Navigating the Music-Tech Landscape in Europe

Matthias Struble is a pioneer. He is one of the first to create music tech hubs in the world. He is the founder of Music Tech Germany and he's extremely knowledgeable about the industry. He gives a lot of insights that are really interesting and comes with a few encouraging words of how to approach it. This is the first time I've tried this. This is actually the second episode I'm doing with Matthias. Last time was... had a lot of technical challenges, but hey, Matthias, welcome back. Hey, thank you so much for giving me a second chance to be part of that. Yeah, no, I really wanted to be in a podcast and actually last time I thought was really exciting. But just to give everyone sort of an idea of who you are, you're called Matthias, you live in Germany, you're the president of MusikTech Germany and also done a lot of really exciting things. You have a very interesting profile because you're really in the middle, the intersection between music, technology. That whole innovation thing, but also community, which is really, really interesting. But could you just make a brief introduction of who you are and what you do? Yeah, my name is Matthias Strube, as you already said, and I'm running MusicTech Germany, which I also founded in 2017. MusicTech Germany is the federal association for music technology. And our members are basically those who create the tools for artists to be creative and for the music industry to have an economic income. So basically everything that's technological from like music production software to musical instruments to everything along the value chain until the far end. And but the other thing that like we have companies as members in our association, but we also have research institutions and academia as members because we believe that if we want to innovate the music ecosystem, these things have to go hand in hand. And yeah, that's why we created this. That's one of the reasons why we created this association. And yeah, now since 2017, I'm running it. And besides that, I'm a lecturer for music technology entrepreneurship at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU Berlin. I have a booking agency for creative technology artists, and I do consultancy for startups in the music tech space.

I love that. And we'll talk a lot about all those kind of things. What I think is really, really fascinating about MusiTeak Germany is I'm a pretty avid LinkedIn poster and reader. And what's really inspiring about what's happening MusiTeak Germany is that so many people are part of it. Like when you see the pictures, it's insane. You know, I've seen pictures where it looks like this, like 150 people at an event. That's not to be mixed up. So there's like, you think Germany, we have a membership based structure and we have around 40 members now, which is some companies and as I said, research institutions and also neutral people. But then the other thing that I'm doing is so what I started in 2018 is I wanted to like create a place, like a physical place for people in Berlin, at least where they can meet who all kind of like. Are interested in what's happening on the innovation side of music or in general about music tech. So I created this music tech meetup, which is a strange name, but it's exactly what it is. It's a meetup for people from all different backgrounds who can meet and hang out with each other, learn from each other. So I started this community in 2018. And I'm running these, I'm supposed to run these meetups on a B monthly basis, but it worked out at the beginning, then we had a pandemic and now I'm trying to like pick up on it and yeah, the community grew into like 2,100 people. Every meetup there's around 200 people coming. And I structured in a way that it's kind of like a super mini micro conference. So there's always an overall topic. And then. I invite three people who give inspiring presentations, not particular sales pitches, not at all. It's more about like inspiring the people in the room about the topic. It can be everything from AI in a certain use case to like musical instrument building to whatever. And after that, there's always free beer and it's always free entry. These are the two creators that I have and I'm always sticking with that. And yeah.

And that's what I'm doing in Berlin for the Berlin people. I would love to do that, roll it out on a global level. I get constant emails from people from all over the world who say, could you not live stream it? It's so interesting, but I don't make any money with it. I did it on a volunteer basis. And... I didn't make money, nobody got money. I got the venues for free, the beer for free before the pandemic, and now it's different. I have to pay for the venues and the beer companies don't give me that for free anymore. So I'm lucky that I got public funding from the Berlin Senate last year after asking for it for four years. And now I have at least enough money to pay for the venue and give the speakers a little bit of pocket money for the effort that they're bringing. Yeah. Because I think that's a general trend I see all over the place right now is that music technology landscape is really developing. And we'll come a bit back to that because that's sort of one of the main topics of the talk. But another main topic of the talk is obviously you as well. You here as a guest. And I'm really intrigued about your story. How did you get into music technology? It was actually a coincidence. I was always interested in music and I grew up with like I had to. Grow up with music, I had to start playing the piano with five. I went to a boarding school that had a whole musical focus. But then in 2012, when I finished my studies about business communications, I wrote my thesis about the opportunities for independent, the communication opportunities for independent artists in the digital age. And that was when things like web labels started and these kind of things. So I thought like, this is like a thing where it's going to be relevant. And then I thought, yeah, I'm gonna work in some kind of like, I don't know, music industry entity and bring in my knowledge, learn more. But before I did that, I went to India, traveled there for all the year, and then came back and did something totally different. Bought a bicycle trailer and then sold drinks in the parks of Berlin because I thought that's the thing and I'm gonna make money with that. But then my girlfriend came and said, look, I have a couple of friends who...

