Ever wondered how the music industry parallels the cautionary tales of Kodak, the Sony Walkman, and Nokia?Join us as we chat with Constantine Roussos of Dot Music. He shares his insights on this journey of music's digital transformation, spotlighting the industry's struggle with outdated business models and highlighting the power shift towards streaming platforms. Through his eyes, you'll see the urgent need for verified music identities as a key ingredient for a secure future for artists and rights holders.
Listen wherever you pod your casts:
Looking for Rock Paper Scanner, the newsletter of music tech news curated by the Rock Paper Scissors PR team? Subscribe here to get it in your inbox every Friday!
Join the Music Tectonics team and top music innovators by the beach for the best music tech event of the year:
6th Annual Music Tectonics Conference October 22-24, 2024 Santa Monica, California
Episode Transcript
Machine transcribed
0:00:06 - Dmitri
The Big Now with Tristra and Dmitri. Welcome back to Music Tectonics, where we go beneath the surface of music and tech. I'm your host, dimitri Vits. I'm also the founder and CEO of Rock Paper Scissors, the PR and marketing firm that specializes in music innovation. We don't talk about it much these days, but the value of music has never fully recovered from the piracy days.
Not all industries had this type of decline in the evolution to the digital market, and sure, spotify has helped return a lot of the value to the overall music industry by retraining the world to pay for music they listen to. But in the process, artists, songwriters and labels have all had to adjust to a shift in the economics and a shift in the balance of power, and now it feels like everyone's waiting to see what comes next with conversations about a post-streaming model. Today's guest has moved mountains to try and reset the balance of power for artists and rights holders. Constantine Roussos is the CEO and founder of Dot Music, which is the result of a global music initiative to unite the music community as a whole around the idea of a music specific top level domain. Dot Music is the safe and secure top level domain name and verified music ID for the global music community and industry. The Dot Music Initiative is supported by one of the largest international music coalitions ever assembled, including the most prominent and influential music organizations, representing over 95% of global music.
Constantine himself is an alumnus of Harvard Business School, mit and USC. Constantine is also a musician, a singer-songwriter and a certified music and sound engineer, having recorded and produced a variety of artists. Hey Constantine, welcome to the show.
0:01:53 - Constantine
Thanks for having me, Dmitri.
0:01:55 - Dmitri
So this will be fun because, like I said, this is not a topic that we've spoken a lot about recently on the podcast, and it'll be interesting to talk a little bit about, like, where we've been and where we're going when it comes to piracy and protecting the value of music. Where do you think the music industry went wrong?
0:02:12 - Constantine
well, that's a great question. Um, you know, hindsight's always 20 20, right? So, yeah, uh, there's many places where the music industry went wrong. Obviously, I identify probably like six reasons. First was they failed to embrace digital transformation and secondly, they clinged on to some outdated business model that was based on physical and obviously another point was they delayed innovating and resisted any change. And another big reason is they misread the customer and underestimated the market power of the fan and the consumer and unfortunately, you know also big tech. They've had better strategies that focused on the value to consumers, which ultimately led to music consumption becoming commoditized, right, all for one convenient monthly price. And this created, you know, bigger problems with pricing, because now there's a threshold where you can you know where you can raise prices for monthly subscriptions. And lastly, the other problem is the fierce competition for consumer attention. For example, people are going to be listening to this podcast instead of listening to music, right, we're ruining it.
We're ruining everything, right, so others will be playing. You know, video games. You know, I'm sure a bunch of people right now are scrolling TikTok and Instagram and responding on. You know, linkedin, man, you're going to be watching Netflix, you know. This goes on and on and on. Again, the music industry is not really an isolated case when it comes to the impact of technology. Right, so, and adapting to digital and focusing to create as much value as possible. Remember Kodak, I mean they. You know, they invented the first digital camera camera, but they feared it would capitalize their, their profit. You know their film business, right, and what did they do? They didn't get into the digital market and then they became history, right, remember sony walkman.
