AI Meets Artistry: Transforming Music Licensing with AudioSocket

Engagement is one of the biggest words that we use. It is one of the biggest Budz words and it is going to be richer, deeper, and more engaging. It's of a human and that by the nature of being human versus being robot or computer is going to be more engaging. I use Taylor Swift as an example because I've just never seen anything like it. That connection to her fans is why she is so prolific. This human authentic connection

is what I think has made her such a power player in the industry Jen Miller the CEO of audio join me for this podcast talking about Artistry and the future of AI what does it mean to license your music for startup companies in this space what does it mean to artists to participate in the AI Journey this is one of the most OnPoint Progressive talks I've heard about this hope you like it hey

guys and welcome back to the podcast. Uh today we have a guest Jen Andis Miller. Welcome. Thank you. We met at the uh birthing conference New Visions uh a few weeks back and we had a very fascinating conversation about music licensing and your company audio socket. You guys have been a quite leading player for many years. Um but what I think is really interesting is your perspective on the

new technologies where sort of that is taking your industry. But Jen for um the people who don't know you and maybe don't even know much about what we're going to talk about today, could you explain who you are and what you do? Sure. So my name is Jen Anderson Miller. Um I'm the CEO and co-founder of a company called AIO socket. Um audio socket is a music licensing agency and we operate

the company um under three distinctive brands which I imagine during the call we'll go through and yeah we've been doing this for 15 years now. So uh innovators of music as a service uh back in 2011 with the first music integration. Cool. It does a lot to break down and you know this part of the music industry is one of the M part of the industry I have the least experience

with. I you know most domain knowledge is theoretical which I have a good deal of but most parts of other parts of music industry have a quite practical hands on. So let's just start with defining what does music as a service mean? So when we first launched music as a service we were playing off of SAS, software as a service. Uh the idea was we weren't seeing that anybody had a

solution that was integratable into any kind of digital realm. So that could be into virtual worlds, that could be into games, could be into creator tools and platforms like Vimeo, Canva, places like that. So we were riding the wave of SAS and um streamlining the music licensing process at the same time and giving uh

tech companies a toolkit that wasn't there before we launched this product. Because some of your clients are some of the best companies out there so and we'll get into that because it's been a quite uh impressive journey. But let's actually talk about that because before we talk about the future of technologies and what it means to your industry, let's just understand your journey because you're a very interesting founder as well and as I

said before we start the episode normally we have these quite clear segmentations between expert and founder but I think in particular this topic and this talk is very interesting to understand your journey because it really informs why you think about the future in a certain way. So let's start from the beginning. How did he get into music and how did you start audio socket? Yeah so I mean what's cool is I

don't really have a story, a traditional story I don't think. Um I was working in extreme sports and at the time I was in clubs all the time um seeing independent bands that were touring sort of at their early stages of their careers. I just loved music and some of the uh snowboard brands were having a really hard time getting licensed music and this was

becoming a much bigger thing with the with the digitization of media. Video was becoming such a huge point of consumption uh online video that was and kind of short form video and so um a team manager came to me and asked if I could go clear some music. So initially I was clearing famous music and it was my first experience with music licensing

and it was very eye openening. I could not believe how difficult it was to figure out who all owned the rights because there were many with each song, how to get in touch with those people and then you know there were times when I was talking to somebody in Japan um about you know what was really just a small clearance for a small snowboard video uh ultimately it took months and

and as I was speaking with this friend of mine I just said there's got to be a better way and he was like well you go out to shows a lot right do you do you have any connections with some of the you know the bands that aren't tied up yet and that was really how I began this journey was out of a need to find music that could be quickly and easily cleared globally. And so I my co-founder uh his name is Brent mosson he was a

booking agent in Seattle so he booked a lot of the venues where bands and artists would go sort of as they're really rising um so really talented bands and artists coming through um and he would call me down to the green room and I would just start speaking with the B the bands about what I was working on so whoever those clients were at the time

and would they be interested in signing a deal with us where I would make an album of theirs or it might just be a track selection of theirs available should the editors um doing specifically initially it was snowboard videos if they would like to use this music and then really from there we launched this company and it was it was just sort of based out of a an intersection of the

digitization of music, the rising of independent talent and the need for quick clearance for digital media. When I sort of talk with people about what music licensing has been and to a big degree still is today, it is very perplexing how things can be some complex and but when you do understand the Ingres of copyright and how it's

represented it does make sense. Like there's a reason why it's complicated or TR has been but it doesn't mean that it's um natural that it should be that complex. Be before you came what was the um intive solutions in place like were you guys sort of f first mov and think this way or like what was the landscape when you started? Yeah so there were stock libraries at the time and I think

