The Future of Music is Interactive with MashApp's Ian Henderson
- Eric Doades
- 1 day ago
- 27 min read
Ian Henderson, founder of MashApp and former Spotify executive, talks with Dmitri about how MashApp enables non-musicians to remix tracks without production experience, and the broader context of technological disruptions in the music industry driven by AI. He explains the challenges in securing licenses from major record labels and his vision for the future of music interactivity. We also hear the news from Dmitri and Tristra.
News Roundup!
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 innovators by the beach for the best music tech event of the year: the Music Tectonics Conference, November 4-6, 2025 in Santa Monica, California!
Episode Transcript
Machine transcribed
Dmitri: Welcome back to Music Tectonics, where we go beneath the surface of music and tech. I'm your host, Dimitri Viza, the founder and CEO of Rock. Paper Scissors, the PR and marketing firm that specializes in music innovation and music technology companies. And, uh, today we're gonna dive deep into what our guest calls the third phase of music disruption.
The first couple of phases had to do with how people listen to music. And this phase which focuses on artificial intelligence, has to do with how people are interacting with music. Ian Henderson is the founder of Mash App, a platform that enables anybody to remix tracks without any production experience.
It's a real simple user interface, and I'm super excited because I. He secured licenses from all three major record labels and cobalt at launch, which [00:01:00] is unheard of for a startup. So we dive into the broader context of these technological disruptions happening in the music industry, driven by AI and focus specifically on his journey to launch MASH app.
We also hear the news from me and Tricia. Let's get into that now.
Robot: Rock Paper Scanner.
Dmitri: Yes, that's right. We are back with the Rock Paper Scanner News Roundup. It's an email, a newsletter that you can get every. Week, every Friday in your inbox. But here on the podcast, we just like to break down a few articles, maybe list a couple headlines, just so if you haven't had a chance to read this week, you have it in your earballs.
So here we are. Trista's here with me. Hey Trista.
Tristra: Hey Dimitri. I am excited to talk about news. News, my favorite thing.
Dmitri: You're good at looking at [00:02:00] news and, and ingesting what's happening in the industry, but then also helping us get one step further. So I'm excited to see what you've picked out.
Tristra: I've got some news of the weird from the tech world
Dmitri: and I've got some news of the industry and I wanna just go through a handful of quick articles just to mention them.
And then I've got a just a couple I wanna dig in ever so slightly. But the first one that caught my eye was from Glen Peoples at Billboard. Why Music investors aren't worried about slowing streaming and revenue growth because there is a plateau that's happening. Growth is still happening, like streaming and revenue is higher.
This year than it was, or 2024 than it was 2023. But it is starting to grow at a slower rate. But he put together some great quotes and com conversations from various people in the industry about, yes, but it's still good. So that's nice to hear, including our buddy Mark Mulligan. I do want to tell our listeners that in a.
Upcoming episode, I do interview Glen Peoples about investment in music, and I do interview Mark Mulligan about the numbers that he looked at [00:03:00] from 2024. So Glenn's been doing
Tristra: some really valuable reporting now about music and the markets with the great, let's tell, we call it economic uncertainty that we're experiencing.
I'm really grateful for Glen's analysis and I think everyone should go check it out.
Dmitri: Yeah, and I'm keeping an eye on this because I still love that topic of music is a recession proof investment, and so we'll see where that goes to
Tristra: need to test your thesis, hopefully, or not. Actually, I don't, I hope you cannot test your thesis in this in 2025.
It's not my
Dmitri: thesis. I've heard other people say it, and I think it's pretty cool. From music business worldwide, there was a title, Amazon makes Last Minute bid for TikTok as US band deadline looms. By the time this podcast runs, we might know more about what's going on with TikTok, but I can't believe how many people, how many companies have made bids for it.
And how unclear, Dimitri, did you
Tristra: put in your bid? Did you put in your bid yet? Yeah, exactly.
Dmitri: I, I post small bid in as well. Just grooving through here. Music industry reacts to executive order on ticket scalping from Hypebot. Um, some feedback [00:04:00] from the industry. They say including Kid Rock and our buddy Randy Nichols and industry pundits slash krabby.
Man, Bob Leitz Gobo. Weird to see this, this executive order to come out right now, changing topics completely another music business worldwide. Headline was China's $6 billion value. Kun Loon Tech debuts World's first music reasoning model claims. It can outperform Suno. Just a reminder, SRA that there's stuff happening in China that we don't, we haven't even figured out that it exists, let alone the impact it's gonna have.
