Mastering the Art of Innovative Storytelling in Music Tech PR

I think the future is interactive in musicand a lot of what seems like the location for growth in music is not just listeningto music, not just going to concerts, but music with acts, music with this other piece. And again, it could be fitness, it could begaming, it could be wellness, it could be food.

There is one podcast that I listen the mostto when it comes to music industry and that is the Music Tectonics Podcast. The host is Dimitri. He is the founder of Rock Paper Scissors,a PR company for music and music tech and creativity. He is one of the most knowledgeable peopleI know and I've heard of, and he brings so much gold on this episode. Hey guys, and welcome back to Sound Connections.

Today I have a great guest in the studio,Dimitri. Welcome. Hey, thanks for having me, Jacob. Excited to be here. I've been looking forward to this, Dimitri. I've been listening to your podcast for awhile. I think I started listening to... your podcast way before I started my own. And in some way, I consider you as someonewho's come before me and still is running and have higher quality than I have.

So I look very much up to you. I appreciate that, man. But what is interesting about podcast hostsis there's often like a story behind them, their mind, what they go through, what theythink that is really interesting. And one of the things that I've been... Missing for a lot of the podcasts I listento is having the opportunity Understand the host that I listen so much to and this ismy free space to do exactly that.

So it's a welcome and thank you Absolutely. No, I'm excited to have this conversationand I don't talk to other Hosts of podcasts on music tech usually either sir. It's still be fun. There's very few of us. Um, Demetri we both work in a very interestingspace music tech is something that I have sort of ventured into the last fiveyears and I'm extremely passionate about it.

But what you do through Well Good Persistence,which is your company, a peer company, and also Music Dictonics and your podcasts isthat you talk about, well, you communicate the worth of startups, you communicate thebrands, everything they stand for in a way that they can cut clear into the world. And one of the things that I experienced alot with companies that I consult is that is one of the hardest things to do.

It's really saying, okay, this is what I do. This is how I package it. This is how I bring it to both customers andthe industry. Before I go into that whole long talk, becauseI'm so fascinated about what you do, could you, for my sake and for the listeners' sake,just spend a minute just introducing what you do and what you've done in the past? Absolutely. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I'm happy to. Thanks, Jacob.

Yeah, so... My name is Dimitri Vitsa. Vitsa rhymes with pizza. That helps people remember. And I started Rock, Paper, Scissors, our PRand marketing firm, back in 1999. We started as a PR firm that helped artists,international artists, actually break into the United States. And I was always really interested in usingtechnology to run my business.

And so we built our own technology to runthe company. And then I joined Music Tech Accelerator myselfand... tried my hand at being a startup. I launched a company called Story Amp, StoryAmp .com, which helps independent artists get press for their concerts, tours, and theirreleases. So kind of automating the PR process.

You know, back then we were watching Ubertake over ride, you know, taxi service and Airbnb take over where hotels left off. And so I thought, Oh, somebody's going todo that for PR. So we did, we did that for music PR with StoryAmp, which is still running today. But as a result, I really learned a lot about the music, the ins and outs of the music industryaround music tech companies, around startups and trying to solve problems with technology.

So we started at Rock Paper Scissors gettingasked to do PR for other music tech startups. And that's kind of how that, that came togetherbasically. So now we're a 15 person team. We get hired by music innovation companies. A lot of them are music tech startups, butsome are scale ups, some are corporate as well. just because we know the industry well andknow how to do storytelling and help these different companies get the word out aboutwhat they do, help them establish thought leadership.

And now we also do other types of marketingas well. So we can help with all kinds of things from,you know, SEO and content marketing to social video creations, influencer management andKickstarter management and beyond. I have a question, Dimitri. I want to know what your thoughts are on thestatus of the music tech world right now.

What is happening? Is it a strong industry? Is it something that's developing? Like what should take on it? What's... Is it strong? Yeah. I mean, what's happening is I think musictech was... I mean, the earliest music tech was reallymusical instruments, right? So there's an entire industry on the musiccreation side, whether it's physical hardware or software or virtual instruments, and alsonew forms of music making.

So there's a whole category there that's beenaround for hundreds of years, really, but has become, I think, grown with, you know,kind of the digital creator opportunities that technology has brought. And then there's the traditional record industry,let's call it. And by record, I mean recording, not vinyl. But on top of that is sort of the marketingdistribution and enjoyment of music that goes with that.

