streaming technologies, ad insertion technologies, we've always been big believer and lover of the music industry. But we didn't know what to do because the space has been really occupied by major platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music. It has been really very occupied and no space for a new model. Up until 2022 when we thought, okay, there must be something else than streaming because independent artists are all complaining. They're all complaining they're not making money with streaming. It's great for promotion, for distribution, but only 0.5 % of the artists, which means the big acts, are making a living out of streaming. So that was really the essence of how and... and why we started Winamp for creators.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And try to break down, how are you addressing that problem with your product? What is it exactly that you do?

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, so the vision to be a bit technical is ERP for music professionals. ERP is enterprise resource platform like you have SAP. It sounds very corporate and it may scare people from the music industry, but basically that's what we do. And what does an ERP do? It's really aggregating administrative financial marketing services in one platform where you can manage your business. So our core belief and also after talking with a lot of independent artists is that in 2025, you have no choice if you want to succeed to get organized and to become in a way an entrepreneur or a business owner. Because first of all, you have all the tools online. But secondly, it's because the model has changed, the music industry has changed, you know. And so we had that vision that if you aggregate everything in one place, building that ERP or a music business platform, let's call it that way, music business platform, we can succeed because there is a need for that. And so basically what we do in Winamp for creators is aggregating revenue services such as collecting your royalties, collecting revenue from YouTube content ID. Selling music licenses, creating a fan shop, also creating collectibles, which used to be called NFTs, but we believe in an IP saved on the blockchain. And also marketing services, like building your own website, managing your social networks, creating and buying advertising space. There are a few others, but this gives you sense of what that platform looks like. And we want it to be very intuitive, very friendly for music professionals. That's the vision and that's what we've built with Winamp for Creators. And it's important to say that we've created Winamp for Creators, but at the same time, we're also working on the Winamp player. So we're going to release a new version of the Winamp player in Q4 2026.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Really interesting, there's so many things to dissect here. So the first question is, is that something you've chosen to build from scratch? Is that sort of existing technology you had available? How do you go about this?

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, no, we decided to build that from scratch. So it's a huge endeavor. And I forgot to mention, of course, distribution in the revenue services, which is the first service that an artist is looking for is distribution. And so that's why it took us four years to build that platform, Winamp for Creators. Actually, we're going to rename it Winamp for Artist, but let's call it Winamp for Creators for the sake of this podcast, because it's called this for the moment. But it took us three years and half to build that platform. A lot of mistakes, soft launch, pre-launch, a lot of testing. And we had to be very resilient. And I'm saying this humbly, but it was long and tough. And we finally launched the platform in April, 2025, so recently. And so we've built everything from scratch indeed.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So you're not the CFO of the company, but I do have a question that I'm sure you can answer to some degree. As a publicly listed company, wherever you are listed, there is some sort of investor sentiment you need to take into consideration. How has the ownership in general responded to a long, long investment in such a new endeavor?

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, I think our investors or shareholders, because it's publicly traded, they have a strong belief about what we're building. So we're connecting as much as we can. Also, it's controlled. We're sharing the agenda, what we're building. They see that we're progressing. They see that we're building something. Recently we've released the website builder or the merchandising service within Winamp. So I think we're reassuring them that it's ongoing and it's a work in progress. Also the brand is very strong. So there is that belief that such a brand is strong in a market and combined with people like us, I think this makes a good mix of people believing in our mission and our vision.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So what I found really interesting in your description of OneUp for creators and soon to be fastest is the approach you had with this very business first mentality. Again, we've had many episodes on this podcast, everything from very established managers to founders to experts that are all talking about this sort of new generational shift of having. Basically being a business person, being in music for many different financial reasons, economic reasons, industry gatekeeping reasons. But more and more so, I see like a lot of ingredients that, you know, having a business approach to music is becoming more central to statistical success. Could you expand your reflections on that a tiny bit more?

