LANDR And The Rise Of The Casual Music Creator

We are going to continue to see the rise of the casual music creator music where creation in and of itself is the fulfilling side of it's not even the output necessarily it's the process that you're doing in a community anything that gets people to engage with creativity I said this earlier I don't give a shit what it is if it lets you feel like you are surprising yourself with something that came out of you like that's where real engagement come from comes from regardless of what you then do with that you know whether it's a product or it's just something you did for fun Daniel Roland and me has an amazing talk about music production with tools as part of partnerships and strategy for Lander he has an incredible insight of what's happening we talk about the past the present and the future and how producers songwriters and artists will navigate the tools of creating music in the future I hope you enjoy this one hey guys and welcome back to the Sound Conditions podcast Daniel Roland welcome to the studio awesome and great to be here you have had an extremely interesting career uh you come from

Production mixing mastering and you have also been a professor for many years uh and then you also head of partnerships and strategy uh head of partnerships at Lander um which I think is really interesting Ladder is obviously a company that's been um present for a few years well quite a lot of years and sort of been one of the main innovators in the production space so what we're going to talk about today is your work there your work as a engineer as a producer um but also talking about tools AI partnerships so it's going to be a really interesting story but for the people who don't know you and from my brief uh intro there can you tell me who are you and what do you do that is a great question I don't know anymore it changes so often but uh yeah I mean as you mentioned I come from the creative side initially of the industry right so I've started as a music producer musician for 10 years making my living doing that and eventually went to college and got a bachelor's and a master's degree in music technology and that kind of led me down the path to producing and engineering and teaching as well and um so I've been doing that for 32 years something like that crazy as that is and then

Maybe 12 years ago I started getting into the technology side actually helping to build some of the tech that kind of we all use to make music uh predominantly with Lander but with some other companies as well and um and yeah and that's kind of what I do today I still teach college full-time back in Nashville and um remotely of course I'm head of strategy and partnerships at Lander as you said and um and yeah and I work on a lot of music these days more mixing and mastering strictly because I don't have the time anymore to work with uh with bands with artists you know because a production can take an eternity or it cannot it just depends but I kind of treat startups and technology like artists now I love working with new tech and people who are kind of you know beginning their journey on that side of things and helping here and where I can yeah when I was looking through your credits I got up at the starstruck so uh well done uh interesting career you've had uh in the creative side and on this side if so what is exactly you do at Lander what does head of strategy in part should mean yeah well you know I mean it's I've been at Lander now

for nine years right so lander is about 10 10 and a half years old so i was there basically right on the first year anniversary so i've been there for a minute and as anybody that's listening to this is if you're involved in a startup you know you kind of do everything right so regardless of what your job title is so i have definitely moved through roles at that company and even now as quote-unquote head of strategy and partnerships i get to touch a lot of different stuff from assisting with product development and marketing and i kind of am the face of the company and then i go out and speak at all the events and have for for years which is something i'm sure we'll talk about because it means i've been talking to people about ai for almost a decade in music so it's been interesting to see the shifting perceptions and some things that haven't changed in that regard so so a lot of that i help direct kind of mergers and acquisitions i direct kind of where we're going with our products and a lot of um what i do is partnerships so figuring out companies that are complementary to us and that we are complementary to to help expand our user base by exposing them to other products that we think are cool and by bringing other products into the lander

Ecosystem whether that's through licensing or like I said acquisition or just other kind of co-marketing partnerships so it's been it's not a world that I come from at all when I started with this company so I've had to learn I didn't had done no business at all I was a touring musician and uh and music producer so a lot of these are skills I've just had to pick up over the years and um I think I'd like to think I kind of bring my own unique take on it kind of not coming from it you know not having an MBA or something like that um yeah and that's what I do for Leaner one of my big passions when I was young and in my early to mid-20s were production tools uh it is one of the most fun things to ever work toys and I've not I've not luckily I still manage a few producers uh and I get to sort of tag along and I have a few friends who are doing really well in the plugin space so I'm quite informed but what's happened the last five years from when I stopped producing music to now the development has been immense um and what would you say is the biggest difference the biggest difference that

Happened the last few years in production tools and music well it's interesting so I'm anybody that knows me knows I am obsessed with that side of things it's really how I got into the music industry was being the guy who knew everything that was out there either up and coming under the radar and or established tools and I could go work with the Adrian Blues or Trent Resners or people like that and I could I could tell them about stuff they didn't necessarily maybe know about and vice versa so I love that stuff but you're right there's been an accelerated rate of development in that space and I think a lot of it is um from the kind of the rise of the independent um production tools programmer and creator right so it's not you're not waiting on kind of the established players to innovate and put something out to market we've just seen this massive uh influx of you know mom and pop whatever you want to call them one person two person companies that are just putting out really boutique innovative not just you know sound effects but virtual instruments you know everything and in some case DAWs right like it's just anything and everything you could want um in that space and

It's yeah it's been fascinating to follow but almost impossible to keep up with as you can you can imagine it's so interesting to see like how much these tools matter like you might think as an outsider like okay how many different tools and things can you actually get in this space like it's just audio it's just music but like uh we had it's wow now but one of my best friends is called Hannes Anneson he's now CEO of Oak Sound and sort of their journey as well like just a small petite company in Finland yeah it's amazing this yeah I use it every single day yeah but like and their story is also just like it's just one amazing cleverer just sitting for three years programming like nothing has launched everything and then there's like two other guys hey can we help you sell this and just seeing how that's sort of taking the world by storm is so fascinating because at the end of the day music is emotions it's stories and people really I would say underestimate the importance of these production tools mixing tools to get that story up and make that