It's not just making the record. It's not just the A &R, but it's putting outthe music and finding fans, interacting with fans, fans and listeners enjoying music invarious forms at this point. And so I would say the state of the musictech or music innovation space is big and diverse right now.

However, it's so diverse, there's a lot ofplayers involved. And if you look at the investment side ofthe business, it hasn't grown. It's been really rocky for music tech investment. So you don't have the same type of venturecapital mindset for much of the music side of technology.

If you widen it out to media tech or entertainmentor Yeah, there's other ways, like categoriesyou could put music tech as part of. It starts to look more like relevant, whichhas an impact on how music tech companies think about how specific their product orservice is. You know, if you can widen it out beyond musicso that it's, we see a lot that are expanding into music and wellness, music and fitness,music and gaming, these other verticals that have larger total addressable markets.

I think it opens up a lot of conversationdoors. That being said, there's a lot of problemsto be solved in the music industry. So there's a lot of very unique things aboutthe music industry, even different than say film and TV, which you would think, or books,which you would think would be like other forms of traditional media that are makingthe digital transformation before our eyes.

But the rights and the A &R and the ownershipand kind of how the history and even the legal history of the music industry has an impacton... where you can go with music tech. So it's not a super easy industry to havea startup in, but that also means that you could have a bit of a moat if you're successfulbecause it's hard for others to get far along as well.

I want to dissect a bit what you're talkingabout. One of the things that I've been very focusedon lately is the investor aspect of music and music tech. Because I want to figure out what is goingwrong. Is it... Is it communication? Is it a lack of track record? Is it that there's like an evil circle ofnot being invested, therefore there's not enough success stories?

What's your analysis of what's going wrongor what has gone wrong that has put us in this position as an industry? I don't know if anything is going wrong necessarily, but I think that in the early VC days of tech, there was some ... people who treated music just like anythingelse.

They put money in, they invested, and thenthey didn't get the payouts they were looking for, or at all. And so people got kind of gun shy about themusic industry.

Part of that is because some of the foundersand some of the investors just weren't realistic about the music industry. So it kind of put a bit of a stain on thereputation of music as an investable entity. The other piece of this goes back to what happened in the music industry in this transformation to digital, which is it was very hard to monetizemusic. And that reputation has kind of stayed therewith the technology side of music. You'll see there's plenty of investment happeningwith catalogs, with IP, with, you know, publishing and record labels and things like that. There's plenty of investment on the publishingside because investors see a long -term return on that creative IP. So there's money in the space.

It's just harder to translate sometimes howone company's technological workflow will get mass adoption and be able to leapfrog over some of the both legal and ethical complications of how the music industry operates.

There's also some really well -establishedplayers. around how musical IP is exploited and theyhave a way of doing things, whether it's for legal reasons or process reasons. And it's just very slow to change. The other thing, Jacob, is I think we heardon our podcast when we interviewed a VC named Juliet Rolnick from BDMI that the total addressable market for music is just smaller than a lotof the other industries.

So if you want to do creative and media stuff,you just hop over to gaming, right? Or if you want to do wellness stuff, you goto med tech. If you want to do financial stuff, you goto FinTech or cybersecurity. And you know, you just have much bigger markets,much bigger potential for investments and companies. And I think that's just been tricky. I think there's still plenty of room in music.

It's just... You're partly doing it out of a passion andas a result, you have to expect that there's going to be some challenges that exist therethat are different than in other markets. I think all of these arguments makes a lotof sense. You see a lot of companies, you see a lotof examples, you talk with a lot of investors.

What do you believe must happen over timeconsistently to make this more attractive for investors to invest in? I think there's a lot of great ideas in musicthat don't really take into account where the financial exchange happens. And you know, if you're in this because you'rea super fan or because you're an artist yourself or you're just excited about music and entertainment, you come up with some really cool ideas.

There's a lot of innovative ideas around fanengagement or monetization even, or new form factors or... you know, live performance. There's so many different directions you cango with very cool ideas. But if people or companies are not used toor willing to part with the first penny for the experience that you're creating, it'svery difficult to convince investors.