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, you know, and we not all creators or artists are maybe as business driven or savvy as the others. It doesn't mean they cannot become more business savvy or business driven, but we see clearly a difference between a hobbyist who is willing to create a song, maybe using AI or using any software and then distributing, but not going the step further. We are focusing our efforts on artists or creators that are willing to go the step further, meaning who understand that if they want to success or grow, rich success or grow at least their career, need today, in today's world, in today's industry, to be more, I will say, organized, but also more business driven. You know, in the artistic world, in the music world, especially when you address the artist, sometimes it's seen as a bad word or scary to mention business. But at the end of the day, a fan is a client, you know and an artist is making an art and they want to sell it, you know. So this is really where we come in, you know. We make them understand that if they're serious about that, we are proposing a solution where they will become business owners. And even if the name business sometimes may sound a bit, you know, irritating to artists, but they understand that today that's what they have to do. So this is really our... the way we approach things. Many, as you said, in industry, it's a big topic today. Artists needs to be more, all the independent artists needs to have their tools. A lot of people are questioning if labels are still needed. So it's definitely, we didn't invent that, it's happening. Also big cycles, like every industries, we saw the cycles.

Thierry Ascarez

Vinyl, tape, CD, piracy, streaming. All of them last almost 15 to 20 years and so we are at the end of the 15 first years of streaming, so something new is coming. So yeah, this is really the DNA that we have and what we propose with Winamp for creators.

Jakob Wredstrøm

It's really interesting and again, I get to speak with a of people and even though obviously there's consensus about the business sentiment, which I just covered, it's rare that the sort of the messaging of the get-go is business first. Not because we need to spend too much time talking about sort of alternatives in the market right now, but... What are you, how are you seeing that you differentiate from other providers that are trying to have this holistic approach? What is it that your angle is that makes you unique in your opinion?

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, so as we said, it took us four years, almost four years to build the platform. So it's not an easy thing to build. We believe we have a platform that no one else today because we are aggregating services like merchandising, website builder, copyright management, very rare. We have our own CMO. Built in Winamp. It's another company we own, it's a subsidiary called Breacher, but we recently have been approved by the CSAC as an RME, Royalty Management Entity, client. So we have that status, who allows us to collect publishing across the world, and so it's fully integrated within Winamp. Selling licenses of music, fully integrated, we use our subsidiary company, Jamendo. And also we have the players. So every fan zone an artist is creating, first of all it's on their website with the website builder, but it's also going to be in the WinAm player. So we believe that the ecosystem we've built is unique. We haven't seen anything like it today in the industry. Of course there are very good companies proposing distribution. And maybe they had advertising campaigns built in. But the whole suite that we are building, we haven't seen that. So we're very confident about the user proposition that we're making.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So what I think is interesting, not because what you do is exactly the same at all, but like, again, I run a venture studio and the concept of venture studios, of course, owning a portfolio, but you build a lot. And maybe a tiny bit in contrast to your sprint, like three years with MusiMap that could acquire prior to music, where their generous strategy as far as I understood Utopia music was, was that they acquired a lot of technologies to create this sort of synergy environment where your approach seems very much more hands-on that you sort of ability the actual tech, could take a lot of investment rather than acquiring just like new technology. How do you differentiate from these sort of consolidation players in the market?

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, it's a good question. Yeah, Utopia was a very sad story, very sad. People in trouble because of that, including me, actually. And also people who didn't know the industry. They didn't know music and tech. They were just coming with big, big money and... you know, acquiring companies and thinking that having that big melting pot of companies will make one super company. I think they failed because of the lack of the vision and the lack of experience. In our case, as I said, we have 20 plus years in music and tech experience. We took the time to build the core of the platform. We took the time to understand each and every services one by one from publishing, licensing, distribution. But at the same time, we need to accelerate. And part of my role as Chief Business Officer, it's also to look for acquisitions. So we're not against acquiring maybe a distributor because it could help us accelerate in terms of users base. But acquiring seven to 10 or 15 companies at the same time, which was the case of Utopia, it's completely crazy.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And, know, obviously the music industry is a fairly complex collection of services and legalities, IP rights and such. You mentioned that you guys as a group has been working together for 20 years. Try to explain that a tiny bit because it's again for me it's quite unique to hear about a group of people that have been building something consistently same direction in music for such so long. Who are you as a group as people? Is that the same six people that started 15 years ago?