have this crazy thing that they build. It's an art installation, but they wanna make a product out of that. And they have no idea because they're all artists. You wanna have a look at it. And then she said, they can create music out of air. And I'm like, what? This is so insane. I wanna see that. So I went there and they had this dancer in there and she was amazing. And this Kinect camera, like motion capturing camera. And she was like moving and... the music was playing and when she stopped moving, the music would also stop. And I'm like, wow, this is insane. That's so cool. I wasn't really sure if this product or something that can be done with that, but I wanted to be part of that and learn more about that. And so, yeah, I talked with them and then we decided to think about creating a product out of that and getting a patent on the technology and all of that. And yeah, and we started Naguel Sounds, which was my first startup in 2011, 2012. And this is how my journey into music tech started. Yeah, it's interesting. And, you know, because that's right now, when I look at your LinkedIn, it says, well, I'm paraphrasing now that you're really interested about the impact, not so much about the finances per se. Is that like sort of where you come from? Is like, you're really interested in what kind of technology do within the music space? It's sort of like a very anti-capitalistic way of framing things. That's a really good reminder to change my LinkedIn story thing that I put in there, I don't know, eight or nine years ago. It's still true. I mean, I still believe that building something meaningful and building something that can actually enhance either the creative possibilities of an artist or enhance the economic opportunities of an artist is still something that I value the most. Like if somebody builds something that is meaningful and has an impact, no matter if they have the financial capabilities of doing that or not. I love if people get into music and tech with passion, but obviously having like the life that I had and the experience that I had, I think it's super important to somehow have an idea how you're going to fund this, how you have like.

The channels to raise money to get into like final, make sure that you have financial resources to actually live the dream that you have. But yeah, like we started Aguiltssans from a passion perspective. That's why probably, it's also one of the reasons why it probably didn't work out at the end. But yeah. You have to like there's a whole package that you need to bring onto the table in order to start a company. Thinking about like doing your market research, finding funding opportunities, and making a product that actually somebody needs in the best case. It's also a problem. So, um, I kind of like shifted that mindset a little bit. But there would still for my personal life like this is an absolute personal perspective, um, I see a lot. This is like a whole philosophical thing now that um my currency in life is experiences and not so much money. And I'm way richer on experiences that most of the people that I know, even like some millionaires that I know, they don't have the experiences that I have because I can jump between both worlds and they are stuck in their upper class world. And at the end of your life, what probably counts the most is the experiences that you made throughout your life and not the money that you have in your bank account. But then money helps a lot to make life easier. And that's why it also makes a lot of sense to... Do something in your professional life that makes money. Yeah, that makes sense. You know, you said you had 40 members of Musiq Tech Germany. Yeah. And a lot more members in the community. And you talk about passion versus business acumen, sort of, I'm paraphrasing now. The members you have in your organization, do they primarily come from passion music? Or do they come for technology? What's the mixture of people there? It's a whole, it's a total mixed bag. We have companies in there that make millions and millions every year. They have a strong focus on building their products in the best way they can to grow fast and to reach a certain market share. Maybe even with the mindset of like, probably having an exit at some point of time.

