There is a new format today. We’ve added three recurring segments – Rock Paper Scanner, Startup Sessions, and Strategies Techniques & Hacks with a Publicist. Plus, our regular long(er) interview with an innovator in the music tech space. It’s an abundance of content from a variety of thinkers and do-ers.
Dmitri and Tristra discuss Spotify's $10 billion payout, the rise of ethical AI solutions, and bids to purchase TikTok. Dmitri's interview with Jeremy Sirota, CEO of Merlin, touches on their efforts to support independent music through strategic partnerships and innovative thinking amidst industry consolidation. We hear from the startup Incantio, and also learn a strategic tip when reaching out to journalists for PR.
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Episode Transcript
Machine transcribed
0:00:10 - Dmitri
Hello and welcome back to Music Tectonics, where we go beneath the surface of music and tech. I'm your host, Dmitri Vietze. I'm also the founder and CEO of Rock Paper Scissors, the PR and marketing firm that specializes in music innovation. Hey, this week we're introducing a few new segments to the podcast, so we'll continue our weekly deep dive interviews with relevant founders, investors, inventors, but we're also rounding out the Tectonics offerings with a few new pieces. First, the Rock Paper Scanner, where Trisha and I scan the music and tech headlines of the past week. We'll also have Startup Sessions a brief glimpse into a startup founder's experience, what problems they encounter and what they're most excited about. And finally, strategies, techniques and hacks from a publicist. One of our beloved publicists at Rock Paper Scissors will share with you a PR tip that's worked for them. So I hope you enjoy this rounded out version of the podcast and find useful and interesting things that you can take into your day, into your week, and I hope it all is fun and useful for you. Now on to the show. Rock Paper Scanner.
Welcome to Rock Paper Scanner. Every week, Tristra and I scan the horizon of music tech and innovation news to see what's coming down the pike In this new segment of Music Tectonics. We highlight a few headlines and share some of our thoughts on what this means for the music business. Let's dive in. Hey, Tristra, I was interested. A couple of outlets reported on this, but I'm looking at the one from Music Business Worldwide which was titled Spotify paid out $10 billion to the music industry in 2024, a full $1 billion more than in 2023. That's a lot of money.
0:01:56 - Tristra
That is a lot of money, but they have a lot of catalog. Well, that's like there's a lot of music on Spotify.
0:02:01 - Dmitri
That's true, that's true.
0:02:14 - Tristra
Plus they say there are more than 500 million paying listeners across all music streaming services and that quote.
0:02:18 - Dmitri
a world with 1 billion paying listeners is a realistic goal for all music streaming services. Wow, that is cool. Over the past year or two I felt like we were hearing that streaming was starting to plateau in the US and in Western Europe, but it looks like growth hasn't plateaued worldwide, which is kind of interesting.
0:02:33 - Tristra
Yeah, that is interesting, you know it is. It's also interesting to think about. You know what is that? There's been a lot of criticism of Spotify. You know about their sort of revenue per user, Right, and so I think maybe this is a pretty strong message that that might also be improving.
0:02:49 - Dmitri
Yeah, that is a really good question. I'm actually curious about that because there's this sense that Spotify kind of saved the music industry. And that's what this news piece was about, in my opinion, was hey look, we saved you. But then you have the side you're talking about where artists feel like they're almost giving away their music for free. And, granted, not all artists are equal in terms of payment and compensation, because their audiences aren't as big. And then I wondered did they put this out because of this Mood Machine book that Liz Pelly put out? That's been getting a lot of press in the last month?
0:03:22 - Tristra
Yeah, I hope Liz's work is garnering that kind of response, because that means it's being taken seriously and honestly. It's wonderful to have voices that are I don't want to call Liz contrarian, but are pursuing a narrative that isn't as widely discussed or really bringing together some arguments that could be easy to neglect and wouldn't necessarily be the kind of press announcement that Spotify would want to put out there. Spotify also just won their lawsuit or got the MLC's lawsuit thrown out of court regarding the audiobooks and bundling question.
0:04:02 - Dmitri
Another, I would say, positive news story from the week from Billboard Music AI raises $40 million for its quote ethical AI solutions and they say we're ready to advance our mission of making music innovation accessible to all and we're eager to explore new possibilities with a focus on practical applications. And I think this is great. I mean the reason we picked up on it. I think Musicai and its B2C brand, moises, have over 50 million users, and so that's some serious traction and it's great to see an ethical AI company that's not simply scraping the web with such a big following, such a big user base. And while music tech investment's been a bit tepid for the last year, it's good to see some of the AI-focused investment making its way to creative tools as well.
0:04:50 - Tristra
Yeah, a music AI's round is very large for a music tech company and even if we put it into the context of other AI raises which it's not really fair to compare that to, like OpenAI's rounds or some of these bigger billion-dollar rounds, I think 11 labs just raised another huge round at a ridiculously high valuation. But, that said, this is pretty notable and maybe bodes well for some future tech innovation and investment. Absolutely.