They had a huge, this huge market share, and again they didn't pivot and they didn't create something great from the iconic walkman and allowed apple and iPod to take over the market Again. Itunes was like the icing on the cake for them. And again the music industry failed to see how disruptive the shift to digital was. So, instead of embracing these online platforms and new business models, they clung on to physical sales and traditional revenue streams. So then piracy thrived. And then this hesitancy and delay created this huge gap with piracy and later streaming services like Spotify, and reshaped how the consumers accessed and perceived music. Also, remember Nokia? I mean, I used to have a Nokia phone and they were the biggest player in phones. They thought, oh, we're the market leader, no-transcript, it was great. But however, by the time the industry figured it out and they started adapting to all these changes of digital, consumer behavior changed. So it's all about convenience, lower price, unfortunately, and everyone's demanding music access. So again the list goes on. Polaroid they were the pioneer in instant photography and they didn't transition to digital cameras. Bye-bye Polaroid. Myspace remember they were the leaders in social media. Know they had so many artists that used MySpace and then Facebook ate their lunch. Better infrastructure, better user experience, better community building features. And, if you remember, everything started with trust In the beginning. Facebook only allowed verified students with a valid edu email address to enter Like authenticity won at the end. Email address to enter like authenticity won at the end.
And and again back to music. Uh, uh, there was this resistance, uh, and they tried a lot of restricted measures like, uh, digital rights management and kind of pissed off legitimate customers and and, but they didn't really reduce piracy and and this approach backfired and these consumers were like, screw drm, we're going to go somewhere where there's a better user experience, and some of these places were piracy, unfortunately. So we totally misinterpreted, you know, consumer trends I mean tower records, same thing, like, oh, people are going to come here and they couldn't compete with itunes right, or later on, spotify, so so you know, we as an industry, we didn't initially understand that consumers valued, like, easy access, affordability, convenience as much as quality, so we're very late to the game. And then big tech came in and all these digital platforms and they captured, um, you know, the wallets of consumers. And unfortunately unfortunately, competition is a bitch and big tech was just faster and better persuading customers and they had a better strategy, like new entrants like Spotify and Apple Music and YouTube.
It was all about creating these user-centric platforms where the priority was ease of use, no restrictions, access any song and personalized experiences, and they reshaped the music landscapes and they they offered these solutions that aligned with you know, modern consumer, what the people were expecting and and something that the traditional music industry failed to anticipate in time. So time is really important. So you know, you know that's that. That that's a few of the reasons.
0:08:07 - Dmitri
Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's. It's interesting because it's almost like you're saying that the tech companies were sort of at the ready to respond to what the individual listener of music or the fan or the consumer of music would respond to, whereas the traditional music industry was more protecting the um, you know, the rights, the rights of the music without, without kind of adapting to that that fan behavior. But over over time, you know, the music industry kind of bottomed out and then came back up with first with downloads and then streaming. And what ways did downloads and streaming help the music industry?
0:08:43 - Constantine
Oh my God, um, you know, even though I sounded very negative in that first question, uh, there's some amazing stuff that happened, right? So, um, you know, digital in the beginning and streaming, you know, in the beginning, was viewed as a threat, right?
And and but it has ultimately, you know, positively impacted the music industry in many ways, like, for example, global reach and more access. Think about the internet, right, so you can distribute anywhere globally with ease. So, unlike physical formats, with digital, artists can reach a broader audience. You know, forget geography, and music is now accessible to anyone worldwide. Just have a smartphone, that's it, or a phone or internet access. And the other thing was business models like subscription. The thing with subscription is, you know, it's consistent, right, it's predictable, it's sustainable and recurring revenue. Baby, you know who doesn't like a stable income, right. And the other thing for artists, you know, reduce costs and lower barrier to enter the game. Right, so you don't need to rely on on labels for distribution, for example, for 99 of artists, like for nearly nothing, you can just upload your music on a digital service and and and voila, you're accessing a worldwide audience. And and again, with social media, that didn't exist during the piracy era, right, the big piracy era that also helped the artists share their work and build a following and generate, you know, income. And another important thing was data right. And analytics, like all these digital platforms that give artists and labels and industry pros like, great data about, like habits, and of consumers, their demographics and all these trends, and then you can better understand your audience and it helps you tailor your music and your, your marketing and you make you know better decisions when, when you're touring, promoting and any new releases that you you have. So getting feedback is really important, but you couldn't get this in the past. So the other problem is, you know we're inundated with data, so you know sorting through that data is like a really, really huge challenge. But the good news is we pretty much killed mass piracy, right so. So this convenience and every song in your pocket killed pretty much mass piracy. Also, it increased, like, artist visibility. So now you can, you know, go on any streaming service and you can put your songs on there. And obviously, the welcome to the rise of playlists, right, so playlists are the new radio.