Percentible and clear um and it might be details and details and details but those characteristics really matter no and Oak is a great example because so they make a few products obviously they came out with one a couple of weeks ago but Soothe you know as I'm you know is was their kind of first entry into the market and that's something I use it literally every day I'm doing more I'm mastering a Star Wars project today and Soothe is on every single channel of that and all pretty much always is with everything like but it's something that 25 years ago it would have been 20 years ago maybe 15 years ago it'd been very difficult um for them to build a business off of effectively one or two products right but now as we've seen you know well I'm sure we may get into this later when it comes through the lens of AI but as we widen the funnel for more creators to come in and more content to be made you know is there are some potential downsides to that when it comes to you know being more competitive on the artist side of things in the creator side of things it means there's more people using technology to make music right so it opens up opportunities for some of these companies to exist with fairly niche products

They're doing stuff nobody else was doing, right, and they can build a business off of that and I absolutely love that. It's a great example, man. And so can you tell me a bit about the Lander story? Because, you know, um, I work a lot within music tech and I try to follow along as much as I can, and sort of Lander for me was first introduced I believe like five years ago, uh, with sort of the mastering side, and then it was a bit because I knew it was existing but I had like okay this is what Lander does, and then when I sort of revisited not too long I was like oh okay something, yeah, something happened, yeah, okay. Can you just walk me through the journey like in a couple minutes? Yeah man, and I think this is really a great example for anybody out there again it's doing their own thing entrepreneur um early stage startup. So Lander started as a is a project in a queen at Queen Mary University over in the UK and eventually made its way over to Montreal and it was it was initially an AI mixing technology right that was going to be used

in like you know married with like live sound consoles so you would go to a live show and it would kind of automated mix the show have it ready for people when they you know when they left that kind of a thing right and it eventually but this is before I was even with the company it pivoted into mastering right for a variety of different reasons and um and great and that was what the company intended to be which was an odd AI machine learning based mastering company and um so that was already one pivot but you know like any business you kind of have to listen to your users about what they want what they're willing to pay for and you know what they're engaged with and that led Lander to become a bunch of different stuff I mean so our users we were doing mastering right which is kind of most people probably know almost the last stage of the music production process before you release something at least that's what it traditionally has been defined as so people wanted us to distribute music okay we'll distribute music because that's adjacent to mastering and then they kept asking for like well like you were already with you doing this why don't you also like sell samples right why don't you also make plugins why don't you also so it became this thing where we ended up

building this kind of and the broadest hands down and and creative platform in the industry that kind of wraps around your daw to give it superpowers and just kept tacking things on based upon feedback from our from our users we now have a massive educational platform that's attached to it and you know long story short the problem that we stumbled into solving and i don't even think it was really intentional at the beginning is that the music creator tools industry has many many awesome companies in it but it's very fragmented right like there's you can get a great distributor or great plugins company or a great this that or the other but if you are coming fresh into the music industry you have to a figure out which one of those you want and then pay for separate subscriptions and some perpetual licenses and all this stuff it's just a very it's a lot of friction right so we are we try to solve that by kind of putting everything under you could ever need to make music doll everything else under one umbrella to get you going and kind of follow you along on your journey and um that's that's been our our positioning and it's worked really well yeah and it also seems like there's a very clear um sort of uh value proposition and who you're going

for at least in my objective like if you compare you know let's say uh Lander to BandLab for example that's very like it B to C in the aspect that there's probably not a lot of professionalism behind the people using the platform but it's way for them to engage with music for free or very easily sure and sort of the products and services you provide at Lander uh seems uh to cater much more to professionals that actually they're trying to live for it or you can correct me if I'm wrong that's at least how I see it yeah I mean professional it's a relative term right professionals to BandLab is awesome right but professionals relative to BandLab kind of is even farther higher up the funnel than we are for right as far as the breadth of audience that they're addressing yeah we're we don't offer a DAW like we don't make a DAW right we complement our assumption is and this is a blessing and a curse to be totally honest with you that you're already using one um and you know kind of outside the BandLab ecosystem your Abletons your Pro Tools etc so that narrows our market but also it's people who are more willing to pay for tools right because they want to

kind of level up beyond the free stuff and that's you're totally right I mean that's who we're that's where we typically meet people hmm so five years ago when I was introduced Lander uh the mastering was as far as I know uh the product um what happened there because obviously when you look at your title head of partnerships and strategy you must have been involved in sort of some of the developments that happened sure with these things can you walk me through was there a discussion the company say okay these are the requests users are having and how did you go about starting acquiring these things or partnering what was the process yeah great so um yeah so it was yeah it was you know it was definitely there was a clearly a strategy behind it though I don't think we even at the time no knew how broad we would go with that strategy but yeah to move beyond mastering um because mastering you know Lander helped and there's people who love this and people who hate this kind of redefine what that term even means mastering typically is the thing you know you do your song you pay a mastering engineer 100 200 300 or whatever to master it and it goes out to streaming services well once

mastering is something you can do whenever you want and there's not necessarily a cost associated with every time you do something you can master demos you can master drum beats you can master we have people who don't use Lander on anything but drums right and some people who use it on their whole mix it's like whatever you want to use it for you can and that's another interesting thing for anybody developing tech um that the coolest part about it is what people end up using it for that you never have seen people use it on uh their drum shot uh drum shot they've on their gunshot sound effects for films and that's all they use it for it's like okay I didn't envision that so but uh but anyway so yeah so the it was a strategy to kind of expand and you know the problem with that is as a startup you have limited resources right so how do you go broad with something when you honestly probably can't afford to build out all of these different tools so in our case we did first of all of course step by step we didn't just add everything all at once we tried to go after the things that we thought were kind of the lowest hanging fruit both in user adoption the potential for that but also in the techno you know lift on the technology side for us so um and that involved again some building stuff