0:05:28 - Dmitri
All right, those are a couple of positive notes. We can't not talk about what's going on with TikTok. There are a couple of articles that I pulled out. One from Music Business Worldwide US investor group, including employercom founder Roblox CEO, claims to have secured $20 billion for TikTok purchase bid. This was just kind of interesting to see how many people are throwing their names into the hat. This group in particular also has Mr Beast as part of the investment group, but apparently Mr Beast is throwing his hat in with anybody he wants a part of TikTok, regardless of who buys it?
0:06:05 - Tristra
Yeah, he really wants some TikTok.
0:06:06 - Dmitri
They also mentioned, there's a group that includes former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary. They want TikTok.
Sure, sure, whatever, and then there was a Billboard article with a different kind of proposal. Us government could own half of tiktok's us business under new plan. San francisco-based perplexity ai proposes merging with the chinese apps us business, which I don't fully understand. This government part, it said the new proposal would allow the us government to own up to half of that new structure once it makes an initial public offering of at least $300 billion. The person they talked to said Perplexity's proposal was revised based off of feedback from the Trump administration. So who knows Trump?
0:06:52 - Tristra
might have said I want to own part of it. It kind of feels like a real estate development deal, doesn't it? Yeah, Everyone's getting in the mix.
0:06:58 - Dmitri
There's government, there's payoffs. Who knows?
0:07:00 - Jeremy Sirota
what's going on?
0:07:00 - Dmitri
Whatever?
0:07:01 - Tristra
Exactly.
0:07:05 - Dmitri
So these two articles brought up something for me Perplexity. They brought up something for me that I want to ask and Tristra, I don't know, I just I can't get a read and nobody's really talking about. How is Red Note and we'll talk about DeepSeek in a minute how are these popular Chinese apps blowing up in the app store at the same time that the US?
0:07:25 - Tristra
government's supposedly curtailing TikTok's access to American data. Yeah, that's really interesting. Well, first of all, like all of this stuff could have been I feel might have been prevented if we would just have a federal data privacy law.
0:07:35 - Dmitri
Oh, there's an idea.
0:07:36 - Tristra
There's been so much political nonsense, so much energy wasted. Like what if we just had a law to protect all people on US soil and their data? Like wow, wouldn't that have been simpler? Anyway, you know, a girl can dream. But the interesting thing about Red Note is I don't know if anyone else out there has any meme lords in their household, but I do, and they have been watching Xiaohongshu content for the last year. Like Xiaohongshu has been flooding YouTube with a lot of it quasi-AI generated. It's super bizarre.
0:08:10 - Dmitri
What is Xiao Hongshu?
0:08:12 - Tristra
Xiao Hongshu, aka Red Note. Xiao Hongshu is Red Note's Chinese name, and so there's something like this has been in the works for a while, like Red Note has been marketing itself to US consumers, especially young ones, via YouTube. Oh interesting.
So, and maybe that's I don't know whether that was a plan or just a fortuitous coincidence that their stuff was kind of quasi viral, but it's certainly interesting. It's certainly interesting. I mean. I think there's just yeah, I think the US needs to kind of take a. I think we need to take a big step back and see, you know, what do we actually want from something like protecting data? And it's not really an international question, it is a question of consumer safety.
0:09:04 - Dmitri
Well, it is both, I think. Because, yeah, I mean, nobody loved it when Meta was getting involved with election rigging in a sense, how that got you know swept under the rug over the last couple of elections, who knows. But then to top it like, oh yeah, we're going to let these Chinese apps come into America and build traction, but then to say maybe the government's going to actually take away the IP somehow or buy the IP crazy. And then it makes me ask, trisha, are the Canadian-Mexican tariffs a smokescreen for what the US president wants to do with China? Like, why are there tariffs there and this other conversation? So we're banning TikTok? We're not banning TikTok. President Trump is allowing in TikTok. President Trump wants to own TikTok.
0:09:51 - Tristra
I think it's very much. I mean, let's not overestimate Trump. He's very much a deal making, shoot from the hip kind of person, not a deep thinker who has, you know, is doing like five dimensional chess with deep foreign policy interest or knowledge. So I think this is just yet again. I mean, as you can see from all the executive orders, it's just spaghetti getting thrown at the wall, seeing what sticks, what doesn't make chaos, because, honestly, that's where Trump feels comfortable.
0:10:28 - Dmitri
And it's all about him. Let's take a couple of minutes before we get into our feature interview for today's episode. For one last story, widening out, vox has an article you're wrong about DeepSeek, what the hot new Chinese AI product means and what it doesn't. And basically what they're saying is it's not that DeepSeek is better than ChatGPT, it's that AI chat has gotten better than the last time most people have tried any of it and that DeepSeek's risen in popularity because it shows its thinking in real time, like you can actually see its process, which is different than the interface.
0:11:01 - Tristra
Yeah, I don't know if we can say it's thinking, it's called a reasoning model and I want everyone. To stay clear about this is not a mind, it is a machine, a very cool machine, but it's a machine.
0:11:11 - Dmitri
And Vox says yes, it's cheaper and was built faster than open AI, which was one of the concerns Like oh shoot, we've invested all this and now all of a sudden, somebody from China is coming up with less powerful chips doing more powerful things, but really they're saying there's room for both. And another thing you know to note is DeepSeek has censored content within it. You can ask it anything about Taiwan and you'll get like a safety message, not what's actually. You know it doesn't actually ingest and process that information.
