Podcasts about united masters

Andy Vargas, acclaimed successor to the throne of Latino soul music in the U.S., has been making waves in the music industry for over two decades. As Santana's lead vocalist since 2000, he has collaborated with musical titans such as Juanes, Mana, Chris Perez, Frankie J, The Black Eyed Peas, Beyonce, and Enrique Iglesias. Given his first shot by legendary producer and managers Terry Melcher, Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys, and Lou Adler, Andy inked a record deal at the age of 16 to Ron Fair at RCA, BMG. Here, he wrote and recorded Pop, Latin funk, and R&B Soul music. This caught the interest of Clive Davis and Carlos Santana, who asked him to support the worldwide smash “Supernatural” record. Vargas has crafted a unique music genre, earning him widespread recognition and acclaim. He has also expanded his professional reach by co-founding Malaspalabras Records (MPR) alongside acclaimed comedian George Lopez and music distribution giant, United Masters. MPR is committed to safeguarding artists' rights and launching fresh talents in both conventional distribution and the evolving Web3 arena. This year marks a significant milestone in Andy's journey as a musician. He has earned solo recognition, securing a coveted spot among the illustrious lineup of the Dave Koz Friends at Sea Cruise. For two weeks of musical bliss sailing through the Mediterranean, he'll share the stage with fellow superstar musicians, promising an unforgettable experience for all aboard.% But Andy's musical odyssey doesn't end there. He's set to join his mentor, the legendary Carlos Santana, and the Santana Band for the 2024 Oneness tour, featuring the iconic Counting Crows. This collaboration with musical giants is a testament to Andy's talent and unwavering dedication to his craft. Beyond his musical pursuits, Vargas is dedicated to giving back. In 2015, he founded The Andy Vargas Foundation (AVF), a non-profit organization with a mission to inspire, mentor, and educate underprivileged youth with dreams of making it in the music industry. AVF offers a host of free community programs, such as instrument training, vocal coaching, music composition and production workshops, music business courses, and college scholarships. Amidst these grand ventures, Andy remains deeply connected to his roots, finding solace and joy in performing on his favorite local So Cal stages, Spaghettini in Seal Beach and Herb Alpert's Vibrato, throughout the year. Here, amidst the cozy ambiance and intimate setting, he shares his gift with fans, creating moments of magic that linger long after the last note fades. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/matt-brown57/support

How does an independent artist thrive in the ever-shifting music industry? We're about to find out, as we sit down with Harlem's own, Neek Bucks. In this episode, Neek shares the emotional story behind H4 Records, a name born from a pivotal moment in his life. You'll hear about his journey from a private individual to a rising star who resonates deeply with fans through his music and social media.Neek takes us through his musical collaborations, including an unexpected partnership with Justine that dates back to 2014, and his long-awaited track with Rowdy, "Wait." He also gives us a peek into his personal life, revealing his morning ritual of listening to 90s R&B with his daughter. As a fiercely independent Leo, Nick talks about the importance of creative control and the empowerment that comes with it.We also explore H4 Records, Neek's brainchild, and his experiences working with industry giants like Steve Stout and Trackmasters. Discover how his partnership with Virgin Music Group and United Masters has shaped his career. With a newfound passion for producing soulful beats, Neek discusses his latest single, "Back Outside." We wrap up with a closer look at Neek Bucks, highlighting his community efforts and dreams of collaborating with legends like 50 Cent and Jay-Z. Join us for an episode brimming with authenticity, creativity, and pure musical passion.Talk Soon! ✌

Not only are we bringing you another testimonial from a rising music artist, but a familiar face. We welcome Brian Kelly back from his 2023 check in on A Mental Health Break!Welcome back to That Entrepreneur Show! If you enjoy the show, please subscribe for weekly episodes and rate the show 5 stars to help others join our conversations! Do you have a question for the guest or host? Email Danica at PodcastsByLanci@gmail.com.Areas of discussion include:-How to create merchandise lines-Recording new music -Why playing with Lebron green lights his passion Brian Kelly is a New York artist best known for his unique, melodic style of music. With over 5k followers and subscribers on Twitter and Instagram, his content has had over 100k streams since 2020. Brian's impressive career includes collaborations and performances with renowned names such as Lil B, BAPE, AKOO, FACEBOOK, and United Masters. He released FOR THE FANS Vol. 2 back in August 2020 and has since been focused on creating wellness, unity, and opportunities for society and his community.Join us and listen to "Understanding What Triggers Behavior + Music Creativity here. Stay connected with us on social media! You can find us at @ThatEntrepreneurShow on all platforms. For more information about our show and our guests, visit www.vincentalanci.com. We look forward to engaging with you!If you want to learn more about podcasting coaching services, email Danica at PodcastsByLanci@gmail.com. Music Credits:Adventure by MusicbyAden | https://soundcloud.com/musicbyadenSupport the showIf you enjoyed this week's show, click the subscribe button to stay current.Listen to A Mental Health Break Episodes hereTune into Writing with Authors here

