AI Is Rewriting the Business of Music Software

Jakob Wredstrøm

Noam, we've talked a few times before and I'll jump straight into this conversation. You said yourself that you're an open book when it comes to these conversations, so I'm looking very much forward, Noah, too, to talk about you and your company's Safari Audio. But welcome.

Noam Levinberg

Yeah, thanks for having me. And we did have a lot of interesting conversations with before this one, so looking forward to jump in and talk about stuff.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So we had a conversation, I believe, last week, the week before that, where you said something incredibly interesting. And I don't think we'll start there is when you talk about the relevance of plug-in companies presently and then in the future. Just to set the context, you know, with plugins in the music world, obviously that's been a big thing since digitalization, I would say, you know, really the last thirty years. But plugins are still very relevant today and you know. Big businesses of pursuits are being built on plugins for DAWs. But you've built a very interesting new one, well newish, Safari Audio. And when I talk with one of my friends, Anas Anasan, which I consider one of the most brilliant minds in the plugin space, he referenced to Safari Audio as the company that he said, Jacob, you need to look at these guys. So obviously we talked before that, but that picked up my curiosity again. Okay, I need to reconnect with Noam. But Noam, you also said that you don't know if plugins will be as relevant in a few years. Maybe let's start there and then people actually get an introduction to what you do as well. But I think that was a really interesting conversation starter.

Noam Levinberg

Yeah, for sure. I mean I think in general if we zoom out for a second and, you know, look at it everything that's happening in terms of tech these days, I'm one of those people that believe that everything's changing in a rapid pace and I don't think we're going to see the same types of businesses and companies moving forward as we did in the past. And specifically, you know, in our industry and as a user of plugins, you know, I've been using plugins as a user, as a mixing engineer and mastering engineer for many, many years since kind of it all started, in terms of plugins. And they definitely do not possess the same, you know, necessities as they were in the past. And I think you know, if we look back into like kind of the progression and history of plugins and music software in general, it started by, you know, replacing very obvious tools, you know. The first versions of Pro Tools and everything. That was just a tape recorder in the computer or a tape machine in the computer. Then, you know, there were DSP processors and all of a sudden you can EQ a sound and recall that re Q EQ without twisting knobs, which was insane. And then, you know, that kind of framework of what a plugin is or what we use it for, kind of persisted till now in the sense that you know we still treat a lot of these things as necessarily tools. But a few things really changed over the course of you know the last like 15 years or twenty. A you know, the DAWs

Noam Levinberg

the workstations became way better. Like when I started on Pro Tools, we had EQ seven, that was it, in terms of EQs and it was okay. I mean I used it on a lot of records, but it wasn't great. And then you know, net looking like comparing that to now, these DAWs have amazing built in processing power as well as, you know free plugins that they offer. So that's one big change. And then I think the other big change is the fact that building plugins isn't that complicated anymore. I mean we're able to do now with a very small team of people what used to be, you know, a huge task or a huge you know mountain to climb in terms of digital signal processing. And it's I don't it's not only us, it's every I mean everyone can now build plugins, especially, you know, adding fuel to the fire, AI, and the fact that you can now vibe code your plugins. And just the other day, like I think it was three days ago, a really talented producer showed me five plugins that he built with Cloud Code. And they sounded amazing. I was like, okay, you know, if he can do it with no code and get it to a point where it sounds just as good as you know, a plugin that was built with developers, then I'm a hundred percent certain that, you know, moving forward, this industry is definitely going to change and maybe even not exist.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Okay, interesting conversation started. We'll get back to that. That's basically what I wanted to be the sort of attention grapper here because we're gonna talk about a lot of stuff, but let's just go back one second and set the scene for who you are Noam. Could you explain who you are, what you do and what Safari Audio does?