And another thing that digital did was it kind of changed the business models, right, so now you can decide, like an artist is an entrepreneur Should I do per stream payments, should I do digital albums? Should I do exclusive releases? Should I do Patreon? Should I have a fan club? Should I do live streaming, you know? And artists now have more control, more creative freedom and, of course, like with AI and so many online tools like you can like, even songwriting is way, way easier. There's so many music creation software that's improved dramatically. I mean, I listened to all these. Let's say, if you want a great cello sound and you don't have to hire a cellist, like there's amazing, like libraries that you can use where it sounds, amazing, right.
But another thing that changes is also music itself, right. So if you're combining all these global genres right and blend of music styles, you get a lot of genres from different countries that are now mainstream. Think like K-pop, right, or reggaeton or Afrobeat, right, and then you see a lot of these combine, right, or reggaeton or Afrobeat, right, and then you see a lot of these combine. And I know, for dot music, we're like, okay, we need to reserve all the genres, right, so we can help people be discovered on these. You know rock, dot music or whatever genre, and we did some research and we discovered there were over 6,000 genres on Spotify. It's absolutely crazy. So, yeah, a lot of things have happened with digital. It's really exciting and it's not all gloom.
0:12:52 - Dmitri
Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting, as you talk about kind of how streaming kind of changed the music economy around piracy and brought revenue into the industry and also helped with global discovery and genre mashups and more niches emerge and that sort of thing, it seems like there's still a bit of a problem for artists in terms of being kind of disintermediated from their audiences. And I'm curious, you know why the issue of identity is still a problem in the music industry, even though we've made this shift post-piracy, we made this shift to digital. What's the challenge with an artist's identity in the music industry now?
0:13:35 - Constantine
Yeah, look, I believe one of the biggest issues is definitely fraud, and identity is a huge part of that, right. So some glaring examples are fraud through streaming bots, right, and again let me go back. So, when it comes to identity and impersonation, there's many examples. We've heard Drake and the Weeknd that comes to mind, and even the likes of David Guerra. If you remember, in a concert he faked Eminem's voice using AI, right. But again, there's opportunities. So Grimes, for example, she's pretty much leasing her voice likeness and gets like a 50% split for all the songs that are created using her AI voice. I think it's a tune called Partnership. For all the songs that are created using her AI voice, I think it's a tune called Partnership.
But again, there are problems and threats with the proliferation of deep fake technology and a lot of people are using other people's voices, unfortunately, and the technology is getting really scary and quite amazing, actually, right. So the problem is how do you distinguish between genuine and and fake content? And and it'll be hard to identify and and this becomes a problem because then, you know, fans are like, you know, where's the trust here? Like, is this new content from my favorite artist or is it ai? And and also you, let's talk about the bots. And again, they're being used for fraudulent streams and even like chart manipulation, and that's a problem because it diverts revenue to scammers instead of legitimate artists. And again, such gaming and this redistribution of money is pretty unfair and it's really not cool. And again, you're looking at Is it 100,000 songs a day that's been downloaded and you know, sorry, put on Spotify and other streaming services? And you know it's hard to be discovered. And now, with bots and all this other stuff, it's even harder for a legitimate artist to get any kind of traction organically, because you can use bots to trigger algorithms, right, and also, even worse, you, you know bots also compromise data integrity, right. So how do you know your real audience if there's a lot of bots there, like is your data fake? Like so you get all this distorted metrics and it leads to, like poor decision making if, if the data is wrong, like garbage in, garbage out, right, so you've got all this inaccurate.