that whole um realm has advanced a lot as well but at the time stock music was sort of thought of as a little bit like filler music is what people called it. We actually made a point of very specifically um differentiating between what we were doing and stock music because if you brought up stock music people sort of moved away from it um unless

they were looking for specifically for that. So there was a model in place that was this globally cleared um easy to use music but commercially speaking um it really hadn't been done at the level at which we undertook to do it. Um there was excuse me there was a company that had um signed independent talent for

globally cleared licensing but we were the first as far as I know to do it online with digital partners. So commercially our first release partner was Vimeo and what we did was we integrated so they built on our API um and they basically were able to access all of the incoming talent and their users could access that incoming talent to soundtrack their videos. So that's

when we coined Mass, music as a service and basically started using that as our product and then we started expanding upon that product line. So again there was stock music but there really wasn't sort of this commercially viable side of that industry um and especially not integratable into digital capacities. Could you explain to me you

know that there must have been a tiny bit of a time difference time the spent between you guys having this idea and you signing a Vimeo well what happened like what was the Founder's Journey did you did you know the tech like what was the there? Uh it's kind of one of those you don't know what you don't know and I feel like we ran into the fire

definitely got burned many times along the way just figuring it all out but um but we knew that there was a solution that needed to evolve uh the music companies both on the on the major label or Indie label side uh kind of labels, publishers and even stock music companies weren't building tech. So we came out pretty hard in our early days

saying we are a music tech company, we are here to you know streamline the music licensing process and um make that available via an API neatly for music integrations and so that was really different at the time in the music industry to have an API and to be thinking about the tech side of it. So I mean even to be honest I mean we were coming out at the same time as

players like Spotify um so very early in on not just being a music company but being a music tech company and innovation is really I mean that's what I love, it's what I dream about, it's where I thrive and so I didn't want to do something the same way. I really wanted to look at the problems that I was hearing about personally and be able to in some way address those and it was a long journey

but here we are M and here you are and have a very impressive company. Could you tell me about what is your company right now like some stats about your company, how many oess do you represent, how do you work? Sure so as I mentioned earlier we have a family of brands uh we needed we were noticing the difference between our clientele was so vast that

it just wasn't making sense to market it as one company anymore and so a few years ago we looked at how do we address the needs of the highest end of Hollywood so we're talking about you know movie trailers with Netflix and Disney and Amazon and then on the other end of the spectrum is people like my husband who when we travel he would shoot videos of our kids and you know on

the water slides and just wanted to have music to post that without it getting uh muted. So really wide variety um of users and so what we did is we turned it into three or three brands. So at the high end we have ASX music which is audio socket exclusives and that's music that we exclusively represent um and it's very white glove

so people contact us to say this is the creative brief go find something that's suitable very um again very high-end very white glove uh customized you know sales team. Then in the in kind of what is I call the middle ground which is anything from you know that casual user like my husband to uh influencers and

really we target small and medium businesses of which there's over 400 million around the globe um and small and medium business is defined as 50 and fewer, 50 or fewer employees and so audiosocket decom is what really targets sort of that um uh self-service user, the people who just want to log in, they want to subscribe to something and they're just doing digital and so we've

created a you know audiosocket the arm that integrates into virtual worlds, games uh creator tools and platforms, fitness apps and so that's really based on the technology uh there's so many interesting about that and you said a few minutes ago that you love innovation and that's sort of also where our conversation began a few weeks ago because

um I don't want to you know make myself uh boring when I talk about AI all the time but it is a big topic and there's many different ways it's going to affect many sides of the music industry and when you talk about ai's immediate impact on industry uh licensing is one of the ones that come up first uh and there's many reasons for that as far as I understand it's also because it's maybe the model who has been the

slowest to inovate and scale, it's still very manual um but what's your take on where AI might take music licensing and then we'll afterwards go into sort of how you look at it, how you work with your arst to towards so creating an environment that can navigate this? Yeah so I mean we've hosted Zoom calls where we've invited all of our artists

we represent over 3,000 uh some of those are part of labels and a lot of them are independent artists so they're all trying to navigate this as well. I think it's fairly safe to say that most of our community understands that we don't want to miss out on setting terms for oursel this time around because I think we saw what happened with the digitization of music and so I mean AI is here to stay. I

like to say we're cautiously running into the fire this time um we think AI plays a really important role on both kind of the traditional side which is more of things like stemming uh you know transcribing lyrics, similarity search uh there's a lot of really incredible traditional tools out there. I call them traditional because they're not generative so I sort of differentiate

in that way and I think there's going to be major advancements and benefits to artists embracing AI and we have found a lot of our artists when we called this sort of ask me anything meeting to talk about how audiio sucket would be redrafting its contracts to include a clause about AI and what that looked like for our community what we found is a lot of artists wanted to stay

