Merging Music and Technology

Jakob Wredstrøm

Today on Sound Connections, we're going to have a conversation with one of the most clever people I've ever met, Josh Greenberg. He's a consultant in his own firm, Green Mountain Lodge. He's also had history with corporations such as Spotify and Red Bull. Today we're going to talk about technology, we're going to talk about the past, we're going to talk about the future. I hope you enjoy it. Well, we've already talked for a bit and Josh, I'm really happy that you want to join the podcast. We have a bit of a history together and I do consider you some sort of... mentor in my life and you've given me opportunities that I'm very thankful for. But just to give my side of it, at one point I was starting a company called Tamber, which I'll actually have in this podcast talking about failure and how we learn from that and mentor from that. But you were our advisor in the company and gave us great perspectives on the industry and technology and all that kind of stuff. So I'm very honored that you're here. I'm very interested to hear... What do you have to say every single time I hear you talk? I'm very inspired and try to think things about new ways. But so who are you? What do you do and what's your story? That's a good question. So formal introduction, my name is Josh Greenberg. A lot of people call me JG, the podcast audience. You can feel free to call me whatever you want. Old guy works too. Who am I? That's a bigger question than simply the professional side of what we're doing. I guess like first and foremost, I'm a musician and music lover and sort of, you know, infinitely hungry music consumer. I think that has a lot to do with the reason I got into this, which for a lot of people, that's the same reason. Also, you know, a lot of people see like failure in their own music as sort of a conduit to why they choose to do this. I think. I don't know if I would have considered it failure, things were going okay, but more choices, right? Just where I could make more contribution and more opportunities. So I think that has a lot to do with who I am and where I come from. I also would say, even though you don't wanna be your parents when you grow up, like both of my parents were in media, brands, creative.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Television content, all of this space. So sort of at this intersection of like the way people consume entertainment and information and how it's packaged and presented. And so like, I don't think I really had a choice in the matter. I think it was just it was it was bound to be something derivative of that. Yeah. But yeah. And then I also would say, like, who am I? I'm sure we'll talk about sort of my career journey. I think I am definitely like this interesting intersection between Gen X and millennial, right? Where I was like born right on the border of these two things. And so I have a lot of appreciation for, you know, the things that make Gen X so unique of like physical possessions and sort of, you know, a bit of apathy from the baby boomer, you know, generation and a little bit more punk mentality, which led into DIY and building things yourself. And then also just the... rapid expanse of technology and everything that came afterwards. And I would say like, I am privileged to have been like bored into and into this industry at the exact time that I was, because it takes the like convenience of that, that happening where I was like in Los Angeles at this period of time when this was happening and just put yourself in the right place at the right time. And then it sort of like happens around you. Yeah. So, you know, did I design all of it? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I was just right place, right time, kind of things connected. Cool. That's amazing. And I'm so lucky to have you on the podcast. And we'll talk a bit more about your background and your experience. But to briefly explain to the audience again, this is a podcast about music entrepreneurship. And the reason why we talk today is also understand your let's call it your viewpoint from technology into innovation and into. Music in general, which is sort of where you also have your expertise. Yeah, but when I first met you, I was really impressed by your resume. And you have worked with big corporations such as Red Bull and Spotify. How did that become a thing? Where did you start? Coincidence. Honestly, the Red Bull thing was a long one. I worked with them for 15 years. So I was still at university. I was studying.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Studio music production at Loyola Berry Mountain, Los Angeles. I love the recording studio life. I was working in a studio called Ego Entertainment as an intern part-time assistant engineer there. There were times where I was like, I'm not sure this is for me sitting in the studio every day. Then there were moments where the magic just came and we're up at Mike Elizondo's studio in the valley and like Dre's. Entire catalog cast of characters are just parading through the door and they're like, okay, this is a special ecosystem. But this was also the start of the 2000s. And on the back end of music piracy, every beautiful studio that I went and toured and saw myself working in for the rest of my life was shutting down. Like they were all closing their doors because they couldn't sustain the revenue required and the record companies couldn't lay out the resources. And at the same time, I was learning on Pro Tools, like 1.0, how to make the records that I heard in studios in my dormer at school. And so I was like, do we even need this type of facility? Is this required or is this necessary? And so I was really starting to question while I'm still in school, while I'm working, I'm playing in bands, I'm doing studio work, I'm like literally hustling as wide as I can in my collegiate existence. And I was really starting to look at like, I