Thierry Ascarez

No, The same people that started 20 years ago, it's actually three people. It's the CEO, me and the CTO. And maybe one or two engineers, I think, are still the same crew. But also, and that's what I tried to explain at the beginning, but I went quite fast. And for more than 10 to 15 years, we did streaming technologies, so really enabling audio on the internet. So we were not in the music space per se, but more the backbone of radio stations, the backbone of audio advertising. So it helped us also to, and so we acquired companies, we acquired Winamp and Shoutcast, we acquired TargetSpot. Also we sold TargetSpot in 2022 to a Dutch group. We've been exploring different areas of the industry, like streaming technologies or advertising technologies. And also we've been exploring business operations such as acquisitions or selling companies. So that whole ecosystem made us, I think, today stronger because of that experience and also ready to build something like WinMP. The player and we learn from creators. I think that experience is definitely an added value. I'm not sure we could have done what we're doing today 15 or 20 years ago.

Jakob Wredstrøm

No, that makes sense. And is that because of the advance of technology or like, do mean with you couldn't do the same thing now?

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, think definitely, you know, our knowledge of the technology and also the knowledge of the industry and the business. It's, again, know, aggregating all those services in one place, building an ERP or, you know, a music business platform. Requires, yeah, it requires some knowledge in different areas, copyrights, licensing, distribution. Add marketing and how to build this requires a decent amount of experience indeed.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So through running the Venture Studio that I run now the last five years, I've been exposed to a lot of business in music and we've worked with lot of music startups and scale ups and some larger players as well. And I've also done a lot of academic research in music technology financing and that whole space. You know, after I've been deep diving for that for a while, really spending my whole career in this space, I still fail to see that it's like a... a very good pursuit when it comes to alternatives of other industries. Obviously, whenever you have specialized company, you can always find value in something. The point I'm trying to get to is music technologies and audio technology seems to be a hard space. How's your reflections?

Thierry Ascarez

Yes, it is. Yeah, no, of course, definitely. I fully agree with you. Wouldn't, you know, I was going to say I wouldn't recommend my son who's 15, I don't know, in nine, eight years going to enter the professional space. I wouldn't recommend him to go in the music or technology space because as you say, it's very difficult and maybe not that... you know, what investors are looking for, very fruitful industry. That's one part. But if no one does it, who's going to do it, you know? And we believe that we can become a leader, you know, we believe that we can. That's for me after all these years, I had my moments of disenchantment. But today I believe we can be a leader. Can, you know, there are a few, you know, take belief in France. You know, there are a few success stories and I believe and we believe here that we can make a difference But totally with you. It's a difficult space Compared to other tech spaces with the money that's flowing into those other space compared to music. It's ridiculous It's big and also as I said our target core target our artists, you know an artist by default our emotional people It's not always easy to convince them to use a platform, to pay for a platform. But when you have convictions as we do, and we are pursuing those convictions, that makes the job for you to wake up in the morning thinking that you are going to make a difference and it's going to work.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Would you say that, you know, over the past 20 years of pursuing this industry and peripheral industries that you have created the value that you were expecting to create, money, you know, in actual money, fiscal standards, is that something