Tristra: Oh, absolutely. And it'd be interesting to see how a reasoning model approaches music and what the different out outcomes are. Hopefully some. Hopefully we can address that in a future episode. That'd be cool. Yeah,
Dmitri: absolutely. And uh, it also just goes to show whatever happens legislatively here in the United States, there's still a whole global conversation to be had.
Tristra: So true.
Dmitri: On a similar topic, sorta music business worldwide had a headline this week, UIO the startup, sued by record companies last year unveils [00:05:00] tool to clone sonic identity of existing songs.
Tristra: It's like they, it's like they didn't have enough. Their lawyers just don't have enough to do.
Dmitri: They're gonna keep, they're gonna keep going.
That's. The thing they're gonna, they're gonna keep saying, this is fair use. There's all these different approaches. Oh fine. You don't want us to train on anyone else's data. Then let them upload user generated content and see what happens there.
Tristra: Oh, wow. This is gonna get really interesting, really fast.
Dmitri: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Those were my quickies. I've got two that I just wanted to mention from two sides of the market, the music market. Two music business worldwide. Again, 5 million songs and $288 million spent on catalogs. Eight things we learned from Universal Music Groups 2024 annual report. Just wanted to dig into this one a little bit because they made it so easy with eight bullets that I could recite, but, but also thank you News worldwide.
Yeah, I mean there's also UMG has had all kinds of news coming out with their acquisition of downtown and they switch to artist centric payouts and renegotiations with [00:06:00] various DSPs and platforms and so forth. But it is interesting to see that from a financial standpoint. I. Seems to be working. So sra, these are the eight things that our friends Tim Hamman crew at MBW said came out of that catalog sales accounted for 66% of, um, G'S recorded music sales, streaming revenue in 2024.
That's defined as music older than three years. Wow. And it's a continuation of a long time trend. But back in 2018, the balance between catalog. In frontline Forgs, digital recorded music revenues was much closer to parody. 54% of catalog, 46% frontline. So catalog is growing. That doesn't
Tristra: surprise me. Yeah, but that's also con, that's concerning maybe for the long-term health of music, or maybe it isn't.
Change my mind. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting question.
Dmitri: The catalog, as time goes on, recorded music catalog gets bigger and bigger. Of
Tristra: course it's gonna take up more and more proportionally. And, but the question is like, is are people gonna get tired of listening to the same old [00:07:00] songs? But though we've had decades of data saying maybe not, or like younger people can keep engaging with older music in interesting ways.
Dmitri: Exactly, and there's more and more derivative content, whether it's in video form or samples, or who knows what this next phase will be, which points to some possibilities for AI two. Number two, UMG now generates 52% of its recorded music revenue in North America. Let's see, Lucian Grange said in early 2024, we executed on our vision to realign our US label structure, and within months we were operating with.
Greater agility and efficiency. NBW says the North American market represented just 39% of, um, G'S global recorded music revenues back in 2014. So from 39%, 10 years ago to 52%, America still seems relevant.
Tristra: Oh, interesting. Let's,
Dmitri: yeah. Um, G'S Music Publishing catalog now contains 5 million owned and administered titles around a million more than two years ago.
So publishing continues to be relevant and UMG is growing on the publishing side as well. [00:08:00] This one might be related to that catalog stuff, but, um, G'S top 50 artists accounted for just 24% of its recorded music revenue in 2024.
Tristra: Wow. So more diversification and moving away from like a big ass hits structure to more a broader catalog that people are engaging with, but not in that crazy millions and millions and millions of streams.
Dmitri: Yeah.
Tristra: For a track. Yeah. Interesting. Yep.
Dmitri: Or billions. Just a few more from this article. Um, GS catalog acquisitions spending jumped to $288 million in 2024. It spent a further nine figure sum to buy stakes in various companies, and let's see, that's a year. Year over year. Jumping catalog m and a spending was primarily due to the timing of deals is what I said.
It's almost like, oh, this wasn't a strategic change. This was just things finally closed.
Tristra: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
Dmitri: UMG employs over 10,000 people across more than 60 territory Tories. That's a slight increase Employees from the previous year by. Not by much [00:09:00] 50 more people, but in a time where we were looking at lots of layoffs in the music industry, it's interesting to see that there was actually growth there.
