The Future of Music at BandLab Technologies

He expects there to be one billion music creators on the planet by the world 2030. And I don't disagree with that, much in thesame way that Instagram transformed our phones into cameras to make everyone a photographer. I think that tools like BandLab are goingto make the ability for people to make songs as every day is taking a photo.

Imagine giving 100 million people the abilityto make music that wasn't able to do it before. Well, that has already happened. Danny Deo is head of communications for BandLab,and we're going to talk about BandLab, its implications, and the philosophies behindeverything that's happening in this space. Hey guys, and welcome back to Sound ConnectionsPodcast.

Today we have Danny Deo in the studio. Welcome, Danny. Thank you. Happy to be here. Danny, I've been quite excited to speak toyou. You have an extremely interesting positionat an extremely interesting company we're going to talk about today. It is BandLab and you're head of communications. Could you just for us explain a tiny bit whatis it you do?

Oh gosh, just within the construct of BandLabor - Yeah, yeah for now. For now, okay. So my full title is head of communicationsand creator insights. The - A little addendum at the end is because welook at storytelling not just through an artist perspective, but also through interestingcorrelations in data that we see.

For example, I think one of the pieces ofdata that a lot of people know about BandLab that's really interesting is that the majorityof our users are under the age of 24. And a lot of them were using BandLab on theirphone versus their desktop computer. So. Those are just a couple of examples to showhow we look at storytelling, not just through the amazing success stories of the artiststhat come up on the platform, but also how the platform is being used and who's usingit.

Interesting and I think you might be a perfectperson to talk about what's happening with band lab and why it's so much in the mediaright now But before we dive into it, I'm just gonna announce this is a survive partnershipepisode So survive is a conference in Norway that talks about music tech investor focusand you're gonna be one of the speakers there and one of the guests there I'm looking verymuch forward to meeting you in person But that's coming up in a couple of weeks.

So if some of the audience wants to be there,please go. It's a great conference. I'm going to be there myself. So let's grab a coffee and I'm sure that youcan meet Danny as well and talk with her. But I'm excited for that. Danny, before we go into that in a coupleof weeks, I just need to understand a bit more who I'm speaking with and the audiencewants to know. So could you use a couple of minutes explainingto me who are you, what have you done, and what has happened until this day?

What you do and what you do? Wow, that's... A big question that I'll try to keep it toa couple of minutes and make sure it's true stay for everyone who's listening. So I have a very unusual background and alsoan unusual trajectory in terms of where I started versus where I am now and what I'mdoing now.

For the majority of my life, I was a fulltime touring DJ and a music producer. I am still a DJ and a music producer, butfor... most of my life that was the primary way thatI made an income for myself. And that really gave me obviously a reallygood understanding of what it means to operate within the music industry from an artist's perspective and also from an independent perspective, which is I think crucially important.

So I spent a lot of time on the road, sleepingon people's couches and releasing tracks on dance labels that people may ormay not have heard of, like Monster Cat and DIMMAC. And from there, I wound up also getting intojournalism.

So I spent some time at publications likeDJ Mag, where I was editor at large for the US imprint. And then I spent several years at The Verge,which some people may know. It sits under Vox Media. They cover... at Consumer Technology and I led their music,tech, and music policy coverage for quite some time. And then from there, I went into music techand I was at Output for a time.

Some people who make music might know thename Output because they make amazing plugins like Arcade and they also were making incrediblestudio hardware. So right now I'm... sitting at an output desk, which I still believeis aesthetically one of the finest pieces of studio furniture that you're ever goingto find on the planet.

And then that led me to where I am today atBandLab as Head of Communications and Creator Insights. So it's not linear. It's a non -linear journey to say, oh, hey,I was a full -time performing artist for 15 years and now... I sit in a senior leadership position at aglobal music tech company.

You don't get a lot of stories like that. No, you don't. I speak to a lot of people within this spacethat I don't hear that, no? Yeah. That's great. Wow. Interesting. And I think that's really important to havethose journeys as well. Like at the end of the day, we work with music,we work with artists, and everything we do is centered around that. So having the in -depth understanding of that,I can only imagine is a positive in many of these journeys.