out for us and then licensing technology I mean I could uh sample I'll take one example of what we do right so we sell we have two million plus samples on our platform that you can access right some of those we've commissioned so they're exclusive relationships that we have with producers they provide us their samples they get paid or they get residuals on those samples and we have those nobody else does but that's difficult to build a massive library doing that and quite expensive which is why no one really does you can also go out and license samples from a lot of sample libraries that are out there so that we might have some of the same samples that let's say Splice has but we've also then over the years built up our own unique catalog that makes us different just like Splice has done so I mean there's things you can do to kind of kind of kickstart you know as you kind of sprinkle on your own unique offerings and we've done that now across a few different lines plugins and other things as well and our educational platform we have stuff we've done in-house and then things that we've licensed out to make it a complete offering for people that's very interesting as you said I think a few minutes ago uh the music industry

Especially in this space seems to very be very effectualized in and how I normally see it is you have these big companies that's Waves Universal Audio and then you have these small companies that's sort of their only thing uh what I haven't seen a lot uh is what Lander's doing is these partnerships where you combine things you combine forces um there might be more of happening more of that than I know of but is there a reluctance in the industry in general has it been a reluctance to sort of join forces to expand their offerings it's a great question man yes uh and not way less so now than I think in the past maybe that's just me looking through the lens of my own experience but it seems like it's people are a lot more open to it now and there's reasons for that and one of the reasons for that is there's been a as some people may be familiar with quite a bit of consolidation in the music technology space right so you'll see you know private equity firms buying multiple companies and putting them under the same umbrella right to really try to build up kind of what Lander I think even they would they do admit this kind of innovated on which is you know the most value under a subscription

that you can get you could you know one example of that is some of my favorite companies native instruments um and isotope is an example right and you could add uh they've now acquired obviously other companies under that umbrella as well plug-in alliance and so forth but but really trying to buy up companies and offer a lot of value to customers now what they've what they found and i don't want to specify native instruments for this but it's harder to do that than you would think especially and this is not even something we've delved in too much when you're buying buying different companies with different products different technical debt uh different you know people working in different countries it's very hard to kind of unify that into a cohesive company much less a cohesive offering for users so but so what you see now is when people are on the outside of that consolidation the companies that are still independent they've kind of have banded together and have been more amenable to doing partnerships right because either you're going to get absorbed into one of these larger companies or we're going to need to work together so that we can all continue to innovate and grow and that's that's what you've seen over the past i would say five to seven years

Yes so like in if you want to really simplify it like there's examples of consolidation that these independent companies might not find attractive for their trajectory yeah again you know I don't I didn't know about the Plug-in Alliance and Native Instruments but you know uh to the degree that I know them they seem very different both in branding and so and they might be supplementary and that might be an acquisition you know I've used uh their you know pretty much all their tools for both of companies and same the reason I went to Plug-in Alliance was very different that we went to Native Instruments um yeah and yeah um and there might have been strategy behind that so what you're saying is there's maybe an interest for independent companies to band together more to stand stronger and not being acquired yeah I've certainly see again as somebody who's been actively trying to do partnership deals for the past eight or nine years yeah it's and maybe this is you know I why and I know this is the case because people have told me that's the case I'm sure there's other factors as well you know we alluded to a factor earlier which is we've seen the rise of a lot

More uh independent companies as far in the creator tool space so it is getting more competitive as well on that side of things not just in kind of the consolidation of these larger companies so I think in general we unless somebody is a direct competitor to what you're doing I think people are less hesitant about kind of exposing their user base and doing co-marketing opportunities or even you know co-branded stuff to try to you know maximize the value you can offer people and then you can get from them yeah no and it can be successful and like you know like you know let's go back to Sound and what they've done with Avid now with the live mixing desks I think that's really interesting one of the things that I love about one of the things that I are looking to the music industry right now and really hope will happen I think is happening is the concept of data tokenization of startups for example like you having some companies might own some data and then they can sort of share with other companies so they can succeed together because the music industry uh is not a great place to build a

Startup let's just be honest uh it's super difficult no it is not it's hard to raise capital you are correct and then so the factualized nature of how the companies normally you know exists together or not together is an issue uh we're trying to sort of win own battle uh but each of these battles are so incredibly hard yep so what I'm what I'm seeing at least a lot of talks about is sort of being beneficial to each other do you see this as well like on a broader level outside of production tools is happening or what's your read of that well yeah now in the case you your case you're bringing up data what specifically you're talking about let's say you have we've got a few podcasts where we talk with let's say for example people very much into blockchain and have existing companies that are sort of saying okay we have data that's very important within our specific product offering yep um that data can be used many other places but you know we can't really monetize it because it's outside of what we do yeah so we would love to sort of tokenize that data and have all the use cases that the companies can build upon and have our share of that usage yes uh

The short answer to that is yes I've seen some of that it involved in some of those conversations that are ongoing at present um but yeah and it's you know that could mean a lot of different things right it could have to do with tokenization and blockchain it could have to do with training data um on the AI side of things right which is obviously super uh super topical at the moment was people you know it's you might think you have a lot of data but you don't have enough data to train a proper engine depend model depending upon what you're trying to do but if you were to somehow be able to you know all throw into a pool uh you could accomplish a lot more that you would individually be completely locked out from right so or we certainly wouldn't be able to compete with a major label or some other entities or we keep talking about these larger companies that have access to tools and to um you know finances and whatever a lot of the smaller companies like us don't yeah that goes beyond just doing you know traditional partnerships data is a is a thing and right now data is incredibly valuable right and