Artist costs reached $5.9 billion in 2024, an increase from 5.6 billion, which is not a huge increase from 2023, but this is royalty expenses, advances write downs. They're still spending money on artists. That's good if you're growing catalog and if you're growing, yeah. Signings and things like that. And finally, UMG now speaks to an owned audience of over 200 million fans, thanks to super fan driven D two C investments.
So this is owned audience. These are people that are going to a thousand artists stores globally to help UMG guide more direct to consumer revenue.
Tristra: That is very interesting. I think that is the most interesting factoid you, you pointed out there.
Dmitri: Awesome. Um, well cool. Thanks for going through that. Yeah. I was also gonna point out, although I'm taking too much bandwidth here, I was gonna point out a billboard story.
It was actually in a couple places. Music watch. The market [00:10:00] research firm, Glen People's covered this at Billboard. 50 million more Americans are buying music than a decade ago. And there's a couple of other stats within that that are. That are pretty interesting. I won't spend too much time on this, but he says, first of all, the US population is increased over that period by 19 million.
So that's a little bit of the growth, but that's not all of it. Half of all Americans adults basically paid for a subscription in 2024. And not only are more Americans spending money on music, but they're spending more money, he says, per capita, about 10% more Americans typically spent $112 per capita in 2024 versus 102 in 2023.
So that's heading in the right direction. And live music spending fared even better than recorded music jumping 70% to $281. There's some ticket inflation from some of that, but not all of it. The percentage of people who bought a ticket rose to 56%. From 51% in 2023 and spending on merch such as T-shirts rose 45%, which is
Tristra: pretty good.
Wow, that's really interesting. [00:11:00] Okay, and that plays into the sort of D two C story that universals. Annual report was telling in a way. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Dmitri: Which is interesting. Anyway, yeah. Tricia, you expand this even further. Tell us, yeah. What articles you're looking at.
Tristra: I'll be quick. I just got a couple of fun things to throw people's way and these are the, these may, actually, the first one is extremely relevant to the music industry and namely that this is from deadline from earlier this week, or sorry, earlier last week when this airs, uh.
Inside YouTube's weird world of fake movie trailers and house studios are secretly cashing in on the AI fueled videos. So this, I, now, this story has already shifted, so I think there's been some renegotiation of this and YouTube has shut some of this down. However, we're, I think we're at a really interesting inflection point when rights holders are going to want to make the most of these kind of deep faked IP and user AI generated UGC.
So. What this indicates to me though is there's this really interesting [00:12:00] tension between what fans want to make and what people wanna see out there and how people wanna monetize it. And yet there's still this question of should there be some kind of, should everything have a certain degree of truthiness, so to speak?
And so that this article from. Deadline is super interesting and just it, it's definitely worth a read. And looking at all these crazy, mostly from the Marvel Universe or superhero movies though I think there was also a fake inside out trailer. So people are getting really creative with these trailers and the studios are kinda like, okay, that's cool.
This is enabling fandom. But it's gotten a little bit more complicated since then. I thought it was such an interesting story. And um, yeah, the fan
Dmitri: fiction of movie trailers and then yeah, instead of saying, Hey, stop that, block that. Take it down. Yep, that's derivative, blah, blah, blah. Monetize it.
Tristra: Exactly.
Okay, cool. You guys are gonna do this anyway, so we might as well monetize it. Another interesting piece that I came across was from the MIT press reader, which is the [00:13:00] anti-capitalist case for standards and all you capitalists out there, don't feel alienated. Don't let that clickbait title fool you.
They're talking about things like D decks or having the same charging cable. Protocol or having the same Kodak or something like that, right? So what's really interesting I think, is that we often think about innovation as functioning best in an extremely competitive environment. That's how you turn the market on.
That's really how you get like the invisible hand to start functioning properly out there. But what I think is really important here. That there needs to be a countervailing force that allows us to come to some agreements and cooperate when it comes to technical standards, and that actually can unleash more innovation and is honestly is way better for consumers.
So having some kind of metadata standard that nobody understands or sees in music, for instance. Does improve search. It just, it improves discovery. It improves so many things in the user experience as well as ensuring that royalties get paid [00:14:00] to the right place. That you don't have dupes, that you don't have weird fakes and just other strange things going on.
But I thought this piece was really interesting 'cause often standards are working best when we don't think about them, right? Mm-hmm. Just like public health measures. But when they don't work well and when you have, or when you have something like the VHS versus Beta Max war and consumers have to take sides, you end up with a lot of inefficiency.