Interesting so something else I noticed a quote was China doesn't want to destroy the world. There are indications they're imitating most of the safety measures recommended by US institutions and taken by US labs. Those measures are totally inadequate right now, but if we adopted adequate measures, I think they might well copy those too, and we should work for that to happen, which is kind of what you were saying, trista, about.
0:12:07 - Tristra
That's a positive message. I like that. I like that if we could actually think about this together to make sure that AI because how is AI going to? It's not going to respect national borders, and I know there's people are talking like a space race, but I don't think we can think about AI in the same way. I think that's a metaphor that's going to hamper us.
0:12:23 - Dmitri
Yeah, Well, I want to ask one more thing before we wrap up our news roundup, which is you know the way that people are using things like ChatGPT and I assume DeepSeek now is they're asking AI questions. That could be very practical. It could be very how do you get business done? It could also be, you know, very personal. It could be psychological. People have friendly chats as well, and the question is do you want your unconscious and conscious mind to basically have a neural link to a company that could very well be subject to the Chinese Communist Party's decisions, not only about censorship, but also just being able to see what's going on over here?
0:13:10 - Tristra
Yeah, that's a really interesting question, and not to mention that DeepSeek has already had a leak of chat, so there's a serious security issue that has led to people's personal conversations being publicly leaked.
0:13:22 - Dmitri
And I used to think I'm scared of what that party might do over there. But I mean, we've already seen in the United States. Maybe I'm scared of the US government doing it too and buying TikTok or you know the rest of the political tech elite that's falling in behind the president here.
0:13:38 - Tristra
And the federal employees have already gotten warnings that they should not use, they should not have a Blue Sky account that is in their name. So I I know personally from someone who's gotten this, this warning- political leanings um yeah, this is kind of interesting. Well, it is a very strange time sorry we're getting. This is like. This is almost like a dark conspiracy show instead of a music tech news roundup, and I'm not claiming any, any conspiracies here, I'm just asking, asking questions no no, I'm just asking questions Curious for our music innovation community.
0:14:08 - Dmitri
What it means for us, you know, to have, you know Moises really working hard to make this ethical AI solution in music and creativity is, I mean, it's in the face of a lot of this other stuff going on, so it's super cool to see that there are players.
0:14:22 - Tristra
Yeah, there's strong anti-copyright headwinds right now, but we're all going to make it All right.
0:14:29 - Dmitri
All right, they won't always be this dark, but hey, we're just scanning what's on the horizon and getting it to you. Make sure you didn't miss anything. So check out the Rock Paper Scanner newsletter and we're going on to our show. Now let's go to the rest of our show.
0:14:40 - Tristra
Thanks, Tristra, you're welcome, thank you.
0:14:44 - Dmitri
As always, we unearth the relevant news for you. Sign up for the weekly Rock Paper Scanner. For an in-depth curation of the news, go to bitly slash rpscanner. That's bitly slash, rpscanner. I'm really excited. This week's feature interview is with Jeremy Sirota, the CEO of Merlin, the Independence Digital Music Licensing Partner, which represents 15% of the global recorded music market. Merlin helps its members to own their independence by striking premium deals with platforms like Apple, canva, meta, spotify, youtube and Twitch. Jeremy began his career as a technology lawyer at Morrison Forster before holding senior roles at Warner Music Group, including head of business and legal affairs for WEA and ADA. Prior to Merlin, he was an early hire on the Facebook music team, driving innovation in music and technology. Hey, it's the legend, jeremy. Welcome to the podcast.
0:15:47 - Jeremy Sirota
Wow, that's quite an intro. I don't know if I've ever been called a legend. I think I need to live up to that now. But thank you so much for having me and this being on your new format.
0:15:59 - Dmitri
Yeah, and I'm so excited to talk to you. I told you right before we hit the record button I'm a fan of your LinkedIn stuff. You guys should definitely check out. Jeremy's writes a bunch of content. It's inspirational, it's very tactical, lots of great tips, and it's cool to see the independent spirit shine through of everything. It's really, really fun. So, jeremy, I always like to ask guests the airplane question. When someone's sitting next to you on an airplane and they ask what do you do, how do you answer?
0:16:28 - Jeremy Sirota
I like this. I was even asked you for the podcast. I was like, oh my gosh, how do people answer this question? And I decided I'm going to give you three crisp answers. Oh, I like it. So the first is I never tell people I work in music. And I'll tell you why. Because I have two experiences. One was a customs official when I was going to the UK when I was working at Facebook Music and I told him where I worked and what I did. I worked on the Facebook Music team and he told me my son applied for a job there and didn't get it. Can you help? Yeah, and I just looked at him like well, I'm not that close to like Zuckerberg and the leadership who makes these decisions, but I'll see what I can do. And then did he let you through? He did let me through. The second was when I worked at Warner Music and I was taking an Uber somewhere and they asked me what I did and, no joke, they started singing to me for the rest of the ride.
Yes and just asked if I could sign them, and I said, well, I don't quite work in A&R, but I'll pass your card along to so on.