Yeah, I think it's positive for a varietyof reasons because I think a lot of new technology is looking to solve pain points. And I think it's especially important to havepeople that have experienced those pain points. And as someone who really was, I was doing all my own booking, all my own touring, negotiating all of my own contracts with labels, I haveexperienced.

a lot of great successes, but I have alsoexperienced all of the roadblocks and the potential ways that artists can get screwedover that exists on the planet. I've entered into bad deals. I have not been paid out on contracts or hadcontracts exercised the way that they were supposed to.

So, I mean, just like being a part of thefriction. that exists in the music industry is, I think,really important when you're part of a team that's trying to build solutions. Yeah. Well, I believe so as well. Okay. Now we're going to venture into the topicof today, and we've set the context of who you are and what you speak about and whatnarrative you come from, and I think that's really interesting.

But you work at a company, as we've said afew times now, called BandLab, which is really interesting. And the last couple of months, well, the lastmonth, weeks, been a lot of headlines about BandLab becauseit's a company that's been growing fast for many years, but they recently hit 100 million users on the platform, which is quite an incredible number.

So obviously there's something that's doneright. They've seen something happening in the creatorspace that's been correct. But to set the scene for the conversationwe're having, could you explain to the audience who might not know about BandLab or in depthwhat BandLab is? The short explanation is we are a social musicmaking platform.

I know that can feel very abstract. Now what is housed underneath that is a varietyof music making tools that serve you as a music maker from inspiration and your veryfirst note all the way to a finished track and distribution. On the platform there is...

a function called Studio, which if you makemusic, you would otherwise know as ADAW, Digital Audio Workstation. Within that, there are royalty -free samplesthat you can use. There's a whole host of plugins that we'vedeveloped that you can use. There's the ability to master. There's stem separation.

There are some AI functions such as a toolcalled Song Starter, which... will help you if you have writer's block andyou just want an idea, it'll provide a little bit of MIDI for you to get started. And then there's a whole host of ways to collaborate with other folks on the platform. I think one of the things that is really excitingto me is that many, many people can collaborate on one song at the same time.

I've actively been in projects working onmusic where I can see the other person that I'm working with. actually draw in notes and adjust things inreal time as I'm also adjusting things in real time. So that's pretty incredible for me as a creatorwho likes to collaborate with other people. So it does a lot.

I know that in one breath that can sound prettyoverwhelming. I think, you know, one of the largest distinctionsthat we have is it's not just free, but it's available across devices. So... For example, when you look at something likeGarageBand, that's constrained to the Apple ecosystem, right?

The vast majority of the world is not on Applephones, they're on Android. And so BandLab is there as a free tool thatworks across all platforms and devices and is available to everyone, no matter if theyhave an iPhone or not, whether they have an Android or not.

It is a place where... you can exercise your creativity and do itfor free no matter what tools you have at your disposal. That sounds amazing. One of the things that actually struck meabout BandLab is how little I've actually heard of BandLab throughout the years. It might be because I've been in a silo, butlike the way that I see BandLab from my side, and correct me if I'm wrong, is you guys arehyper -focused on creators in a way that it's really about all these people that couldn'tmake music before they're unable to do it, or people who maybe have a hard time gettingstarted, they get this extra help.

And the reason why I haven't heard about BandLab, for a while, I think it's actually becauseI come from music production myself. I'm a master's in music production. And when I heard about BandLab the first time,like, oh, this is like some, you know, someone who doesn't need to make music and wants toget started and have fun, like playing in the app, like a game. And that's what BandLab does. So it hasn't been sort of on my radar untillike this company, like it was suddenly amazingly huge, which somewhat is embarrassing, butalso quite interesting because you guys have differentiated yourselves so much.

that people like me might not even have noticedthat it came along. And again, I might misunderstand it, but that'smy own narrative, which I think is interesting. I think you're touching on a few things. And if it makes you feel any better, rightbefore I joined BandLab, I also had never heard of BandLab.