actually don't think what I'm studying right now has a really robust, you know, future state for me financially. And I think I'm going to struggle. I think, you know, these very successful engineers and producers are going to be looking for new jobs, you know, and I'm going to be competing with them when I come out of school for this. So maybe I need to think about a slight differentiation or perhaps there's an opportunity for something that, you know, might not be music business at its core, but actually music is a core component of what they're doing. And so I was just starting to look around. I was playing a show at the Troubadour in LA, kind of legendary venue, and I was playing drums in that band. And I happened to drink a Red Bull before the show, like on stage, sitting next to my kit while I was playing. And this guy waited until after we finished at the merch booth and stuff after the show and was like, hey man, you drink Red Bull.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And I was like, yes, kind of odd, you know, and the conversation just evolved to like, okay, like how did you learn about it? And I was like, oh, I learned about it through skateboarding and he was like, starts drooling, you know, he's like, oh, you skateboard too? And I'm like, yeah, you know, and is like, okay, so like what you're just playing music full-time. I was like, no, I actually study full-time. He's like, and you're a student at university. It was just like aligning with this. And what I came to realize, this is like 2001, is Red Bull had only launched in America in 97. And they were still a very nascent company in the States and the business was just starting to kind of grow. And so this relationship sort of evolved into like, hey, can you just kind of give us some insight, give us some feedback on how to steer like Red Bull culturally into your world? Like at a collegiate level. At a sports level between surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, you know, all the things that I was doing and then the music ecosystem. And so I just started kind of doing some stuff with them on the side and then they made it a little bit more formal and then it became slightly more formal, you know, and then by the time I was a junior in college, I was in a full-time capacity with Red Bull while studying. And it was sort of at this intersection of sports and music and, you know, art. Kind of broader culture and you know some of it was Los Angeles but some of it was more broad than that. And so it was just this coincidence of like these things coming together where I'm like I'm not sure the studio ecosystem is going to be the forever but you know what could I do with this education in this way of thinking and then because Red Bull was sort of you know immature I guess structurally and starting to build some maturity around some of the music ecosystem just really didn't exist. I mean, there was maybe three or four people working on music nationally in America at the time, and there was no specialization. So there was no one that was like, oh, this is the artists department and this is the licensing department. This is this. So I come in into this role and it's like, all right, what do we need to do? How do we need to get it done? And I'm the guy, you know, it's like from front from front to back from like ideation through concepting through pitching through artists onboarding agency management.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Label cooperations, licensing, public performance, all of it into live production, all these elements of the puzzle, which I had some experience in doing, but I had to learn the professional side of all of these areas of the business. Yes. I am so thankful for, because every other person I knew that went into the music industry went specialized. Wow. Yeah. It went into one vertical of one thing, and I got to learn all of these different areas and how they tie together. And like, you know me quite well now, so this is actually like, this is the origin of the foundations of like how I think. Right, is it? It's not about how one section works, it's about how it all fits together. Yeah, and sort of also like a corporate startup entrepreneurial journey for you. Like it's like, even though it hasn't been like your own company per se, that is a corporate startup in its own. Red Bull always refused to embrace the idea that they were a corporation. Uh, they, it took until very late in my time period when there were like 10,000 employees worldwide. I mean, I think I was marketing employee, 87 in America. Yeah. Still there quite early, but, um, but yeah, I mean, they, they always thought with this entrepreneurial sort of mindset and what they were doing, and I think that train that, but in particular, yeah, I just, I was sort of given a license. There were no rules. We didn't have competition. The budgets were like, yeah, spend some money, not too much money, but not too little. You know, go out and make some things happen. And I really like, I think that was an amazing toolkit for me to go out and figure out who I was and how to do things. It is a, I mean, it started as local, you know, kind of Los Angeles, and then it grew into, by the time I was 23, I was running the Los Angeles market overall on all field marketing efforts and what we were doing there. And then it expanded in 2010 into something exclusively focused on music. Because that was when the business started to take music really seriously. It had been like not that serious prior to that. And then they did some external research studies that kind of showed the influence that music had like it was a zeitgeist study and it basically showed the influence that musicians had on consumer decisions versus like action sports athletes. And anybody that knows the Red Bull brand knows that like action sports athletes are up here as far as priority and musicians were sort of down. And it was