on after they just wanted to geek out and talk about how they're using AI in their workflows. So I do think we have a lot of artists that are really embracing it already in a very big way um but I also think the sentiment is around equitability and ethical use and so that is where licensing comes in. It's not a you know Wild West sort of a thing I think it's really getting ahead of the

curve and saying we're going to and so you know about a year ago we put into sort of our terms of service this is you know you can't come and use this music without a license and we've furthermore made it so that our license with our artists there's kind of a tier that is um required and then there's a tier that is all permission based and that's where it relates to generative AI

so what we were trying to do is just say on our terms um and I think you know a lot of people you hear a lot of artists talking about AI and you know a lot of them are excited, a lot of them are scared but I think everybody just wants to understand how they're going to make money and be compensated in an ongoing way. The one and done is what I keep hearing is not going to fly and you guys have been using um your

AI call capabilities or at least your data to use AI or help AI companies license and work with that um ethically sourced K can you sort of walk through me how have you used these AI claes and how has it been for the benefit of us a company and the assess you work with? Sure so um we basically put a clause in that defines traditional

versus generative AI traditional AI is is tooling that we believe benefits the artists whether they use it or not totally up to them but it can drastically reduce timelines inefficiencies in workflows and help them you know be more prolific and spend more time doing what they love doing and so on the traditional front um we've really clearly defined what that is and

we've said we will be part of this, we will work with startups at very affordable startup rates just so that they can create this, these tools. You know, we feel really strongly that ensuring that not just the Giants, um, but also the really small Scrappy companies can, you know, can train ethically and responsibly. So with the traditional models, it is

really kind of a oneandone it's um they're using this you know pool of content to train on we're trying to help them do that affordably um and structure things that work for them so this isn't something that any artist is going to make a bunch of money on but it's something that again we firmly believe that AI is here to stay like let's not close our eyes let's

Embrace. As it relates to generative AI, we made that an opt-in basis and, uh, on the call I explained and obviously via all of our Communications that they would never be opted into anything generative, but rather if they wanted to. And I think we only had a few artists of all of them say I don't even want to hear about these opportunities. For the most part, everybody said we want to, we want to hear about the opportunities and

then we'll decide. And we wanted to give the artist control over that realm. And furthermore, because we don't have those rights now while everything is really gray, it's very easy for me to say I'm sorry, we don't even have the rights you're asking for at this point, um, until we find opportunities that we do see where the ethical and the Equitable sides, the boxes are checked. And so there

are some companies doing really cool things out there with generative AI where we see how the artist continues to make money in an ongoing way, and as such there's attribution. Now not necessarily public attribution, that would be impossible as the layers, you know, go on and on, but very much so in terms of their ability to make money with the New Media that's

created. And so for those we're welcoming people, um, startups and companies to come to us, share with as sort of how they check those two boxes, and then we've set up a Advisory Group of artists where they effectively look at it, decide if it's something that they feel we should present to the community. And so right now that's where we're cautiously running into the fire. We're definitely moving really slowly at the moment to

just ensure that we trust, um, sort of the Technologies being used and we trust that our artists are going to make money. Same, like I think of it like cover songs, yeah, any person out there can cover a song, they don't have to ask permission, but the artist is always going to make money. Yeah, it's really interesting. Before we go deep into that,

I would like to get your, U, if possible, uh, your to stop an Viewpoint of music licensing at large and how it's affected, you know, one of the things I keep on hearing, which might be correct or not correct, our companies, I'm not going to mention any specific names, that might be in the business of having, let's say, uh, large cataloges of more Anonymous music that might be, you know, that just composed by people and a lot of that

might just be taken over by AI drained material. What's your comment on the Dynamics of that part of the industry or any other industry that might have, that might part of the industry that might be losing its Financial viability? I think it's a real fear, um, I don't think again that we can kind of turn a blind eye to what is working

and there is good music being created by generative AI, um, what's lacking again is the um trackability and the transparency and sort of the Equitable Solutions, and part of that is just the lack of laws right now. But I do think that it's going to disrupt um more of that sort of underscore kind of background music, uh,

music without lyrics, music without sort of the depth and Rich richness that um I think commercial artists tend to pay attention to. Um, I did a series uh earlier, well I guess I started it about this time last year, and you know that was one of the things that I spoke to people on either side of that Spectrum, um, an artist Jesse Josephson who I'm

sure some of your community would know, um, he's got a very prolific YouTube channel about sync, uh, licensing, and then on the other side of the spectrum, um, an artist who has a label called Jazz is dead and everything is still analog. And so it was interesting to find consensus about where things will move, and part of that consensus is yeah, you probably have to look to stand out more with your

music to make sure that it doesn't kind of blend in with the AI music that we're, that we're hearing now. We had a guest on the podcast called Tom Fritz who's a researcher, uh, within the neurology department, um, and he works sort of from a musicology angle and sort of how the brain reacts to it, and one of his points I found incred incredibly interesting, and that is that sort of you can separate the consumer's perception of