It does make me feel better. Thank you so much. Like you, I was already quite far along inmy journey as someone who was a music producer. And so I already had my own ecosystem of toolsthat I am comfortable with and I use on a daily basis. I'm an Ableton user. I don't know what DAW you use, but because I'm already locked into Ableton, I'm not necessarily searching for other solutions.

I already have my solution, right? But what I've discovered is actually BandLab does fit into my workflow in ways that areunexpected. Because if I'm working in a project on Ableton,I've got to have my physical laptop with me. And if I have an idea, I have to break itout and I have to open up the program and I have to do it with this big piece of equipment.

A lot of times I'm not traveling with my laptopor I have an idea, but it's quite to open up this giant piece of software andto sketch the idea in. So BandLab serves as a, we'll say, a placefor musical sketching for me. And then I'm able to take those ideas andthen fully bake them out in Ableton later.

And I think that's a use case that is maybenot as talked about. because it really isn't our primary focus,but there is a place for things like BandLab with folks that are already in Pro Tools orFL Studio or Ableton because it's on the thing that you carry with you everywhere all thetime anyway.

But also, to your point, a lot of the peoplethat are on the platform are people that... we're not making music previously. We're seeing this really interesting expansionof the word musician and the word creator right now. And even our CEO, Meng, had an interview withMusic Business Worldwide a few months ago where he said he expects there to be one billionmusic creators on the planet by the end of 2030.

And I don't disagree with that, much in thesame way that... Instagram transformed our phones into camerasto make everyone a photographer. I think that tools like BandLab are goingto make the ability for people to make songs as every day is taking a photo.

And so we've got this expanding superhighwayof the types of people that are engaging in making music. And to me, I think that's almost sociallyand morally really important because Up until 150 years ago or so when modern commercialization of music came into play, music really existed as a community function and as a service,right?

And we now have this modern thought that ifyou're going to enter into music, there must be some aspirational arc to that, right? You've got to, you're either a hobbyist inyour bedroom, or you're aspiring to be Taylor Swift. And really, there are so many avenues thatexist outside of that dichotomy, and there should be places where people can engage inmaking music, not because they have any aspiration to commercialize it or to make money or togig, but simply because it's a fun thing to do.

And I think it's really interesting that weput music on this pedestal in a way that we don't do with other creative endeavors. For example, the... When, if you're listening to a lecture andyou get bored, you might doodle, right? Doodling is drawing and we don't judge peopleif their doodles are bad.

People can also engage in sculpture. We know a lot of people that are hobbyiststhat maybe take pottery classes, right? And they do it for fun without any sense ofwanting to commercialize that hobby. But for whatever reason, music is an exceptionto that rule. And I think it's exciting to see. that layer being broken down and to say, hey,wouldn't it be a fun exercise if we just allowed people to make music because it's a fun thingto do.

Okay. That's interesting. And honestly, I haven't heard that comparisonbefore with other creative arts and how that sort of stands out, but I do absolutely recognizewhat you're saying. Before we're going to talk about sort of theimplications this might have for the future creativity in the music industry, I just wantto understand a tiny bit more who you're.

persona of the... Who's the user that is using BandLab typically? Could you go into that? Yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, the majority ofpeople on BandLab are under the age of 24. So, these are really the next generation ofmusicians or creators or people who happen to make music, however you wanted to findit.

And they come from a variety of places. The US is our largest market, but... Only about 30 % of our users are from theUS. So even though it's a large portion of ouruser base, it really speaks to the fact that our users are actually global. They come from every corner of the planet.

And I think that's really exciting aswell. I think it's also really interesting thatthe majority of these users are interfacing with BandLab on their phone and they're makingsongs using the mobile app. as opposed to using desktop. And they're also quite inventive in termsof the types of music that they're making and they don't really like to ascribe to genre,which I think is very, very cool and also really indicative of the mindset of youngcreators right now that are sort of saying that genre should not define them, they definegenre.

Good. I think there's a general trend happeningin... not just the music industry, but in creation,generation, like AI is being a lot of these things up. And I sometimes use myself as an example. I'm a very creative person. I also do have ADHD and I do have my limitationswhen it comes to focus on certain things that's really difficult, that takes time to learn.