You know information and obviously, with bots, know you go to social media and again, there's many accounts there that are not verified, like most accounts are not verified, right, so there's all these accounts where they're AI generated and some, you know, impersonate artists or industry pros, and then you could be exploited to scans and, and you know fake profiles and and people can financially gain. Uh, you know fake ticket sales, you know fake collaboration offers, you know fundraising I mean, there's so many ways that that you know all this stuff is being used to to scam people and and ultimately, it disrupts revenue streams. And we haven't even spoken about, you know, fan and the artist's safety, right, because this is personal information as well. Like, they're sharing personal information sometimes and that results in, you know, losing money and artists being targeted by scams is another issue, right? So there's this issue of security and safety. And also, you know there's this issue of security and safety and also, you know there's a lack of adequate safeguards and the issue is always identity.
Do we know this is the real person? Like, who are we dealing with? Like, all we know is it's a name behind a profile, right? So traditionally, I mean, when you look at Instagram and Twitter X, they, you know, they verified all the celebrities, right? So so now what happens is they flipped it around and they're saying, oh, you want to get verified, we're going to charge you every month to have that blue check mark, which, again, it's kind of unfair and and you know it comes down to do, we know that this identity is real and it gets even worse than that. So that's when we talk about copyright and we talk about identity.
We want to pay people. Let's say you want to open up a bank account and you go to the bank account. They're going to ask you what's your identity, who are you? Before you can put money in this bank account, you must tell us who you are. Give me your ID, right, let's prove that you are who you say you are, and you're going to open up a bank account, right, and we know the person. So money goes there.
I mean, with the music industry, it's kind of interesting because we're saying let's pay artists and again, in order to pay an artist, right, you got to know their identity and who they are globally Like. All verified artists are global, right. So there's artists in different countries, different places. So we need a global solution where identity is verified right. That way you can pay them. So if all this money is sitting around in these black boxes and you don't know who to pay pay, it's because you don't know who to pay because it's unattributed, so so the data is wrong because we haven't solved for identity. So so again, uh, the music is a target for for a lot of these, you know problems right.
0:19:07 - Dmitri
Yeah, it makes sense. Like as you, as you're talking about, it makes total sense, just as you compare it to a bank. Same thing. If music is ultimately going to get paid for at some point, streaming and you're going to get payouts for it, if the identity is not verified, you start to say, well, who's getting paid for what? We've got to take a quick break when we come back. I'd like to dive into what DotMusic is doing to address this. We'll be right back. Open your calendar app, get your planner, take a note.
The Music Tectonics Conference will be back November 4th through 6th 2025. You saw how great it was in 2024, if not in person, then on LinkedIn and Instagram. We're doing it again in 2025. Same great venues, same great beach, interstellar programming, galaxy wide network. You ought to be a part of it. So see you in Santa Monica on November 4th through 6th 2025. Want to get updates? Tap the musictectonicscom link in the episode show notes and get on our mailing list. See you there. Okay, we're back.
And, Constantine, I think you know the first 20 minutes of this conversation. You've really outlined kind of some of the mistakes the music industry made along the way, but also even with some of the solutions that's come into the digital and streaming marketplace, how there's still some challenges to be solved. You were talking before the break a bit about the role of verification and identity and how some of these things that have never really been addressed, especially in an anyone-can-upload-music-type market. What some of the challenges are there. I'm curious what's Dot Music doing to address this. Why don't you just break it down for us? Because I think it's really interesting that even at this moment in time that Dot Music has come into being. So tell us a little bit about that.