Jakob Wredstrøm

Musicians were number two and three collectively, and action sports athletes were like number 17 behind other celebrities, other people that kind of drove influence. And so it just reprioritized the investment corridors and things. So I actually had a lot more ability to do music programming in Los Angeles prior, but then when the business took it more seriously and it became like 33% of our marketing spend overall was dedicated to music, I'm like, okay, now let me go full time into this. And then yeah, that was the last five, six years of being with them was in that space as the company got really mature that way. Yeah. Wow. Such an interesting journey. And what happened afterwards is you joined Spotify, which is of course one of the biggest disruptors of the industry within technology. Also when your college state got disrupted by the digitalization. So you've really been a part of both like when the industry was disrupted and now into one of the disruptors. So, I've really seen it from both those sides. But can you tell me a bit more about your role in Spotify and how that has given the perspectives you have now? Sure. Yeah. By the time I left Red Bull, I was running the global live music business for them. So, I was based out of Austria and I was working with 300 culture managers around the world and every territory we were working on. It became a very macro kind of big picture way of thinking about things. And I like that strategic view. And when Spotify came to me and recruited me for this job... They were looking at a role that I actually saw was a bit simple for what they were proposing. They thought that, so the title was experiential marketing director. They were looking for somebody to execute their programs at South by Southwest and the CES conference and Cannes Lion Festival and France and whatever. I was like, these are all B2B propositions where you're basically selling advertisers. That the fact that you believe that this is what your role is or your responsibility is, is actually kind of shameful. Like you have the platform that connects the most passionate fans with the artists, and you sit in the intersection of those two things. If you're trying to figure out what an experience offline looks like for Spotify, you need to figure out how to connect those two people on a platform that is physical, just like you connect those two people on a platform that's digital. And they were like, whoa, that's like...

Jakob Wredstrøm

A cool way of thinking about this. They're like, how would you think about doing that? And that's what excited me about the role. It wasn't the job that was presented. It was sort of that, like they said, well, how would you think about doing this differently? And so my entire like strategic journey with them was about figuring out all the unique selling propositions of the Spotify platform and how would you rip those out and create physical experiences associated with that? So what is a playlist when you create it live? What is an album debut when it becomes a moment that's shared between the artist and the fan? What is it when you take a specific program or a specific function that you can experience inside the app and then extract it out and create the physical manifestation of that? And so that was a really cool opportunity. I really loved the access to data. One of the things at Red Bull, when I was there, I was part of the team who kind of helped build and scale Red Bull Sound Select. That was our first real data proposition and actually very advanced. Like we had stuff that was way ahead of chart metric or sound charts or any of this kind of stuff that we were feeding to artists in that program based on our own design and that was cool. But moving into Spotify, I didn't have to guess, right? It's like I had really robust data on how consumers were consuming in each territory, what type of music they wanted. So when I'm designing Rap Caviar Live for Houston, you know, and I'm putting together a live show of the playlist, I can tell you exactly what the listening behaviors of the Rap Caviar fan base is in Houston. And then I can take that data to the artists and say, you are the most beloved person in Houston this month. Like, why don't you come and play this show and sort of celebrate these moments? Artists don't say no to those things. Fans don't say no to tickets. It kind of just connects the dots, right? So there was a lot of opportunity inside all of that. But I just liked, you know, that again, I got to kind of be an intro. Entrepreneur inside the business. Something I don't talk about that often, but like when I started at the company, I was given a budget of $0. So literally I had to build a strategy, go and sell that strategy to different stakeholders and then bring resources together from internal and external parties to invest in the concepts that we were developing. So that's not even a corporate startup. That is a startup. It was a startup. I mean, it was well-financed, but it was still a startup.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Start up inside the business. Yeah, I know, I know. That's so cool. Amazing experience, amazing view of like the whole transition. Like what is, in your view, what has technology done to the music industry the last 30 years and how that's changed the way we look at music and consume music? Of course. Shark transition, it requires us to back up a little bit and then move forward, right? Yeah. And I think it's an interesting term because a lot of times I talk about like music and industry, right? That these two things, I think technology is the industry part of that conversation now. Right? Is it like, basically, we do have some human intermediaries that sit between like the music and the technology. But in the end, the industry, industry being the machinery that operates things, it is all technological today. But that is only a 24 year, 23 year proposition. And the thing that I appreciate the most of this, cause I'm a big fan of like anthropology and what moves people, is that it was a consumer driven decision. This was an industry driven choice, right? It was a reaction to the fact that consumers mobilized towards technology faster than the industry did. They adopted piracy, they adopted Napster and then LimeWire, Kazaa, all of these different things. P2P file sharing became a thing. And it was like, oh, we need to react to this. In order to figure out what was happening. And realistically, what professionalized the industry? Was it the industry? It was Apple, right? Because Apple developed the iPod, and to fill up your iPod, you could fill it up with pirated files, or you could get higher resolution files through the Apple iTunes Store, right? And so all of the major industry players had to figure out how to compress and distribute their material digitally from their catalogs into the iTunes Store. That is the origin of our entire music industry today. Like it's literally that process because all the metadata problems we deal with today, all of the like challenges that exist around the distribution of music and also the opportunities that exist around the distribution of music are all tied to that moment, right? Because the distribution systems that were set up for iTunes were the same ones that were required to be used when Spotify came to the market. It was the labels, okay, we already send this way, you have to receive these files through these.