And so I think the thing that will get uspast that is if founders are just more realistic about how far that their idea can go. And it's really vetting the idea a littlebit more strongly. And some of that, as Cliff Flouet said onone of our early how to startup podcasts is, you know, which was about like, is your ideaany good?

It was kind of like the earliest stage conversation about this is to think about like, what are some parallel verticals that you can be operatingin at the same time or possibly test marketing? Sometimes people don't want to see it testmarketed in music because of this past reputation for investment returns. And so if you can put it into sports and athletics, if you can put it into medical or even advertising, you know, like ad tech or something like that,and demonstrate that it works elsewhere, then you bring it back and say, you know, causepeople in music love to be, love to, to love to say, why are we doing it like so -and -so,like such and such industry and so forth.

And so as a startup, you can actually leveragethat to your advantage, make it work elsewhere. And then you create some FOMA within musicas well. So I guess to answer your question, it's reallylike, I think it's because there's a lot of great ideas, but they're not great businesses. And so music tech founders have to make surethat they're thinking about the second, third, fourth phases, not only of investment, butof monetization of what's going to sustain this and so forth.

I hate to keep referring back to people I'veinterviewed on my podcast, but like you, I'm learning from people. No, this is good. It's a great excuse. And Vicki Nauman on one of her recent interviewspointed out that there have been different phases of investment. And at the beginning, All you had to do was show that you were goingto reach 100 million users and you could figure out how to monetize it later.

And then after that, there was a phase where you had to demonstrate that there was a monetization model. You know, like just make sure that we cansee like if you were to grow, how are people going to be paying you? And now she's like, no, you actually haveto be cashflow positive. You can't just say we're going to attractpeople or you can't just attract people and you can't just say.

Look, we've shown our first transactions tohappen, so now we just need to add fuel to the fire. You actually have to be cash flow positive,which means not only do you have to bring in enough users, but you have to bring inenough users who are willing to pay, and they have to be paying, you know, enough to startto offset your burn rate.

I'm sort of interpreting your words a bit. You said a minute ago about founders needto be more focused in the business and there's too many ideas out there that probably isn'tgreat businesses. Do you think that stems from there's so muchpassion in this industry? There's so much passion to the product? I mean, I'm sure it happens in a lot of differentindustries.

I mean, but music is one of the most popularforms of media. I mean, it drives a lot of even what happensin film and TV, right? The story has to be good, the set has to begood, the directing has to be good, but the music always adds the emotional element. It's the emotional layer. It's the part that makes your heart just likejump right in.

Any movie without music would be a whole differentexperience. And that's crazy to think about. But you could say the same for social video,right? Like what would social video be without music? It's like missing so many. elements at that point. And it really, it's what people, it drawson people's like sense of identity and their sense of purpose.

And just like you think about a soundtrackin a film or TV, it's like your soundtrack to life, literally. You know what I mean? Like people want something specific musicto study to, to walk to, to exercise to, to cook to, to entertain to, to dance to. Like you have a soundtrack for everythingthere. So I just think that humans are wired forsound to be this.

extra layer on top of everything else. And so as a result, yeah, it creates a lotof passion. Is that passion the reason people come upwith not business friendly ideas? I just think the standards are higher. The bar is higher for music because of pastfailures. I also think we go through these phases ofdevelopment and maturity of how people ingest music, listen to music, whether it's the variousphysical formats.

I mean, if you look at the history of all the different formats of music that haveoccurred, it is like this ridiculous cycle. And some people have even criticized it tosay that it's actually exploitative to the consumer to say, okay, you have all your records,but you know what's cool? Eight tracks are cool, or cassettes are cool,or now you need to replace everything on CD.

And then after that whole thing, oh wait,it's free. But there's been these cycles. And so the industry has gotten used to likequickly moving to a new format and then growing it, maturing it, building out tools for itand so forth. And we're kind of at the peak of streamingin a sense, right? Like the revenue that's come in as a resultof the streaming era is kind of, it could grow a little bit, but it's not, it's notgoing to hockey stick or skyrocket the way each format had previously.

So we're at an interesting place in termsof time as well, where There's a maturity where I think it's goingto have to be a significant breakthrough that will drive new revenue. And so we're at a complicated time in thatsense. You know what I mean? People are now leaning on streaming the waythey were leaning on CDs. The industry is like, yep, we're back.