0:20:49 - Constantine
Right. So first of all, I think it's important to indicate that dot music, again, if you think about it technologically, it's like a 30-year plus technology. Right, you're talking about domain names. I mean, you're talking about, let's say, dot com. So they started off being popular in the late 90s. Right, so everyone knows email. Right, everyone knows websites, everyone knows com, net or whatnot, so the pillar is actually quite popular. The World Wide Web is the most popular thing, right, everyone can access it. You're not behind the Apple, ios or Google Play. Right, so you don't have to download software. You're not bound to Apple or Google or the Android or the iOS. Right, so what we're saying here is go to any browser, you can access any website. Right, so it's that simple. Right, and the technology, everyone knows it, everyone uses it. Right, so what's special about domain names is when you register a com, for example, it is global. Right, you can access it global. And when you register it, it's actually a database, right, and it gives you a few things like who owns this com? Right, or, in this case, music, who's the registrar, who's the owner? Right, and let's say, for Google, googlecom, it's Google. Right, for you know, amazoncom, it's Amazon, and it's quite interesting because it is a database, right? It's a database of ownership of a name, right?
So the reason why domain names became very successful is because people and humans could not remember IP addresses, right? It's like phone numbers. Who remembers phone numbers? I remember the person's name, but I don't remember their phone number or, in this case, ip addresses. So IP addresses were replaced by domain names, right, because you could remember. Googlecom is easy to remember instead of remembering their IP addresses, right? So that's what was very interesting and it got me thinking.
I mean, look, if you look at ISRC numbers for recordings, or ISWC for works, or ISNI, which is International Standard Name Identifier, for identifiers for creators, I thought to myself people don't remember these numbers, right? They're numbers, right, and for identity, it must be something that people can remember. So let's say Taylor Swift, right? Taylorswiftmusic, you know what's her ISNI number, and then attach all her ISRC numbers, all her credits, and I thought, okay, couldn't we use this 30-year-plus technology? That's essentially. It's a database. That's global, right? It's not like hey, uh, spotify is going to launch in india in three months, right? I remember when we launched a month ago, we launched in every single country in the world, you know at the same time, right, it's truly global and in over over 100 countries. Have participated, obviously, in Don Music, which was quite amazing having people from so many countries register their names.
But ultimately it is a database issue. So the root cause to the problems with attribution are related to not solving the issue of name, image, likeness and, in this case, voice as well, when we're talking about AI. So we always try to solve for copyright but not address the big elephant in the room which is identity. The question is, who are we paying? Right? So we have billions of unclaimed royalties sitting in black boxes because we can't identify who to pay. And again, everyone's talking about let's create this global music database of rights. Well, I'm saying, okay, that's great, but how about starting at the basics, at the root? Why don't we?
You know the root of the internet, for example, there's no unified, verified, global music database of music identities at a global level. Right? And what music does? It provides a regulated space and again, we're regulated by ICANN, that's Internet Regulator. We're bound by our rules. Just like edu is only reserved for registration for United States accredited post-educational institutions right, those rules? Accredited post-educational institutions write those rules and basically, that's basically the beauty of running a top-level domain. Again, every single other company that's launched a top-level domain. It's like go register your domain name and create a website, and music is not really about a website. It's more about identity, and we want to be the identity provider for the global music community, right so?
So I think that's a really, really big problem that needs to be solved is how do we solve for music identity? Everyone's talking about music identity, but no one's solving for it, right and again, it has to be done in a verified manner, right so? So, um, if you want to fix impersonation and you want to fix fraud, and if you want to fix all these issues with unclaimed and you know royalties, if you don't solve at a global level for identity, then you have a huge, huge problem to to fix the problem, right. So you want, if you solve for identity, you can help with attribution, fair compensation and protecting your name, image, likeness and voice rights. So it's, it's that simple.
The you know, you know the challenge is communicating, uh, across, you know, the entire global music industry space. And again, you know, with dot music, we've got a huge community, a huge coalition believing in the verified global music identity. And and again, um, it is a challenge because you're you're actually combining two industries the domain industry that's highly regulated, and then the domain industry that's highly regulated, and then the domain industry that's all about. You know rights, you know mechanical rights, performance rights, you know print rights, sync rights there's so many rights and how do you marry these together? Right? And then to ensure, like, accurate attribution for songs, compositions, and how do we help these collection societies become better? Right, and it's not only collection societies, it's also artists themselves. Like you know, they control their destiny. So I think you know music and you know verified music ID can create lots of efficiencies and a lot of security as well, because, again, we're regulated and and we need to do what we say. We are going to do so and we're bound by our I can mandate and our I can agreement and our mandate to the music industry to protect IP, and we've been absolutely.