Also something that people need to take very seriously because you can you can really destroy your brand if you mistreat your users data or do things with it that they do not agree with so there's also that side of it as well you know there's the optics and ethical component of it on that point that was a beautiful transition uh Lander recently launched a fair trade uh program um and can you tell me a bit about that because it's really interesting yeah it's like you know as a technologist there's a bunch of stuff that I want to see exist that involves generative AI and I think generative AI that just that term just the term AI at this point has become a very triggering term for people to the point that I almost don't want to use it anymore and especially when you apply it to music people who have anxiety about it understandably by the way associate that with somebody like you know a five-year-old pressing a button and getting an Elton John song right so now there's no need for Elton John anymore or something some variation of that right there's no creative input you're just we're all being replaced that type of thing and sure that could be a use for it

Maybe we'll talk about why I don't think that's the case but there's a lot of really cool stuff that you can build with that or would give people like me and you as music producers superpowers that literally I've been hunting for 20 years so I want to do that and we as Lander want to do that and the only way to do that is if we have data to do that right you can have models all day long but the data is the special sauce so we launched something called Fair Trade AI uh the Fair Trade AI program I should say because we're a music distributor we have distributed millions and millions of songs right to the major DSPs Apple Music Spotify etc so we're going to our users and saying hey if you would like if you would like to opt in right it's your choice you don't even have to don't do it if you don't want to we will build some cool tools we'll train some models on the data that you opt in and we will do a rev share on all the sales related to those models or those the products that we build using those models and it's early days for that and we only launched it

I think maybe two weeks ago but the response has been like way beyond what I would have imagined right I thought we might catch some catch some shit for it right because people are just kind of nervous about this space again understandably but because I think the way we approach it because we've been in the space for so long right um people I think at this point trust us the proof will be in the pudding obviously with the tools that we build but the response has been great we've had it tons of people opt in um and are and are growing the database to a size that we will be releasing products later this year so super excited about that amazing and it's stuff that creators it's we're building quickly products that the people who are giving us their data will want to use right this isn't for like some completely different space or something like that we're building smart tools to help people produce music quicker and better hopefully uh it's amazing I have so many thoughts on sort of this area and I know you do creativity what the future creativity will be um for musicians creators and sort of who will be the

winners and who will be the losers if you can sort of frame it that way but if you very simply could put as simply as you can what do you believe AI's impact will be on creatives more specifically on people who might use your products producers engineers shop owners I don't think you know history is littered with disruptive technologies that have come along in the music industry right and some of those I won't go through a laundry list of them but you can all imagine everything from the gramophone to the player piano to digital technology since drum machines etc right some of those streaming some of those have had a much greater impact than what was uh you know they were underestimated as far as the impact they were going to have streaming being one of those things and some things have been under us you know have had less of an impact than people thought they were going to have so it was overestimated I would say drum machines and synthesizers were going to get rid of drummers and you know uh specialized players I think AI is going to sit

somewhere in the middle of that this is my opinion right so every you know no one knows the answer to this but I don't think it's going to be as disruptive for music producers as people some people might think it's going to be now it is in the immediate future it's going to uh we're going to see a proliferation of you know AI powered plugins and workflows and things like that I think if you're already making music um it's going to make your life easier doing that and like you know uh Donald Glover says allow you to make mistakes more quickly which I think anything that lets you do that is awesome um I don't see it as something that's going to be a replacement for you know musicians or producers I don't think that's what people really want to use it for when it comes on the on the fan side of things as you know there are places where it's going to disrupt the industry and that's going to be uh probably on the sync and commercial music side of things for advertising and whatnot there are opportunities that we as creators especially that mid-tier of creator have that may be lessened by this and I think there's other opportunities that will appear

will appear as a result of it but that's kind of a rambling ass answer to your question but I think like everything it's gonna there's gonna be a good side and there's gonna be I guess a bad side but like there always is like people conveniently forget that the only reason they're able to make music right now is because of massively disruptive technologies that pissed off the established players you know 10 years 20 years 30 years 40 years and beyond ago right like we're all participating this because we can make music on a computer right or we can blah and uh this is kind of another step in that is it a little different yeah but ultimately I think human behavior is not different and I think the uh I think it'll be okay I'll just say that yeah interesting it's really interesting and there's so many differing thoughts and predictions of what's going to happen I think yours is one of the uh more optimistic ones I've heard yeah um but again I think that's also really refreshing to hear since this is sort of

what you do and what you live and breathe yeah and I understand your I've listened to some of your perspectives on this as well and I don't disagree about that being a potential outcome but it all remains to be seen I mean I guess it depends where we think the threat of AI is coming from like if it's going to reduce opportunities for producers like people again that kind of middle class of producer musician who is taking where are those opportunities going right is it that fans the average person can now press a few buttons and make music is that really the thing that's going to take away from them is it the you know more professional opportunities like where is the where is the leak in the damn but it's going to come from a new interesting perspective I was talking with a startup um not too long ago I think last week I'm not going to get into what they do but we're talking about AI and sort of how they use AI in their product they're developing and one of the things we've got talking about is uh retention uh in a way that in order for technology really to be interesting and have an