It's good. Everything's good. Please don't screw with it. Everything is fine. Nothing else is needed. And so there's a lot of fear about what kindof innovation will happen. And actually, most of the innovation reallyis, I mean, as cliche as it is. It really is disruptive, right? Like the next thing in music is about interactivity and experience with music rather than just passively listening to it.

And nobody's really cracked the nut. There's a whole other revolution happeningon the creativity, the creation of music. And I'm not just talking about AI, it doesn'thave to be AI, but those tools certainly can help make a non -musician a musician in asense, like a creator of new musical content or a curator, a curating creator. something because you know, there's not asmuch, sometimes in some of the tools, there's not as much actual creative production happening.

Um, but I think like it's going to be thisnext phase is there's going to be, it's going to take a, a little, a couple of cycles hereto make it make money as well. So I don't know if that answers your question,but those are some of the ideas that brought up for me. It does. And. You know, as a relatively young entrepreneur,I'm 30 years old and I've sort of been an entrepreneur for 12 years and five years fullyin tech related products.

I'm sort of very curious about what my futureholds in this industry because there's this one side that is very optimistic about revenueincreasing, different models being introduced. But the other side is the history of this being a very small industry with limited opportunities. I'm preaching the gospel of entrepreneurship,but sometimes I really doubt like, is this really the right industry to do it in?

Because I almost feel like I'm fooling myselfand the people around them. Like this is something we should focus on. And obviously we should because we love musicand want to do a difference in it. But it speaks to the thing that you said, like there's big economies, there's big opportunities probably in other creator economies than music.

I'm curious, Dimitri, everything I read aboutyou, everything I see about you is about music. And you very well know that there is mostlikely more opportunities or could be more opportunities in other creative economies. What's the reason that you stick so much tomusic? What is it that drives you there? I mean, what's happened in the past may notbe what happens in the future, because I'm on my own path as well, you know?

Yeah. I'm facing the same questions at times andtaking different paths down different alleys and roads and rabbit holes as well. And I think the reason I've stuck with itis because it's what I know. You know what I mean? I grew up playing music as a kid and thenmoved to New York for my teenage years and played music in the subways and went to ahigh school for music and the arts in New York City, the Fame High School.

And then, you know, I got very involved withkind of community activism and then figured out how to sort of use music towards thatgoal as well. But then really enjoyed the storytelling ofmusic, helped international artists tell their cultural stories through music. And then innovation has always been a partfor me. And so then I went down this other alley aroundinnovation in music and it's just been a blast.

I feel like I'm learning so much all the time,you know, like I, because of the types of interviews we do on the podcast or speakerswe host at the Music Tectonics Conference in LA, or just the clients or the potentialclients. I'm hearing about, I actually can hear abouttrends before they were reported out in the press because there's companies that are doingstuff that haven't launched yet and they're talking to me about what their perspectiveis on ethical AI or digital avatars or what the future of spatial computing looks likeand how that affects music.

And it's just... You know, it's very exciting. I mean, like for me as an entrepreneur, Jacob,like it's all about curiosity and just pulling that thread of curiosity. So it's almost like, I don't know if it'san innately human trait, but it's certainly one that I think a lot of us get hooked intois like, what are we curious about? How do we learn more? I mean, for me, it started with like, whatare the weird sounds that different musical instruments make, you know, and how do theymake them?

And it's just... Then you get, as an entrepreneur, you startto focus on the financial and the business aspects and you're like, okay, so what arethe weird sounds that these business models make? You know what I mean? What are the origins of this strategy of channelsales or partner management or content marketing?

They're their own timbral elements as well. So like... I think to some extent it's like why? I don't know, it's my life, it's what I do,it's what I'm passionate about. And I've attracted a bunch of people on myteam who are in the same boat. They're either artists or super fans or journalists, storytellers, or just good marketers who like to be part of the larger culture as well.

That being said, I do think it's in both ofour best interests to think bigger than what we do and to keep an eye on things. You know, you have to have like... peripheral vision as an entrepreneur as well. Because if you just go straight, you mightnot realize that there's galloping tigers next to you on either side. You kind of have to keep an eye on other industries.