0:17:36 - Dmitri
Hey, that was your early influencer opportunity. You could have been doing auditions and Ubers. What's it you know? Tell us about? Tell us about Merlin and how you think about your role. Yeah.
0:17:48 - Jeremy Sirota
The way. Yeah, putting aside how I avoid telling people I work in music, I actually love talking about it and what we do. We have such this incredible mission about ensuring that, like, no matter what the size of your company, no matter what genre or region, you can get access to the best digital partnerships in the world. You can get superior commercial terms, more opportunities, and we serve as the advocate for what independents need. And for myself as the CEO, of course, my job is to support my team. That's first and foremost. Without a team, there's no success in the world. But beyond that, it's how do we ensure that we're helping independents create parity in the marketplace so they can compete? How do I shine a spotlight on our independent members, because they are the heart of what we do? And then how do I help bridge that delta between capital, resources and access? And we do that by giving them information and tools so that they can thrive in what is just a constantly evolving marketplace.
0:19:02 - Dmitri
So let me ask you something that might be confusing to some of our listeners, which is you guys are a member organization. Are you like a PRO? Are you like a publishing administrator? Are you like a label, a distributor? I don't get it Like. Are you a trade group? What is?
0:19:17 - Jeremy Sirota
it? Great question. The good thing about Merlin that makes it so exciting to work at is we're a unicorn. There is no one like us in the marketplace, and I've been doing this for a long time. I've never quite encountered anyone who operates the?
way we do. The bad thing about being a unicorn is you're a unicorn, which means it's so hard to describe what we do. Sometimes they'll describe us as what we are. We operate like a not-for-profit and so, for example, at the end of the year, if we have money left over from the admin fee, we collect 1.5%, which even there is the lowest in the industry. If we have money left over, our board will vote to give a rebate back to all of our members.
That's a part of Merlin. Well, we also have a board from our membership. It comes from our members. They're nominated by our members, so we have this member governed organization. And then, really, the thrust of Merlin, what I was talking about, which is how do we help our members independent members thrive, and that means we can take a very broad view about what we think we should be doing on their behalf, and that gives us a lot of license to enter into new areas Things we're doing with Merlin Connect and tapping into the startup space, what we're doing with our insights initiative. So when I talk about these things, you hear a lot of similarities, obviously, to what other actors do in the marketplace, but because of the nature of our organization, we can operate and think a lot differently about our mission.
0:20:55 - Dmitri
And is it primarily record labels that are? Members, are publishers a part of this, as well, we represent sound recording rights.
0:21:04 - Jeremy Sirota
So that means a lot of our members do have publishing units and have publishing arms of their companies and in fact what we're doing with Merlin Connect does touch on publishing rights but primarily what we're representing is the music, the sound recordings of our members. So we do have take, for example, a Reservoir Media Reservoir really got their start in publishing but now have a very strong sound recording arm. So you get a mixed bag across our memberships. We have labels, we have distributors, we have artist rights management organizations, we have service companies. So it's a very broad swath.
0:21:42 - Dmitri
Got it. Okay, that makes sense. Great Thanks for letting me get a little in the weeds with that. Just because I think, since you are a unicorn, there aren't a lot of other people in that species group in the music industry, it's helpful to just explain where you are there. What challenges is Merlin trying to solve and how does it differ from some of these other types of entities that are out?
0:22:00 - Jeremy Sirota
there almost the problem statement and opportunity that independents have always presented. So the opportunity that they present is they are the cultural cachet. Everything bubbles up from independents and the reason why is that they've always been more risk takers, disruptors, maybe even pray tell, sometimes troublemakers, and that means they just have a very different viewpoint of the marketplace. And so when you say what problem are we trying to solve? We're trying to solve for the problem of no matter what your level of sophistication, no matter what genre, no matter how you're approaching the marketplace, you can come to Merlin and be able to thrive.
And when I say thrive I just mean I take this very broad sense of the term. When we sit in the center at Merlin, what we have and we can present back to our members is over 450 different members communicating to us, communicating information, what they're learning, what they're seeing on the ground right. They are the arms, legs, ears and eyes of the organization and all that funnels into us and we're able to take that information and share it back, obviously maintaining confidentiality, not naming anyone by name. But we always say, for every one thing you share with Merlin, you're going to get 10 things back that are going to help you navigate, frame the world, make decisions, and so that's really the problem statement how do we give them the tools, no matter what the marketplace is doing, no matter where the value is coming from, to be able to thrive in that sort of unique way that independents approach artists and what they do?
0:23:53 - Dmitri
Cool. So how does the independent sector intersect with one of the themes of our show, technology, and how does it drive innovation?
0:24:01 - Jeremy Sirota
A couple ways strike me. The first is that they've always been on the front lines, and that's both at an artist level, but also because, just inherently, they're less bureaucratic. Most independents are still run by their founders. It's like a single individual making a decision. It's like a single individual making a decision. And in the same way that they are typically more supportive of artistry and authenticity and just creativity generally, like there's more empowerment on the artist side, that mindset also goes towards technology and platforms, and so you just have a lot more tech forward mindset.