impact it needs to be something that retains people in it yep uh and there needs to be stimulation there needs to be a sense of mastery or accomplishment and sort of as a lot of these things out right now that are very generative um of course they can develop and iterate but the sense of mastery and retention I can imagine isn't going to be that satisfactory for consumers I think it's you know there might be an essence of I have something I want to be expressed and to some degree does it yep but at the end of the day we want to feel accomplished about what we do uh and yeah I don't know if it's true but that's one of the most interesting conversations I've had lately about it like if you can't introduce an element or for tech like mastery or you having a bit begin to pack up the output yep I'm doubtful whether or not it's going to stick for a long time yeah like I agree and disagree so I agree that the mastery thing is the is a key part to retention 100 and these tools right now I mean there is a novelty to them for a

minute but I think you know again that long-term retention maybe not so much right now I mean the thing that I enjoy the most not just about creating art but what I appreciate about the art that other people create especially that side of it is when they do something that I feel like is beyond my grasp right they have an idea I didn't have they can do something on a guitar I don't want to sit and watch you play the same blues like I can play or worse than me right I want to watch you do something better than me and I appreciate that if it all is kind of this kind of even muddled playing field I think it's not as exciting for people but the tools will evolve so we'll see how much you know the how much agency people continue to be able to have with these tools so that there is longevity to that engagement we're talking about people who are there's way more other uses for generative music specifically outside of targeting people who want to create music right but and through that lens but then again you know and I guess you could do you could almost look at it like the through the lens of video games right where you have people who are you know are all about the mastery of playing

a game and there's other people who just kind of want to participate and there's a community around it and I think that's when you look at platforms like let's just look at Suno and Udeo and what their business models are at least that I'm aware of that's a big part of it right it's not just a place for people to go like generate some music and then take it to Tick Tock or whatever it's really trying to build a social platform for the creation of sharing of and listening to of uh of AI powered music right and that's kind of what they're going after to get that retention it's a platform play more than just a tool good it's so interesting and like one of the reasons why I love talking about this so much is it something happens every single month yeah uh and it we're really living in it right now uh and whatever predictions we make or senses we have you know they'll most likely be wrong to a big degree pretty much uh and I think I think that's the interesting thing what I'm what I'm really trying to hone in on right now is I'm trying to understand

So what are the things that will, uh, not be disrupted? Or, uh, as things are disrupted, what will be more impactful when it comes to, um, the creator? I have a few thoughts on it, but, oh, I'll go, I can try to ask, get it going as a question. Me up, I want to hear you first. Okay, so my working theory is, um, is skills are generally going to be less important, yes, for the average person, I agree, or producer or whatever, so that's going to decrease in value to some degree. Um, so if you take away skills, what is the most important thing about music? Uh, I believe words such as, uh, context, uh, words such as taste, but most important, uh, storytelling, um, is the most important things, and not just storytelling in, you know, I was

having a discussion, um, with another company today about, you know, AI general music, and they're talking about, you know, well, you know, now you can create stories with just creating a song. Like, that's not what I mean by storytelling. I mean by having a consistent narrative over time that people can connect to, uh, so I believe that's going to be even more important, and for me, that's kind of exciting, uh, because one of my frustrations as, like, a, let's call it maybe a taste snob once in a while, it's just like, so what are you saying with this music? Um, and, um, I think that's going to be really interesting, whether or not people lean into the underlying storytelling more, and that's my assumption, that's what's going to happen. Yeah, I completely agree that I've been, so my kind of my talking point for the past six years or so has been that we're heading into a period where we're taking something from DJ culture, which is that curation is creation, right? So it's an amazing analogy. Yeah, this idea that if you have taste, right, if you can make choices based upon things you like, which we

can all do, we do that when we wake up and make breakfast for ourselves, right? But if you can do that in the context of music or art or whatever we're talking about here, that, uh, that you can tell a story, and again, I was, I would say the same thing, a story isn't kind of the way that people traditionally think about it, but yeah, you have something to say, and that's valid, and we are, this is another case, and this is just another step in the march of technology and the democratization of access, that we are opening the funnel up for more people to come in and be able to tell stories, right, with a lowering of the barrier of technical skills to do that. But again, people who act like that's some big shocking thing, you are the only reason you're probably participating in the industry you're in is because that barrier was lowered and the generation before you, right? Like, it's why we're all able to do this. So I'm not super afraid of it. Um, I actually in a lot of cases welcome it to a degree, right, because the blessing and the curse of this is, yes, now you're going to be able to impart your taste, and if you can say something that other people identify with, I don't give a

shit how you made it, right? I don't care the tools, I don't care the tools that you use, if it got you to something that moves you and therefore moves other people, right? It also means, of course, that some people can push a button and spit out a song, right, and not, and don't just do that, and you know, in mass, and not maybe not care, but there's bad, there's always going to be, I don't want to call them bad actors, but people that want to use technology for things maybe other than what they were intended for in a way that we don't deem ethical, right? So is we tend to focus maybe too much on that, then we, then you know, we need to regulate that, blah, but I love the opportunities it's going to open up for people to tell stories that we otherwise will, would have absolutely never heard for a variety of different reasons. I think that's when the dust settles, that's what we're going to take away from a lot of the advancements that are happening now. Amazing, like a director, you're a director, man, we don't talk about directors, right? What does a director do? Director isn't a cinematographer, he's