Noam Levinberg

Yeah, absolutely. So I am first and foremost a music lover. I've been mixing records for about twenty years now and started kind of my way into this world of music creation through big studios. So I was really lucky, you know, got a chance to go through kind of the old way of doing you know, mixing or engineering, which is started as an a as a intern, then assistant, then kind of became a recording engineer, then a mixing engineer, so really saw kind of the ladder that used to exist and now kinda doesn't. But did a lot of projects in Israel where I'm based and then traveled the world Did stuff in, you know, the UK, US, Australia, Asia. And about seven years ago I joined a company called Artlist. They do content for video creators, really amazing company. And my wife always jokes that's kind of where I did my university. Kind of because I didn't I didn't study anything. But that was I worked at Artlist as head of audio for four years and that's really where I learnt you know all my business skills things like you know how to run a team, how to run budget, and also kind of taught me in many ways that if you go Artless's story, and we'll get to Safari in a second, but like their story is a bunch of founders that were users of different products and wanted to kind of build a product that would s suit their needs. And in many ways, we I did the same, I feel, with Safari, which is I am, you know, a plug-in user or plug-in addict, call it whatever you want, but

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Noam Levinberg

I use, you know, hundreds of different plugins and I always had, you know, dreams and ideas of like, if only this plugin could do that, you know. And so at some point, you know, after working at Artlist, I decided to jump ship and start my own thing and I started Safari three years ago, bootstrapped, no funding. And Fast forward to now, you know, we have a hundred and seventy thousand users. We're a team of nine people, really talented. I'm lucky to, you know, be with these amazing people. And we try and make fun plugins.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. And I think what's really interesting about Safari Audio is you've again, from an outsider's perspective, it's almost like brand first. I know, you know, the quality of the plugins are obviously vastly important. But for people listening to this, you can go and sort of look at the website. But it's super fun, super engaging, super fun, interesting calls, great design. So what's been your thought process about building a company in Let's say a less traditional way, when it comes to that aspect.

Noam Levinberg

Yeah, good question. I th I think honestly, you know, if to answer the question as honest as I can, I didn't think Safari would become a company per se. I looked at it as you know a personal project that I thought would probably allow me to make a living. That was kind of my initial approach, was like Maybe I could do this thing, build plugins, and, you know, support myself and my family. But then, you know, it's kind of like it's funny to say, but it's kind of like playing a game where, you know, a lot of times you'll play whatever, like some video game and some people enjoy the first, you know Phase of the game, but then other people were, you know, get increasingly into you know the process of how do I go to the next step, go to the next step, go to the next step, and that was kind of my experience with Safari. I felt like I, you know, it was kind of step by step it was becoming a company, and step by step I was all of a sudden being asked like what is the company's goal or like where do you see the company in five years and suddenly it became something real. So I didn't plan it at first, but then it you know, it kind of grew and grew up to a point where it did feel real. And fast forward to now we definitely do have goals and plans for the next few years. And I think what you said about a fan, that's kind of our angle in general in this you know, in this industry is and that's what I identified before starting safari was all the brands looked at mixing and music production as something very serious. You know, all the ads and all the images of all the plugins w were always focused around this like seriousness of like the best.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Noam Levinberg

Compressor, the most linear EQ or like the cleanest something. And as a mixing engineer, I was kind of turned off by that because I felt like, you know, when I started Safari in 2023, there was an abundance of that, you know, but I still have analog gear in the studio, and the reason I do is because I'm looking for Not like the best or the cleanest, but I'm looking for something maybe inspirational or a little dirty or something that kinda does something that I didn't expect it to do. So I was leaning into that aspect of music production and mixing. I was like that this should be fun. I mean, we're making music, it's not we're not selling products to neurosurgeons, you know?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Noam Levinberg

So the funniest I wanted to not only have it you know, exist in the in the in the products as audio, but I also wanted it to be represented in the visualization of how the products look and feel.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm-hmm. And you know, you've carried it through also in the digital marketing and marketing a website and how it's engaging and you know, I'm not the best at these sort of cultural sort of words, but it feels more Gen Z it feels it feels more relevant to a younger sort of audience, maybe someone who's the next generation. Is that something you've done on purpose or?