Steve Stoute and Shannon Sharpe embark on their journey to Queensbridge Projects in New York, unearthing tales that led to the legendary careers of Nas and Steve. The episode kicks off with a hilarious FaceTime call to Nas from the very projects that shaped he and Steve's lives, sharing laughs and memories with the neighborhood crew. Steve then guides Shannon through a tour of his office, dropping gems about the time Men In Black sunglasses overshadowed Will Smith's album and revealing the untold story of Kobe Bryant living with him at 18. The anecdotes keep rolling as Steve spills the beans on being behind LeBron infamously rejecting a $10 million check while in high school, Allen Iverson's elusive Reebok commercial appearance and the transformative impact of hip-hop on Reebok's brand image thanks to Jay-Z and 50 Cent. The episode delves deep into Steve's entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing equity, ownership, and the ethos behind starting United Masters. From the rich hip-hop history of Queens to the intricacies of legendary rap beefs, Steve Stoute shares his insights with wit, wisdom, and a touch of humor, making this first half a rollercoaster ride through the iconic tales of the music and sports industry. Don't miss out on the laughter, lessons, and legendary stories that unfold in Part 2 of the conversation with the one and only Steve Stoute. #VolumeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Steve Stoute and Shannon Sharpe embark on their journey to Queensbridge Projects in New York, unearthing tales that led to the legendary careers of Nas and Steve. The episode kicks off with a hilarious FaceTime call to Nas from the very projects that shaped he and Steve's lives, sharing laughs and memories with the neighborhood crew. Steve then guides Shannon through a tour of his office, dropping gems about the time Men In Black sunglasses overshadowed Will Smith's album and revealing the untold story of Kobe Bryant living with him at 18. The anecdotes keep rolling as Steve spills the beans on being behind LeBron infamously rejecting a $10 million check while in high school, Allen Iverson's elusive Reebok commercial appearance and the transformative impact of hip-hop on Reebok's brand image thanks to Jay-Z and 50 Cent. The episode delves deep into Steve's entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing equity, ownership, and the ethos behind starting United Masters. From the rich hip-hop history of Queens to the intricacies of legendary rap beefs, Steve Stoute shares his insights with wit, wisdom, and a touch of humor, making this first half a rollercoaster ride through the iconic tales of the music and sports industry. Don't miss out on the laughter, lessons, and legendary stories that unfold in Part 2 of the conversation with the one and only Steve Stoute. #VolumeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Steve Stoute is an American businessman and record executive. The founder and CEO of the Translation, a marketing agency, and the author of The Tanning of America: How Hip-Hop Created a Culture That Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy. In 2017, Stoute received $70 million from investors such as Alphabet Inc. and Andreessen Horowitz to launch United Masters, a music venture for independent artist. In 2023, United Masters launched in Africa, via Lagos, Nigeria.

The Latent Space crew will be at NeurIPS on Tuesday! Reach out with any parties and papers of interest. We have also been incubating a smol daily AI Newsletter and Latent Space University is making progress.Good open models like Llama 2 and Mistral 7B (which has just released an 8x7B MoE model) have enabled their own sub-industry of finetuned variants for a myriad of reasons:* Ownership & Control - you take responsibility for serving the models* Privacy - not having to send data to a third party vendor* Customization - Improving some attribute (censorship, multiturn chat and chain of thought, roleplaying) or benchmark performance (without cheating)Related to improving benchmark performance is the ability to use smaller (7B, 13B) models, by matching the performance of larger models, which have both cost and inference latency benefits.Core to all this work is finetuning, and the emergent finetuning library of choice has been Wing Lian's Axolotl.AxolotlAxolotl is an LLM fine-tuner supporting SotA techniques and optimizations for a variety of common model architectures:It is used by many of the leading open source models:* Teknium: OpenHermes, Trismigestus, CollectiveCognition* OpenOrca: Mistral-OpenOrca, Mistral-SlimOrca* Nous Research: Puffin, Capybara, NousHermes* Pygmalion: Mythalion, Pygmalion* Eric Hartford: Dolphin, Samantha* DiscoResearch: DiscoLM 120B & 70B* OpenAccess AI Collective: Manticore, Minotaur, Jackalope, HippogriffAs finetuning is very formatting dependent, it also provides prompt interfaces and formatters between a range of popular model formats from Stanford's Alpaca and Steven Tey's ShareGPT (which led to Vicuna) to the more NSFW Pygmalion community.Nous Research MeetupWe last talked about Nous at the DevDay Recap at the e/acc “banger rave”. We met Wing at the Nous Research meetup at the a16z offices in San Francisco, where they officially announced their company and future plans:Including Nous Forge:Show NotesWe've already covered the nuances of Dataset Contamination and the problems with “Open Source” in AI, so we won't rehash those topics here but do read/listen to those if you missed it.