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, we're getting there. We're getting there. Every day we have new users joining the platform. Every day we have improvement in terms of the product. I would really recommend your listeners to try the product. The product is really good. We've built something robust, easy to use, and that's something not to forget. It's a very strong product, efficient. So we will get there, you know, and again, as I said, every day now we see users joining the platform. So we're very happy about that. And that's also the bet that we did when we acquired the brands. The brand has value in terms of attracting people. In October, we launched what we call the Creator Program. And basically it was a global program. Globally and we were advertising any artist, independent artist to join the program, submit a form with their project. They had to have an ongoing project, know, but it could be just conceptual. And during a month they were submitting their forms and at the end we would choose three artists and we would sponsor them for five months in a row, 3000 euro per month. So 15k per artist. And we had 4000 artists joining the program from 120 or 130 countries globally. So we're super excited to see, without any marketing, just a few deals here and there, artists were flown in. So we believe also the brand is very strong.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. Where do you see this going as a company? Like, again, there's incompetence in the space with each their sort of niche or each their angle. Some of them are consolidating and buying other players. What do you see yourself in the future if you succeed with this pursuit?

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, so I definitely see Winamp as a, as I said, know, as a European leader in the music industry within the next, you know, three to five years. And we could even imagine, you know, global, I mean, I say European because we're, you know, headquartered in Europe, but today most of our artists using the publishing services are coming from the US, for example. So, I cannot give you figures of our business plan, but definitely being one of the main music leaders in five years, yes, definitely.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And so on behalf of your owners and investors, like you've bought and sold companies before, like how do you imagine this going from like part of your owners? Like what are they expecting in this journey, do you think?

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, I think they are expecting us to grow, as I just said, know, to grow their business and so, you know, to reach thousands of tens of thousands of artists. That's the promise we made. That's what we're building at the moment. I think they see the value, but, you know, I cannot give you, you know, the valuation of the company in five years, you know, but Definitely, I think what they're expecting is seeing Winamp now that we've launched last April and 2026 is clearly a year where we accelerate the commercial growth and we will continue that in 2027. You know, they're expecting the company to grow commercially.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And is the sort of customer base ready? You mentioned yourself that artists are sometimes emotional and perhaps lack, generally speaking, awareness of themselves as a business rather than sort of an artistic expression. Do see that the market of artists are getting more, it's more and more common to have this business sentiment?

Thierry Ascarez

Yes, I think so. Was at South by Southwest three weeks ago or four weeks ago and on stage I was Mark Cuban, know, the shark tank personality in the US. And he said on stage, he said, you know, as an artist, you have to become an entrepreneur. You have no choice. Just to tell you this is, you know, something everybody's, you know, now realizing in the music industry that with the internet and all those tools and also the streaming model that if you want to succeed, you have to be a little more savvy in terms of taking care of your career. The label model that was before... where you get an advance, you get paid for an advance, and then you were building something with your label. I won't say it's over, but it's maybe, you know, there is a big transition happening. I don't think the young generation of artists is surprised by that. Actually, they think they are already embracing it. We're meeting with a lot of artists. Every day we have calls with artists. We are onboarding artists every day. We have a team here onboarding artists. And they don't, they're not surprised, they're not reacting like, my god, I have to do all of this, this is not for me. They are more inclined to use those tools. They are used to do it since, now it's been what, 20 years, we have those platforms, social platforms, so they are used to go online, they are very savvy to upload things, to create an account, to do your KYC, to have a money wallet where you get your money. So all of that seems less and less artificial, but more and more natural.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, that makes sense. I think, you know, my reading of the situation is also that streaming and gaming and like the whole part is also realizing the business around things. Obviously it's not quite the same, but there's these subcultures, there's this expression, there's this popularity where monetization is becoming more popular and also fans getting used to the business side of it. And I think all of this is sort of expressing self towards artists as well and they're getting realizing how to run it as a business. And obviously there's the necessity. As you said yourself, streaming is not, well, it's not really a viable income and for most independents it's like negligible. So you need to have an awareness that yes, what you might at least have had illusion 10 years ago you'd make money on it's probably not gonna happen that direction. So you need to take ownership to make this sustainable.