Noam Levinberg

Yeah, so I definitely wanted to tailor it to the like next generation of music producers and people that make music. I don't know if I succeeded if I'm honest, because you know, if we look at our demographic there definitely are you know, younger generation users in our user base, but still a very big percentage of our user base are people kind of my age with my experience of you know, people that it's funny because I focus the products to appeal to a younger generation, but in the end I think a lot of people that are my age, which is like, you know, close to forty, look at these plugins and say, like, I already have all the necessities of, you know,

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Noam Levinberg

Oic sound and fab filter and all the stuff that I need, these are fun. So I'm gonna grab some of some of Safari's plugins because they're inspiring, because they're fun to use, etc. And that demographic of people that are older tend to have also a little bit more of a budget. So I think that's kind of Why it worked out pretty well.

Jakob Wredstrøm

An interesting question I think might be is how much is actually needed. You know, I can argue in you know it's been a while since I didn't did mixing, but I that was most of my life at one point. And I recognize there are some things that are like must-haves. Again, Oak Sound and South became a must-have, right? And you know, the FAP filters and the way that they approached it sort of borderline must haves. But still most plugins are still like an excuse for must have. They're not actually must have. There are more fun or ego or I don't know what it is. So do you think that's just an extension of that? And then they can you know more easily just point their fingers at this is something fun or

Noam Levinberg

So it's a really interesting conversation because that's something that I think about a lot is like because I so let me go back for a second. When I was mixing and traveling, there was one time I was traveling I was in the UK tracking a record and I got an email about mixing an EP and it was like really on a tight deadline. So I didn't have time to go back to the studio and I wanted to mix it when I was there. And at the time, this was you know like twelve years ago, I had a laptop but the laptop didn't have all the plugins that I used to have on the you know studio's computer. And so at night in the in the hotel I tried to download all the stuff that I needed and I just I just remember this feeling of like there were things in there that I had replacements of but I was very much used to the process of working with a specific tool. So an example for that is SSL channel strip. So For some reason, I on my laptop I remember having I think it was the G series from Waves, but I was used to using the E. And it's a small difference, right? You know, you could argue that in the you know in general terms, sure they're different, but like they're kind of the same flavor. And I remember like being really disappointed in myself and not being able to kind of get the drum sound that I wanted with the G instead of the E. And I think that's like just going back to the conversation I think I think that's the thing. It's like we all get used to certain workflows and those workflows become our must haves. So I think

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Noam Levinberg

you know, it's very much workflow dependent and you know, maybe I don't know if this is true, but like maybe some of the Safari stuff became must-haves or will become must-haves for some producers, for a certain workflow. But for me I kind of feel like and this also like applies I think to anybody who's producing and recording and mixing is like you get to a point where these plugins become sort of like

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Noam Levinberg

some plugins become just an extension of like what you're used to hearing and how you're used to processing it. You know. And so

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm. Yeah, because you know, one of one of the things with these must-haves, is generally speaking, unless you buy them outright, you know, there's a retention to it or the brand around it, right? So if you have, you know, a certain plugin type, let's say universal audio, for example, and you're very dedicated to those sounds and those plugins, like you're usually like a repeat customer. Because, you know, your favorite plugins, if that's a pull tick or whatever it is, you come back for other products of that of that provider, and that in itself provides, you know, a higher lifetime value. So how do you see that with your current customers? Like is there still repeat purchases? Is there loyalty to the brand and sort of products in association with those products they buy? Like how do customers actually act around that?

Noam Levinberg

Yeah, we have really high loyalty. You know, I it's hard for me to compare to other companies 'cause I you know, I don't have ten plug in companies to compare, you know, all the data. But in general, about seventy percent of people that purchase a first product will purchase a second one on Safari. I think there's many reasons for that. The main one being we focus on building small products. So each product does one thing and we release a lot of them. So there's a new release coming out every month. So I think that if you find a like a cool compressor that's l you know, in a shape of a of a of a pedal appealing, then you probably find, you know, weird reverb

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Noam Levinberg

in a shape of a pi pedal appealing as well. So I think I think we do have, you know, a bunch of people that are core audience that come back multiple times to purchase plugins. But I don't think that is necessarily, you know, a kind of a direct