Then we have other startups or even individuals that they're still working on the same products in seven years because they're so passionate about it to bring in everything that they could do. And so there's not a general member that are stereotypical member of MusiTec Germany. It's like, it's really everyone from both sides of the table, like super business-orientated and super passion-driven. And then obviously we have the research institutions, which are... None of both. They just like, um, do the thing that they want to do without having any, um, yeah, any urgency to, to be in a business sense and super successful. Hmm. Well, we'll get back to that because that's really interesting conversation. I also have some thoughts and comments that we love to ask you about or, or throw around with you, but, but after Nagel sounds, you, you started Wicked Works. And I assume that was a bit more commercial enterprise. So like, what is that? And what is that all about? There was a lot in between Wicked Work and Naguel Sounds. So after Naguel Sounds, during Naguel Sounds, I attended a thing called Music Tech Fest. These days it's called MTF Raps. And Music Tech Fest was basically a gathering of individuals from the entire world that all had like some kind of like... innovator gene in them. They came from different industries, from the automotive industries, from the space industry, from whatever, but they met to work with new technologies and build cool stuff with music. So music was the social clue, was the message. And I was there in startups and people with cool ideas could present there and showcase their stuff. And I went there the first time in 2013 or 2012 with Naguel Zons and then every year to their yearly gatherings. And the community was amazing and awesome. And they had one in Berlin. And yeah, I kind of like, laughed at a lot and I wanted to somehow get involved with them again. And when I left Naguel Sounds, I did something totally different. There was 2015, the refugee situation. I started a refugee camp in Berlin and managed it for half a year. But then I went back to my music tech world and I started working for the management team for Music Tech Fest. And that was basically

One of the main reasons why I started MusicTech Germany afterwards, because they have this huge community of, I don't know, almost 7,000 people from all over the world, but they only meet once a year. And there's not really a way of communicating with each other throughout the year. And there's no network that is in place. So when I left MusicTech TechFest, I decided to start MusicTech Germany. But then MusicTech Germany, I discovered, okay, this is something that's needed out there, and I'm super happy that it went the way it went. But I also need to make money because we have really low membership fees in order to make everyone be able to join the network. So I started Wicked Work and that was basically a consulting agency for innovation in the creative industries. And we hosted conferences, we curated conferences and trade shows, we went to festivals and curated them. So kind of like everything around creativity and technology where some consultancy was needed. And yeah, so this is the first thing that I did after Music Tech Fest or Music Tech Germany to make a living somehow. Yeah, and you still have a brand that you offer to this day besides your consultancies. That's also something with Wicked. Yeah, Wicked Artists. And this is this. Yeah. This came out of Naguel Sounds. That actually goes back to Naguel Sounds because... So with Naguel Sounds, well, I didn't say that so far, but... we created this technology where we could translate any kind of data into music. And we first took the dance movement in front of a Kinect camera and translated that into music in real time. We never finished a product. We wanted to make a product for the Xbox. We never finished that for certain reasons. But what we did is we created a prototype that was fully functional and what was capable of letting two dancers in front of the camera dance with each other and create music at the same time. And somehow we got hired from like agencies and event organizations to perform with professional dancers all over the world and in Miami and in like, like lots all over Europe. And one day we kind of like opened up for Katie Melua and that like, that was so insane. I'm like, wow, this there's a real demand for that. And

Then I talked with my friend Dennis, who was a journalist, or is still a journalist for German radio stations, and he worked at Radio Eis back in the days here in Berlin. And he interviewed me for Naguel Sounds, and then we became friends and we stayed in touch with each other. And then we talked one day and I said, look, I guess that there's a lot of companies out there that would love to have like a different experience, a performative experience on the events, like be it the general assembly or be it the opening of a new venue or a conference. something that's more related to their brands, to their business image, rather than having nothing wrong with like singer songwriters or rock bands, but rather than having like a singer songwriter or rock band at the end of a general assembly, I'm pretty sure that they're interested in like innovative artists that we have in our agency now and to book them to show how innovative the company is. Then we started Wicked Artists and this is like a booking agency for creative technology artists. And we have now around 12 artists in our roster. They all do different things with technology. They all do amazing things from robots that are built to produce and perform techno music or other electronic music to one Bertolt Meyer who was born with one arm. And he kind of like hacked his prosthesis to control a modular synth only by his brainwaves, only by thinking about like controlling the pitches and filters and stuff on the modular synth. And to Paul Drexel, who does performing, who performs with AI, and he started that already, like, I don't know, four years ago. So we have a mixed bag of different artists who do different things with technology and showcasing how technology can enhance the creative possibilities for performing artists by also creating a cool show with it. Yeah, that's a really interesting concept and I've looked through the Instagram and we really see a lot of cool videos going on. Going back to music technology and the founders there because one of the things I'm curious about is when you look at

the music technology landscape in Norway, which is, you know, as far as I know, seven or eight companies. And in Denmark, maybe around the same. You know, I've tried to stay informed that's sort of what I could figure out. So let's say two countries combined, there's 15 to 20 companies. In any other industry, that would be a unimaginably low number of music technology startups. Why do you believe it is like that?