And there's a lot of overlap and a lot of,I think, benefit from how those concentric industries can support music and vice versa. I mean, again, some of the, I think the futureis interactive in music and a lot of what seems like... The location for growth in music is not justlistening to music, not just going to concerts, but music with acts, music with this otherpiece.

And again, it could be fitness, it could begaming, it could be wellness, it could be food. Because, you know, we no longer live a lifewhere we stop and put a record on and sit there and listen and don't like space out. That's not how life operates anymore. And so music has to be able to kind of... fluidly move along with how people are experiencing the world as well.

So I think looking at those parallel universesis critical. It doesn't mean you give up on music necessarily. It just means either you see what's workingthere, like we talked about earlier in the conversation, or you look for other opportunitiesas well, just because you're not a one -track human. Nobody is. You have other interests and the world ischanging.

You might want to see what else is poppingonto other people's radars, too. You learn from other people's passions andcuriosities. And there could be entrepreneurial opportunitiesfor you there, too, Jacob. Yeah, they could. And, you know, I'm very curious about it. One of the things that intrigues me aboutthe music industry in particular is the complexity in the relationships and how that much theymatter.

One of the things that I've realized throughthis podcast is, I haven't changed much of what I do as anentrepreneur. I've been working with startups for a goodtime and I've been able to raise money, I've been able to build companies. But when I started the podcast, suddenly mycareer started to explode in the opportunities.

And why? Just because it's such a relationship gameand people assume that because I'm associated to some people, then I'm worth something. And - What I'm trying to say is when I speak tocolleagues that are startups in other industries and stuff, this relationship game that we'replaying seems different.

It seems different. And that's why I think it's particularly interesting because you navigate into a space that is so much about the complexity between humans,more than at least from the outside, it seems, from other industries. And that's why I'm so curious about it becauseit seems like a game almost that you need to try to win. in the relationship space.

Sorry, that's sort of my own. No, I mean, I agree about the importanceof relationships. I don't know about how it varies from industryto industry. I do think that people come to the music industrymostly out of passion. And so there's an emotional timbre in thoseinteractions of those relationships that's probably different than, I don't know, equipmentsales.

cyber security, you know, there's a reasonthat some people are passionate and become thought leaders within those industries, butit feels like everyone in music is pretty much passionate about something that's musical. Um, uh, because otherwise they probably wouldfind a different industry to work in. And, you know, for our role at rock paperscissors, we see ourselves as storytellers, but the intent of the storytelling is to inspirepeople and to activate networks.

And that's really what you're talking aboutwith relationships. It's like, How do you build your network so that youcan help other people, help yourself, help your business? And that's a lot of what we're thinking about. Even though we might be pitching a press releaseor trying to secure a story in an outlet, ultimately, we want the goal to be to inspirethe people who are seeing that media or to activate networks of people through our events,for example, to get the people who will make a difference for the entrepreneurs we're workingwith.

to make a difference in their business. So I don't think, I think I agree. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you aboutthe relationship side. I just don't know how to compare it to otherindustries. No. And I also just know it based on conversationsof other entrepreneurs from other industries and that's what I have from it. Dimitri, I'm through this because you've beenrunning Rock Paper Scissors for a good while and then you did the sort of the start yourselfand really started to deep dive into music tech.

And then you started something quite significant,the Music Tectonics Conference. Could you walk me through what sort of sparkedthat idea and what has happened the last couple of years with that? As a startup and as a PR firm, my best leadgeneration channel was always conferences. From the beginning, since 1999, I'd actuallygo to Europe to go to a conference to meet record labels and festivals and artists andget them as PR clients.

And you know, like... I had my business coaches over time, my Jacobsof the world that would help me with my business. And I did an analysis of kind of like, wheredo our leads come from? How are we generating new work? And we generate the most interest by attendingthese networks, these conferences where the relevant right people would gather.

Jakob Wredstrøm (28:20.846)And so I started putting more emphasis when you first start going to an industry conference,you're like, okay, I got to spring for a badge. This is kind of a big deal, a flight, a hotel,a badge, food, all that stuff. Like, well, that's kind of an investment ofitself when you're first starting. And then you might say, well, how do I geton stage? Right. And you invest some energy in trying to figurethat out.

Sometimes that means you might sponsor a conference. Even a low level sponsorship will put youkind of on the map in a way that as a Scrappy startup at first, you're like, that'sstupid. That's just about hype. And it's like, well, wait a second. It's actually about attracting people to you,letting people know you're there. You're elevated above the crowd by saying,I have something to say.