Jakob Wredstrøm

You know, APIs and these calls in this way. So it was like the iPod and then eventually the iPhone really took this consumer behavior and it mobilized access. And I think when the access was mobilized, that's what created an ecosystem for Spotify to succeed. Right, and Spotify was like, oh, okay, well, now that you mobilize this access, why do I need to hold all this on my drive? Or why do I need to use my computer to do it? If the access is mobilized, why can't the content be mobilized alongside you? So I think those like, anthropological things were there. In parallel to all of that, the thing that I think is super interesting and people don't talk about as much is MySpace and the role of MySpace in all of this. Because MySpace and SoundCloud, not that long after, but MySpace sort of as the front end represented a new DIY ecosystem in this, there were artists that were born out of Napster, they had never sold records before and they scaled their entire existence off of Napster and off of, you know, Limeware and Gazob. I had other P2P platforms, obviously, at the time. But their brand was actually being built in MySpace. MySpace preceded Facebook as far as like a music proposition in that way. And so that became a DIY proposition. And even MySpace was flirting very early with the ability to distribute music, right? There was MySpace records and there were things that were kind of happening there on how to distribute music that you were creating, loading the MySpace and how could you share that to other platforms. So this started this whole kind of DIY proposition digitally and technologically. And I think an entire industry over the last 20 years has been built on the back of that proposition as well. Like, why do we need to go through all the same systems in order to get this content here? Why can't we just simply upload something to a channel and then make that get to the end destination? So I think the technological side, I know this is running long, but I think it's important to go through that entire journey to understand where it comes from. Because if you ask me like, what is what is some of the most important, you know, stuff that's happening in technology, I think the creator funnel that exists and I hate that I even use the word creator, because that's like one of my least favorite words. But just that this artistic creative funnel, you know, that exists today from the from the point of creation all the way through the point of distribution and everything in between.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Is a result of this technology being core and people just understanding and realizing that we don't have to go through the traditional music industrial systems. We get it there, we could actually hack ourselves into these industrial systems and build solutions that allow anyone who creates music to get it to the same destinations and the same platforms. Yad in itself presents some new problems, but we'll get to that later. That's so interesting. One of the things I... I really heard when he said is that Apple sort of forced innovation into the music industry. Do you think that's happening today as well? Because the way I perceive the music industry, especially in the Nordics, is that it's not that innovative. Like there are a lot of ones presenting the opportunities. So do you still perceive that to be the fact that we're just reacting? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, like the music industry didn't create TikTok, right? The music industry is living off of TikTok right now. It's entirely reactive. But like... we've started making shorter songs. We've started making songs with hooks more upfront, you know, with things within the first 30 seconds based on that medium. You know, one of the things I actually always appreciated, Daniel Eck at Spotify commented on quite a bit, is just like, why are we forcing ourselves today to still live on the three minute 30 second single format? Like that was drafted from radio and that was drafted from what the capacity was on a seven inch single to fit into a jukebox. You know, like. for some reason we still think that three minutes and 30 seconds is like the ideal time for that. Now that TikTok has come, that has gone