What happens to me when AI really startedto roll out and I use... loads of AI's who is every single day, isthat I can limit the time from having an idea to actually making something that is a product,that is good, that can represent me. And for me, that is transformational becausethat means that I can express myself and sort of all these boundaries of skills or processesor tools that I need to have in order to do that are just ...

make much smaller and much easier to workwith. And for me, that's sort of a comparison toBandLab is that you have these people who are inherently creative that might have listenedto music for many years, but don't necessarily have the skills or the tools or experienceto do it in the traditional platforms. But through tools like BandLab, they can expressthemselves creatively.

And what I think is particularly interestingabout that, sorry, I normally don't give like long talks to the puck ass. No, this is great. is that I believe that there are creatorsout there like me who are very creative, who have very strong opinions about stuff, butsimply don't have the skills to manifest them.

And they will become artists, creators, andproducers as you guys have examples on that exactly like that. They have that unique thought. They don't necessarily have the skills. And through tools like yours, they can becomeamazing artists or amazing producers. And that's of course the user group that maybeis ambitious or didn't know they're ambitious until they actually create what they had intheir head.

And for me that's just so interesting. I have so many thoughts on this. I'm so sorry, I'm not cool to interrupt. This may represent a little bit of Bandai,but also just represents my own personal thoughts around music making, especially... digital music making, especially digital musicmaking in a box.

And I have always wondered why we insist ondeveloping new plugins since, et cetera, that are extremely skeuomorphic. So meaning we continue to design things thatlook like they're analog or physical counterparts. We can design things in any way that we choose,but we still by and large designed them with these interfacesthat are quite confusing to people that are just entering into the space.

And so it's a huge limitation when you knowthat you're creative, you want to get to a sound, but all of a sudden you're confrontedwith this entirely new language, for example, of words that you've got to use. You know, what is a... What is an LFO, right? What is the difference between a square anda sine wave, right?

Like all of these things that you have tolearn on top of, you know, a signal path and it's a very complicated procedure. And so I'm all for thinking about new waysthat we can reimagine existing tools or create what you're talking to, which is AI shortcutsor AI that can enable people that have an idea in their head,but don't have traditional or classical training in order to get to the end goal.

And I don't understand why we have to placemore value on people learning one way versus learning another way, right? People learn in a variety of ways. As someone you with ADHD can speak to probablyquite pointedly. You probably learn and retain knowledge ina way that is very different from other people.

And it doesn't mean that the way that youare educating yourself is any less valuable than anyone else. Like some people are visual learners, someare auditory learners, some are hands -on learners. And I think we've got to be more consideratein the music space about creating alternative pathways for people to arrive at the sameend result.

Yeah. I think that's beautiful and I fully supportthat thought. And for me, like, for me, it's given me hope. Not just, you know, BandLab is a tool I haven'tused in depth before, but like the whole concept of what we're talking about has given me hopebecause it's, I can live out a potential that I knew I had, but I'd sort of given up onmany aspects.

So I think that's important. Yeah. Sorry. No, I'll go. Go for it. Go for it. I just wanted to highlight one tool that Ithink really specifically talks to what you're saying. We have a tool in BandLab that's called Voiceto MIDI. So for example, if you have a melody in yourhead, you can sing it into BandLab, into Studio and record it.

And then the app will transcribe it into MIDI. And then you can, from there, change thatMIDI into one of hundreds of different virtual instruments. So say you've got an idea in your head andyou're like, oh my gosh, this would be a killer piano melody. You can sing that melody into the app andthen make it into a piano. Amazing.

Yeah. And people might not realize how big a thingthat is because it sounds so simple. But again, not to nerd music production, butI have been in music production and I have friends that are incredibly talented. And what I believe is what really makes aproducer stick out is the ability to very quickly...

transfer an idea to something. Because the flow of creativity is so importantwith creating music that you don't have these stops all the time. So the speed of which you can do it reallymatters to the quality of the creativity. And for many, many people who might have hadthe level of creativity I'm talking about, but does not have the skills, are limitedin that aspect.