Right. So instead of that, maybe we should consider standards and a less kind of competitive view where we all try to converge on standards as soon as possible. I don't know. Fun piece. Yeah,
Dmitri: I, I think it's interesting about the relationship between standards and markets and communities coming together around that.
As a foundation for trust. 'cause what you're saying, when there's a format, wars, consumers start to lose trust in an industry because they're like, wait, I just invested in all this and now this, or, I thought this was gonna work and now I thought this cable was gonna work or this mm-hmm. Protocol was gonna work and then it doesn't.
Yep. I love going 10,000 feet up. Tricia loves going a hundred thousand feet up. Those are some great, I'm best
Tristra: in orbit. [00:15:00]
Dmitri: Those are some great articles you brought in. I think I gotta go go back to reading the newspaper now. Thanks for all that. I'm, yeah,
Tristra: I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go and listen to my Vilo.
Sounds good. Thanks Tri. All right. Bye.
AD: What makes news in music tech? Find out at our next Seismic Activity online event taking place April 23rd at 10:00 AM Pacific. 1:00 PM Eastern, 6:00 PM UK time. We'll be joined by expert journalists to go behind the scenes to understand how journalists and editors work, what gets their attention, and what happens next.
Head on over to music tectonics.com/online events. To register now and learn more about our free monthly online event series.[00:16:00]
Dmitri: Ian Henderson is the founder of Mash App and a former Spotify executive who's focused on redefining how people interact with music. After spending the last four years navigating the intricacies of music licensing, he recently launched MASH app to give music fans the tools to create and remix their favorite tracks MASH app.
It's an innovative app that allows anyone to step into the role of DJ and create their own music mashups, using tracks from major labels like Universal, Sony, Warner, and Cobalt with no production experience required with an intuitive interface and a social component for sharing and discovery. MASH app makes it.
Easy for anyone, regardless of skill level to remix their favorite songs, and join a community of other creators. Ian, welcome to the podcast.
Ian: Hey Dmitri, thanks for having me and thanks for that great intro and description of MASH app.
Dmitri: Oh, I'm really excited about what you're doing because I think it's the timeliness of what you've done.
I mean, it's funny, we'll talk about this. It's been a long time in the making, but in terms of announcing this [00:17:00] app now, um, is so relevant to what's happening in the industry. In fact, let's talk about the context. We'll dive in. You have a deck that I saw for MASH app that has a slide that caught my eye and I wanted to ask you.
To explain it from about 1999 to 2003, there was a huge disruption of music that you called the unbundling of the album business model, which is a great way to put it. That was Napster breaking everything and then iTunes coming back, rebuilding a business model around singles. And then you say from 2005 to 2011.
YouTube came along and pushed free on demand streaming. There was some other stuff going on at the same time, but that was the big one. And then Spotify came back and rebuilt a business model around on demand music. You worked at Spotify, so you know how that went. But you say now that we're in this third major tech disruption of music of the past three dec decades, what is the disruption you're talking about?
Ian: This disruption's about artificial intelligence. Of course, the first disruption in like the late nineties, early two thousands was about the MP three format, and the [00:18:00] second disruption in like the mid to late two thousands was about on demand streaming, really free on demand streaming. This new disruption is about.
Artificial intelligence if the first disruption was led by Napster and, and the second disruption was led by YouTube. This disruption I think, is led by companies like Suno and uio. But I also think this disruption started maybe as early as 2019 when startups like Moises started letting music fans and DJs use artificial intelligence to.
Pulled their MP three files apart into multi-tracks, into stems, into like vocal only or instrumental only versions that I think that's when the interactive AI powered music interactivity revolution started.
Dmitri: Yeah. And in that case, they were sort of using it for their own, like personal use to learn how to play a song or understand the mechanics of a song, et cetera.
They weren't doing anything commercially with it at that point.
Ian: I think DJs were already starting to make their own remixes and you needed to have a lot of music knowledge, uh, to, [00:19:00] to use these tools and to make remixes. And the big visions of MASH app, as I think we'll get into, is to let anybody be able to be a music creator and play with these new tools.
Dmitri: That's a really good point because we're talking about format shifts in a way, and let's get into that. How is this disruption with AI different than these past disruptions we just identified?
Ian: Yeah, th this disruption is really different. If the first two disruptions were about how music fans access music and how they pay for music, how they pay to listen to music, if the first two disruptions were about really new ways I.