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Noam Levinberg

connection to are these plugins must haves because like take for example you know so you gave the UAD example as you know as something and this is just f for me personally I n I mean I have all the UADs stuff. I think I have like an ultimate bundle or something. But I never actually put the UAD line of plugins in my kind of night must have bucket in my brain because at the time when I was like in the in the process of you know mixing as a career I always felt like I don't want to depend on something that's you know DSP based on like a hardware. Because that was before they came out with Spark and all that native plugins. And what I'm trying to say is like sometimes the must-have versus nice to have arguments get won over by things that you wouldn't expect, like what other people have or what producer or engineer feels like the pros are using, you know, all kinds of things that are non, you know, product related per se, if that makes sense.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And to sort of take the conversation a tiny bit back to where we started, these psychological considerations, so consumer behavior considerations of running a plug-in company, obviously we'll be, you know, change confronted with the change of AI in general right now. I think a good analogy to this is I'll take Suno even though it's not really related, but You know, if you look at, for example, Suno versions three versus what they have now, and when it comes to sort of the audio processing, you know, that there might be a lot of things going on behind the brain that I don't know of, but in this poor, you know, outside analysis, like the sound quality, the mixing, the mastering, a couple you know, a year ago on Suno has fundamentally changed. We actually now have outputs from AI generic music that has high audio quality when it comes to sort of how it's supposed to sound in a mixed and mastered sense. And if I sort of try to take that analogy and put it into other types of sort of fundamental models or machinery models or cloud-based, you know, sort of processing, I'm sure there can be a lot of very high quality intelligent processing that will, you know, conflict with plugins, especially those of a more surgical nature or more of a coloring nature, rather than sort of primary. Creative expression. What's your thoughts about that?

Noam Levinberg

So I think I think there's like stages to kind of the AI revolution in our field. And I think I think people don't fully understand how many like different angles AI can affect, you know plugin creation. And what I mean by that is like for like a really s insane example that is very new to us, like as of yesterday, is we use product we use a platform called blender for 3d rendering of knobs and other things and We found out that Gemini now creates these amazing 3D renders if you prompt it the right way. And so all of a sudden you can design like a two-dimensional knob, let's say in Figma, which is another design tool. Very, very basic design. Like you could just draw a circle. And maybe, you know, decide on how exactly you want the knob to, you know, look in terms of dimensions, etcetera. You can expert, stick it in Gemini and say, make this a 3D designed, you know, knob, make it look vintage or new or th you know, all these descriptions and all of a sudden you know, you don't need to spend six hours on building and rendering knob design in Blender. And the reason I bring that example is because like these little things all add up. And so I kind of feel like this is how I felt even like way before the AI thing was like in the news and way before

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Noam Levinberg

like when I just started Safari, I was told by kind of the developers that I spoke to, in general, like very, very I'm making it a general conversation, but like in general I was told, look, there's juice. That's for people who don't know, that's like the platform that most plugin developers use to Build the plugins. That's a framework for coders. There's juice. Juice has all this DSP in it that is very basic. And then the more professional developers build, you know, their own DSP for whatever EQs, compressors, distortions, limiters, etc. Kind of like, you know, it was sounding to me as a non Developer, it was sounding like people said, Look, there's like EQ7 from Pro Tools, it's an EQ, but it's not really that great. And if you compare it to Fab Filter Pro Q, you know, as an engineer, you should use that. Don't use the EQ7. But then going back to kind of the discussion about AI. That thing doesn't really exist anymore because you can, you know, you c you can build insane algorithms with cloud code or cursor or anything. And the plugins that come out of it will definitely sound good. And not only that, I think what I was trying to say earlier is that I think there's a very big misconception in this industry in general is like I don't think the kind of algorithm part of plugins is that big of a deal. I think the bigger deal is what you make out of it. So

Noam Levinberg

our whole thing with Safari is like I want to be able to twist a knob and not have it linear. I want it to mimic something that I have in my head that I'm imagining and that involves that doesn't really involve complicated you know algorithms. That involves just being creative. And thinking, you know, about sound in a specific way. So

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

That makes sense. And I think that's in general, I think the intent of what you're building adders more and more now when the actual execution becomes easier. And I that's not something that sort of AI in general captures really well. Like what is the intention of this? Like and obviously since they don't necessarily have a sense of what's going on other than it's zeros and ones. But you know, one of the things I hear a lot from the startup community especially for people who are sort of on the more forward leaning side of it, is that the actual technology, the actual building is becoming less important and distribution is becoming the new thing. Like it's you know, if everyone can build something fairly great, then it's sort of an equal playing field when it comes to quality. You know, not really, but let's just assume it's at least more equal than it used to be. But now getting it in front of the right people that are willing to pay for it is gonna be, you know, probably the biggest priority. How do you think about distribution?