So having tools like this, which again, soundssimple, but it simply just hasn't existed, is important for - higher level of creativity in my opinion. No, I absolutely agree. It's hard. When you're in flow state, you want to stayin flow state and you don't want anything to interrupt that. And my favorite songs that I've produced weremade in the least amount of time.

And I think most people that you'll talk towho are musicians will say exactly the same thing. Yeah. I think it's pretty well known, but like thesesimple, I guess they might have been complicated to make, but these simple too addresses that. Yeah. Isn't that interesting that we, I think youare catching yourself maybe thinking about the language that you're using because simplealmost sounds diminutive.

And then we're talking about giving accessto people who don't have a skill set and skill is a word that has a lot of weight and importanceto it. Right. So even in the way that we're describing thesetools, we're also inherently without meaning to in this very conversation, putting more value on one thing and de -emphasizing another.

When in reality, it's really one person arrivesto an outcome one way and we now have more pathways for other people to arrive at thesame outcome in a different way. That is important, but it requires a paradigmshift for the whole music industry to understand how to communicate differently about that. Because I agree, but also do agree that myvocabulary and my way of approaching it is exactly from that traditional space.

I took music theory, so I also come from aspace. Okay. So, there might be some people - This is gettingreally philosophical. I like it. It's important. It's important. There's a lot of people who might be, I don'tthink the word is scared because I think we're over that point as an industry about what'shappening, but maybe a bit like seriously curious about how this is going to affectthe existing careers of music creators.

Are they going to be out -compete? Now I'm just asking questions that some personmight have. What's your thoughts on this? I think it depends on what your goals are,what part of the industry you operate in. For example, I was on a panel at South bySouthwest a couple of weeks ago that was talking about the future of sync licensing as an industry.

And the whole panel was in agreeance thatthis was not a fun piece of information to talk about or deliver, but those who... exclusively make a living from productionmusic should maybe think about ways to diversify their income in the future. Because AI is probably coming for their job. So I think that there are some parts of musicmaking or parts of the industry that are going to be seriously affected.

And I think we can't be so blue sky when we'retalking about AI to only think about... look at the expansive opportunities that thisis going to provide because there are going to be serious ramifications. There are going to be people who see theircareers impacted and production music is a perfect example, I think, of one of thosespaces.

But I do think that with every new technologythat comes along, we see some parts impacted, but then we see new avenues come about, someexpected and some in ways that we could have never predicted. The way I like to talk about it is electricity,for example.

So when electricity first was invented, itwas really hard for people to accept this as a new technology. And in fact, there were a lot of live demonstrations that were held when there was this shift to adopting electricity to show how dangerousit was and to try and dissuade people from using it. Now, of course, we all...

use electricity now and we can't imagine ourlives without it. It's what's enabling us to talk at this verymoment. And did it replace the candle? In some ways. Do we still make candles? Yes. So I think that there, we see this over timewhere a new technology is introduced.

There's fear. The fear becomes lessened over time and that lessening of fear comes with people's accessto it. I think chat GPT was really our societal reckoningwhere we had this moment where suddenly billions of people had access to AI in a way wherethey could tangibly see how it could impact their lives, right?

So we had a very quick adoption to the mainstream. So there's this fear then that maybe it'snot so bad then. We're going to live with it, so what doesthis look like? And then we see how the industry is actuallygoing to pick up its pieces and what it's going to look like on the other side.

So I do think it would be disingenuous tosay that some people are not going to be impacted by it, but I do believe that more people willsee opportunity and will be empowered by it ultimately. It makes sense and super insightful. It's really interesting to follow what's goingto happen.

I don't have like a blue sky outlook, butI do have a lot of optimism. I believe this is an industry where we coulduse some help with a few things. You don't say. I'm welcoming the process. Could you speak to me a tiny bit about whatyou believe is the general positive impacts that platforms likeBandLab and the extra amount of creators within music is going to have on the industry.

I think this goes back a little bit to whatI was talking about in terms of the ethical and moral right that people should be ableto express their creativity. I don't believe that everyone... wants to be an artist with a capital A, butI believe that we are all artistic and we all should have access to tools that allowus to express the artistic sides of ourselves.