I have something to show, et cetera. So we did all that stuff and we figured outwhich conferences worked really well for us in the music industry, in the tech space andinvestment and culture. And then we started doing meetups. at various places. We'd usually partner with another organizationlike 2112 in Chicago, or there's a great New York tech meet -up we partnered with.

Or Project Music was an incubator in Nashvillethat we partnered with. And then we started doing our own, organizingour own, either at existing conferences, sometimes we'd go through the formal process, et cetera. Point being, we got a lot of great businessout of it, and it was fun. It was part of that musical vibe. of being together in person and networkingand meeting people.

So what's the next step, right? Organize your own conference. We noticed there was nothing around musictech and innovation in Los Angeles, but we also saw that the record labels were renovatingtheir offices with the growth of streaming. The streaming services were opening up officesin LA. There was already gaming companies, socialmedia companies, hardware companies.

It was just like, oh yeah, Hollywood. It's right there. It's like all again these convergences ofall these things that I see as the future of music tech and music innovation. We're all right there. And so we started the conference because welike building community as a way of creating a relationship. It's like you starting your podcast. And the first thing we did even before thefirst conference was start the music tectonics podcast because we needed to start to createa channel, a way to have conversations around these things and start to kind of put a shingleout there globally to say, oh, you're interested in music tech and innovation, come learn aboutus.

Come be a part of our conference, come speak,come demo, come compete in our pitch competition, et cetera. So that's kind of how it happened. And it's just been a blast. We're going to be October 22nd to 24th. It's our sixth year. I could tell you more about the conferenceif you want, but that's how we got there. I would love to hear more about it because I'm so fascinated about the concepts of conference.

I also experience conferences being very differentin vibe and quality and purpose. One of the things that you guys do, whichI think is extremely interesting is being so innovation focused, where a lot of conferencesthat I've been to aren't that so much. There's room for that and place for that,but your focus in particular is very interesting.

Can you go into depth between what happened? How did you launch it? How did you see the growth over time? I mean, oh, well, I guess I should say we've... I had a career organizing conferences longbefore I was in the music industry. So one of my first jobs out of school washelping an educational organization here in Portland, Oregon, where I used to live andrecently moved back to, organize a large like 2000 person conference.

And so I learned just sort of the mechanicsof that. And then one of our clients of many years,CD Baby, wanted to start a conference called the DIY Musician Conference and... They said, Demetri, you seem to know somethingabout conferences. Why don't you guys help us organize this conference? So we organized their conference for, I think,the first five years. And that was a large thousand plus personconference as well.

And so we kind of, you know, just got trainedup on how to do it in the music industry as well. And we were servicing a totally differentaudience than them. Theirs was oriented towards DIY artists forthe most part. And... they distribute and that sort of thing. And so, you know, I already had spent a career'sworth of time organizing conferences.

And so it kind of just made sense. And was there immediate interest in it? Was the response from the music tech communityimmediate? It was in the sense that we had over 400 attendeesat the first event and were cashflow positive. So I call that a success.

That's about what we're aiming for. Each year it's grown. Last year we just almost hit 600, so we'reexpecting more this year as well. Those aren't huge numbers. That's not like South by Southwest numbersor ADE numbers, but we don't have a festival component either. We're just the business meetings component,although it's super fun. It's on the beach and we do some cool stufflike take over a carousel and have startups demo around the carousel.

We do some cool stuff, but it was successfulin that sense. I didn't lose my shirt on it. You know, I see some growth areas for it. I think we're going to... start probably experimenting with some announcements later this year to see about how we could grow it out a little bit more as well. The other thing that we did that was reallyimportant to me from the beginning was to focus on not just saying, hey, music techstartups come to this conference, because there's definitely value in founders talkingto founders, absolutely.

And there's value to finding the consultantsand the studios and the attorneys and so forth that want to work with startups. But there's also value if there's legitimate investors in the room, record labels, managers,streaming services, social media platforms that these startups are also building productsand services for as well. So we've not tried to grow purely with themusic tech founders because we want those VIP execs, decision makers, influential peoplein the industry to keep showing up.