To do old things, listening and paying this new disruption is about people being able to interact with music in, in a completely different way. AI lets people lean in and as we just talked about, pull music apart, but do all kinds of of other things. So simply this new disruption is about music becoming interactive.
Dmitri: Whoa. That is quite the statement in itself. I [00:20:00] mean, I follow a lot of the stuff that's going on, but that just, you just put it out very plainly about that interactivity, which is like a model for the future really. If we watch how technology has shifted and then how consumers slash fans slash citizens, anyone out there.
Is interacting with music to say the music, it's interactive itself. Now that the technology's catching up, is really what you're saying. We can expect something very different, which makes us ask the question, if AI powered music interactivity is this disruption, what's the business model solution? What's the Spotify or iTunes of AI music interactivity.
Ian: That is the big question. Of course. Right? And let me take that big question in two parts. Let me talk about what do we know already? And then let me tell you about like mash app's vision.
Dmitri: Okay.
Ian: What we already know is that like in the two previous disruptions, when fans show that they want to access music and new use music in new ways, [00:21:00] and when new technology companies make that a possibility.
The music industry leans in and tries to find business models, tries to find ways to monetize these new, um, uh, music activities, and we can already see that happening. As you said at the top MASH app, we, we announced our licenses with the, the major record labels in February. So the record labels are already licensing in this space, and of course, just happened with Napster.
The record labels are also going to, they're gonna have to engage in some litigation to enforce their rights to, to license these new sort of music activities. So what we already know is that the music industry is recognizing these new ways that music fans wanna play with music, and they're leaning in and trying to find these business models.
So what's mash app's vision of what this, uh, what these new solutions might look like? Our mission Mash App's mission is to make music creation fun for non-musicians, and we think the way to create a mass market business where music fans have fun interacting with music is [00:22:00] to let people play with their favorite songs.
We think that when people can use AI powered tools to interact with music that they hear every week on Spotify or on the radio, then that opens up music creativity to audiences who have never had the chance to be a music creator before. And mashups music. Our user experience, uh, today is focused on helping people create mashups and remixes.
But we have other plans. We have, we've other ideas for how people will be able to lean in and play with music. And I, and our business model vision is a freemium one. It's like Spotify's. We have a free app where you can create simple mashups and remixes, and then if you are starting to have a really good time and you want more creative tools, you wanna create song length mashups.
And of course, if you want less ads, you can subscribe to MASH app plus and take your creativity to a whole nother level.
Dmitri: Gotcha. So people will be subscribing so they can do all these interactive things and be sharing with other users and friends and having a whole different kind of conversation as a result.
And, uh, it'll be so interesting to see what I mean. People are already doing it. We know that sped [00:23:00] up. Yeah. And slow down versions are getting somewhere on the internet. This is empowering people to do it in a legal way, a way that. Compensates rights holders, which seems that's, that seems like a new revenue stream, which is pretty awesome.
What, what is it, let's back up a little bit. You talked a, you mentioned a little bit about what we know so far, but what is the true fight between the AI music companies, the gen AI music companies and labels and publishers? What and what are the possible outcomes homes?
Ian: So the big question that's being asked right now about music and artificial intelligence is do technologies.
Do technology companies need the permission of record labels and music publishers to train AI models with music, right, with copyrighted music. And if you look at, if you look at the music publishers litigation against Anthropic, which is one generative AI company, or if you look at the controversy, the recent controversy around the UK governments proposals around music and ai.
In both these situations, the. Big [00:24:00] question that's being debated is, do technology companies need label and publisher approvals to, to use copyrighted music to train ai? And so the two simple possible outcomes are, number one, technology companies are allowed to use music without permission. Or number two, technology companies need to get music rights, soldiers permission to train AI with their music.
Dmitri: Okay. Yeah, that's great. I love, you've really crystallized what the conversation is there. Which outcome do you think is most likely.
Ian: I personally think what's most likely is that the law holds up that technology companies need to get music rights holders permission to train AI models with copyrighted music.
And why do I think that? I just think that tech, we've already talked about technol, technological disruptions come along all the time, and this isn't the first one the music industry has been hit with. And technological change has never negated the fact that artists and scientists and engineers and.
Other creators should be paid for their work. So I, I think, I think that the law will [00:25:00] uphold that you need to get creators permission to use their creations and compensate those creators if that's what they want in return for their permission. I think the more interesting question is that, is, is like, how is the music industry gonna arrive at a business model to allow technology companies to use artificial intelligence to do.