to two minutes and 30 seconds. Like literally the medium has changed the length of what an ideal song time is. So I think there is still a lot of platform-based development on this. I think the kind of up-down journey of the NFT hype changed a lot of... things that way of like what type of assets or tools do we need to go there? Obviously, I still see a long tail on NFTs. It's just that the hype cycle has sort of died now. Yeah. But I think, yeah, I think a lot of times innovation outside the industry is what is what drives the industry to react. And for the most part, the industry is pretty good at reacting. They're not that good at, you know, driving innovation internally because just, you know, you're, you're driving a pretty big cruise ship and to make that thing turn left pretty hard.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Uh requires a big wave coming at you it's not like you make this choice The question is quite complex. I don't know if you can answer it. Would it be positive for the music industry to be the innovator in the future? Like right now we've had many years of reacting. Oh, what would the scenario be if we were to innovate before? And would that be effective? It's an interesting question. I mean, each of the majors in particular have hired over the last 10 years, they've brought in like a innovation lead, almost at a C level, right? So Scott Cohen was doing this for Warner. Jay was doing this for Universal, like Sony now has brought Jacob from the orchard up into a CTO role inside their business with a high level of innovation on some of these things. So I don't think that they're not following innovation. The difference is about developing some of that stuff in-house versus supporting external parties to do it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Warner, like he's got the YouTube mentality to things. I think he'll change some of the ways that they develop, you know, their own technological competencies, but I still think like it's not their core business. You know, they can diversify. I think Spotify was, is a good example because this was the first time that they really diversified some of their own investment stake into someone else's pocket that was like, you know, uh, interdependent on their business. Right. So they took a financial stake in the growth of this platform. And now based on how that worked out, they're like, okay, now every other investment we make with our catalog, we also want a percentage of your company. I understand some of that development, but I would say. If you think about the role of a major label who obviously that drives the top end of the industry that we're talking about major labels have always operated as VCs that's their business model, right? They just do that on behalf of music. So technically. their role in this business shouldn't actually be that different. They should operate as venture capitalists, not necessarily as the tech platforms themselves. So I think that is the behavior that we're seeing across the market. I see a lot more people investing in technology to participate in the benefits that are associated with it, perhaps to have exclusive rights or early access rights to that technology when it comes across. So you see that with Universal and Endel, platform from, I think it's Germany, but they just did a cooperative deal on like AI development, you know, assets for some of their catalog and stuff. So I think that's, you know, that's a very progressive or positive role. But I would just say like, yeah, thinking themselves more as a venture capital firm, not only for the creation of music, but also for the creation of technology around music is a way forward and a good way to think about it. That's a really interesting answer. Do you think they are active enough? as VCs. Yeah. I mean, if their portfolios aren't publicly, you know, available, you could technically look into some of this because they're all publicly traded companies now. Right. So like, Universal's listed, Warner split off the Warner Records proposition. They had a public offering. Sony's obviously a publicly traded company. So there probably is some visibility into that investment portfolio somewhere if you really wanted to dig into, dig into reports. But