* Axolotl GitHub and Discord* The Flan paper and dataset* StackLlama model and blogpost* Multipack paper* Our episode with Tri Dao* Mamba state space models - Tri Dao and Albert GuTimestamps* [00:00:00] Introducing Wing* [00:02:34] SF Open Source AI Meetup* [00:04:09] What is Axolotl?* [00:08:01] What is finetuning?* [00:08:52] Open Source Model Zoo* [00:10:53] Benchmarks and Contamination* [00:14:29] The Case for Open Source AI* [00:17:34] Orca and OpenOrca* [00:23:36] DiscoLM and Model Stacking* [00:25:07] Datasets and Evals over Models* [00:29:15] Distilling from GPT4* [00:33:31] Finetuning - LoRA, QLoRA, ReLoRA, GPTQ* [00:41:55] Axolotl vs HF Transformers* [00:48:00] 20x efficiency with StackLlama and Multipack* [00:54:47] Tri Dao and Mamba* [00:59:08] Roadmap for Axolotl* [01:01:20] The Open Source AI CommunityTranscript[00:00:00] Introducing Wing Lian[00:00:00] ​[00:00:00] swyx: Welcome to Latent Space, a special edition with Wing Lien, but also with our new guest host, Alex. Hello, hello. Welcome, welcome. Again, needs no introduction. I think it's like your sixth time on Latent Space already. I think so, yeah. And welcome, Wing. We just met, but you've been very prolific online. Thanks for having me.[00:00:30] Yeah. So you are in town. You're not local. You're in town. You're from Minneapolis?[00:00:35] Wing Lian: Annapolis. Annapolis. It's funny because a lot of people think it's Indianapolis. It's I've got Minneapolis, but I used to live out at least in the San Francisco Bay Area years ago from like 2008 to 2014. So it's fairly familiar here.[00:00:50] swyx: Yep. You're the maintainer of Axolotl now, which we'll get into. You're very, very prolific in the open source AI community, and you're also the founder of the Open Access AI Collective. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Maybe we can go over a little bit of your backgrounds into tech and then coming into AI, and then we'll cover what[00:01:06] Wing Lian: happens and why you're here.[00:01:08] Yeah. So. Back on tech, so I started years ago, I started way back when I was scraping, Apartment websites for listings and then, and then building like SEO optimized pages and then just throwing Google AdSense on it.[00:01:24] And that got me through like college basically. Is[00:01:27] swyx: that decent money? And what year[00:01:28] Wing Lian: was this? Like 2004, 2005. Yeah, that's decent money. It's like thousand bucks a month. But as a college student, that's like. Gravy. Really good money, right? So, and then there's just too much competition It's just sort of like died off. I was writing stuff in like Perl back then using like like who nobody hosted anything on Perl anymore, right? Still did a little bit more like computer tech support and then software, and web more professionally.[00:01:54] So I spent some time working on applications in the blood industry. I came out to San Francisco for, I was at SGN, so Social Gaming Network, as a startup. They started doing, with Facebook apps, and then they pivoted into doing mobile apps. And then, from there, I spent time.[00:02:14] I've quite a few more startups since then and in the last few years I've been in the music space So like I was at United Masters for a while and then past year I've been at SoundCloud, but not doing that anymore and now that I have a lot more time It's just like all right.[00:02:30] We're going full bore on axolotl and we're gonna we're gonna crush AI So yeah,[00:02:34] SF Open Source AI Meetup[00:02:34] swyx: totally you so you're here in town for the open source. Yeah, I meet up that we had yesterday Yep, yeah, that was amazing. Yeah, it was a big collection. Olama, Noose Research, Alignment Lab, Anyone else that I missed? I mean, Jeremy Howard is his own thing.[00:02:47] Yeah.[00:02:49] And Alex, you're also there. You love to bring SF to the world. Your takes?[00:02:55] Alex Volkov: It's incredible that we recorded a Thursday Eye episode after that one. And LDJ, who's usually co hosts Thursday Eye, just like briefly mentioned, Oh yeah, I talked about it.[00:03:04] Like, I saw Karpathy, and then I talked to Jeremy Howard, and the guy from Mistral came in, and it's like, He's talking about all these, titans of industry, basically, that outside of SF, You just don't meet casually hanging out in the same space. You can't, pull somebody. He ran into the Laylow from Mistral, he ran into him while, drinking water.[00:03:20] He didn't even know he was there. It's just, that type of stuff is really hard to find outside of SF. So, absolutely, absolutely great. And also, presentations from Alignment Labs, presentations from News Research, news issues, talked about. Forge, and some of[00:03:33] swyx: the other stuff they announced. We can say now they're officially a company.[00:03:36] I met Technium.