I can't really speak for the infrastructure in Denmark and Norway. I do have friends in Denmark and particularly Norway who run music tech startups there. And I know that they are super like, especially Norway, you know, they have the NTNU in Trondheim, which is a university where you can actually study music technology. And they have a lot of smart people coming out of that.

I really don't have any idea, but I think that they probably get hired by other companies to work for them. They're not particularly in Norway, maybe. Or it's kind of like difficult to start a company there, maybe, because they don't have the resources, they don't have the environment to actually connect with others. Yeah, that's probably one of the reasons, but it's really hard to judge northern countries that are so far away. But it's the people that I speak to from like... particular companies from Norway that I can talk about is like Master Channel, which is one German guy and a Norwegian guy. They started out of a research project and they were scientists and they started in Bergen because one of the two lived there and the other one lived in Germany and Germany is probably also not as easy as you would think to start a company and yeah. And it's also spread out. I think that in Norway people are kind of like spread out through the country and not in so dense environments than we have here in Germany, at least in Berlin. Or when you go to the UK, most of the stuff is happening in Manchester, London. And yeah, so there's different, most countries have these hubs where people do stuff in music tech and in Norway, there's Trondheim, which is far away from Bergen and Bergen, and then there's not much in between. But even if you look at Germany, you know, 40 companies in music take Germany. That's one of them. Because it's only 40, I think... You know, I guess we could have been more, or we could be more. It's just that I didn't put as much effort in it as I wanted to, to actually get more members on board because I was busy the last 12 months, basically. figuring other things out and building a bigger music tech ecosystem in Europe, which wasn't more complicated than I would have thought. But from next year on, I'm pretty sure that if we would have a conversation by the end of next year, it's probably going to be 80 companies. There's so many out there. There's so many underdogs out there. There's so many people and companies that are not well known and they are not visible yet because they are still somewhere in their...

in their basement or in their garage. And we don't have this kind of accelerator structure that other countries have. So there's more, there's way more in Germany than the 40s that we have. Because one of the, of course, one of the agendas for this podcast is also understanding the music tech landscape. And I'm also involved in music technology to some degree. My company, Capella, owns a large stake in a blockchain-based ticketing system called Mintix that I help out with a lot. And when I look into the landscape of music technology, I also get a bit worried, like because it seems like it's super underrepresented in the street. I do get a bit happy when you say there's more players than you would think. But what is the consequences of, let's say these 40 extra players you think would happen next year, the consequences of them not being tied into a community. What is that? How do you mean they're not tied into a community? They are tied into a community. Yeah, well, the companies that are not. So the small companies that are working in the garages and really don't have that infrastructure of community and network. That's another reason why I started MusiTech Germany back in the days is that when I traveled with Naguel Sounds to all these conferences, it was a totally new feel for me to go to conferences and music industry events. But then I met other startups and they were pretty rare back in the days, but there were other startups. Some of them did really similar stuff, but they didn't know from each other. So it was really hard for them to... I was like, there are so many synergies. If you guys would meet with each other, then you could a lot learn from each other. So I think that the companies that are still on their own, that are still hustling around and they don't have access to a network that we have established or in other countries, other organizations have established, these companies who are outside of that network... they have a way harder time actually taking the next steps, getting access to different resources and also learning about maybe competitors that could be collaborators out there because they might do something similar but have a different kind of like, I don't know, business case or different kind of target audience. So I think that the key in music tech in general is to learn from each other and see if there's any collaboration potential

amongst each other because it doesn't make any sense if like there's five companies, like I don't know how many companies I've seen who tried to like build the next streaming service and how many of them have failed and it's obvious why they failed. But there's also other products that people are trying to build and they build next to each other and that doesn't make any sense. The music industry is very fragmented and very complicated but then at the end of the day the problems are pretty clear and the solutions can be only achieved if people work with each other. So that's why I think the companies who are left out of the community, they lack that knowledge, that network access and a lot of other things, which is extremely valuable in the innovation space and the music ecosystem. Yeah, because especially we've had talks on this podcast with WikiNOWmend and Toro Picare and one of the things they talked a lot about is how network-based the music industry is. And when you talk about music technology, and you think just about technology, you might think it's very much about the product. But there's so much about the network and sort of the way you talk and the way you act and the places you are that really defines also the opportunities. When I've been traveling to conferences and I've represented what I represent, there's a lot of things that happen, opportunities that happen just by being there, by just having a beer with the right person that you wouldn't get otherwise. Is that something that you experienced the founders having issues with or is that sort of a revelation? They go through that, whoa, the music industry is also network-based. Yeah, I totally agree. The music industry is a full-on network business and it's a people business as well. It's a lot about who knows who and who has the credibility and the trust from someone else. Probably one of the biggest problems and challenges for entrepreneurs and startups is to, like if they have to build a technological, decent product that would work,