not an actor, he's not a script writer, he's not a screenwriter, he's not a, what is he doing, right? He's directing the ship because he has a vision for something. Like, why is that right? It's something we're all going to be able to do if we choose to in various forms of media. I've said this a few times on the podcast, but, um, I started music rather late, I was 17, uh, I knew how to play guitar, uh, I was a pretty decent singer, uh, and I started doing music production and sort of live with it full time, uh, and went all the way to do a master's, but I sort of, I quit making music for several reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is that I couldn't express the music myself, right? I wasn't a good enough musician to be a, you know, producer sitting at the laptop and sort of playing the bass or sort of understanding all the complexities of harmonics, and I didn't have it, you know, I've never really had a rich musical, music background, you know, I grew up in a very

that's close-minded religious environment, and I didn't really have the breadth that all my colleagues had, and I just said to myself, like, this is too much uphill, I don't believe I can have a career, and what I was very good at is facilitating, yeah, because I could always put bands together and teams together, but the problem with that is it was too expensive for me to run that business, right? I needed to pay the bass player and the guitar player, and I need to have that guy, have that guy, so I stopped doing music, and for some time I was a bit bitter with that, sure, like, it's, I love creating, like, and that's why I do startups, because, you know, for me, I couldn't, well, I couldn't sustain a living from being a creator in music, um, but I could stimulate myself with creating music related startups, but when I see my profile now, I'm like, I believe that could be one of the perfect profiles for the future of music creation. It is a person who understands how to tie all the pieces together. Oh, I'm working on a project and I haven't really spoken about it, but I'll do it on the podcast now, and I would love to

give your thoughts on it, please. So, um, I've been thinking about, as a sort of startup guy, so what is the biggest problem, uh, what of, what are some of the biggest problems, I believe, is in being an artist, strong-runner producer, and the things that I've identified is, um, it takes a lot of time, it costs a lot of money, and the income potential is very low, and the success rate is very low. All those combined, pretty shitty career, um, most likely, um, but the problem is that people are so driven by passion that they will risk health and sanity to get there. Great, I think that is both beautiful and sad. So that is, you know, some of the problems I see. So if you were to hypothetically or practically, which I've experimented a lot with, use AI, generative AI to alleviate some of those problems, how would that

look? Um, and sort of what I've done, you know, for example, I've used a lot of generative platforms, um, I like Suno the best, uh, right now for several reasons, but I've made around, I'd say 5 000 songs with Suno, and one of the, one of the projects I've been working on is I've been saying, okay, assume I would have a artist that was really good stories, I love the lyrics, what if I would take that artist lyrics, maybe tweak them a bit, and be very thorough with the prompts and the music prompts, and say, okay, I take your beautiful lyrics, which is your storytelling, we agree in a direction you go, and now I just start really, uh, prompting a lot of songs, sure, and um, what I've come with, and I've done this for several projects, is like come up with, you know, maybe after I've prompted like 500 songs, I have 12 songs with 12 different lyrics that I think this is perfect for you, and that's a starting point for creativity, and I know there's complexities with copyright clearance, but there's a lot of gray areas

there, but in theory, I believe when you talk about Don Clover with Phil Faster, this is a very, you know, on the edge case, it's a way to work with, if you have intention within lyrics, if you have taste, if you know what I want to do, you can use these tools to create very strong starting points, and what I've done, for example, for these hypothetical projects or less hypothetical projects, up, you know, over like a matter of days, created an album, like, this is not perfect, but this is like, this would have taken you years to just to get here, just this starting point of your expression. So that was a lot of things, um, it's a lot of controversial things, but could you please give me your thoughts about that? Well, just to make sure I understand, so you're taking, and you're taking, uh, you know, lyrics that an artist has written and effectively creating various derivative works based upon those lyrics, right? So it's not the exact same lyrics in every song, but it's different kind of takes on a theme, sort of a thing, or is it the same

Lyrics in different music, I use exact same lyrics, so I would have obviously, yeah, this, I mean, this is, you know, there's tools that do this now, right? You can go out and put a song in, it'll separate the vocal out, it'll keep your lyrics so you can transcribe the vocal, you know, do with a different voice model and then replace the music underneath it. So I've out of one idea you can get, you know, in theory an infinite number of effectively remixes or derivative works out of that, you know, for kind of and get kick those out to streaming. There's some, you know, long tail benefits of that, like labels, I'm sure love that idea, right? The idea that you can really get mad, you know, I do as well. I mean, the idea that you can experiment quickly, um, also it just on the commercial side of things, right? You can target different genres and markets, you know, like so you can have your k-pop version and your blah, all from an initial idea in a way that would have been completely unscalable previously, including in different languages. People are doing this now, right? Where they're getting 50 versions of a song and, you know, 10 different languages and, uh, you know, as many genres as

They want, some genres that don't really exist. I mean, if you look at Suno, look at all the different genre mashups they have there, they're not always necessarily, they don't always work, but it's interesting, right? So no, I think that's a, I think that's a, that is the future of a lot of content is people just try to maximize is the most amount of value they can get out of an idea, um, as possible, because you said it and I'm not saying I agree with it or not, but I think that's the future of where we're headed. It's an incredibly difficult industry to make any headway in, so if you can kind of up your odds of striking gold, right, uh, then off of an idea that you really believe in, then why would you not pursue that? Yeah, and then you know who would benefit from this, right? Let's say you'd have multiple offices doing this, like it comes back to are you the storyteller, like can people connect to you? And I think, I think the interesting thing about the superfan economy, which I'm getting very tired of that term, but I love the sort of the meaning behind it, is basically you have