All kinds of things with music, and I think that there's two potential scenarios here. One is it's just like an open market. And publishers and record labels are negotiating bilateral deals with different technology companies. That's one potential, uh, scenario. And the other scenario is that governments have to get in more involved and, and statutory licenses or compulsory licenses are created like you have with a publishing rights and collecting societies and, and many countries around the world.
Dmitri: Yeah, it's gonna be really interesting to unfold and as the kind of political landscape shifts and the, the balance, the. Balance of powers, I guess the court systems, all that stuff. It seems like it's a constant [00:26:00] like moving a moving target here. So it'd be interesting to watch. Something that I find really intriguing about you, Ian and Mash app, is that you've done deals with all three majors and cobalt.
This is unheard of. We have to take a quick break, but when we get back, I wanna understand how you pulled this off. We'll be right back. Okay, we're back with the launch of MASH app. Ian, you did something that might be unprecedented. I'm not sure. I don't, I'm not a, I'm not a lawyer. I don't track all the cases of what, what went down with who licensed what, but you launched with licenses in place with all three majors, universal, Sony, Warner, and Cobalt.
Given that labels and publishers have not made it easy for new startups to license music, how did you pull this off?
Ian: Before I answer your question, let give you a little update. Yes. At launch we had the three major labels and Cobalt publishing. Uh, universal Publishing was also on board at launch shortly after launch of Warner Chapel and, uh, Concord Music Publishing also signed deals with us, [00:27:00] so we're super Wow.
Happy, thrilled. Licensed up to, yeah, to have support from both big record labels and big music publishers. But to answer your question, like how do we. How do we pull it off? I think the first thing I have to say is that I, as an entrepreneur, have advantages in the music licensing space that most startup founders don't have, and that's that I, I worked for seven years for Sony Music negotiating licenses with technology companies like Spotify, and then I jumped to the other side of the table and I.
Worked for Spotify for four years, negotiating deals with the major labels and with little record labels all around the world. I have, I had a lot of relationships at, at the big record labels. Secondly, I have to say that even with all those relationships, it took a long time. I, I started these discussions in 2021.
I signed. The last deal I had to have to launch in late 2024. Maybe another answer to your question is I was patient. Hmm. And, and the fact that [00:28:00] somebody with my level of knowledge and relationships and music licensing, it took me so long. Number one, that's because I was dealing with a new area around using artificial intelligence with music.
It was gonna, it was gonna be a long discussion, but also I think it's not a great thing for the music industry that it takes somebody, even with my level of knowledge, so long to be able to get access to the rights, I think. I think that that's something the music industry has to think about, whether that's right or whether their way is to encourage more innovation.
And then the last thing I think I'd wanna say an answer to your question is that maybe the way I pulled this off has nothing to do with me. Maybe it's just that the music industry's view on artificial intelligence changed a lot between 2021 and 2024. I think. The music industry started seeing that there were companies out there that were building their businesses and developing their technologies using music and not coming.
To the big labels and publishers and saying, let's have a discussion about what the user experience should be, what the business [00:29:00] model should be. And when the music industry saw that that was happening, they're like, okay, well, people like Ian who are actually coming and trying to have a conversation with us about, about how a music and artificial intelligence should be able to be used together in the short term and in the medium term and what the business model should be around it.
We, we should probably lean into these discussions because, 'cause people like you are coming and trying to have a conversation with us.
Dmitri: No, it's interesting to think about the experience you have that got you here, as well as the lead time, as well as the ramp up time that it took and still being, that was still a long time, and I don't think it's solely how labels feel about ai, but also how labels and publishers feel about.
Licensing new use cases like this, we don't know what's gonna happen with these songs once they start matching them up. Or it doesn't matter whether it's AI or not, it's just the fact that, oh, how do you put this song with that song? How do you get pre-cleared licenses for this songwriter to be okay with their song, with that songwriter or what?
Whatever it is. It's not just because it's ai, it's also because it's just the end [00:30:00] result is something that's never been. Licensed in that way before. And it is interesting for you to bring up the fact that you had the relationships because honestly, most startup founders, especially if they haven't had, they're young or inexperienced, they haven't been in the music industry, they can go to the front door of a major label.
But how many like layers in do they have to get till they get to the group of people that actually are gonna make the decision or the group of people that are gonna ask the hard questions that you have to answer before the people who are gonna make the decision. So you probably got to those people faster, but then there's still that.