[00:03:37] He[00:03:37] Alex Volkov: came over here. He didn't want to get recorded. But maybe.[00:03:41] Wing Lian: We'll wear him down at some point. Yeah, I'm excited for Forge. They've positioned it as this agentic sort of framework where it's just Drag and drop things and, fill in text with where you want to inject different variables and it opens up all of these potentials for data pipelines now, right?[00:03:56] And using your own local LLMs and not relying on GPT 4 or anything like that. Yeah, yeah,[00:04:02] swyx: good stuff. Okay, so let's maybe go into the Axolotl origin story and then we have, we have some intro or background.[00:04:09] What is Axolotl?[00:04:09] swyx: To do on like the open source model universe and also on fine tuning, but maybe just, since you're talking about your personal journey, what was your personal journey into[00:04:18] Wing Lian: axolotl?[00:04:19] Yeah, so my personal journey started like back in mid March, completely unrelated to AI and axolotl. And it really started, I fell while skiing, I torqued. Great 3 MCL sprain and being sort of like an active person that can no longer be active because the two, couldn't play soccer, because that is requires to have having knees until I, it's healed.[00:04:42] So I. I decided I needed to find something to do to take up my free time. And that became, well, let's learn how to train in, these language models. It was everywhere. So I was like, all right, I'm just going to sit down, learn. I think I used like other, I think I was using like Alpacalora.[00:05:00] Cause I think the Alpaca paper had just came out, come out then. So I was like using Alpacalora repo and sort of like learning how to use like. None of us were like GPU rich back then, and none of us, most of us still we're still all GPU poor, but I was doing what was it, like 4 bit, Alpaca Lord, there was like a 4 bit version where we were doing quant, or 8, no, 8 bit quantizations, and then I think they had released QLOR a little bit later, and I think right when, before QLOR came out, I was already starting to do fine tunes, but having this need to sort of like mix data sets together, and If you've ever looked at all the various different datasets available on HuggingFace, they all have various different prompt formats, and, it's sort of a nightmare, and then I think the other piece is if you've ever tried to fine tune, at least Back then probably the ecosystem's a little better now.[00:05:54] Everybody required that you say, alright, you put your hyperparameters as command line arguments. And so it's always like, well, I now have to go copy and paste my previous thing and to change things out. And I really wanted it. to be in a YAML file because it was more portable and reproducible.[00:06:09] So I was doing that and then the QLOR paper came out. Tim Dettmer announced that and then somebody looked it up for me yesterday and it's like between that announcement it took us seven days to get that integrated into Axolotl, right? Which is like, it's not. I wouldn't say it's really fast, but in a manner that, is in a, a reusable framework, I think it was quite the accomplishment then.[00:06:33] And so we started, picking up traction with people there. And then it's just been building models, and then just iterating what my needs are. So, yeah. Excellent. Yeah. I[00:06:44] Alex Volkov: want to ask, for folks who are listening who never heard of Axolotl, now do you describe how you got there?[00:06:49] Can you, how do you summarize this for folks who maybe haven't fine tuned anything. They know about open source LLM exists, they maybe know like LLAML, what's XLR for somebody who doesn't know. I've never heard of a data set curation[00:07:01] Wing Lian: creation before. We sort of have to take a step back and understand that, when you've got these language models, you have what I think most people refer to as like base models, also known as like foundational models, right?[00:07:15] Where some benefactor, whether it's Meta or Mistral or whoever, has gone and spent all this money. To train these models on huge corpuses of text, right? And these, these corpuses, they're generally good across lots of different things, but they're really good at just saying, talking on and on and on, but they're not good at, following instructions or having chats or anything like that.[00:07:40] So, when you think about fine tuning, it's like Saying, all right, we have this really sort of good generalized, text completion thing, and I want to turn it into something that I can talk to or have, follow instructions. So, I think fine tuning is probably best defined in like that.[00:07:58] swyx: Okay, got it.[00:07:59] And we actually[00:08:01] What is finetuning?[00:08:01] swyx: Do want to make sure that we have like an overall introduction to fine tuning for people because again like trying to make sure that we bring everyone along in this, in this journey. We already went into Loras and QLoras without explaining what[00:08:12] Wing Lian: they are. Oh yes, yes, sorry.[00:08:14] swyx: And so I will put things in my words and you can correct me as, as, as my I'll be the village idiot here.[00:08:21] So, so fine tuning is basically sort of grabbing an open source model off the shelf, and then basically doing further training on it with a custom dataset of your own. Primarily, people use it, think about it as fine tuning for JSON output, or fine tuning for a style of response. Let's say you wanted to tell jokes, or be funny, or be short, or whatever.