The next step that they have to take is first how to find an audience, like their target audience, and then how to get into an industry that's pretty... It's a network industry, but it's also pretty close. If you have a startup that might... I don't hate that term, but that might disrupt a certain stage in the value chain. A lot of traditional music industry players, and I'm talking mostly bigger labels and publishers and even managers, sometimes, they're kind of like, okay, what is this thing that you're presenting to me? My business is going well, so I don't need you, I don't want you, so you don't get a foot in the door. If you don't know anyone who gives you the first opportunity, who opens the door for you. That's why I think as a founder and as a music tech startup, even if you have an amazing product, you need to have this kind of connection to the certain people in the music industry. That's why I think it's really, really important that these both worlds, the traditional music industry and these music tech entrepreneurs and startups build more bridges with each other and see if they can do something together in order to innovate the future music ecosystem from within rather than jumping again on the backs of big tech giants. Hmm, that makes sense. What is your... view on the financial potential of music technology in general? Is this a good industry to get into as an entrepreneur? I mean, if you have a choice, like, I don't know, probably real estate and insurances is probably way better, but it's also way more boring. It's definitely not the industry where you should go into if you want to get rich fast. It's just so difficult compared to other industries. But Then on the other hand, it's also so much fun and music tech people are usually the people who are super curious, people who are super interested in what's the next big thing in technology. They experiment, they want to find out. The music tech industry, I would say, is probably next to the porn industry, the ones who adapt to new technology the fastest and are the ones who also often fail.

And, but at the end of the day, if you want to be on point or be like one of the first people to work with a new technology, then the music tech space is a good space. If you're going, like if you have just finished university and you were deciding in which kind of industry you want to go and you want to want to make a lot of money, I would recommend going into banking or something like that. Do you think over time that the industry, music technology industry, become more attractive for these financial gains or is it something that's going to stay for a long time? I mean, as long as the music industry stays as complicated as this, the music tech world is also going to be really extremely hard to navigate. As an investor, it doesn't matter if you're VC or if you're an angel or whatever, you have to make a decision. It's your money or you're kind of like taking care of the money of others. But at the end of the day, you need to decide what I'm going to do with that money in order to get a return of the investment. And with music tech... products, it's often very difficult to foresee if this is going to take off or not. The problem here is that there's so many stakeholders involved in order for a product to be a success other than in other industries. So that's why I think it's going to stay like that because the music tech space, and this is a definition of music tech, for me music tech is everything that's not whistling,

The whole everything basically that happens in the music space these days is technology-based and then it depends how far you take it. If you talk about production lines of merchandising tools and making that more sustainable, I count that to music tech as well because at the end the merchandise ends up with a musician sold in a venue, but it's still kind of music tech. And if you... see the entire picture of like products and services out there that are technology driven for music or artists, then it's a lot of opportunities that you could go into as an investor. But at the end of the day, it's a risky business because so many different dots have to connect with each other. And yeah, I guess I still believe that the way out there is probably like what people, what like If artists would decide to start a kind of like independent artist with a big outreach who have a lot of network out there, if they would decide to start a fund that's not driven by any major labels or anyone that only sees music as a money-making machine, but with the idea of like, okay, we want to invest in new startups and we want to take them to the next level.