Music in three parts. One is the Acoustics, another one is the um the context or the cultural context, your understanding of where it's, it is, and the, and the last is how you interact with music. And the Acoustics alone basically Le on a um scientific, uh, standpoint, it doesn't necessarily need

to different between uh the value of human created Music and AI generated music if they can sort of be compared in quality and all the other metrics going into it, which I think is really interesting. But what I really got from that is sort of the context and how you can interact with that music, if that's just through playing the song yourself or shooting into a channel that Kos this music to you, that adds a

lot of value to it as well, which also means sort of the assis that you represent has a lot of that as far as I understand, a lot of cultural context, they have something to say in one particular environment, which if people are aware of that and not just consuming music without having some sort of relationship to what's happening, um, stands strong against AI music. Is that

something you guys think about, that's really important that you need to show the context of what's happening with your artist? Or yeah, absolutely, um, I think, and that's even again there was some consensus across this spectrum of artists that we spoke to, that was really what they were saying too, which is that's where human-made music is going to thrive. I mean, I use

Taylor Swift as an example because I've just never seen anything like it. That connection to her fans is why she is so prolific. It's not because her music is better than anybody else's, I mean obviously it's great music, but um this connection, this, you know, human authentic connection is what I think has made her such a power player in the industry. Um, I think that the market is

already getting saturated and is only going to get far more saturated over the next, you know, few years here with AI music. So I think if you're just looking for something to kind of like move things forward, then AI music is going to be fine. But I think where you actually want to have a connection to the emotions, to the lyrics, to the artists, I

think AI music once it floods the marketplace, then we're going to see this Resurgence and this strong desire to be connected to the story, and that is the musician. And so if the music is just being created to move things forward, that's where I do see AI stepping in and sort of becoming a threat. Um, if the music is being created

with a story in mind and, you know, um, with human emotion, uh, at the center of it, I think that's where the context and the connection will come in, and again I think that's where we'll see this, uh, sort of circle back. Um, it will, it will almost be like that music once again sort of serves the purpose of just moving something forward, and that will become sort of the AI realm, and

then the human realm will be um the side that is, that emotional impact side. Yeah, I have a question that I've sort of been struggling with and I think we're sort of touching upon the answer, but I would love to have your points on it. Take myself, I, when I listen to music, I would imagine that you know maybe 20 to 30% of the music I listen to something I've chose myself, the rest is cater to

me, uh, through playlist or whatever, uh, byproduct of whatever I'm doing that day. And when I don't choose something myself, it's really hard to um verify the context of what I'm listening to, you know, if it was great AI generated music, you know, it might just have been that and I wouldn't have noticed it and it wouldn't have brought less some more value. And when it comes to for example commercials, which is sort of a

traditional sync environment, um, most of the audience, uh, unless it's a very big budget commercial, wouldn't really necessarily Know music. So my question is, it the gate, Gatekeepers, the businesses that are going to take a stance on this? Or like where is the argument that this real music will be

chosen in these commercial settings? Yeah, I don't know, probably the argument at this point, um, I do think again it's going to be a phenomenon that I think happens quite frequently is where we say oh what is that like, music catches our ear and we sort of Shazam it or pay

attention. Um, I think when you, when you take that motion for me and there's an artist at the end of it, I'm like oh I really like this artist, I want to learn more, I want to go down that rabbit hole. I think if it's AI generated music and you know with that you're not quite sure what you're going to get in terms of like there's not a person behind it to follow

specifically, uh, I think, I think that's going to again sort of be a differentiator where people are going to hear that music that they love and they're going to follow those artists where they want to engage with people, and the AI music will somewhat be a little bit left behind in that regard, unless of course Ai and the people creating the AI music

start standing up socials and engaging in human ways. But if you look at let's say just pure metrics, when you don't go into sort of the details and arguments, let's say we have a company like K that I know you guys are working with, um, and if they didn't have any um sort of uh considerations about where to support when it comes to Artistry and just well we have this catalog that you know

might be ethically sourced AI music that is very high quality, now I'm just talking maybe three few years into the future where that's actually possible, um, and say what's going to be their motivation for not saying oh we got to go with this AI gener music there, got to be a fifth of the price and sort of deliver the same acoustic value as human created license music, what's going