That appetite for trying something new and trying something different. And then there's also the money it costs to license music or whatever those agreements are. So there's a lot of different factors there. And on the one hand, it's hopeful to see that MASH app was able to launch with all these amazing major label licenses.
And on the other hand, when you say it's. Took three, four years is it's gonna take another three, four years for the next founder to come along. I, I don't know. Hopefully it's thawing a little bit. 'cause I think, as you said, it does create revenue opportunities for the entire music industry. When people can, if they actually [00:31:00] want to license music, they can actually license it versus what will happen otherwise.
In your two scenarios that you painted as well. Ian, how does Mash app work? We didn't, you talked a little bit about the people doing mashups and remixes, but tell us what the experience looks like so we can get a real sense of what it is you just launched and accomplished.
Ian: Yes, so as I, I think I mentioned earlier like our mission is to make it easy for non-musicians to be able to feel like music creators.
And that's why we went out and licensed popular music. 'cause we think in order to make this a mass market opportunity, people need to be able to, to play with. Their favorite music, and also really important is that we needed to make this process of creating mashups and remixes as simple as possible. So I, I like to think it's just like a three step process, maybe three big choices.
And at every step, MASH app makes recommendations, uh, for you. The, the, the first step is you come in and you select a song and we recommend songs to you, and you select. The part of the song that you wanna use, and you don't even have to know what like a verse [00:32:00] or a chorus is. Our AI will say like, Hey, swipe right and left, and we're gonna, we already, we've already picked those sections, the best sections of the songs to use.
You just listen, have fun listening and, and choose what you wanna, when you wanna use. And then the next, um, a big step is. What version of the song do you wanna use? This is where we do some really cool things with ai. You can basically say, I just wanna use the vocals from this song. I just wanna use certain instruments from this song.
Mashups sound a lot better when you're not used. Just stacking one whole song on another whole song. When you're taking some parts of one song and some parts of another song. That's the second step. And then the last step is you choose the other song and you make the same decisions we just talked about and we, we recommend our AI recommend songs that that mash up well together.
So. I hope it's just a three step process and we're making recommendations to make it easy for people at each step of the way.
Dmitri: Sounds like a blast. I've downloaded the app and I need to cut this podcast short so I can go do some mash apps real quick, but it's gonna be so much fun. Cool. What will things look like for Mash app if it becomes successful?
Where will this go [00:33:00] from here?
Ian: So just last summer we commissioned some of our own consumer research and it showed that. There are hundreds of millions of people around the world who want to lean in and remix and play with their favorite songs. And that a, a very significant percentage of those people are willing to pay for some sort of premium service.
So that is a big, exciting opportunity. And so if mashup is successful, then we will become a mass market. International app that looks like some mix of a music streaming app and a social network and will become a significant new revenue stream for the music industry. That's our goal.
Dmitri: That sounds good.
It's the business model solution for interactive music right there. Exactly. So once you, let's say you reach that state of success, what will happen next for mashup and for the world of fan remixes and music interactivity? Where will it go beyond just the business model? [00:34:00]
Ian: Yeah, I think. What you can do with music in terms of remixing music and interacting with music is gonna continue to change and evolve.
Right now our license agreements with the big music companies allow us to do certain things with artificial intelligence to offer music fans certain types of creation tools. But we went and asked for a whole bunch of things and the record label said, yeah, you can do these ones and you can't do these ones yet.
And so there's a lot new, a lot of new functionality. We want to. Offer to, uh, music fans. We've got a great future product roadmap, and so if we're successful in building a big audience for MASH app and monetizing that audience, then I think that artists and their partners will get more comfortable letting companies like MASH app use artificial intelligence to offer fans more ways.
To interact with and play with their favorite songs and artists and record labels will start to see this type of music interactivity as just another way to make money, and another [00:35:00] way that music fans express their love for their favorite artists.
Dmitri: Amazing. I'm super impressed. The simplicity of how you describe it is like brilliance.
I'm almost mad at you that I didn't do it myself. 'cause it just sounds like it's. The right time for this kind of creativity and this kind of interactivity, and yet it has an elegance to it. So congrats to you for getting it off the ground, getting those licenses in place. I can't wait to see what happens next.
Ian, thanks so much for joining me on the Music Tectonics Podcast. Thank you 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 are lovely podcast listeners can join.
Find out more@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 [00:36:00] 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 Viza, 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.