And then the second piece that's always been really interesting to me is because they also typically have less resources. They just have to make smarter decisions. They can't just arbitrage against the whole marketplace and just say, oh, we're just going to experiment with these 10 things. They have to look at those 10 things and decide which is the smartest one that I'm going to invest my time and energy in. And that means that when they look at technology, they're just making much more. Both they'll take more risks, but they take a much more calculated approach to it, and that just means technology has always driven them. In the same way that new genres and artists drive them, and emerging trends. They're more willing to experiment with technology.
0:25:33 - Dmitri
Yeah, there's almost like an agility there that an independent has, as well as a sort of mindset and an aesthetic that suits that sort of experimentation. But intentional experimentation, not like we'll throw money at every single thing, We'll pick something and if it's you know, if it's the right fit for what we're trying to do, they can kind of pursue some interesting new technologies or innovations.
0:25:58 - Jeremy Sirota
I'll tell you some of the smartest, most interesting conversations I've had with tech. And, to be clear, I've had a lot of interesting conversations about tech with many, many members. But there's a gentleman named Brett Gerwitz who's the founder of Epitaph Records and Anti, and he's just. Every time I talk to him he's telling me about the next thing he's experimented or something he's implemented in his company and I'm always learning something new, like I walk away with just like notes of things to look into after I talk to him, and that, to me, is quite representative of what's happening in the independent space.
0:26:31 - Dmitri
Yeah, love it. We've had um labels like Loma Vista or Secretly Canadian, come to the Music Tectonics Conference and they do seem like quicker to quicker to kind of adopt stuff or at least know about it. You know and and and, like you said, it's kind of like check it out and see if it's a good fit, which is why it's great to have you here with this conversation. What are some of the biggest issues of the next year for your membership, for Merlin, and how do you think things will unfold in the independent music space this coming year or so?
0:27:02 - Jeremy Sirota
Okay, I like that. It's a very nice small question. There has always been consolidation in the music space. That is just the history of how the five and then four and now three major record companies were formed. And every time there's a consolidation, things slip out and you see growth in other areas and that's always been. It's. You know, the independent space has always sort of respawned in a sense. The independent space has always sort of respawned in a sense.
At the same time, it's accelerating and that, to me, is problematic for the industry, for innovation, for choice and for creativity, and that's an area that I hope continues to get looked at. I begrudge no one who sells their company. I hope continues to get looked at. I begrudge no one who sells their company. It's very difficult to compete in this space, but I see consolidation as a key concern that hopefully there's more focus put on that. I'm sure one of your questions will be about AI, but clearly AI this is a year for the creative industry. It's very important to get it right. And then the third, something that is so near and dear to so many independents folks like NinjaTune and K7 have been leading the way on this, amongst so many others about sustainability? How do we adopt greener practices? How do we address the environmental impact? And, with the growth of AI and the computing power needed to sustain it, these questions are coming faster than we thought about. How do we, as an industry, address this more holistically?
0:28:42 - Dmitri
Well, that's a great set of issues to kind of like think about big picture in terms of where things are going. And I think, yeah, you're right about the, the consolidation front, not only from the majors but also, you know, everybody needs an exit strategy at some point as well, and so so I mean it's funny when people talk in the industry about consolidation, it's especially with an independent mindset. It's often thought of with a little bit of a negative bent, because as companies consolidate, as in get bigger, it starts to feel more and more like monopolies. It feels like more controls getting lost. It feels like there's a little less diversity about how people are valuing certain aspects of music or creativity. You get a little more of the widget or the you know the bean counting as opposed to sort of like the heart of, of like doing something because you believe it must just be on the planet. And then there's the flip side, even from an independent perspective, people do need to have an exit strategy, right, or? Or they need, you know, like, or they need to wind down something because there's not going to be somebody else to keep things going. So I mean even just taking care of things in the future shifts as well, and we see it on the rights holder and the label side, but we also see it on the music tech, the startup side too.
We've seen more and more consolidation happening there, and I think you're right. Then there's like a rebirth, then something you know, like something gets folded into something else and it loses its. You know, something gets folded into something else and it loses its. You know, like I was just talking to um uh uh, a record label that bought a catalog for an artist that couldn't get onto the streaming services because of old business, because of agreements not matching, because of unlicensed samples that needed to be managed and so forth, and you know, then later it emerged. You know, like, then somebody, somebody calculated things differently and figured out a way to make it come to light as well. So I think there's there's opportunities post post consolidation as well.
0:30:35 - Jeremy Sirota
There always is, and this is one of the unique facets of Merlin, which is it's not for sale. We don't have investors looking for an exit. We are a member-owned organization and that means that there is a consistency about us, that we're not going anywhere you don't have to worry about. Is Merlin still going to be here two years from now? And, more importantly, what it allows us to do is provide an alternate voice into the marketplace.
I can't tell you how often partners come to us saying, hey, what are your thoughts on this? This is what we're hearing from major rights holders. How do you think about this? What is important to you? What do you think we should be building here? How should we be approaching this? And to me, that's really important that there continues to be a voice like Merlin, amongst other voices within the independent space, of course, that there is a one place you can come to to have a different view about what the marketplace should be and what it means, to sort of help, nurture and support it so that it can maintain this originality. This originality it's evolving so fast the way people consume media, this birth of short form video, the way in which people don't even sometimes know what they're consuming, or they're consuming so much more passively. The thing about Merlin that keeps me really engaged is knowing that 5, 10, 20 years from now, this Eni will be here continuing to support sort of where music is born from.