And it can only be a good thing for us tohave more people be able to contribute and to hear different voices, musical voices,and to be exposed to different sounds and the explosion of new genres and people connectingall over the world through music.

I don't see that feels like a net benefitfor humanity. If we're going to take a 20 ,000 foot viewand just look at altruistically, what does more music from more parts of the world mean? I think also what's really exciting for usat BandLab is that we're able to service many parts of the worldthat don't have access to classes where they could obtain music theory.

Instruments, physical instruments are veryexpensive. Music education is a luxury, right? And very often that means that people onlyhave their phone and they only have access to what is free or very cheap on their phone. And So I think that it's really exciting thatwe're able to provide a very robust platform for people to express their musical creativityin drastically underserved parts of the world.

That is so interesting. I think I haven't deep dived into the topicyet and we'll actually do that on a podcast and not too far from now talking about emergingmarkets and the potential happening there. But that is a net benefit from the music industryhaving those contributing to the economy. Because let's be honest, like even thoughthere's some people in the music industry earning a lot of money, like there's a wholelot more money to be made in the music industry and it could benefit us all to have theseemerging markets as a part of Yeah.

Well, we do. And this is just a side note, but me personally,one of the things that I've always been really interested in music is how to create equity. I've spent a lot of time in, especially asa woman who is in the production engineering space, trying to contribute to spaces thatencourage more women to participate in production engineering.

And why these barriers exist and how do wecreate... places that feel welcoming to women. And so one of the things I think is reallyinteresting about BandLab is that we find that almost 40 % of the users on BandLab identifyas female, which is so ridiculously high in comparison to almost every other platform.

And so part of me wonders, it wasn't intentional,but how did we arrive here? And is it really as simple as saying, What happens when you create a platform that is free where anyone can have access to professional tools and have a safe space to create music? Like what truly happens when you break downthe barriers?

We see so many people contributing from underserved, when I say underserved communities, that doesn't just mean from socioeconomic backgrounds,that also means gender, right? Yeah. I find that really exciting that the freedomto be able to, creating a space where you have the freedom to explore means that we'reunintentionally creating equity in a variety of ways.

I really hope there's a bunch of PhDs beingwritten about this right now. Okay, that is amazing numbers, interestingnumbers. I did not know that, so thank you for bringingthat up. That is interesting. I'll definitely share that with my thoughtsfor a few days. Okay, so when we talk about data, becausethat's sort of what we're venturing into, can you tell me a bit about the data insightsyou have with BandLab?

Besides sort of the ... gender equity, which is amazing. Are there any other things you're seeing onthe platform that's really interesting for the music industry to know about? Well, I think a number that was mentionedearlier is a big point of interest as shown by recent headlines. Breaking 100 million registered users is ahuge milestone, especially considering I think it was last year that we announced we had60 million.

Yeah, that's crazy. So that's a, you're right. That's an amazing amount of growth in a smallperiod of time. And... So I think that number is really important,not just for BandLab, but for the music industry at large to really consider. Because we do have an expansion of the musicindustry happening at a rate that we've never seen before.

And that means people not just making music,but also people distributing music. I think the most recent number is what, 120,000 estimated new songs are uploaded to DSPs every day. That's insane, especially when you considerthat it was just about a generation ago that it was only about 5 ,000 new albums that werereleased into the world every single year.

Good. Yeah. No, it's amazing. And I think a lot of that, you know, well,it comes from technical innovation, new products and digitalization. And with that, there's recently been a lotof talk about AI and BandLab has taken a pretty big stance on this.

You've talked about responsible AI, you'vetalked about human ancestry. Can you, for the sake of our listeners, justexplain a bit what is the stance? Ben, I was taking on this. Yeah, so last year we announced that we hadalignment with the Human Artistry Campaign. The Human Artistry Campaign is a set of tenetsthat basically the TLDR is AI will never replace human creativity.