Jakob Wredstrøm

Um, uh, you know, from what I know from friends that, that are working at different companies and whatever, yeah, there's a pretty, you know, diversified portfolio investment from the majors, but also there's a lot of venture capital money coming from just the financial community, right? It's, it's flooding into music and kind of every facet of it because music is scaling at such a rapid pace, kind of ahead of other, you know, business ecosystems, and there's a lot of money to be made in this space. That's cool. It's really nice to hear. So basically what you're saying is you believe that they're more aware of investing into the future right now than they were 25 years ago. Of course. Yeah. I mean, I think 25 years ago, they were trying to protect their CD sales, right, more than anything. Now, you know, maybe the songwriting and the publishing side of the equation probably has a little bit more innovation work to do because some of the, you know, sort of reallocation of value has shifted more towards major rights holders and the marketing side of what's there, like the marketers sort of benefit from the results. But yeah, I would say for the most part, they're a lot more aware, but they are still trying to protect what they have, right? So when you see year on year that like the independent landscape is growing... by almost a percentage point a year in the overall share of revenue coming from the music industry. This is why Sony goes and buys AWOL, right? And put that under closure. This is why all these companies go and secure all of these other players in the middle of the funnel because they're like, we're not going to be left out as the independent universe starts to take up more of the inventory in this. So I think that also comes with some awareness. And now we have data that allows us to act a lot faster. Before it was like, you know, you're... data reports that were three months or six months lagging on album sales and trying to make strategic long tail decisions based on that information. Now I get it from what was consumed an hour ago and can make decisions on how things are going. That's cool. From an entrepreneur's perspective, this seems really positive, what you're saying, because obviously, if you're an entrepreneur and build stuff, that needs to be some sort of either you need to make a really profitable company or you need to be bought by someone.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And so what you're saying, if they're investing, they're really aware of this, definitely a market for creating stuff that could have, you know, a place in a buyer's perspective, buying into new technology, new innovation, new business models. Yeah, and I wouldn't only aim that entrepreneurial focus at the majors or the big players, right? That there's still a lot of opportunity in this independent landscape, and that's only continuing to grow, right? Yeah. I think that there's, I guess. middleware is sort of a soft term for this, but middleware being this intersection between the art that you're making and the consumer who's consuming it. Like all of these different machine parts are bolting together to make things. And you know, there's still gaps that are needing to be filled, you know, on an ongoing basis. And so I think there is a very viable business opportunity to not try and just exit with a sale, you know, to develop an audience that's kind of built around a specific need or a niche focus or whatever it might be. I still see there's great opportunity there, but at the same time, I do think you get some pretty big scale with the majors. They're just looking for big discounts based on enterprise solutions, and they want you to be able to process. You're used to processing five or six requests, and they want you to be able to process 50,000 a day. So it's like you have to scale yourself to service that type of client pretty quickly if you're going to do it. Wow. For me, this is just a social encouragement. and thank you so much for sharing. Around half a year ago we met and you talked about new technology and I was really interested about your perspective on that. What do you believe is the next move in technology within music? Like what do you think is gonna be the next cool thing that we need to relate to and actually work with as a music industry? Yeah, there's lots, right? I think the interesting thing is short form video has changed a lot of what we're doing. you know, the ways in which we think about the music that we're creating, but it's also challenging a lot when it comes to licensing and micro-licensing and this idea of like how people get access to music to put alongside video content. The thing that I'm much more interested in is like 14 and 15 year olds that are training their behaviors on what good content is based on short form video, vertical video content. So these people in five to 10 years aren't necessarily going to be seeking long form Amazon Prime.

Jakob Wredstrøm

you know, content and the same thing, unless Amazon also has short form offerings that are kind of similar, because they're used to these snackable content formats. And in a lot of cases, the consumption numbers, the predictability, all of that associated with licensing, like larger, you know, level content for this small piece of content that I'm not sure is gonna go anywhere is almost cost prohibitive. So what's happening is there's a whole level of production music licensing that's kind of coming underneath that, that's really interesting. And then obviously the... you know, the elephant in the room when it comes to this is just AI generative, you know, that can solve for some of the same issues. I think that's going to, that's going to pose an interesting thing. Cause the consumer is consuming this content at a rapid rate. Uh, older demographics are coming down into this, uh, into this consumption behavior too, you know, not to say that every older demographic is consuming, uh, TikTok, but Instagram pulling reels more this way. YouTube is pulling shorts more this way. Spotify's including. you know, short form video and sort of vertical scroll type experiences into it. So I just think we'll see a lot more of that. I would not be surprised if we see like Netflix and, you know, Disney plus and whatever adding shorter form stackable content to some of what they're doing too. They do it for kids already. Now it's more about like, how do they, you know, build that for an older audience? So I still see some foresight on that. And then, yeah, I think there's AI is sort of a it's a loaded term. because I love there's a chart somewhere that I've seen that shows like the 17 different verticals of AI that actually exist. And when we, you know, people say it, they just usually assume machine learning or LLMs or you know, whatever it might be in that. And there's lots of different pieces, but I think the split here specifically is the AI creation ecosystem. And obviously what that means for the future of the music that's being created and developed. I think a lot of, you know, older generations of artists are trying to protect their livelihood and that totally makes sense. I think the smarter people are the ones who are embracing it and figuring out, you know, how they participated in it and can this also give them scale in their business? That's where like the universal end-all thing becomes interesting to me or like, you know, when I see Grimes developing an entire AI behind her own voice to allow people to use it, it's like, okay, cool, that actually scales the amount of Grimes content out in the world and will build her brand