What's the paranoid about every single person's name? And I'll give you an example. So we created an algorithm for the launch, right? Basically, we used a lot of technology providers where we looked at total Spotify streams, number of YouTube subscribers, number of listens here and there, and basically we created an algorithm where we ranked artists from number one to 50,000. And then if someone goes to register someone's name, it says no, you cannot, you cannot register this popular artist's name, it's on the reserve list and only the actual, real artist can register this. Right?
So we've had some funny stories. So we've had, you know, many, many artists getting really, really, really, really upset, right? So they come in and they're like, they put in their name and they're on GoDaddy or whatnot. True story, by the way. Oh my God, the fans stole my name again, right, because there's many cases where a lot of dot-coms are taken by squad or look up brucespringsteencom, dustinbiebercom, anyway.
So the artist goes in very famous artist that's in the news as well and basically goes in our support queue. He's all pissed, thinking that the name's gone, like someone took my name and my band's name and it's the worst. And, uh, one of our people responds and this celebrity thinks that it's a bot, right, and he says let's get on facetime, because I don't believe you guys are actually doing this. So. So lena from my team gets on facetime, like on webcam, to show that it's real people. You know processing, you know the uh, the verification of famous artists and brands, right. So so he's like holy crap.
Uh, this is amazing like you guys are protecting us, the artists, and and look, there's some other issues as well that we've had and and with there's a bit of a disconnect. So we spoke to a few people again. This is like the minority, and the minority has said hey guys, artists won't care about their daunt music. Right, and anyone we spoke to which is an artist, especially the famous artists, they're like my name is the most important. I want my name. Who told you that we don't care about our dump music? It's quite fascinating.
0:30:46 - Dmitri
So, Constantine, you're saying this artist contacted. You said, hey, I can't register with my name, somebody's faking me. And you said no, actually we saved this account waiting for you to register Is that right?
0:30:58 - Constantine
Yes, yes, exactly. And then?
0:30:59 - intro
he.
0:30:59 - Dmitri
FaceTimed with you to make sure you were real people and you could make sure it was really him, and he realized that you actually were protecting him, not frauding him artist is not going to come direct.
0:31:23 - Constantine
It might be their label, their manager, their attorney, their agent. You know the key person from the band. And how, what do we know in the back? We don't know their contracts, right. So it's really, really complicated.
And then we had to make decisions and this is a big decision on on names, like, okay, who's deserving of elvis? Is it elvis presley or elvis costello, right? Or some other person called Elvis, right, and that's just the beginning, right. And then, okay, taylor Swift. Okay, what if she comes and says, hey, I want Taylor, we're like, okay, but there's also Taylor guitars, right. And then there's Martin, right. So there's Steve Martin, and then you've got Martin guitars. And then there's martin right, so there's, you know, steve martin, and then you've got, you know, martin guitars. And the list goes on and on and on and on and on.
So again, we had to draw the line somewhere and say, okay, we're going to use algorithms and data, right, and we need to protect not only artists but also labels. We need to protect companies and brands like Spotify. So we took ages putting all these things together. It's never been done before. So we're doing the right thing. We want to protect IP. It's critically important that it's done right.
So I can't tell you examples of people trying to come in trying to take people's names and we're like, no, you're not getting. This is a popular artist. Yeah, it's kind of a generic word, but you're not going to get that name because it's reserved for the artist. And we're being very patient. And, again, we're not making money off this because we want the names to go to the right people. So we would rather not make money on this. We want it to go to the right people, even if it means not making money on the bigger artists or whatnot, or the big brands, and doing it right in the beginning makes a whole difference. But what's really amazing though because we spoke about the threat of AI there is no chance in hell we could do what we're doing today without AI.