Because I've seen other conferences wherethey start out pretty good, but eventually it's like, you're kind of just, not having enough of those decision makersthere to make it valuable to be there. It's like critical for us to think long termabout making sure that there's value for everyone who buys a badge. Because even though the badges are only liketwo, three, $400 to go to, which I think is one of the cheapest in the industry, it'san investment.

People have to fly there. They have hotels. They have Airbnbs. They have time put into it. We just want them to get value and keep comingback. So that's been the most challenging thingis to keep that. perfect balance and I think we're doing allright. Absolutely. Like for the people in my space I talk with,Music Tectonics is one of them that they talk the highest and best about.

Dimitri, I'll let you go soon. This has been sort of a gold line of information,but I do want a bit more of gold. And you said 10, 15 minutes ago that you getto hear about innovations before they happen. You get to see trends before they unfold. For the entrepreneurs listening to this podcast,can you give us some insights to what you believe is going to happen in the future inthis space?

Like very specifically, what area is goingto grow? Where is innovation going to happen? What would be a good idea pursuing businessesin? Yeah, sure. You know, I think there's several categorieswhere I think we're already, as soon as I say these things, people can be like, oh yeah,that makes sense. So they're not like super secret or anythingof that.

It's more just about like, how you curate all the information that'scoming your way. And I mentioned a little bit about this before,but I think the biggest trend that I'm really keeping an eye on is the explosion of musicalcreativity, meaning opportunities and tools for more people to be making music, or tobe musical, or to integrate music into what they do, or to blur the lines between whetheryou are a creator or a, quote, consumer of music.

musical content. I think that's going to continue to shift. It's sort of the origin story of the Instagramsof the world was around photography, right, and around static images. And the origin stories around YouTube andthen eventually Vine slash TikTok was around video and video editing and making it so easythat people could make this short form content that was as sticky as a Hollywood.

You know, you're watching TikTok for hoursand hours at a time now instead of Netflix. And that really hasn't happened to music yetuntil now. I mean, part of it is a camera, whether it'sstill or video movement, is capturing other things, right? You can turn it on and just start capturingsomething.

In the case of music, there's no... You can turn on an audio recorder, but nomusic is gonna show up in there, you know? So it's been complicated to actually createthe technology where somebody who doesn't have music lessons or who doesn't want tofollow a traditional music learning path can start to create music. Everyone had a camera in their pocket as soonas they had a phone, and now everyone's going to have a musical instrument in their pocketas soon as they have a phone.

And there's other new form factors. The video game industry, the cell phone industryhas brought down the prices of these physical parts as well. So you have this musical instrument. Renaissance where you're starting to see lotsof new types of finger drumming and synths and samplers and all sorts of fun stuff likethat as well. So I think like one of my, my focus areasis to just think about this convergence of the traditional let's make a song and makeit popular industry and record it and get it out there with the like creativity andthe creator economy and all that kind of stuff.

I don't love the phrase creator economy becauseit sounds so generic, but. what we've seen happen with film and videoand other things like cooking and writing books and so forth is that the tools haven'tbeen there for music until very recently, in my opinion. Even though the laptop, the bedroom producertransformed the music industry, it's really hasn't gotten the same level of access asvideo and photography, in my opinion.

So that's emerging right now and I think it'sgonna continue to change. So that's a big one. The next one I want to mention is fandom asa concept has been around. I mean, as a kid, I saw old black and whitevideo of Beatles fans going crazy for Beatlemania, you know, and heard about the British rockinvasion and all that kind of stuff as well.

But in terms of like the current digital experience of music, there's a layer of interaction of fandom that hasn't really matured yet. And I think that's another really interestingarea. It's tricky right now. Remember earlier we were talking about thelevel of maturity of the streaming era makes it hard for people to break in, as one ofthe things.

Streaming services have not had a lot of luckof making listening to music as social as it could be. You know, the Twitches of the world have,but they're not music -centric necessarily. You know, music is almost like a sidebar toTwitch. Gaming is like a central piece there. So I think something's going to emerge withfandom.