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah. And streaming, you know, don't get us wrong. You know, we like streaming. It's necessary. It's like, you know, radio before you have to be there. When someone is going to look for your name, they are going to look in Spotify or Apple Music for your name. But indeed, in terms of, you know, making money and revenue, this is almost inexistent today. It's so low, you know, you need to... to find other ways to make money. We love the fan zone at Wynnum. The fan zone is very easy to use and you can, you know, there is that famous blog post from 2009, 1000 true fans, know, the idea is if you have 1000 true fans, you can make a living out of them, you know. You just have to get organized instead of posting 10 posts free per day on Instagram. Maybe you reserve two, three, four of them on a fan zone. Where only your paid true fans have access to it. So that's the whole idea. It's such a pity that an artist nowadays, they have given up on their website. No one has a website anymore because why? Because you have an Instagram page. But guess what? With a website, you have fully access to control to the data. It's your own property. So there is that whole new movement coming in, people realizing, artists realizing, okay, I want to be in control, but I need... I need a super tool to do it. So that's really what we provide.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. That makes a whole lot of sense and I'm a- You know, I'm fairly technical as well and I've been building products for years. But again, now when I have more access to great tools like the rest of the world I've gotten access to lately, I'm diving more and more into the data. And as a builder, like that's where I start first. Like let's start with data, let's start with track and let's start to that understanding because, you know, the last 10, 15 years that has been more or less just been reserved for the big tech companies and you need to use their services in order to get a hold of them. But there's so many more ways to be clever and use data and easily accessible. Okay, amazing. Thank you so much for the episode today. I think it's very fascinating that we as an industry are, I would say collectively agreeing upon the necessary part of business and the artistic expression as well and the need to be paired probably in the same person in order to have some sort of chance of doing this. And I think it's incredibly. Interesting to also just see your patience in the space. It is difficult and I can imagine it's been stressful and a headache. I could also imagine that there's always these existential questions like, why am I even working in this industry? Is that questions you ask yourself?

Thierry Ascarez

Yes, of course, you know, of course. But when I think about it, and I have also those moments often, you know, about music and, you know, what music means to the world, you know, it's such a great product, it's such a great commodity. So I'm also very grateful still being able to work in that industry. And to your point, it's maybe not always the easiest industry or the most attractive industry to investors, but it's never going to go away. And there are still going to be innovation and winners. So we definitely plan to be one.

Jakob Wredstrøm

It makes sense, and there definitely is, and there has been in the past, and you can succeed in this space. I think, you know, maybe I'm naive when I say this, but there seems to be a disproportionate amount of... sacrifice for the same amount of outcome if you had done comparable success elsewhere. And I think that's where a big part of the issue is. It's not necessarily that it's harder to succeed. Think everywhere in life, it's harder to succeed. It's very hard to succeed, but when you then get the success or some sort of success, that success seems to manifest itself of less material value than many other alternative industries. And I think that's the issue, right?

Thierry Ascarez

Yes.

Thierry Ascarez

Yeah, and then, yeah, maybe it's not an issue. You're right. It's the definition of success, know, is a materialistic success or, you know, is it money? But on the other side, you know, it's not always about money. It's also about building things and helping people create. And of course, when you're in business, you're looking for revenue. But and as I said, when you ask the question, you know, If we don't do it, who's gonna do it? You still have people doing it, doing building things in the music industry. We're one of them.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, and you know, I think there could also be less competition. If you can, not necessarily, but if you can find your field in your lane, I think there's also valid reasoning to pursue something.

Thierry Ascarez

Yes, indeed.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Tiri, thank you so much for sharing your story and the pursuit you're doing right now. In all honesty, I haven't met many of your type of groups and your type of people. And I'm very happy that there is getting a lot of focus on the builders these days because there are in essence like what builds the industry for it as well.

Thierry Ascarez

Thank you.

Thierry Ascarez

Yes, we're very excited about building things, know, building something useful. So very happy about that. And thank you very much for your time, Jacob.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Thank you for today.

Thierry Ascarez

Goodbye.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Great.