0:32:20 - Dmitri
You've painted a great picture for us, Jeremy, about kind of what you do at Merlin, how you think about some of the things that are shifting in the industry as it relates to independence and some of the upcoming kind of issues that independence and the music industry faces. But I'm curious, what gets you most excited about emerging innovations in tech and music?
0:32:38 - Jeremy Sirota
Great. I like this. The simplest answer is just anything new. And new doesn't mean a new platform per se. New can also be a new feature. There's so many ways that platforms have evolved over the years and different ways they engage their audiences. As their audiences grow to represent different demographic, different ages, different needs, the reason people use a platform will change. And so when I say new, it can be a new platform, new feature and just how much they're trying to kind of transform the experience for a person. And I thought about you know, if I go back to my early days at Facebook, when they launched music stickers and just this concept that you could just add music into your short form video, which is now just taken for granted, but at the time was quite transformational. There's other ones. We, you know I was.
I was questioned a lot why I did this, but I was really excited to partner with Supernatural, who's doing things in the metaverse fitness space, which I think is quite exciting. I'm really excited about how Twitch has moved into sort of providing licensed music to DJs and creating this platform for them. I think that's really exciting. Last night I met with a Merlin Connect applicant. They were traveling into town and it was just. We spent a lot of time talking about, obviously, merlin and our Connect initiative, which is geared towards startups, but just talking about what AI tools are you using? What are you seeing in the marketplace? What are you hearing when you talk to the VCs and how they're investing? And so all these things are what get me excited.
And then there's just like I have like I was, as you asked me this question there's like a laundry list that just started going through my head. It's like where are we going with wearables? Deeper personalization? I, you know, there's always. I've always had fun conversations with friends who've been deep in the fan club space about imagine customizing a fan club by user, and I don't just mean like skinning your app, I mean literally a customized experience for you. And then my favorite, of course and I always love making this joke which is we've been talking for the last 30 years about how AR and VR is just five years away. So I might have we're getting close to what I can say 35 years, but maybe in this next 10 years, five years it's going to happen in a way that has more widespread adoption, because it does open up a lot of opportunities.
And then I'll say one more, which is just data. There's just, you see, every successful company is a company that has built up a repository of data and that can tap into it, and it's one of the reasons why we launched our Merlin Insights initiative last year. Merlin Insights initiative last year we sit on the largest repository of data, of realty data, trends, data outside of the major record companies, in fact, probably as big as at least one of them and our ability to provide that on an anonymized, aggregated basis, of course, but to our members, so that they can not just have a descriptive view of the world but a prescriptive view and maybe even try to get to a predictive view. So those are some of the things that are really exciting me right now and they get me animated.
0:36:18 - Dmitri
Cool. There's a couple of things you mentioned there that I kind of want to follow up on before we wrap up here. You haven't talked a lot about AI, but I know Merlin recently published a policy and statement on artificial intelligence. Can you talk about your approach there?
0:36:35 - Jeremy Sirota
Yeah, we've published two different pieces about AI. We have a policy on AI. That's on our website, and we've also put out what I would call maybe not quite a positioning blog post. It's not quite a paper. There's the standard which we've been talking about for a while consent, compensation, attribution. Great To me, that's foundational.
The way that we think about it and the way we talk to people who want to get into the space, want to work with us, the way we communicate to the public, is about you want to be on the right side of history with this, and uh, yeah, I only use this internally, but I'll use it here anyways. The term I use is ice. The way we approach AI is innovation, culture and ethics, and by that what I mean is we both embrace AI and the potential it has for human creativity and creating new opportunities. That then has to go alongside of a mutual understanding about music is just not just binaries, it's not just data points. It's an art form that shapes culture and that leads into an ethical approach to AI. That is about being on the right side of history, about supporting the values of civilization, thinking about issues such as sustainability, thinking about creativity, and so those are the three things that drive how we approach and how we talk publicly and how we talk to people who approach us about.
0:38:27 - Dmitri
AI. That's helpful and sounds very logical and reasonable as well. It's kind of cool to work at a nonprofit, because you can not. Everything is driven by money all the time.
0:38:38 - Jeremy Sirota
It's not. But at the same time, there is both an empowerment of creativity, which can, I believe, help to drive new companies into understanding music and wanting to work with music, and then, at the same time, it can also open new spaces for commercialization and new revenue streams, because the best way to continue to create more space for rights holders to come into this world, for artists to come into this world to create sustainable careers, is you just have to grow the pie, and you have to grow the pie in different spaces. And that's where AI is, I hope, trying to start to unlock for startups the power of music, because if everyone just thinks about music, like a lot of engineers and people of that mindset do, it's just a binary, it's an input into a data set that delivers some sort of output, and what they miss is how much it drives stickiness, how much it drives how much time people spend on platform, and that's the power of music and that's why I work in this space.
0:39:44 - Dmitri
I work in this space, love it. That's a great way of looking at it. Hey, you mentioned this thing called Merlin Connect. Sounds like maybe it's for how you engage with startups what?