to be the argument there that they're not going to do that? Um, I think it's going to come down to honestly uh preference, and I mean there will be a lot of content that will be created with ethically sourced AI music and I think that's going to be fine, but in the same way that we see today at the high end where the budgets are, you know, bigger

and they really are paying great attention to all of the detail, I think that's where we'll continue to see people that want human-made art. Um, it will be a differentiator, it's going to be something that sure you can go and get the music as part of your canvas subscription and maybe it's AI, but if you actually want to put something out into the world, again marketers are all

about authenticity and relatability and what's there Beyond just sort of like the actual piece of media, what's there is how deep can you go down that rabbit hole again. So it'll become a differentiator, but a ton of, a ton of video will be created with I'm sure sort of that ethically sourced AI music, and my hope is that we're part of that

too. Again, I'm not seeing it as a direct sort of a thread unless of course on the legal front things move in a direction of um, you know, if laws start dictating that permission is not needed, which I don't think that's going to happen, and you know with what we've seen in the EU that's not the direction things seem to be moving, but I think as long as that all gets sorted

out, um, I see it as a one or the other, I see it as a way that you know if truly the music industry can get it act together to come together and create um the terms of use, then in theory we can actually say if it's ethically sourced AI, the terms of use are that the artists continue to make a

pool of that Revenue, they're not just cut off from the revenue Stream. So I think the better the music is going to get, the more you're going to see models that the artist is going to continue to be part of the revenue stream, and that's where we see Collective licensing as something that we can offer. So today we have you know almost 100,000 songs, really incredibly car highquality songs from artists

around the world, and so you know if it's something that people can work with us and on our terms, we say great, but there is revenue to be driven and if you want your content to stand out then you've got to pay the artist same as before. So let's figure out this way to create that Provence, um, and then make sure that the artists are always making money. So again I don't see it as we're going to be cut out of those

revenue streams, I just see it as it all needs to evolve and start with us to create those terms. There's one sort of analogy I have in my head that I've sort of been thinking about when it comes to the impact of AI music and these specific use cases, and I sort of tell a bit of a story without trying to butcher anyone. You know, I speak to a lot of startups and quite often once in a while I

speak to startups who wants to let's say create a new streaming proposition, uh, maybe within with a new model that they would Define as more fair, um, but if you just do the basics math, like even if you were to, that's not viable, but if you weren to pay 100x the amount of whatever Spotify is paying, you most likely still won't read scale. So like even though you're cheaper

or P better or whatever the argument is, if the stakeholders that has this impact, that has scale, that has a say, the carries Brands, represents brands, do not choose to go down that road, it's still not going to affect um the big movements that's happening. So basically what I'm trying to say is if the big companies like

Disney Cana whatever that uses music at scale choose to still go down the human path um whatever the AI generated aspect is doing the human trity music will still have a lot of value because the companies choose that's still going to be a model they pursue is that something that I can be correct of sort of thinking that way what do you believe about it oh yeah like I said I

think that's where we the it's far more deeply engaging and I think people want in especially in this world engagement is one of the biggest words that we use it is one of the biggest Budz words and it is going to be richer deeper and more engaging because of what it is it's of a human and that by the nature of being human versus

being robot or computer is going to be more engaging I think that's incredibly interesting you know I tend to be dystopian about this topic U just because I spent a lot of time researching it and that's very natural path to go down but what I've really sort of um figured out lately but what I what I tend to believe lately is that the human connection uh consumers

businesses whatever will go towards that I think as things become much more blurry what is uh real what is you know generated from something that was real um it's going to be so blurry that people are going to actively seek out content opportunities that are purely uh or the source correctly with humans behind them because they want to have

that human connection and I think that's where I find comfort in all this is when it comes to businesses as well people who actually has power and money and revenue and customers I think they're going to understand that as well that they not only have a responsibility but there's also an opportunity to take the stance of human curated ethically sourced material it's going to be a

um value proposition that they can use in order to acquire or retain customers yeah absolutely I agree okay that's interesting because you know when I go down this dystopian path that's something that you know I overlook once in a while and especially a lot of the people I talk with so is this the um is this savior you know if you if you come

from a dystopian angle is this is what's going to make it not dystopian that proactive deliberate move towards taking a stance um yeah I mean I suppose so it's you know it's sort of what I've just always felt is going to be that differentiator um yeah I mean if you think about going

to an art gallery imagine going to a gallery and not having the stories of the people who created that as part of it if it was all just robots it's just not as interesting and I yeah I just don't think that you there's the same kind of soulful um uh sense of what that experience would be