Individuals who attract people and communities and there's a way for them to engage deeper with them. And I think, um, if you would make the creation of music easier, a creation of ideas or whatever, it still comes back to the point, are you a person that can gather people around you, yes or no? Yeah, is it true? This is my thoughts, I don't know, they're without question. Well, you made me think of a conversation I had recently, which is there's also this, the counter argument to some of this would be specifically what we were just talking about on the, you know, derivative, there are various versions of songs using the same vocal as an example, is that is the, your ability to gather that group around you, does that come from kind of a single source of truth or are you diluting that by having so many different takes on a core idea? Do you know what I mean? It's like this idea of adaptive content is an example, like if we can, if we can all watch a movie and it's a little bit different customized for your

Taste versus my taste, are we then getting that shared experience that get gathers community around a piece of art or an artist, right? And is, are we making that easier or are we making that more difficult? And I don't know, it was just a conversation I was having recently, it's like, I don't know, I don't know, anyway, there's various ways to, there's a rabbit hole. Yeah, but yeah, but it's fascinating because people are trying, that's what we're doing, right? People are really experimenting, uh, along those lines. Yeah, I'm also very doubtful about sort of these sort of the versions of songs, even though that's, you know, also having a commercial success outside of the AI generation. Yeah, I'm just more talking about if you have the opportunity to, you more quickly come to result, yeah, that can inspire you to create a finished product. Totally, because you know, um, when I started prompting with some of these things, I'm like, when I became good at prompting, because there's, that's also an art to it, like you need to sort of absolutely figure out how you can steer, see, you steer the within the limitations of the particular model you're working with. Yeah, I would say, you know, this song or this songwriter who would and this would have

A very good opportunity to be signed by a publisher, like it's already there where I believe the output at least, unlike if we take away the AI bit, that is a level of a semi-professional, um, and great odds as though standing out might have something to say, it's going to take them years and years and years to get there. Um, so it's just interesting to see what's going to get short cut and what's going to stay, what's becoming even more. Yeah, sure, and again there are commercial uses, like look at the sync market, right? If you're able to pitch a song in a variety of different genres or forms, right, so that it works better for a piece of, uh, of film slash video, right, there's that's something that you'll have, you will increase your likelihood of getting that gig, right? So it's, I don't know, there's all sorts of directions you can go with it, but yeah, super interesting. And you know, I, the one, the interesting example of this, right, and this has now been, god, it feels like it was, it's 10 years ago, but it's been, but probably four months ago, was the BBL Drizzy thing, right? Which is where you've got, you know, um, I love it, I love that, I love it, dude, Walonious

Hatcher, I reached out to him like the day after that shit happened on LinkedIn and we used to, you know, and started chatting with him like, what do you, this is crazy, right? And especially when you know initially it was that he got some social, he's got some social clout because he got a shout out for Metro Booming on Twitter, and then it ends right with him getting publishing on a Drake and Sexy Red track because he wrote the lyrics to that, you know, part of that song, the sample that they used, right? He's not getting paid for, obviously the AI generated music is not copyrightable, but the lyrics he wrote are, right? So he's getting a check because of that. And there is, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but there's literally not a chance in the world that dude would be in that position had he not made use of those tools to do that. I actually, it's one of those, you know what I mean? Like he was able to compose this piece of music and stick his kind of comedic lyrics on top of that, he's not going to go hire a band to do that, he's not, that's not taking work away from, you know, a guitar player or something like that. But at the same time, I'm sorry, we're going off on a bit of a tangent, I was wondering if that was going to be a catalyst for, you know, so much more AI generated content on the music side of

Things to be in the market and everyone who's a beat maker is now going to sample AI tracks because they can make their own, you know, they've got all the ingredients to make whatever they want, they're crate digging but in a different sort of a way, which is I guess how Google is kind of positioning them themselves or their AI tools on the crate digging side. But I don't know if I've seen that, right? I've seen, I've seen a rise, I haven't seen of AI tools, but I haven't seen the massive explosion that I that I expected. Um, Suno and Udio have a user base, sure, Refusion, you know, launched their iOS app a couple of weeks ago now, which is there's boy amazing for several reasons, but they've not seen this like wild adoption in users, it's, I don't know, well, we still have to see where all this stuff lands, but um, go ahead. Sort of my false interpretations of that is sort of the people who are established, uh, and successful already have an existing workflow. Yeah, 100, that they're not, you know, anytime going to change like drastically, and the people who are upcoming or let's say the next generation, like you know me or younger, you know, I'm slowly getting older, um, uh, you know, I'm 31, right?

I started doing music, you know, very seriously when 17, I haven't really experienced a disruption in music creation other than, you know, just having strong computers, like it's, you know, my computer slow 14 years ago, it's faster now, like that is, you know, because you came in after streaming was a thing pretty much. Yeah, you know, it's there was a biggest disruption, so for my generation or younger, uh, I think this seems much more scary than for people who have been in the game for a long time, because they might understand the, either they might understand, um, sort of the changes that's happening or they also understand that, you know, it's not that just easy to replace me, it's also relationships, it's partnerships, like there's a lot of things that goes into being a professional greater. Yeah, um, I that might be right, it's at least the thoughts I think, because when I talk with producers and I do that a lot, um, that a young 25 right out of college, you know, have a dream, they're scared, uh, and I think that also might be why they're slow at adopting this. Um, and I think tools like Lander, you know, making sort of a pivot back to that conversation, it is one of the most interesting