Noam Levinberg

Yeah, that's a really, really good point. And I'm one of those people, like I feel that way. But here's the catch, I think. I think the catch is I'll answer the distribution part in a second, but I think the catch is it's kind of like a cat and mouse. So you can obviously have, you know, the best marketing in the world if your product is you know not good then doesn't help. And vice versa, right? Like you can have the best product in the world if you don't do any marketing. No one's gonna hear about it. But I think that in our industry it's kinda leaning more into the product. So you could get away with like

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Noam Levinberg

A way better product and not a great distribution system, you can't get away with having like an amazing distribution system and a really bad product. There's examples of that. I won't like name names 'cause I don't wanna, you know, be negative about any brand, but there's examples of products from both sides, like products that, you know, Valhalla for example, as a good example. You know that

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

Noam Levinberg

Almost no marketing. I don't know if they do any marketing, you know? And everybody uses their product. So I think that the that's where like because music, software and audio is a very small market and a very kind of niche community, people will find the good products because they're looking for them, you know, as opposed to you know, an industry like, I don't know, like plumbing or something. Like do I necessarily care? Of course I want a good service from the person that's, you know, doing the plumbing for me, but I don't really I'm not like spending my days on plumbing websites and like comparing between like you know what mean? So I think that like other types of industries is where

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Noam Levinberg

In my opinion like distribution is in many ways almost the only thing that matters now. You know, like an another example for it is like Jira. Yeah, you know, everybody uses Jira. We had some issues with using Jira. Like we use Jira but recently, like a month ago, we started using our own vibe coded Version of Jira. And we had discussions internally, and it you know it's a great product. Like we love using our own system, it does a lot of things that Jira doesn't. Am I going to you know make a product out of it and sell it? Probably not, because I think that to play in that game of like you know, marketing to that broad of an audience and competing. with world champion, you know, marketeers and distribution systems, I'm not going to you know, win in that game, I feel. Does that make sense?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm. Well, it makes a hundred percent sense. For me when I talk with sort of colleagues outside of music, because music seems to be like its own beast sometimes and maybe a bit introspective, but when I talk with founders working in a broader, broader context of industries, we talk about digital marketing being the new thing. And it kinda sounds a bit ironic because okay, well, digital marketing has been accessible and available for a long time and now with sort of AI tooling, you know, it's more accessible and how to do good copy and all that kind of stuff. But the there's two aspects to it. One is traditional speed of digital marketing, adaptation, analyzing data and sort of converting that is too slow in traditional way. But then also this all these underutilized distribution of great products, you know, I've been I've been speaking with a bunch of plug in founders lately just because I'm quite intrigued and we just started working with one company out of Spain. Because for me one of the most overlooked opportunities in the audio music world is legacy plug in software that just hasn't been distributed well. And you would be surprised I was speaking with one company,

Noam Levinberg

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Out of Germany and maybe to my own fault, I was like looking at their data. I signed an NDA, I looked into data and said, okay, why don't you do this? That was just a basic question. And obviously this found it was smart. When it did that and they five extra revenue. I was just like, I should have said that. Like I should have kept that to myself and made a deal. But it was interesting that a legacy company could basically just do one actionable insight they haven't really thought about and then make a lot of money really fast because their product, you know was amazing and has been for so for ten years. So there is a product market fit, there is a an audience and what they just didn't have was distribution. And I think that's the really interesting part about this. If you can nail both, I think there is not necessarily a moat to be built, but I think that's a way to build a business now. But obviously knowing how to build both quality and also distribution is a different skill set entirely and not too many founders know how to equip both.