like so yes I do think that people conscientiously choosing to work with human created art whether that be music or otherwise yeah I think that's what's going to preserve it yeah but I also think um I don't know that I mean it might be naive to say it I just don't know that AI will get so

good that it will actually replace what is sort of um you know call a songwriter a storyteller will they really get to the place where they will replace both that storytelling aspect as well as um the musicality side of it because so far I think it's good but

there's a lot of content in the world so good is fine great is exceptional and I again I just don't know that AI is going to get to that level of great in two respects one the Taylor Swift analogy there's just not going to be that uh that connection that she creates with her fan base and then

secondarily I just don't know that the music actually gets to that level this is interesting and this is actually where a lot of my discussions with people start because I'm more on the AI leaning side of this argument and let me explain why because really I think great that's a great question uh I don't know and I don't think that the sort of the storytelling

that t Swift brings for consistent persona over 20 years and her material I don't think AI is going to get there but let's say if you look it from a national perspective um let's say all way example our great might be American good you guys have a much bigger market much more influence and I think in the good segment there's going to happen a lot of things

when it comes to the quality of the ai can use and uh I research a lot of AI generated music um you know my me personally have prett I think seven 8,000 tracks uh s of trying to steer prompts and really understand what the potential is and sort of where I am now when it comes to you know steering understanding the intersection between uh language style uh music

prompt lyrics how they're structured how they layered how each line sort of affects the output I've can now come to the place where I believe that the I have capabilities and I'm not trying to be arrogant to create songs consistently that is above the usual place where people get signed to a publishing company and the output quality is also really high which means and I

don't believe I can create great music but I believe that when it comes to a national context it can already now composition wise um production wise very close to be commercially viable good which means as this develops I believe there's definitely going to be a segment for that I'm not going to say whether or not this is going to have an actual impact in use case I'm just when

to say purely from quality in my belief with different how to sort of frame lyrics how to prompt lyrics also based on other things it's going to get there quite soon and may even already now yeah so yeah well I think the big thing that we haven't actually brought into the conversation yet that's critical is

innovation um the robot is trained on material it doesn't innovate it may it may do that slightly differently it iterates it doesn't innovate and I do think that we're going to I mean as we see in life whether it's fashion or it's music or it's art innovation is what trends so when

somebody does something differently all of a sudden you know people are interested it's unique it's interesting it's innovative I don't think that again AI is not going to set the trends it's going to copy and so I think there's a very big difference between copying and innovating and again that's where I think human talent is going to continue to proliferate I think I have a tin of

bit different take than that because when I look at sort of the concepts of AGI or even the concepts of AI models creating artificial data to train on themselves so they create data that they train on I do believe that there's very soon going to be in many different models if it's sort of large language models or any other model to innovate in the traditional sense that it take something that is new that's not based on previous

training I do believe that's going to happen and I believe that's already you know just SE the one model that just came out with reasoning from open AI that even has an element of that um but I do believe that innovation comes from subcultures it comes from cultural context it comes from movements and I think that's not going to happen with AI uh at least not in my

logical world but I so I do agree with you um but I'm a bit I'm a bit more skeptical to the not being able to innovate on a more technical sense yeah I'm like I said I think uh I think there's always going to be the aspect of innovation and to your point maybe that falls into specific back to the word

contexts okay this is really exciting so what do you believe is the future obviously you guys are taking your own stance and your own direction but if you were to give uh blanket advice to everyone working within music licensing how should they think about technology and how should they perhaps position the companies in a different way I think if again I'm going to go back to the same thing I said a little while ago I think

the most critical thing that could happen right now is cooperation collaboration amongst the music industry I think where the music industry has failed to uh create technologies and solutions for itself is where it fails to cooperate and collaborate amongst peers so I think if we continue to sort

of let technology drive the solutions we're not going to be in charge of the terms of use and it's going to continue to be very uh fractionalized and you know as we see today with the digitization of music and how music is tracked online each tech has its own um way of doing it and it just adds more and more and more work to keep up so for

the music companies now we're delivering in this style to these people and implementing this for these people and this for these people and it's all done very differently that's insanely inefficient if we had collaborated on a technical solution at the beginning of this era then we could have actually created a technology that we said okay

startups to giant tech here is the solution that we've built to protect our interests to help us thrive as an industry and you come in you know in my in my vision tech company comes in kind of fills out the boxes that apply whether that's for a startup you know our budget is X or we giant tech our

budget is why you can kind of you know be guided through a journey and then at the end of the journey is here is what a what's available to you oh I think if we collaborate and we build solutions for ourselves hopefully it's solution I mean it ultimately it will be multiple but it would be fantastic and ideal if we could agree on