[00:08:43] Just the open source AI community has really fine tuned in all sorts of different manner. I think we'll go over those those things now. Let's go over those things now, and then we'll talk about fine tuning methods.[00:08:52] Open Source Model Zoo[00:08:52] swyx: So there's a universe of people who fine tune stuff. Yesterday in your slides, you had, I'll just list some of these and then we'll maybe go through some of them, right?[00:08:59] So Technium is personally leading Open Hermes, which is I think the sort of premier model out of the news. news community. There's OpenOrca, which you had a hand in. News, the news research itself also has Capybara and Puffin and all the others. There's Pygmalion, which I've never messed with.[00:09:14] Eric Hartford, I am aware of his Uncensored Models and his Samantha Models. Disco Research with Disco LM. And then you personally have done Manticore, Minotaur, Jackalope, and Hippogriff. What should people know about all these names? Being part of AI Twitter is seeing all these things and going dude, I'm being DDoS'ed by all these things and I don't know how different they are.[00:09:32] What should people know? Yeah, so[00:09:34] Wing Lian: I think on a lot of these models, generally, we like to think of those as sort of general models, so If you think about it, what is GPT 4, what is Chad GPT? It's a good general model, and then, One of the services I think that OpenAI offers is like these fine tunings where you're a business and you have very specific business use cases and you might fine tune for that use case.[00:10:00] All of these models are really just general use case that you can then go and maybe Fine tune another lore over it for your use cases, but they tend to be good. With good being relative, it's open source. Open source AI is still sort of is infancy. So, good is, it's pretty reasonable.[00:10:18] It's probably still better than most, high schoolers at answering questions and being able to like figure things out and, and reasoning skills and math and those sorts of things, right?[00:10:27] swyx: And also as measured on the Hugging[00:10:29] Wing Lian: Face leaderboard. Yes, well, that's like a whole other discussion, right, there's a whole other, group of people who, and I, I mostly agree with them that, benchmarks can be, are pretty bogus these days, LM says, I think they published something recently where, even if you think the dataset's not contaminated, you can go and, find contamination And maybe we should step back and say what contamination is, right?[00:10:53] Benchmarks and Contamination[00:10:53] Wing Lian: So we have all of these data, when you go and do these benchmarks, there's a specific data set where there are these questions and usually it's multiple choice. And what can happen is, well, sometimes someone It puts the question, maybe maliciously, maybe accidentally, into the training dataset, and now the, the, your model knows how to answer the test questions really well, but it doesn't, it hasn't generalized the ability to actually do that[00:11:20] Alex Volkov: right.[00:11:21] We've seen some folks competitively announce models that are like the best at that leaderboard, but then it's, it's quite obvious that, In open source? Yeah, and in that leaderboard, for Hugging Face specific, I don't know if LMCs, if that had suffered, but we, there's been some models that seem to have been competitively trained and some leakage happened into their,[00:11:41] swyx: like, supposal.[00:11:43] I understand, once there's been a credible assertion, Hugging Face actually does take them down, right? Yeah, yeah,[00:11:48] Alex Volkov: which is really hard to know, right?[00:11:50] swyx: It's really hard to know, sometimes it's like a pure accident,[00:11:52] Alex Volkov: it's oh, oops. You're going through a mixer. I think, a responsible So acknowledgement, that this kind of happened to you is also important.[00:11:58] I saw LDJ from news research can acknowledge that. Because many of these datasets are collections of other datasets. There's a bunch of people are baking, basically. It's alchemy. Right. And so sometimes you don't know. Sometimes you pull an open source dataset and they announce, oh, you know what, actually, the MMLU benchmark which we used to Specifically identify models that did go into this data set, that then went into that data set.[00:12:22] So sometimes it's actually an accident and folks take it down. But I've seen some competitive folks who want to put their name out there because people are starting to notice which is the top[00:12:30] swyx: model. For those who want a fun take on this so the file one dataset. FindOne model from Microsoft was accused of being contaminated.[00:12:37] And I saw this joke paper that was fantastic. It was called, training on the test set is all you need. It's a super small model that just memorizes everything. It was fantastic. So yeah, contamination, I think we've actually covered it in a previous episode before. So we're good. But again, I want to give people a map into the open source AI model, the universe.