would start a fund and would invest in a small startup that only has two customers, they would immediately, they have probably other scaling issues then, but they would have the power to make a startup rise or fall. And right now, there's a lot of other actors involved that decide if a startup can rise or fall. And that's a problem. And then you have these hypes. are also a big issue for investors to understand if it's a hype or if it's an actual real opportunity, this new technology. So, yeah, there's a lot of different things that are called into this. Yeah, that's really interesting what you're saying. But also, you know, you keep on returning to investors, which in many cases are essential people in order to scale a product or make it a finance business within technology. It's really hard to bootstrap ambitious companies within technology. So you say that's a problem with the communication and this problem with them understanding what to invest in and also you maybe also saying that the risk is probably higher than other places. How do you work with that aspect of the industry? I'm trying to educate as much as I can. I'm trying to provide resources and connections to people. Like if I could like funds or accelerators coming to me and say, look, you're looking for startups in that area and we don't know how we find them and what's really feasible and whatnot. I'm trying to help them understand what the technology can do and what the challenges and risks are. They do the diligence themselves. They know what's like they have. their thing that they know good and they have to believe in some kind of startup when they're pitching if they are capable of doing it or not. Like if you look at the first pitch decks of the big companies, it's like they look really shitty and at the end of the day they are worth millions and billions. And then you have other companies like Ableton or Bitwig, which is digital audio workstations. They don't have any investors at all and they also kind of like scaled up big because they just invented something that...

people actually wanted. So it's really, really hard. If I would be an investor that wants to invest like into different startups, I would probably do it in music tech because that's my industry. But if you're an investor that comes from another industry, I don't know if I would recommend that person to invest in a music tech startup. I think the best products to invest in is the industry that you know the most about. rather than relying on consultants and sometimes dodging people that trying to convince you for something just because they want to do it for their own favor. Yeah. And that's the really complex problem that I meet as well. Like obviously the way that I run my company, which we right now define as a venture studio is, you know, facilitating founders and the ideas and help them develop and also find financing. And we've been lucky all financing efforts we've had, we've landed. but also that sort of narrative and communication you do is really, really difficult. We haven't fundraised a lot. We fundraised around 500,000 euros across different companies, but it's still a start. But what we're really working on is sort of, can we tell parallel stories about our industry and our potential that they do recognize? So we're really experimenting with that narrative and it's really difficult. But I also hope... Did you build up yourself like a kind of like a... Like when you started raising the first money, Did you have already contacts to a lot of investors? Or like... No, we started from scratch. So right now we have 14 investors that have invested over 25 small investments. But the way I did is I just, pretty random, just found the first guy who had a bit of money that we related to. So we were renting an office space and the guy who owned the office space. I sort of explained it about the rise of worth of IP rights and acquisitions, especially with focus on hypnosis, because I used to do a fintech startup with that focus. Actually it's called Tamber and whatever Jukebox is right now, we tried five years ago. All right. Obviously we were too young and dumb and didn't know enough, but at least we were very good at that narrative. So I basically just told him that we were starting a music company. We don't really know what we're doing, but I'm good at telling stories.

And potentially this could be worth something. And he's like, okay, I go in with a small amount of money. And that, those amounts just increased and increased. And now we're in the process of closing a new round. So at the end of this year, we'll probably be around 650, 700,000 euros in total of what we do. So what I hope to do is becoming really, really good at telling that story and helping others tell that story. Because I, as you say, you know, the narrative towards investors is essential, but also maybe one of the most difficult parts besides the complexity of the industry. True, but would you also say that the network effect that we just talked about in the music industry, that if you don't know anyone, it's really hard to get a foot in the door. Isn't it the same with investors? Like, I don't know who told me that, but I think a year ago, there were like, on whole crunch base, there were like only a handful of investors that invested in music tech companies. So finding these people and like doing cold acquisition emails is anyway, pointless and getting someone who knows someone that makes you an intro. It's insane. So I think there should be a music tech network of investors who invest in music tech. That would make it way easier for startups to actually, also for investors to validate if something is valuable or not. So this is missing. Yeah. And that's not just talk about new ideas, but that's something that I've really been missing when I look out on. the different music tech communities that's starting all over Europe is, how do we get money then? Because the investors we have, none of them have invested in music associated companies before. But now they're open. So some of the investors that came in with small amounts came in with more money in a new venture that we're representing. So hopefully you can have some sort of snowball effect of information because... Obviously, every single time I send out a board update or a new pitch deck, they learn more and more about the industry and the potential of it. So I believe that Europe, MusicTech Europe, reading needs, that sort of information and network. How to structure it, I have no idea. But yeah. Yeah, that's the thing, like to structure that is a thing and also to, you know, like MusicTech Europe is basically...