Like for example on the verification front, like traditionally, again, I'm blue-check verified on twitter and instagram. I was verified I don't know five, ten years ago when I would, and that was a manual process. It took ages, right, and they selected who they would blue check mark, um, and today, with, with the blue check marks, what happened? It became like a money generation machine, right, right, I mean, it started with X, with Elon Musk, where they're charging, you know, 15 bucks a month up to like thousands if you're an organization, and then even Instagram is doing it, whatever, 20 a month, but the problem is it leaves out 99% of everyone else, right, and to me that's a problem. So, in order to do a true dot music, that's verified, you have to verify everyone. Verified, you have to verify everyone. You have to verify the businesses as well. So you've got a kyc thing. Again, we go back to the bank. We need to verify like a bank. In other words, we need to verify that you are who you say you are. And with ai, today, again, our partners called shifty, for example and I really like shifty because they cover over 200 regions and countries. Right, so you can go with your smartphone and, uh, in real time, uh, scan your your face and then you scan your id and again your next question may be oh, do you guys keep the data? I don't know, we don't we. All we get is a thumbs up and a thumbs down verified or not verified. But to go back, we could not scale this without AI and all these advancements of technology. Right, and think about it. Godaddy, for example, which is the biggest player in the domain industry in the past, would never, ever, never, ever, ever, ever, ever consider a top level domain that has restrictions, especially community-based domain names. For example, dot sport is a community-based top level domain. You don't see many of those around dot radio because they have restrictions and rules, right in order to register, like dot, ed, edu.
And GoDaddy likes things to be streamlined and the process to be clean for the consumer, and everyone is registering their name in a convenient, fast manner. So GoDaddy is offering music because we streamlined the process. So you go there, you put in your name, you check a box that says I attest that I am who I say I am. In other words, we trust you. However, after they pay and they get their name, their name is not activated until they get verified. So they go through this kyc, kyb. So if you're a company, you go through kyb which is not your business, where you showcase your papers, that this is your registration number for your company, and all this stuff happens live. So it takes 10, 20 seconds and you're done.
And again, we're improving the process continuously and to scale this. We could not do this two, three years ago, but you can do it today. So that's why all this stuff is really really exciting and even in our community phase, which we ran before the global launch that was a month ago, we had over 600 major organizations signed up to be part of this community phase and it was just amazing to see. And again, we're loving it internally. We're we're like, so, so, so busy with, with, uh, with customer support and all this other stuff. And again, you never know until you launch things right. So so it's really really exciting, but ultimately, uh, we're doing this. We're doing it the right way.
We're really excited on how the music industry is going to use it. Again, it's just a tool. Ultimately, you know we want to be the hub for startup music services. I'll give you an example how you can use it, just like you know log in with your Gmail, log in with your Facebook. You can log in with your you know music ID. So startups you know music startups could say hey instead of logging with your you know music id. So, so startups you know music startups could say hey instead of logging with your gmail. Why don't you log in with your verified music id? And this can help even you know distributors, you know collection societies to determine. You know, without even spending a cent, by just adding this, you know, sign up with your music ID, right. So the sky's the limit. The music industry is quite smart. They'll figure out exactly how to use this. So we're excited about this all the possibilities and becoming you know this, you know identity provider, and leveraging a top-level domain.
0:38:19 - Dmitri
Super interesting. Yeah, I mean, even though you and I have talked many times, I didn't realize how core to this functionality is really this database and this identity. The music domain aspect is almost like icing on the cake from what you've described. We have to take a quick break and we come back. I want to widen out again. We started out pretty wide talking about where we came from. We got very specific about how dot music is entering into this identity space and the opportunities there, and I want to widen out again. We'll be right back.
0:38:50 - intro
Hi there, trista here. Sorry to interrupt. I hope you're enjoying the show, but I have a little question for you. What do you want to hear next? Let us know at musictectonicscom slash podcast. Click the big pink button to fill out a quick survey. You can suggest future guests or other music innovation topics you want to hear for us. Cover Anything that's on your mind and that you think would be really fun to explore in a podcast, or just tell us how we're doing what you think.