Noam Levinberg

I agree. I think also doing both is tricky. I feel like looking into our like, you know, I'm not objective about Safari, but I feel like we're okay with both. Like we're not great in either, but we're kind of okay with both. And I'm not sure if that's better than, you know, just excelling extremely like

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Noam Levinberg

Doing really great in one of them.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, I you know, I don't have an answer either. You know, we've mentioned Oak Sound a few times, but I used them as an example. Like Hannes who's the current CEO and was part of the Erdy team there. They consciously, I think for four or five years, did not do any digital marketing or just very, very light touch because they were product first. They spent years building a product and obviously when that came out, they just sent it to you know, great producers and that endorsement in itself was enough to get the ball rolling. Obviously they also they do in digital marketing now, but they had a very specific strategy of like, let the product be the best in the world and that's what we carry by. But that's a very one of type situation in most cases, right?

Noam Levinberg

Yeah, it's also like I'm not sure y you know, looking at Oix Sound because it's such a good example I feel, I remember when Sooth came out and I don't think I mean like f first impression of Sooth was okay, this is different, interesting, unique. Not necessarily I wouldn't put it in the in the must have category right off the bat. You know? Now a hundred I mean, it's one of the maybe like three must haves that like, you know, any producer or engineer really needs. Including myself. I mean, I don't see myself mixing or mastering without Sooth. But what I'm trying to say is like it's very hard to determine that early on. Like they took a very big bet that might have come out in a negative way too. And I don't think that's like a real strat like I don't mean to disrespect you or but I don't think that's a strategy I would go for as a young company because

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm-hmm.

Noam Levinberg

I feel like that's much higher risk you know, than a strategy where it's like we did the exact opposite. So I we you know, when I came out with Safari, I was like, I want to put out a lot of products, mainly I mean I had a lot of ideas of products, but also mainly because I wanted to see what people like and don't like and you know, react quickly to whatever feedback that we get. We evolved the products over time based on a lot of user feedback, like, we want this, we don't want that. This worked extremely well in this product, etc. And I don't think we could have, you know, done that growth without that strategy. And also I think we made a lot of mistakes and we got away with them because you know, if you if you spend a month building a product, it doesn't work out. It sucks, but it's not the end of the world. If you spend four years and it doesn't work out, then you're problemalizing the company.

Jakob Wredstrøm

That's for sure. Like I've definitely fallen in the trap of I've been always been a distribution first kind of guy. But I've, you know, most of my life missed the quality part, which has been its own type of issue which I'm working on and I think I've sort of to some degree solved now. But what I've come to realize, what I believe is the currently the best version of the strategy this might change is that there's an initial pursuit of quality. And then you start with distribution really to inform where the quality should take it. So it's sort of it's parallel and the distribution is basically your market research. But still it's a pursuit of quality, but you need to have parallel distribution in order to iterate quickly. And I think that's what the world has opened up for a possibility right now that you can do. And maybe that's also what a sense in what you guys are doing. Like there's this parallel pursuit of understanding the market, building for the market, then going deeper into it. And you also come into something In our last talk that maybe you can explain about what do you think is the next, you know, stage for Safari. If you look five years ahead and you wanna position yourself to be still be relevant there, how do you believe your company will look like and maybe even the plugging in industry?

Noam Levinberg

I think that five near years now is like fifteen or twenty years in the past just because of AI. So it's really hard to say. I think there's a few path paths that we're looking into to going to and it's a it's an interesting period of time too, 'cause on Thursday this week we have a whole day of like strategizing for next year.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Sure. Yeah.