Jakob Wredstrøm

But I think it's gonna be this intersection of human plus machine creativity that is gonna develop. And the reality is that's how it's been for the last 15 years anyway. It's just only a small group of people had access to the tools because they were expensive because it was there just even utilizing auto-tune or Melodyne. Those are AI tools, right? They're analyzing your stuff and giving you real-time feedback on what the... should be based on a training of a machine that says it should sound like this. So we're going to move your voice here instead of here, because that's realistically where it should be. So I think, you know, we've had an intersection of AI stuff. Now it's just becoming a little bit more forefront and in certain places, people are being a little bit more public with it. So I think it'll be interesting to see how the consumer accepts or even is aware of the origin of the material and how much they care. Right? Because I think there's a big thing where artists say, you know, this is important to me and maybe we're going to have a dissection between, you know, mainstream music that has a AI sort of technological side of this and the human made stuff, which sort of might be, uh, I guess parallel to thinking about the art world, right? You have like the independent artists who are doing the small gallery shows that are really core to it. And then you have like big format artists that are reproductions and stuff that's being sold in a local poster shop. Uh, there's a difference between those. They're both art, but. different levels of art, right? So perhaps we might have something that way. And then the last side of the AI thing, before we move on is I think the analysis and the recognition software stuff is just starting to tickle kind of how far this can go, because obviously we are being designed around algorithms for our own consumption behaviors, but now there's a lot more algorithmic. you know, recommendation for making choices for sync or analyzing music libraries or, you know, I'm talking to a certain client partner right now on a product that analyzes your music and the entirety of the playlist ecosystem on all streaming platforms and figure out figures out where that song should belong as far as playlist placement that has the same, you know, alignment on those things. There's like, there's really interesting ways to think about analysis.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Of the entire internet, like OpenAI and Chat GPT obviously is sort of one of those like public spheres where it's scrolling, it's learned from the entirety of the internet and now you're able to query that for certain things. I think that becomes quite interesting in analyzing where your music could go or where it would fit or how it could fit or how you could differentiate or do things differently based on the ability to analyze and sort of recognize performance around some of that stuff. So I mean, there's lots of interesting spaces, but these are three that I'm sort of paying attention to on an ongoing basis. Based on this is going to be the last question of this session, but based on everything you've said and talked about, you know, some artists adapting technology as Grimes, if you were to give a tip to entrepreneurs about their mindset or their approach to new technology, what would that be like? How should they frame themselves towards it? Yeah, I think it's an interesting one because it becomes a generational proposition, right? Like if we talk about going back in this story to piracy, you had the... the notorious Lars from Metallica fighting against Napster and what was happening there. And that actually lost credibility for him with a younger audience, right? Because the audience saw that as the new norm or the reality. And the ones who embraced it ended up sort of winning in that period of time. Not to say that Metallica went anywhere, they didn't, but it's just a matter of like, there's... Anytime technology comes, the people who embrace it at the front end can benefit and potentially sustain on some of those things. I don't necessarily love the artistic narrative that's happening with AI right now. I think that's a really pessimistic way of looking at things. And the reality is like, if Meta, Google, Apple, Spotify, all of these major companies are investing in AI solutions for... you know, not only for their own core businesses, but also as new future states, they're not going to let them fail, right? They're going to push this forward. And there's a lot of people pushing this forward as a potential for what's there. We might see some regulation that's going to shape some of this when it comes to governments and choosing certain things. But I think to try and push off AI as if like, oh, no, I'm not going to do that because I believe in this like core artistry principle.