Things of bridging the gap between that sort of man what seems almost artificial to what's actually practical what they can take and make real music with 100 and that's the that's how a lot of this stuff works right we see you know you take the Sunos of the world right they're not coming into this industry and trying to like embrace the existing music creator tool space they're trying to do a different thing and really address in kind of make a new market right and that's cool but what they've done is freaked everybody else out that's in the traditional music industry right including these up-and-coming producers who are kind of scared about the repercussions that's going to have well what we're what we now get to do right now that we've had this kind of shock value tool that is absolutely useful for certain people now take the data part out of the equation that will get resolved at the end of the day we now get to kind of backfill and pick out the best parts of those type of technologies and figure out what can we actually make that benefits that I would use that you would use that a 25 year old producer would use I mean an example and this is the thing that excites me not

To go off on too much of a tangent about this the most about this is something we've all been trying to do with various tools forever which is how can I take static content and make it malleable right and not just have a my favorite song you know you get different versions of that or have it change to my heart right when we talk about adaptive music but like I'm used to working with loops and samples right loops and samples are static things well why can't we have those things why can't we in paint why can't we out paint why can't we get what was a static four-bar loop and have subtle changes or dramatic changes as we try to build out a horizontal arrangement or a vertical arrangement right having things that adapt to the context that you provide them like there's tons I mean this is how all DAWs are going to work in the next five years to six years DAWs are going to be a little bit slow to adopt but these independent companies the landers of the world other companies are going to build the plugins that are going to fit into these kind of more uh old-school tools to give them the superpowers that we all want that will take us out of what has been a box that we have been in for

A while you know on my soapbox limitations breed creativity we love that but the idea that I have to work with loops or even MIDI right you can only do so much with that so to be able to take something that I like and make infinite versions of it that I can then curate in influence I think is going to allow us to make potentially more musical music at the end of the day using AI something that people look at as sort of a non-musical tool so there's a lot of cool shit that's going to be built with this stuff amazing so what I take away from this conversation is you're optimistic I'm I am I without at all turning a blind eye to the impact that this is going to have on the music industry at large but yes I'm still optimistic about it because I think it just fits into uh you know most of the other advancements we've seen in industry and I think I've been in the this world long enough in the AI world for almost a decade and certainly the wider music industry for three twice that three times that long that uh that's my assessment and I'm I will happily be wrong

About that but regardless it's not going to impact how I go about my day-to-day um and the music that I make and you know wanting to help other people do the same thing amazing down this has been a really good conversation uh I love deep diving into some nerdy stuff like you know I miss music production uh and one of the reasons why I miss music production is you can on such a detailed level do changes that you can see changes stuff in music and understanding the nuances of music and I think for a lot of listeners it just might seem as one thing but it's really interesting to also know the process of being the storyteller or storytellers behind of making all these things fit together yeah and the last thing I'll say on that is like you know I don't do as much music production these days as I would like to because of all the other stuff I'm involved in but music doesn't have to be a job right we've kind of established this threshold where people everyone wants to be an artist because of social media because we took down the gates of major labels you know being the ones who distribute

Music right with streaming and all this everyone feels like they can participate and somehow there should be a financial reward for that making music is fun like I don't play basketball because I you know because I think I'm going to be in the NBA I do because I legitimately enjoy it right or anything else gaming what have you like there's reasons to make music besides feeling like you have to put the pressure on yourself to build a career out of it that can happen organically it can not happen at all and all of those things are fine so I'm all for like empowering people to make music more easily it doesn't necessarily mean that it has to equate to them becoming you know Beyonce that is such an interesting perspective and do you believe why that might have been the primary um it's called barrier for people creating music or that expectation is because the barrier of entry of skill has been so high like it's you know if you want to do music you know it's really hard to just you know feel casual about it because you gotta commit like no matter what you can't just you know do it for two months and then like that was very pleasant yeah well now we're what we

Are seeing I mean look at what's being done with music creation and Fortnite and Roblox right we are we are going to continue to see the rise of the casual music creator music where creation in and of itself is the fulfilling side of it's not even the output necessarily it's the process that you're doing in a community with uh you know with friends gamified not gamified what have you and those things there's a place for that content to live in game on social media you know maybe streaming who knows right but it's not all at the same level right and people's aspirations around music shouldn't all be that way either right so I think we're headed into that's a that's a whole separate podcast but we're heading into a future where that's a thing too and I'm super excited about that as well man it's like anything that gets people to engage with creativity I said this earlier I don't give a shit what it is if it lets you feel like you are surprising yourself with something that came out of you like that's where real engagement come from comes from regardless of what you then do with that you know whether it's a product or it's just something you did for fun I love that I'm not going

To go down that direction but I really want to one of the one of the things I'm thinking a lot about and uh I'll I won't go down it but I'll just want to say one comment is music in general is undervalued when it comes to sort of comparing the income of the industry uh the livelihood of artist and what effect it has and one of the things I'm very um sure is about is uh what are the elements about music or music creation that's going to increase the value overall over time and I think to the interesting point of you know you love playing basketball that might be one of the contributing factors of really increasing the value of music is if people can partake in casual creation and joy and partake that economy is that something you think about well yes and I'm not sure it depends on exactly what you're saying but like the people participating in creating music casually whether it's using AI or not using air or whatever I do think increases their appreciation

For people who actually do it seriously right like it you get once you have a little inkling of an understanding about what goes into some of this stuff I think then you know and how that leads necessarily to more money flooding into the industry I mean there's all sorts of stuff obviously you can do with fans and licensing and branding of an artist's uh content but I don't think it hurts I'll say that so uh yeah I don't see it as a detractor at all I'll think more to the point and come with better question next time but it really leaves me with some thoughts Daniel this has been beautiful thank you for taking your time um what you guys are doing at Ladder is really interesting and your perspectives on the on the field is also really interesting and I really appreciate you taking your time yeah man thank you for having me I love the podcast great we'll talk soon cool peace be good you