It will live alongside it. It will augment it, but the human must becenter. at the end of the day. And if you look at the list of signatories,it is everyone from SAG -AFTRA to the RAAA to the NNPA to any acronym under the sun thatyou can think of that touches on creative arts here in the United States.

And we were the first company to publiclyannounce that we stood by that set of tenets and those values. And I think at the time, the reaction, it was quite interesting becauseI think some folks didn't really understand why we would stick our necks out.

But I think it's important to make these commitments now and to make them early as the tools only become more powerful and we all decide whatside of history we want to be on. And I think at the end of the day, we can provide tools that are incredibly usefulfor our creators without having to infringe on anyone else's rights.

So if we can do that, why wouldn't we justdo it? I hate to be so glib about it, but it reallydoes feel that easy and fundamental to us. And so to that end, internally, there aresort of three, I would say, main ideas.

when we're thinking about AI and how we buildtools and how they serve the people on the platform. And one is exalt the person, not the algorithm. So we make tools that give everyone the opportunity to have their musical voice heard. And that's regardless of background, education,economic status, all the things that we've been talking about in this conversation.

Also traceability matters. Know the source. So our models are built by BandLab, with BandLab,for BandLab, real music producers and human creativities involved in every step of theprocess. And then lastly, protect and support creatorchoice. So we believe that AI training should be opt-in and not opt -out.

And we also respect and support and championeverybody's individual choice with how liberal they would like to be. So for example, You probably have read about Grimes and thefact that she created an AI that anyone can use with her voice. And if that is her choice and that's whatshe'd like to do, then obviously she should have the freedom to do that.

But if someone wants to be restrictive withtheir material, then they should have every right to be restrictive with their material. Yeah. It's such an important discussion and it'sprobably, people recognize the relevance of that statement much more today than it dida year ago. I can imagine. But it's so important is one of the thingsthat I talk a lot about.

I'm not a technologist, I would say, but I'ma very, very big fan and I follow along. And this is one of the things that I'm themost concerned with right now. Like, okay, what is the consequence that ithas for the individual? And that's interesting, it's philosophical.

And I think Bad Lab is doing a good thingof taking that stance on behalf of your users, but also the music industry. Yeah. I think we have to, especially since a lotof this, and maybe you can speak to the other side where you are in your part of the world,but at least hear a lot of the confusion around the ethics of AI and music licensing and copyrightand everything that comes along with that is kind of undecided.

in a lot of ways. And so I know that in the EU, there was abig AI bill that was passed recently. I'm still trying to wrestle with everythingthat that means and how that's going to impact where you are in the world. Maybe that's a separate conversation we canhave offline, but certainly in the US, we are grappling with all of those conversations.

And I think also, I would say that we believe that good policydoes empower culture. And so we also think about these core tenetsabout how we build AI for our creators with that idea in mind. Danny, this talk has been extremely interestingand I'm very, very excited to meet you in person in a couple of weeks of show life.

I'm interested to hear you speak. I think this has been one of my favorite podcastsbecause we talk about something that's so current, so important and this is what's happeningin music industry right now. And BandLab is by example leading the way,not just by having a stance, but actually having a product that reaches a hundred millionusers. I think that's amazing.

There's so many lessons to be learned forentrepreneurs studying BandLab, studying the founding journey. Hopefully in the future we'll talk more aboutthat, not necessarily with you, but someone else within the BandLab system to understandmore from an entrepreneurial perspective what happened and what is happening. But it's something I'm going to follow veryclosely.

Danny, thank you. Thank you for taking your time. Thank you for indulging in a tiny bit of philosophical discussions as well. I think that's important. No, I think it's incredibly important. I think there's, whenever somebody buildsa product, there's always a philosophy around the way the project's built, right? And so I can sit here and describe featuresall day long, but that's not very interesting and it's much more interesting to talk aboutthe why.

And I think right now, you know, more thanever, we're all really thinking about that question of, why in a variety of ways. So thank you for allowing me the space andfor you to ask such insightful questions so that we can have this really interesting spaceto talk about not just a product or a platform, but the implications and the why behind somany people make music.

Amazing. Thank you, Denny. See you in a couple of weeks. All right. See you soon.