[00:12:57] And Alex, you can also jump in here because you guys have spent a lot more time with them than I have. So, what should people know about Technium? What should people know about Noose? And then we can go down the list. Yeah,[00:13:05] Wing Lian: I think so. I think if we start with, Technium. When you talk to him, he's gonna say, I think, I think his response is that he wants to build GP4 on his laptop, right?[00:13:14] So, very, very good at building general models. I think with Noose, Noose Research, they're looking at more, sort of, More, more research focused things, like their Yarn models, I don't, I don't, they didn't actually train their, they have their own trainer for their Yarn models, but So they did not use Xlato for that one?[00:13:30] They didn't use that, but like Is that, you don't have support for it? I think we do support Yarn, I think, I'd have to double check that answer. Yeah, I'm just kind of curious what you can and cannot support, and Yeah, I mean, Yarn is supportable, it's basically, I think it's just replacing, I think, the rope part of that, so Yeah, not, not a big deal.[00:13:48] Yeah, it's not a big deal, it's just I haven't gotten to it, not enough people have asked, I think a lot of people have asked for other things, so it's just, squeaky wheel, right? I think at the end of the day, people are like building these data sets and I think if you sort of map things chronologically, these make more sense because it's like, how do we incrementally improve all of these models?[00:14:07] So a lot of these models are just incremental improvements over the last thing, right? Whether it is sort of through methods of how do we, how did we curate the data set? How did we improve the quality of the data set? So, you maybe LDJ talked about it right on I think for, for Capybara and Puffin, like how those, those were very specific dataset curation techniques that he works on.[00:14:29] The Case for Open Source AI[00:14:29] Alex Volkov: So there's, folks are doing this for dataset curation. Folks are doing this for skillset building as well. Definitely people understand that open source is like very important, especially after the, the, the, the, the march, the debacle, the OpenAI weekend that we all had. And people started noticing that even after developer day in OpenAI, the APIs went out.[00:14:48] And then after that, the whole leadership of the company is swiftly changed and people, there was worries about, you know. How can people continue building AI products based on these like shaky grounds that turned attention definitely to Technium at least in open RMS I started seeing this more and more on Twitter, but also other models and many companies They're gonna start with open AI just to get there quick, and then they they think about okay Maybe I don't want to share my knowledge.[00:15:13] Maybe I don't want to sign up for Microsoft. Maybe they will change their terms and conditions so What else is out there? They turned to other companies. Up until yesterday, Google was nowhere to be found. We've talked about Gemini a little bit before in a previous And you can tune in[00:15:26] swyx: to[00:15:26] Alex Volkov: Thursday Eye.[00:15:26] Yeah, you can tune in to Thursday Eye. We covered the Gemini release a little bit. And but many are turning into the open source community and seeing that Meta released and continues to release and commit to open source AI. Mistral came out and the model is way smaller than LLAMA and performs Significantly better.[00:15:43] People play with OpenRMS, which is currently techniums based, news researched, sourced, axolotl trained OpenRMS, I assume, right? And then they play with this and they see that, okay, this is like GPT 3. 5 quality. We had GPT 4. 5 birthday just a week ago. A week ago, a year ago, a week ago, we never, interacted with these models of this caliber.[00:16:04] And now there's one open source, one that's on my laptop, completely offline, that, I can continue improving for my use cases. So enterprises, companies are also noticing this. And the open source community folks are building the skill set, not only the data sets. They're building the actual kind of, here's how we're going to do this, with Axelotl, with these data sets.[00:16:21] The curation pieces. Now. Interesting. There's like recipes of curation. The actual model training is kind of a competitive thing where people go and compete on these leaderboards that we talked about, the LMC arena, and that recently added open air and recently added open chat and a bunch of other stuff that are super cool.[00:16:37] The hug and face open source leaderboard. And so there's a competitive aspect to this. There's the open source. Aspect to this, like Technium says, I want GPT 4 on my laptop. There's the, let me build a skill set that potentially turns into a company, like we saw with Noose. Noose just, started organizing, a bunch of people on Discord, and suddenly, they're announcing their company.[00:16:54] It's happening across all these modalities, and suddenly all these people who saw these green pastures and a fairly quick way to, hey, here's a cool online community I can, start doing cool stuff with. You mentioned the same in the beginning, right? Like, after your accident, what's cool, let me try this out.[00:17:08] Suddenly I start noticing that there's a significant movement of interest in enterprising companies into these areas. And, this skill set, these data sets, and this community is now very Very important, important enough to create an event which pulls in Andrei Karpathy from OpenAI to come and see what's new Jeremy Howard, like the event that we just talked about, people are flying over and this is just a meetup.