Noam Levinberg

And there are things we need to kind of decide on which path we are going to. I think you know, first to answer not safari, but like as an industry, I don't think plugins are going to make it to the future because I think that DAWs are not gonna make it to the future. My guess or my vision or my, you know, assumption of what's going to happen is I think we're already seeing, you know, Suno is reporting they have two hundred and fifty million users coming into Suno. Moises are talking about eight eighty million users. Those numbers are so far away from you know, like if you look at the TAM, like the total addressable market of music creation software, you know, it's a few single percents of that huge pile of people. And the reason I bring that up is I think now more than ever before, people are going through these funnels, which by the way, going back to what we were talked about earlier, like these guys are pros. Like they are so much better than anything else that we experienced in the music software business, in my opinion, in terms of bringing people in and getting them to use the product. Whether it's good or bad, you know, that's for someone else to say. But I'm just like stating a fact in my opinion. Like getting that amount of people in a in you know a really new concept for music creation I think is huge. And going back to, you know, what we talked about, like the future, I think those people, their first experience, if you think about it, their first experience with producing music or writing music or creating is through prompts and these kind of new ways of making music. I do not think that a large percentage of them

Noam Levinberg

Are going to you know, just move from the ease of use of Suno to the complexity of you know downloading Logic Pro, downloading twenty different plugins, installing them, license using you know

Jakob Wredstrøm

I totally agree with you. I think I had this very reflection two days ago. I was I was at a birthday party and there was like four performers performing. It's one of my friends, great a lot of people there. And I was like, I wanna go back into sort of, you know, performing again, maybe just for fun. I wanna write a song, release a song. Like it's been a like a lot of years since then. I was reflecting, okay, if I were to do that, how would I do it? I was thinking about like I still have logic on my computer, but honestly I can't be bothered finding all the plugins. Like I just th I was like, I don't wanna go back into that workflow, like I can do it, but then Let me let me research what tools out there where I can automate a lot of this process. And even me with like five years ago, I would be a dedicated pro in this. And now because I'm so used to sort of the accessibility of vibe coding or, you know, vibe creating music, I'm like, no, that must be a better way than going back and even I can't even be bothered using an hour to find all my plugins. Which I've paid, you know, too much money on over the years. And so for me that's lost. That's a lost, you know, work process. I'm not gonna dedicated time to relearn it. And for me, that's gonna maybe take a day or two. For someone else, that's gonna take years, right? So that's the problem when I can't be bothered to relearn something I used to be a pro at, like how do we expect newcomers to want to spend time doing that?

Noam Levinberg

Yeah.

Noam Levinberg

Yeah, and I and I think you know I th I think that's exactly the thing is like once you experience the ease of use of something like Suno and the immediacy of it, then going back to opening, you know, traditional Dawn plugins is not easy. And I and I think where the future is going in my opinion,

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Noam Levinberg

Is some plug-in companies are going to make the leap into you know online based daws. I think that one, two, maybe three DWs that are online are going to win the war, so to speak, and transition people into their new way of doing stuff online. FL, I think FL Studio is doing an amazing job right now and Their online dot is really good in my opinion. And you know, they're first to market in terms of the other traditional DAWs. There's going to be others. There's companies like there's a company called SESH. Have you heard of them?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I think so, yeah.

Noam Levinberg

Yeah, so Sesh does like online an online DA that's also kind of like Figma in the sense that you can work on it simultaneously with multiple people at once. Their user experience I think is the best. I love using that thing. It's really fun. I know the founder, Matt, he's a really talented person. And I think

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Noam Levinberg

That's where the world is going. I think I think we're going to see online da DAWs become the standard. And I think some plugins are gonna exist for sure in that in those DAWs. But you know, maybe in a few years the user can generate a plugin based on his song or based on his, you know, prompt, etc. I'm not sure necessarily there would be a need for plug-in companies. But the thing is like what is interesting is like if you if you compare plug-in companies to labels, I think I think the smart plug-in companies understand that, you know, it's much more than just the technology or the assets that they own, but rather what they kind of represent. So The group of people that like Safari enjoy using our products not because, you know, they have to, but because they're fun to use. And hopefully we can transition them into you know, other offerings that may, you know, be appealing to this new world of online DAWs and prompts and everything, if that makes sense. And that and that's in many ways what we're doing. I mean we're releasing A new AI tool called Meow Chain in a few days. It's coming out on Wednesday. We're recording this on Monday. So we're trying to kind of look into to building those new tools that are fun to use but also make more sense in the world that we're living in.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm-hmm. A question sort of before we sort of round up the episode is you have built you've built a company that now has 170,000 users and you know obviously you're doing something right, that's for sure. But still it's cost you three years and I know it's also been a journey and you know the pursuit of for example trying to raise capital has also been difficult and you also know sort of where

Noam Levinberg

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

This is heading, I think, for your industry with like a good deal of both curiosity and anxiety and uncertainty. Do you think it's worth it to build a company in this day and age within the plug in space?