0:39:28 - Dmitri
That's at musictectonicscom slash podcast. Okay, back to the fun stuff. Okay, we're back and this has been super interesting to dive in. I've learned so much about dot music and how you fit into the emerging ecosystem of music and I want to widen out with one last question for you, Constantine when do you see the music industry going in the next five years?
0:39:44 - Constantine
It's a great question. It's a really great question.
0:39:48 - Dmitri
Lots of changing fast huh.
0:39:50 - Constantine
Oh my God, yeah, yeah, one thousand percent. Look, I mean, from our perspective, we're again in, on, on, on the verified identity front, right, and and this is where I think name, image, likeness and voice is going to become really important. I mean, you look at, uh, uh, even like large brands, like queen, for example, they're, uh, you know, they're they're even selling their name, image and likeness, right. So so everything's for sale, catalogs are for sale, and even name, image and likeness, and I think that's going to become a huge, huge thing in the next five years, without a doubt.
Um, obviously, ai driven innovations when it comes to music creation and distribution. Uh, obviously it's going to cause a lot of problems because you're going to start the right, you're going to see the rise of the ai artists and what are we going to do with that, you know? And also, what's going to happen legally speaking with, with ai. I mean, is there such a thing as an ai artists and should they get paid right? Um, you know, copyright and rights management. That's going to be this, you know, disrupted, but I do think that there will be technology to reduce fraud and, you know, improve, improving on the unclaimed royalties. I think that would be done and, obviously, new business models and revenue streams, like interactive content, you know, virtual reality stuff. Streams like interactive content, you know virtual reality stuff. Um, ai would be, would be, uh, stronger to to counter fraud, I believe, without a doubt, um, and, and you know, we want to be in the middle of this, right, so so we want to help and and we want to make the music industry better. Uh, I believe that the music industry is not a $100 billion industry. I believe it's a trillion dollar industry. Something's wrong when companies can be worth trillions of dollars, when something that is consumed by billions is $100 billion, it just doesn't make any sense to me. So something needs to be done in that aspect.
And for us, as Dot Music, again we're going to provide some cool tools. Again, it starts with the root get your name, and we're introducing this thing called the Smart Badge, which is kind of a QR code. And this QR code you can place it anywhere in your email, in your photographs, in your videos, and when you scan it with your phone or a fan scans it it takes you to your music page, kind of your name music page, where you, as the artist, label, industry, professional or company, can have all your source of truth there, so you can put your biography, for example. So your biography is not coming from Wikipedia, it's coming from you, the source right. You can put your songs, you can put your photographs, so this way you can authenticate that this is the real photograph. This is not some AI generated photograph, so kind of like an IMDB, but for music and it's on your own branded page, like, let's say, taylor Swift on music or whatnot. So we've got this smart badge and also the smart page and the verified identity all in one.
And obviously a lot of people have asked me the question of com. Do we need a com? Yeah, 100%, you need a com Because with com, it allows you to brand your website the way that you want to brand it right. Music is not intended to be a website. It's more like a database, kind of like a source where people can see. You know where your legitimate links are, for example, for your merch, for your tickets, for your streams, and also to discover, you know, dot-com as well, where you can go and showcase your brand in a more visual way. So I see a lot of changes in the next five years. It's really, really exciting. We're excited as a company. I think you know even at Music Tectonics. You know you had that excellent debate.
0:44:08 - Dmitri
You know the bifurcation debate.
0:44:10 - intro
Yeah that was brilliant.
0:44:12 - Constantine
So you know, no one knows where we're going, right, but we know it's going to be more social, right. We know music is not going away and we know more people are consuming music. The question is, how do we, as an industry, make it possible that we grow the pie from a hundred billion dollar industry to a trillion dollar industry?
0:44:37 - Dmitri
right, so that's the goal right, great Constantine, this has been super great to kind of dive into this with you. It's really got me thinking in a lot of directions. I'm excited to see where Dot Music goes from here and I really appreciate you coming on the podcast.
0:44:51 - Constantine
Thank you so much, Dmitri. Thanks for having me.
0:44:55 - 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. 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.
Let us know what you think! Tweet @MusicTectonics, find us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or connect with podcast host Dmitri Vietze on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
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.