0:40:00 - Jeremy Sirota
does it have to do with how you and Independence are driving innovation and addressing music licensing in our space. Merlin Connect is about how do we make music simple Not the music itself, but accessing music. Yeah, okay, no-transcript a long time, we'll say. And I've always thought about how complex it is. And there's like three analogies. I came up with two of them and someone else came up with the third and I can't remember what it is because I give them credit. But one is it's sometimes Escher-esque, like how do I navigate this? The second is it's like Ikea. I don't know how to find the exit to pay for my goods. That part of Ikea, okay, yeah, that part. And then the third is like where's Waldo? I don't even know who to contact.
I get it now I get it, yeah, and so we have created the turnkey solution for merging platforms about how to accessing fully cleared music, quality, independent music, and it's not just about simplifying the licensing process. It's about simplifying understanding the power and use cases of music. It's about making it easier from an operational level. There's no complex integration, it's simply an API pull. Basically, if you can build an app, you can pull this music and you can use it, and so we've just simplified it at all levels where it's typically been quite complicated in the music space.
And then what we want to do is take the uniqueness of independence, the skillset and investor mindset that we have within the team at Merlin, and then the membership and their labels and their artists who are so interested in this stuff. And then how do we bring all of that? That is our capital. We're investing that capital into the startup, and it's something I've been excited about. I've tried to do it multiple times, basically at every company I've ever worked at, and this is a key priority for us. This year we're really excited. We signed our first partner in Connect last year and I think we're close to our second partner this month.
0:42:16 - Dmitri
That's great. It's a super cool program. We've heard about different labels trying to figure out like what a almost like a beta licensing look like, or a test case where it's free or inexpensive but it's got a cap on it. But it sounds like you're kind of like building the rails for that to scale both across multiple partners but also as those partners grow as well, which is a. It's sorely missing and maybe we found Waldo.
0:42:43 - Jeremy Sirota
I don't know, Maybe we found, you know and that, but that does go back to the independent mindset of how do we create smart but much more flexible approaches to the marketplace, and that's something that is unique to the independent mindset.
0:42:58 - Dmitri
This has been a blast. I really appreciate you taking the time. I have one last question for you. We really like to expand our network with our guests and our audiences. What other people or companies and music innovation would you like to shout out for our audience to check out before we part ways today?
0:43:13 - Jeremy Sirota
Okay, that's a good one, man. If I don't mention someone, I'm going to just say everyone I work with I love, but if I have to, I'm going to do power of three. Let's pick three here. Cool, they provide both enterprise and consumer based tools in the creative space, and they're quite bullish about integrating music into their platform, and it's been really exciting to work with them because they're pushing the boundaries about how music can be integrated into a platform.
0:44:43 - Dmitri
Awesome, jeremy, this has been great. I appreciate you taking the time and sharing your thoughts and giving us a quick kind of overview of sort of what you do, what Merlin does, and how you see things emerging. This has been great. Really appreciate you being on the podcast.
0:44:54 - Jeremy Sirota
Thank you so much for having me. This was a lot of fun.
0:44:59 - Dmitri
So many members of the music tectonics community are startup founders, so we decided to ask you, our lovely listeners, to record a voice memo and send it in for the new startup session segment of the show. If you'd like to apply for a spotlight, go to wwwrockpaperscissorsbiz and click the contact us form.
0:45:34 - Danny Newcomb Incantio
Now on to our debut spotlight, and being one of them, I had a lot of back catalog and no place to put it where it would be automatically surfaced for sync licenses. One of the ways we did this, as we launched the company, was by finding a good way, good recommendation engine. We partnered with a technology partner and we have an AI recommendation system that's based on song features, music features that services music very well. The other way we did this was by building a legal framework, legal structure that allows independent artists to be able to license their music for certain tiers of exposure, create a legal contract for those uses so that music could be immediately licensable and the licenses would be clear. It's a complicated problem because oftentimes there's lots of rights holders or there's lots of co-writers in some cases publishing so we had to make sure that we captured all the rights holders, so we make sure all the rights holders are signed off and then we present the tiers that they want a license for and make sure that it is a clean license for music supervisors or content creators on the other side that want to use independent music. I first came across this problem so I grew up in Seattle during the grunge era my oldest friend is Mike McCready from Pearl Jam discussing, like all these demos, outtakes, alternate versions of songs that there was no place to put where they could be surfaced for licensing and there was no immediate way to license them. I think what I realized was that while there were options to sell catalogs if you've done really well in the 90s there wasn't a way to keep hold of your IP and keep collecting money off it and keep control of it but also be able to license it directly to people who wanted to license it. Providing value to artists who've worked really hard to make their art I think is easy if you give them a way and a market for their music to be licensed and to let them hold onto their IP to continue to generate royalty payments if the music is used and to decide where the music is placed. The other thing for me in particular as an older artist one with a couple of musicians in my family was giving access to younger artists who are creating to the sync market so that they could put their music up, their compositions up for licensing and have access to that market where they don't really or can't really get that access unless they're working through a label. One of the ways that we provide value is on the artist side is direct payments based on their splits. So as artists come in and categorize and get approval from the other rights holders on a certain track or a certain composition, the way that they're paid is direct to their account when they get a placement based on those splits. Of all of the things.