Noam Levinberg

Really good question, man. I mean, I had this conversation with my wife the other day.

Noam Levinberg

I don't wanna be like I don't wanna end the episode in a pessimistic way. But the honest answer is no. I don't think it's worth it. But here's like my point of view is I'm really having fun doing it. Like I really enjoy the, you know, the path in which we chose to go through. And so I believe that as long as, you know, you're intrigued and curious and have fun during the process, then it is worth it. But from a business standpoint, I think that there's so many opportunities right now, you know. That I wouldn't necessarily say this is a good one.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm. I you know, I'm not an expert in the field. I've done my fair share of research on it lately though. Like where I see the opportunities is fully utilizing legacy companies and that's been under distributed and you know, make sure that gets out further. But you need to be really smart in order to become relevant in the future. Like you need to do things really, really differently than the status quo in order to make this work. And I do think you're doing that, by the way. So I think there's validity to your path, even though you say it might not be worth it to build a new company. But I think my perspective with my limited knowledge though, I think that there's definitely a future for Safari Audio. Especially talking with you multiple times. I see you have something that most founders in this space don't have that I speak with. And I think

Noam Levinberg

Thank you.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Even though path is difficult, I think that's what's necessary in order to actually survive and build something great. What do you think is your dream scenario for Safari Audio? Like, you know, capitalistically, what do you think you can get from this?

Noam Levinberg

Again, like really good question. And thank you for the kind words. I mean it's hard sometimes to see it, you know, from the perspective of where I'm at. Honestly I think you know, for Safari in a

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Noam Levinberg

you know, in a in a financial way. I think and we had this conversation b before. I think there are ways to optimize and grow the company way further than where it's at right now. And I'm doing my best to figure out what those you know things that need to be done happen. And I also think, you know, that if I'm speaking honestly, that Safari has a lot to offer bigger li legacy brands. And you mentioned you know, an exam you didn't say a name, but like a an example of a legacy brand that kind of didn't do a lot of marketing or optimization to their s sales funnel, etcetera. And I think there are many brands that I can think of that, you know, we would definitely bring enormous value to you know, either in a acquisition or a partnership, you know, way to join a bigger company. So that's another thought that I have definitely on my mind right now.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hm. And I think, you know, it's been a it's been a space with rich consolidation, the plug in space, you know, maybe not always successfully so, but there has been a lot of activity of consolidation and buying other companies. Maybe not the biggest exits ever heard of, but they're definitely there and some of them can be lucrative. So it does make sense still. So yeah. When thank you so much for the talk. we didn't get too much into the founder journey, but maybe we should cover that another time again. But What I think is incredibly interesting is this space because it's under so much disruption and there are gonna be winners. the biggest question is like where's that gonna come from? What angle is that? And I think for sort of investors or sort of more PE style, I don't know how many of those will be listening to this podcast, I do think there is a real big opportunity in a mixture of what both you and I just touched, like marketing, distribution, brand. there's still an audience and it will still be an audience for a few years. it's probably not gonna take a long time before that's completely eradicated. and there's still there's still a lot to be won there. But I think already now being very, very proactive of trying to pursue what's next is necessary for these to still exist in a few years. so I think we both agree on that as well. No and Beautiful. I think I think I'm really excited to follow your journey because I know that you've been quite what's it called? quite focused on being relevant. So I'm very excited to see what you guys will try to do these next couple years in order to stay relevant.

Noam Levinberg

Thanks so much. I really appreciate it and it's always great to talk to you. I think you know you should definitely keep doing these interviews because it's inspiring to hear other people and talk about these things, especially in our little niche market. So yeah, I appreciate it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm. Thanks every. Have a great day.

Noam Levinberg

Right, you two.