um not even agree what money is going to be made or specific permissions but agree that we want to be the authors of the technology that is delivered to the users to the tech companies to anybody out there who wants to build on it that's where I think we win and that's where I think we can also set the terms that says we will be part of these

ongoing revenue streams because if the threat is that human made art ceases to exist because there's not demand well if all of that is going to be generated out of human ma art and we want to continue to support human ma art then we need to carve that path forward and I think that's done at this very early stage when right now I use John RS and

theory of justice often when I'm talking about this because um his theory was you have to be behind sort of a veil of ignorance in order to create truly just rules because then you don't know where you're you know behind the veil of ignorance you don't know where you're going to land I think if we do that now then I think we have the opportunity to win later I think if we do what we've

done in the past and we operate in silos and we're not cooperating I think we're just going to end up with a fractionalized system again and it'll be very hit or miss as to whether artists become a part of an ongoing revenue stream this is also where our last conversation ended which I thought was really interesting and it just you touch fundamentals of where I see most of the issues in the music industry lie right

now if that sort of flow of data to super fan platforms or whatever like this lack of streamlined way of standing together as an industry to make sure that the value we have can be transferred between different stakeholders and the data we have can actually have extra monetization channels that the inherent worth we have and what we already own

can have even more worth it all depends on some sort of underlying technology or standard or way of making sure this can happen and this is where we aren't yet as an industry and this is also where I see a lot of these sort of value proposition from super fan platforms sort of fall through like sure you might be able to build your siloed version of

data um but how are you going to scale this and I think that really speaks into it so I think it's a fundamental issue the music industry has not solved at scale and I think you're touching something completely correct um and I think as you say this might be one of the big moves that we need to do in order to set the terms which

we still really aren't capable yet um but I think we're sort of in the early days when it comes to taking a stance and then the practical uh strength needs to be built and agreed upon um and that's sort of where we are now as an industry yeah I mean I think the thing that I have found consensus around is we

can't get behind the ball again on this like I think there is agreement and even willingness to figure something out that is driven by the music industry so now it's whether you know there needs to be I guess that organizational side to it um obviously when you and I met um I was I was trying to track down um AI okay uh

Martin and we ended up chatting about that as well but I see players out there working I think to bring that consensus together um I see technologies we've been chatting a lot with copyright Delta um and there's there are people on that really kind of that neutral layer that are trying to bring those interests

together and so my hope is that happens quickly enough I guess that we don't end up again sort of in all of these you know all these tchs are being built for us using you know udio and andso as an example what if they settle well now what I mean you know we still need so then they would

actually deliver tech to us just like you know back in the digitization yeah YouTube delivered tech to us and meta delivers tech to us and all these players deliver tech to us again if we don't get ahead of it right now and get ahead of it with sort of a universal approach that truly is it can be um universal approach doesn't mean it has to be the same for everybody

It just means that we are going to tell everybody that wants to leverage our IP this is the way to do so this is here's the gatekeeper enter through here and again we've then built that technology from within M and I think that's beautiful and I completely agree um this is outside of

sort of our core discussion today but one of the big worries I H have about this proposition which again I do agree with how in the world do we get it financed you know the you know it's not a traditional sense where you can just sort of Center power in one company and then you know there would be someone who get a huge return on investment from a private equity

standpoint like this is this is much more stand together and make it better and possible for everyone but the financial return in that whole thing is just a big question mark and when you talk about implementing technology at scale and building consensus and opportunities you know capital is one of the really big pieces of that um and this is where my biggest unanswered

question Al lie like how can the industry Mak an incentive to make sure this gets financed besides all the other complexities that needs to fall in place do you have do you have any thoughts on that no I mean I know I've seen it done um I don't know if DX was done in that way meaning I don't know if it was sort nonprofit setup yeah um I mean

obviously we I think we've seen about three iterations of that and really um the pr for the most part are similar in positioning so it's obious viously been done um it isn't something that I've specifically wrapped my head around um but I would like to be I mean I've made it really clear kind of everywhere I go these days I have this

conversation about Ai and the need for collaboration and again I'm finding incredible consensus around that um yeah I probably need to dig deeper as well into how does that how do we how do we help support that how do we make sure that comes about I know that my company is not going to be the innovator of that Tech but really any company sitting in our shoes shouldn't be it really that's what's appealing

about copyright Delta and as I understand it um AI is more of sort of the organizational unit and copyright Delta is more of that neutral Plumbing layer of technology so how do we um how do we bring these things together cohesively um to really come to the table discuss the Solutions and then bring that financing about for whoever

those players are if it's not those two it's others but um you know yeah the financing piece is going to be a challenge for sure yeah and I agree and shout out to Dan Asher he's also been on the podcast he's a wonderful human being Well audio sucket you guys are building for the future what does the future look like for you