I never expected to be doing a startup. I'm still an active musician. I'm still releasing music. I'm very proud of my team. We have a great team of four people who have built the platform we're getting ready to launch here in 2025. Very happy that we'll be able to work together and build this platform without a lot of resources, but with the idea that really what we're doing is connecting creatives on the visual art side people who are looking for music, people who are creating advertisements and also on the artist side. I think connecting these two sides of creatives to me is very important.
One of the biggest positive results that I've seen in talking to people the past couple of years is that this has all been possible with the advent of new technology. Everybody has always wanted this to exist a way for independents to be able to license directly. But the partnerships we've been able to get have really given us traction and showed me that the whole industry is aware that this would be a beneficial service to have a new model for licensing. Partnerships with APM have been great. Partnerships with CD Baby, partnerships lately with Disco has been amazing. As we go into launch, we are very excited to be one of the platforms on Disco where our artists will be immediately licensable.
I think if I'd known how much work it would be to get a startup off the ground, I might not have started it. The biggest challenge has been finding resources, and that means financial, but also, I think, doing marketing and production and getting the word out to what we're actually doing. No, we're not another catalog that's buying your content. No, we're not a tech catalog first that is just posting music up for people to stream. We are actually trying to create a service, a marketplace that has a new legal structure, that allows the business to have a new model, and that is something that I'm very passionate about, still excited about after two years in the startup world.
But I think it's going to be very worthwhile and the first artists we have on the platform are very excited as we launch in 2025, we're going to be working with Disco to have our light set up for our artists on the catalog. That is a big technical push for us to get that done. We're going to be working with a beta catalog with artists at CD Baby and starting to bring in larger amounts of catalog. Over the past year and a half, one of the exciting things has been to connect with A2IM labels. So after we get done bringing independent artists on DIY artists, we're going to be bringing on and working with some of A2IM's labels and that's going to bring on a lot more curated content, grow the catalog more quickly with great music. So that's the big push for the first quarter of this year and we are so excited. So please check out Encantio. Thank you.
0:51:54 - Dmitri
We love the founders and investors in the music tectonics community. If you'd like to be part of the startup sessions, go to wwwrockpaperscissorsbiz and click the contact link. Fill out the form and let us know you're interested. I'll give me a PR tip. Another new segment we're adding features a member of the Rock Paper Scissors team sharing a PR or marketing tip. So before we wrap up today's episode, let's go to Tristra with our first tip.
0:52:25 - Tristra
Hey everyone, this is Tristra, the Chief Strategy Officer at Rock Paper Scissors, and I have a new little feature we wanna introduce to you today, and that is how to PR. So we'll be bringing you some simple tips, tricks and mindset hacks that will help you learn to PR a little bit, or at least learn about the PR process, so you can work closely and successfully with an agency when the time comes. The first one today is really simple. It's so simple that I'm sure some of you will roll your eyes with the obviousness. But I want us all to remember one important thing about PR, and that is that journalists are humans.
Yes, I know it can feel really strange to pitch someone and know them kind of from their writing in an email, especially when someone is a gatekeeper or feels like a very important potential ally or spokesperson or amplifier for your message. It can feel really easy to get a little carried away and let your emotions dictate your behavior, but it's really important to remember that journalists are humans too and they desperately need you to understand this. So when you're learning about a journalist, when you're doing your research, preparing for PR which is something very, very important to do you should read someone's work really closely. I would rather you target you know a small handful of people that you've looked at really closely and target them well with a pitch that's relevant to their reporting and their overall interests, rather than, you know, doing a newswire or hitting something you know really really widely, with some list you have of thousands of people which we lovingly refer to in PR as the spray and pray.
Instead, get to know the humans on the other end of that email or a DM or a phone and learn how to talk to them in a way that they can really see the benefit of what you're offering, because you are offering them something and if you can find that sweet spot where your interests intersect with theirs, oh man. That's when you have a really successful pitch and something lands and you often end up getting a great story that can talk about exactly what you're up to. Great, that's. My first little tip is remember that journalists are humans and work with them as humans, build the relationship, learn about them, investigate how their minds work and what really intrigues them, and then pitch accordingly. Now we're going to have more in-depth practical tactics and tips and bigger strategy considerations, and I'll be bringing together some of the RPS team so that they can share their discoveries from pounding the pavement as publicists with you. Thanks for listening.
0:55:17 - Dmitri
Thanks for listening to Music Tectonics. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on your favorite podcast app. We have new episodes for you every week. Did you know? We do free monthly online events that you, our lovely podcast listeners, can join? Find out more at musictectonics.com and, while you're there, look for the latest about our annual conference and sign up for our newsletter to get updates. Our annual conference and sign up for our newsletter to get updates. Everything we do explores the seismic shifts that shake up music and technology the way the earth's tectonic plates cause quakes and make mountains. Connect with Music Tectonics on Twitter, instagram and LinkedIn. That's my favorite platform. Connect with me. Dmitri Vietze, if you can spell it, we'll be back again next week, if not sooner.
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The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Weekly episodes include interviews with music tech movers & shakers, deep dives into seismic shifts, and more.