Done, like we are founded, just the paperwork is not finished yet. But there's lots of things that we want to do. And there's also not a question like who's going to do all these things. And we have all these networks and organizations, but everyone is like, kind of like also having their daily life. And like having someone who kind of like aggregates a list of investors and communicates with them and kind of, I don't know, starts, I don't know, a fun with them or whatever it's going to be. This is a real challenge and you need to have either a lot of savings and a lot of time to actually do that or somebody needs to take on that challenge because they are in that field anyway and for them it's like way easier for someone that doesn't have all the context for that. But yeah. That's one of the ideas of MusiTech Europe, to bring everyone closer together. And even if you look at all the creative European calls out there for funding for the creative industries, there's a lot for audiovisual film and there's a lot for games. And then there's not so much for music and there's little for music tech. And that's also because even with them, these people who sit there in the European Commission, they don't know really what music tech is and to define that term, to tell people what it actually is capable of doing this industry and how much money is made in that industry, how much taxes are paid, how much people are employed in that industry. So it's a real big industry. I would like, it's really, really big, but nobody has ever done like a study about the economic potential of that industry, which would also help to raise attention for the... for investors and for all the public funding structures. So yeah, there's a lot to do, but we have to do it step by step. And now you talk about step by step and you talk about, you know, music tech Germany and music tech Europe. And as far as I've understood, you know, I don't know, maybe there's a tiny bit of compensation in it, but I would assume there's a lot more work than there's monetary value for you as an individual. How...

How do you balance that and what's your emotions towards putting so many hours towards building a better future for others? You know, like there's really only a little money in that, but I knew that from the beginning. No, I didn't know that from the beginning on. I thought that I can get some public funding in Germany to actually start this association and then maybe even pay me a little salary. That's not in it anymore. Like it's really a volunteer work. But you know, as I said at the beginning, so I'm really passion-driven. See, what really gives me a lot more than having a big salary when working for MusicTech is that MusicTech Germany is that we're now building MusicTech Europe. There's now 11 countries who have created some sort of similar structure that I did with MusicTech Germany in 2017. So having like other countries following that example and knowing about the importance and this is the most important part. All the people in these different countries like José who does it in Barcelona, Matilde and the people in France, there's like Ana in Italy, like all these people, they put a lot of passion in building this network and structure basically for free just with the, sounds weird, but the altruistic idea of like creating a better future for the music ecosystem and not making... hack people, destroy the existing music industry. It's all about building bridges with each other. And to do this, we have to start bootstrapped, if you want to call it that way. And maybe at some point, there will be a way of financing this entire structure. But then at the same time, as long as there's no money involved, everybody's doing it for the reason of being passionate about that. And... That's a way better driver to grow a network than having big institutions financing it. We had certain companies that wanted to be part of MusiTech Germany, which we denied because we said, if you come on board, if we take your money, then you dictate what we are doing and then we're not going to do that. So yeah, it's a passion project. And when I do the meetups here and there's like 200 people coming in like...

Half of them telling me how thankful they are to have this opportunity to meet like-minded people. This is way worse than all the money in the world. Sounds weird. I can say that because I make my money somewhere else. If I wouldn't make my money somewhere else, then I wouldn't probably talk the way I do. But yeah, it's also a personal thing, I guess. Yeah, but it's very admirable. But it's also conflicting to hear it because, you know, as music tech entrepreneurs, I think one of the things that are really lacking is financial incentive. Because one of the things that I'm really concerned about is the lack of brain power and knowledge that chooses not to go into the industry just because it's simply not attractive enough. There might be first time founders that dabble in music technology and they figure out, okay, wow, this is not for me and they go somewhere else and put their efforts. What is your thoughts about, let's call it the lack of economic potential across the board? And how does that affect the people going into the industry? Yeah, you know, I just had this last week at the last meetup, there were like eight people that were there from the same company because the company closed down and they came with the hope to find a new job at the meetup of meet people who could offer them a job. And half of them said, if I don't find a job in the next month, I'm gonna switch the industry. And I'm like, yeah, but this is like, people like you leave the industry, like we're losing the talents that you have. Like it's really vital to have people like you in the industry. But yeah, as you said, if there's no economic incentive and there's not enough, like if I have worked in the music tech industry for 10, 15 years, I'm not going to start with a startup with a salary of 500 bucks a month. So I did that when I started Naguel and Salons. But I wouldn't do that today. So the more experienced you are, the less you're willing to go back to where you started, obviously nobody wants to do that. But then the opportunities, how we say that the air gets thinner upward. So there's like only a few companies left up the ladder where you could actually make a decent amount of money with the expertise that you have and the talent that you bring into a company. I don't know if that's comparable to other industries because the money that is made in the music tech space compared to other industries.