[00:17:28] So, definitely, the community is buzzing right now and I think Axelot is a big piece as well.[00:17:34] Orca and OpenOrca[00:17:34] Wing Lian: Cool. Maybe we can talk about like Orca real quick, Orca, OpenOrca rather, I think there was a lot of buzz when, the first Orca paper came out. And just briefly, what is Orca? Yeah, Orca was basically having traces of like chain of thought reasoning, right?[00:17:48] So they go and they, they distill sort of GPT 4. They take, they take a sampling of data from the Flan dataset. Maybe we can like add some show notes in the Flan dataset. Yeah, but we've covered it. Okay, cool. Use GPT 4 to say, all right, explain this in a step by step reasoning, right?[00:18:06] And then you take that and you, they train the model and it showed, very good improvements across a lot of benchmarks. So OpenOrca was sort of the open reproduction of that since Microsoft Research never released that particular data set. And going back to sort of the Hugging Face leaderboard thing, those models did really well.[00:18:23] And then I think, so sort of the follow up to that was SlimOrca, right? I think Going into and building the OpenOrca dataset, we never really went in and, validated the actual answers that GPT 4 gave us, so what we did was one from OpenChat actually cross referenced the original Flan, the original Flan response, the human responses, the correct answers with the dataset, and then I went and took it and sent all of, both of them to GPT 4 and said, is this answer mostly correct, right?[00:18:54] Yeah. And then we were able to filter the dataset from, At least of the GPT 4 only answers from like 800, 000 to like 500, 000 answers or rows and then, and then retrain the model and it had the same performance as the original model to within I think, 0. 1 percent here about, and 30 percent less data.[00:19:13] So, yeah. Okay.[00:19:15] swyx: Interesting. So, I mean, there's, there's so much there that I want to highlight, but yeah. Orca is interesting. I do want people to know about it. Putting chain of thought into the data set like it's just makes a ton of sense one thing I think it would be helpful for people to scope thing these things out is how much data are we talking about when when you When people are fine tuning and then how much time or resources or money does it take to train to fine[00:19:36] Wing Lian: tune?[00:19:37] Yeah, so I think there's a little bit of overlap there with sort of like fine tuning techniques, but let's say Orca and I think even Hermes, they're both relatively large data sets like 10 billion tokens. Yeah. So large data sets being or the original Orca was, or the original open Orca was 800,000 rows.[00:19:55] I believe it was somewhere in the ballpark of like a gigabyte of data, of gigabyte, of text data. And I, I don't. I believe, Hermes was, is like a quarter million rows of data, I don't know the actual byte size on that particular one. So, going and training a, let's, let's say everybody's training 7 billion Mistral right now, right?[00:20:15] So, to tri I, I believe to fine tune 7 billion Mistral on, let's say, 8 A6000s, which have 48 gigabytes of VRAM, I believe, It takes about 40 hours, so 40, and then that's, depending on where you get your compute, 40 times 6, so it's like 500 to fine tune that model, so, and, and that's assuming you get it right the first time, right?[00:20:44] So, you know.[00:20:45] swyx: Is, is that something that X. Lotto handles, like, getting it right the first[00:20:48] Wing Lian: time? If you talk to anybody, it's like you've probably tried at least three or four runs or experiments to like find the right hyperparameters. And after a while you sort of have a feel for like which, where you need your hyperparameters to be.[00:21:04] Usually you might do like a partial training run, do some benchmark. So I guess for Al Farouk, whether you're going by his. This is Jeremy, he's, his actual name, or his twitter handle. He released the Dharma dataset, which is basically a subset of all the benchmarks. And Axolotl actually supports, you know taking that subset and then just running many benchmarks across your model every time you're doing an evaluation so you can sort of like see sort of relative it's not going to be the actual benchmark score, but you can get ideas alright, is this benchmark improving, is this benchmark decreasing, based on, you know Wait,[00:21:39] swyx: why don't you run the full benchmark?[00:21:41] What, what, what The[00:21:42] Wing Lian: full benchmarks take Take a long time. Significant, yeah, significant amount of time. Yeah. And Okay, so that's like[00:21:48] swyx: mini MMLU. Yeah. Like,[00:21:49] Wing Lian: mini BigBench or whatever. Yep, exactly.[00:21:51] Alex Volkov: It's really cool. We, when I joined Web2Masters just recently, and one of the things that I try to do is hey I'm not, I'm a software engineer by trade, I don't have an MLE background, But I joined a company that does primarily MLE, and I wanted to learn from the community, Because a lot of the open source community, they use weights and biases, And the benchmark that you said that Pharrell did, remind me of the name, sorry.