There's companies that got into kind of likeaudio social that are starting to see new things happen. And there's a company called Station Headthat's been around for a while, but now is like blowing up in terms of the way that artistsand fans can interact with each other. And they're working in parallel with musicstreaming service. They've actually gamified music streamingbecause...

artists or even fans will come on and say,we need to get back on the charts, help us power some streams. And they listen to music together and it influences all these people streaming music at the same time. So that's like an interesting type of layer of fandom, but there's all sorts of fan experiences that people want to have that need kind oftools built for them. And you can see in the music industry news,the trade press record labels are talking about fandom, investments in fandom and thingslike that as well.

So those are a couple of them. I do think the social video thing, you know,we're in the midst of this TikTok universal music standoff, which is complicating thingsfor music's relationship with TikTok. You know, TikTok wasn't the first to do itand they might not be the last, you know? There may be existing players, the YouTubesor the Instagrams of the world that sort out some sort of algorithmic shift that couldlead people back to their platforms.

Or it could be a company we haven't even heardof yet. Um, so I think, I think that's, uh, that'sa space to watch. I'm not exactly sure how that's going to playout. The main thing I would say is. TikTok might not be the end story for thissocial video phenomenon. I don't think the phenomenon is going to goaway by any means. And then I guess the, the other topic,just to throw one more at you for now, um, would be, you know, there's this categorythat I would combine altogether.

People don't like to combine augmented reality,virtual reality, mixed reality, metaverse. avatars and spatial computing, but the wholeidea that you there's going to be a growth of Content interactive experiences that willmess with our reality whether it's virtual or augmented I don't know but that will messwith our reality that will allow us to have new types of Experiences that feel like you'rein your body, but aren't actually in person is I think under indexed in terms of how people are thinkingabout it.

When Facebook got into calling themselvesmeta, I think it kind of made it hard for people to perceive where this could go. It was a little, there was a little too muchdoubt about Facebook owning the entire concept of metaverse. And I don't personally think metaverse hasto be blockchain or metaverse has to be virtual or anything.

But I think the idea that there will be virtualor digital spaces that may not have been created yet and experiences. I think there's a lot of potential there inthe future. And I do think that Apple is going to do thingsdifferently than Oculus or Facebook did. I don't know. Again, I still think having the big thingon your face is not a blast.

It's not a great user experience. But contact lenses would be. And I think the bigger issue was just makingcontent accessible. Making those types of experiences accessibleis something that Apple could crack in a way that Facebook couldn't. Apple built the original app store that everyone'sbuilt their app stores around. They've been great about incentivizing appdevelopers to create these types of experiences.

If they can pull it off with people wearingheadsets, I wouldn't put any doubts against them on that. Obviously, the price is going to have to comedown a lot. But I also don't think you need to have a headset to have a metaverse or a virtual experience. There's browser -based things where you'rein a world. And I think there's some opportunities therefor music that are really scalable.

It's just a little bit matter of time, youknow, it's just making those tools of capture or creation of those experiences more affordableso that people can jump in or creating venues like that people can just tap into withouthaving to build their own things like that. So those are, those are some of my kind oftrends that I'm kind of keeping an eye on.

Some of them I know are not that mind blowing. like you've been hearing about them for severalyears. But I think sometimes we jump too quicklyfrom one idea to another one anyway, and you need time to develop these things. These things can mature, the business modelscan shift, and the public interest in their appetite for these things can grow over timeas well.

Dmitry, this has been an absolute gold mine,and it's just been... Enjoying kicking back and listening to stories,listening to your insight. You are probably one of the people in theworld who has the most insight on what's happening and what's going through music tech. So I'm very honored to get that talk withyou. And I really will encourage listeners to goto your podcast, Music Tectonics podcast.

There's so much gold. You even had like, you had a, what's he called? You had a yesterday you had an event withthe previous music tech stars leader that I couldn't attend Yeah, I couldn't attendit and I actually felt bad about it. So that's the level of content you'reproviding So thank you so much for doing this and thank you so much for putting so muchout there.

That's so easy accessible Demetri it's beena pleasure. I do count on be at the music tectonics thisyear So I hope I get to meet you and give you give you a handshake or a hug whateveryou prefer. Yeah Great. This has been a blast, Jacob. Thank you so much. I'm rarely on this side of the mic and it'ssuper fun. I appreciate you giving me a chance to talka little bit about some of my ideas and it was a blast.

Great questions and I'm looking forward tocontinuing to listen to the podcast as well. Thank you, man. Have a good day. You too. Thanks.