Is still pretty little if we're not talking about Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple and like the big guys. But if we're talking about other music tech companies, there's not a lot of companies up there that make a huge amount of revenue in order to pay like hundreds of thousands of salaries per year. And that's probably because of the industry. The industry is fragmented, but then at the same time, there's only there's an aggregation of them. Certain products in one space. Like if you look at what happened with what Native Instruments tried to sound by, then with like all the others that then tried to be part of that conglomerate. People are trying to like aggregate everything in one space. And then there's no place left for entrepreneurs and startups to rise. And that's a problem because then the economic incentives to support these startups who might have a similar or even better idea is pretty little. And... And then we have the same kind of like corporate structure that also destroys innovation in some sense. The bigger the companies get, the less innovative they are. Yeah, that makes sense. And it's super complex and, you know, we need to figure out as an industry how to navigate all of that. True. One of the things that I'm a bit hopeful towards is the rise of the market cap for independent music, which seems like there's in general, there's a tendency towards non-aggregated companies that are also gaining popularity, both in the arts side, but also the music company sides. Do you think that's going to spill over into music technology? I think that... I'm not a big fan of major labels, that's no secret. I don't think that it's wise for a young artist to sign up for a major label because they can destroy... not destroy, but it changes your career different, definitely, and not always for the better. What I think is that, so we haven't, it's kind of cool that we didn't talk about AI the entire conversation, but what I think is like, there needs to be certain solutions out there that you can only be part of if you own all your rights, or if you're signed with a.

Independent entity that understands your needs and actually works with you rather than uses you to work for yourself. And if there are more opportunities in that world for an artist, it will be a decision to say, okay, I'm going to sign up with a major label, but then I can't be part of that world because all the services that people provide out there can only be used by people who own all the rights. I know it sounds quite weird, a lot of music industry people will say it sounds pretty dumb, but at the end of the day, owning all the rights will be the way to go in the future because of all the tools at hand that we have already these days. And it's all possible, it just takes a lot of effort. And I think if we can narrow down the effort and educate a lot more artists, then the amount of artists who are going to stay independent or sign with cool independent labels will be way more than major labels. So at the end of the day, I think this will be the crowing piece of the pie in the future. Hmm. That makes sense. This has been a really interesting talk and it was actually quite different from last time, which shows that we appreciate, I feel that very stimulated in the conversation. But if you were to give some advice to upcoming entrepreneurs in this space, what would that be? Do your research, do your homework. The first thing that I would say is like, you have to figure out if there's someone else out there building something like you have in mind. And the second thing is like, do your research if there's an actual need for your product or service. Like you don't have to solve a problem. That's probably the best case scenario if you have an actual solution for an actual problem and you know it's a problem because you did like, I don't know, a questionnaire or I don't know, you did your research, but. If you don't solve a problem and you build a product that is just like a new tool for whatever, then make sure that there's a market for that. And if you haven't done these two things, like figuring out if there's someone else out there and figuring out if it's actually an audience out there that wants it, then I wouldn't touch it. And if there's this whole AI automatic generative music thing that's happening at the moment, it's the same with the NFT hype that we had a couple of years ago.

80% of all of them are going to die in two years because they are not going to keep on taking off. And that's why you should rather have something that's more unique than just swimming with the, with like everyone else. Yeah, that's great advice. And I think that really also speaks into the reason why it's so important to research is also really important. It's really hard to get information, which means that the research is even more important. because you really need to dive deep. And that's also one of the reasons why we're doing this podcast is to, I've had huge problems with finding out what I should think and how I should go and what I should do and who I should talk with. And maybe this is a part of a very big puzzle that needs to be laid about informing about certain perspectives. Yeah, that's why it's so important to have a podcast like yours for young entrepreneurs to listen to different perspectives from people. all over the industry. That's why that's cool that you're doing that. Thank you. That was like a leading compliment almost. No way. Well, thank you so much. This has been brilliant. I will probably meet you soon at one point, but thank you so much for being on here. Thank you for your time and we'll talk soon. Thank you for being there, for having me. Bye bye.