Jakob Wredstrøm

You can believe in that, but you still need to understand what's happening here. And there may be some ways to embrace parts of that, you know, uh, for, for the purposes like I'm, I'm writing some new music right now. And just to try it, I'm thinking about using Uber duck to help me track a vocal that I actually record the vocal recording of, but I want it to sound like a few, like nineties kind of grunge artists specifically. And so I might map three different voices together. Uh, you know, in order to record the vocal that sounds like mine, just for the purposes of trying it to see what, and I think that type of experimenting, that type of like engaging with these technologies, seeing what it can do, seeing what's possible. That's the only reason I still write and record music right now, right? I still play and enjoy it, but I record it because I want to have the empathy of like, what is it like to go through my own distribution system? What's the monitoring looking like on the back end of this? Like, what happens in this creation process? You know, I learn a lot more with real-time hands-on stuff. So I think, you know, if I can sort of embrace a narrative for this like a young entrepreneur, young artistic side is not to fear these changes, but like if you're not fully on board with them, that's okay, but you still need to understand them. You still have a responsibility to understand what's happening and sort of where it's going. And if you choose to go against it, have a narrative as to why, understand the innards of that instead of just saying, No, I don't want this because I think it's going to ruin artistry. The reality is if it does end up ruining artistry and you haven't figured out where you fit into that later, then you're just a victim. You know? Yeah. So George, right now you have your own consultancy company. It's called Green's Munch. And you do consultancy for different music companies and tech companies. Tell me a bit more about it. What's your focus right now? Yeah. I mean, I think in 2018, I left Spotify when we moved to Denmark. And I kind of had like a critical career moment of deciding which way do I want to go to. I want to stay in the bigger corporate ecosystem. I talked with lots of people about, you know, C level jobs inside some of that. And I think for me, it's just, I really value this, like the creative thinking time where you're really looking long tail at business strategy. And it was hard to find many of those roles inside companies where I was like, I could really enjoy doing this, but I know every company needs this specific service.

Jakob Wredstrøm

They need the time, they need somebody to challenge them to go beyond the three and six month sort of what's immediately in front of me, OKR cycle type thinking into where are we going and why? And what are the steps or what are the tools that we can utilize to get there philosophically? And that also adds up to founder and C-level dreams, personal interests as well as corporate interests and things that way. Starting Green Mountain Lodge was sort of the proposition of like a philosophical off-site, right? That there isn't an actual destination. Green Mountain Lodge is like a mindset as a principle and kind of that I can be a partner that comes in and works with people on thinking about where things go long term. And the cool thing about that is that's the same exercise I do with a company at the scale of Spotify would be the same exercise I do with an independent artist thinking about where they're going, right? It's about... putting together thinking about vision and mission and sort of goals and where you want to get, what are the tools to sort of roadmap in that way. And then because of this experience that I've had working across the entire industry, I'm looking at how different elements of this fit together to either build your brand, to build your business proposition, to build the technology behind it, to build the content or the curation, to build the musical proposition. whatever element is sort of required to do that, I can flex between these different things. So I think Green Mountain Lodge has been this now five year ongoing proposition that just works with lots of people on where they wanna go and why, and sort of what are the tools or what are the ways to think about doing that. And that has so, it looks so many different ways. Like people always ask, they're like, what do you do? And then my first question is, what do you do? And then I'll figure out how I can help you because each person's going to need a different set of services. So it's really across the entire music industry. It's even flexing a little outside of the music industry now, which has been fun. I've been doing some stuff in sport and fitness now and hospitality and a few other things that way. So, yes, that's the more the day to day execution today. So I'm working with lots of different people all over the world. Amazing, Josh.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I love this talk and I leave with it really quite hopefully, especially with the points about embracing that new technology and also just the investments of new technology and music scene in general just on the major side and independent side. Yeah, but that's sort of I think what we will have today. It's incredibly insightful. Yeah, and hopefully there'll be a lot of other talks about technology in the future. I have a lot of interesting guests lined up, but thank you so much for your time and thank you for being on. Sound Connections. Thanks for having me. Yeah.