guys I'm very optimistic I actually really feel like um Indies Rising into the mainstream is part of what we're going to see I mean we're already seeing that now but I think it's something that we will specifically be able to be part of um and I think the AI piece is going to be part of that Journey meaning when I when I look at my kids their gen um they want to they want

to take stuff and customize things and take it back to just something very basic people go to dinner and they want this but please you know leave the Mayo off or you go to your hotel and now hotels have Pillow menus and you want your pillow customized to you there's customization in every aspect of our life and customization is not a bad

thing so if we look at AI as the ability to iterate and customize to our liking and when I look at my children and I see how they engage with music they want to do stuff with it you know like they want to they want to engage it they want to you know change it up they want to do different things I think the more we can support that again with that Equitable

side in place the more um and specifically I think early on it will be Indie artists that are more willing to play there and so I think that will that will continue to help Independent Artists rise I mean I think if their music if they are discovered because their music is iterable let's say um and it's accessible then I think I think

they're going to win more and more so I think for audio socket we're definitely leaning into um accessibility uh with guardrails I guess yeah and I think that is that is the exact right path to take also to lead us into the future uh where the future is maybe a tiny bit more unknown but still sort of respecting the path

and the and the current in order to lead us to the Future like and I believe you know one of my last comments on this is I believe the future will look very different uh you know I have I have three kids the oldest is soon and five and we create music together uh you know it's a bit controversial when I speak about this on conferences and stuff like with Sho but I'll just explain my mindset because the reason why we do that is I believe that he will

sort of grow up in a fundamentally different way of talking about creating music so the way that we operate um me and my team with my 5-year-old kid is that we tell bed stories at night and I sort of net them down we sort of make them up ourselves I ask him to sort of tell bit of the story and I note it down and sometimes the day after we sit down we created a universe of five squirrels that sort of a family and then

we write out all the notes in like a structured format where maybe write some hooks for a song and I have a model that's just or custum instruction just made to create songs in structured format within that and then we go to soono and make song and matter like 30 minutes he has his customized song that we' made from the day before and he feel complete owners with we play it and we sing it and he has ownership of these characters and for me that's you know

that's not how it's going to happen in the future but that generally speak I believe that concept of you know creation is going to be accessible and it's really about true ration it's really about context and the broad storytelling that's going to stand out besides the human element you know and what you guys are doing is I believe maybe I'm taking a bit this a bit far is making it possible for us to have that future it's going to happen no

matter what but have a system where people get paid for it where it's sustainable where there's still something called sustainable Artistry if that makes sense and that's how I look at it um absolutely well and it's funny um at the New Visions conference that you and I both just attended uh I was sitting with a guy who has a music tech startup and he's doing something really fun and at

the end of the conversation um you know we were like all right so I had already taken some next steps to kind of get him what he needed to assess uh our catalog by dinner time he tracked me down and we had dinner with a group of people and he said my the favorite thing I heard all day today was when you said we can get a deal done in a day and he was like having just spent the last 18

months trying to get a deal done yeah you know with various labels and Publishers he's like the fact that you had already delivered me sort of the data that I needed you know ndas of course like but um and could make something accessible so I can now build something really cool and his was not generative AI just to be clear but he's like the fact that I can be in business

so quickly is exciting because it's been such a massive barrier and I apply that to AI as well where again as long as these artists are going to continue to make money the a is going to happen the customization you're talking about with your son that's going to happen so either we're with it or we're against it and I think we know where the against it leads us so um that's

beautiful and I think that really sort of ties a conversation together really well is that you guys have taken a position to actually create the same value propos of speed and access that a lot of these companies that might be doing it illegally are like you say okay we're going to work with the same mindset you have we're just going to make sure that this is actually legal

and people get paid and you know to a big degree future proof you guys are not going to get sued for 10 billion US Dollars and I think that's the beauty of it like I think the music industry even though that might feel uncomfortable that in many cases would be the best way to work not even longterm but also short term like it's going to be a competitive Advantage

uh you're going to work comparably to how other Industries are working that might not be working as clean so well done I applaud that and I believe that is the way to work thank you yeah it's the only way we've worked um so you know it's I guess inner DNA but uh yeah thank you Jen this has

been incredibly informative um it's really good to hear a voice in this particular space that are looking at it from your angle uh I really believe the human perspective is going to be the protector uh and I am dystopian but I'm a tiny bit less dystopian after this talk so thank you for that I needed

that awesome well thank you for having me again it was yeah I feel like so many great ideas were shared a few weeks ago and so let's keep let's keep that going forward and um yeah find where we come to the table and collaborate and build for ourselves thank you Chen we'll talk soon okay bye