[00:22:13] Dharma? Dharma, yeah, yeah. So Luigi showed me how Dharma shows inside the dashboard. In Wi and Biases dashboard and so you can actually kinda see the trending run and then you can see per each kind of iteration or, or epoch or you can see the model improving trending so you can on top of everything else.[00:22:29] The wi and biases gives like hyper parameter tracking, which like you, you started with common line and that's really hard to like remember. Also the Dharma data set, like the quick, the mini orca mini, you mini many different things. It's pretty cool to like visualize them as well. And I, I heard that he's working on a new version of, of Dharma, so Dharma 2, et cetera.[00:22:47] So hopefully, hopefully we'll see that soon, but definitely it's hard, right? You start this training around, it said like 40, 50 hours. Sometimes, sometimes it's like your SSHing into this machine. You, you start a process, you send it with God and you just go about your day, collecting data sets, and then you have to return.[00:23:04] And the whole process of instrumentation of this is still a little bit like squeaky but definitely. Tuning performance, or like grabbing performance in the middle of this, like with Dharma and some other tools, is very helpful to know that you're not wasting precious resources going somewhere you shouldn't go.[00:23:21] Yeah.[00:23:22] swyx: Yeah. Very cool. Maybe I'll, I'll, before we go into like sort of more details on fine tuning stuff, I just wanted to round out the rest of the Excel autoverse. There's, there's still Eric Hartford stuff. I don't know if you want to talk about Pygmalion, Disco, anything that you know about[00:23:35] Wing Lian: those, those things.[00:23:36] DiscoLM and Model Stacking[00:23:36] Wing Lian: Yeah, I think like one of the, definitely one of the more interesting ones was like the Disco 120b, right? Yeah, I know nothing about it. Yeah. So, so. Alpen from Pygmalion AI, right, so they, so Pygmalion is a sort of a, it's, it's, they have their own community, a lot of it is based around, roleplay models, those sorts of things, and Alpen, like, put together, merged together Llama270B, so, and Alpen, like, put together, merged together Llama270B, so, I don't remember how he stacked them together, whether he merged the layers in between. There's a whole, there's a whole toolkit for that by Charles Goddard, where you can like take a single model and like stack them together or multiple models merge.[00:24:18] That's like a whole other talk and a whole other tool set, but was able to create this 120. Billion parameter model out of a LAMA two 70 B. And then I believe the, yeah, disco is a fine tune of, of the, the, the sort of the base one 20 B is, I believe Goliath one 20 B. So, and, and what are the[00:24:37] swyx: headline results that people should know about[00:24:39] Wing Lian: disco?[00:24:39] I think for the headline results, I, I've, I haven't played with it personally because it's. It's a very large model and there's a lot of GPU, right? But, like, from what I've heard anecdotally, it performs really well. The responses are very good. Even with, like, just, even the base model is a lot better than, Llama70b.[00:24:57] So, and we, I think generally everybody's like, we would all love to fine tune Llama70b, but it's just, it's so much, it's so much memory, so much compute, right?[00:25:07] Datasets and Evals over Models[00:25:07] Wing Lian: I[00:25:07] Alex Volkov: want to touch on this point because the interesting thing That comes up out of being in this ecosphere and being friends with open source folks, tracking week to week state of the art performance on different models.[00:25:19] First of all, a lot of the stuff that the folks do a couple of weeks ago, and then something like Mistral comes out, and a lot of the stuff back then, Doesn't technically make sense anymore. Like the artifacts of that work, the actual artifacts, they don't no longer make sense. They're like lower on the on, on the hug and face leaderboard or lower on LM CS leaderboard.[00:25:36] But some of the techniques that people use, definitely the datasets. The datasets keep traveling, right? So open airmen, for example, is the dataset. The tum cleaned up for only. Open sourceable data that previously was just Hermes. And that, it was previously used to train Lama. And then once Mistral came out, it was used to train Mistral.[00:25:54] And then it became significantly better on the 7b base Mistral. So the data sets keep traveling, keep getting better a little bit here and there. And so the techniques improve as well. It looks like both things are simultaneously true. The artifacts of a month and a half ago. The, the actual models themselves, it's great the hug and face has them, because not every company can keep up with the next weeks', oh, I, I'll install this model instead, sell this model instead.[00:26:19] But the, the techniques and the, the dataset keep improving as we go further, and I think that's really cool. However, the outcome of this is that for a long time. For many, many people, including us, that we do this every week. We literally talk with people who release these models every week. It's really hard to know.[00:26:36] So, there's a few aspects of this. One, I think, like you said, the bigger model, the 70B models, you actually have to have somebody like Perplexity, for example, giving you access to the 70B really fast. Or you have to, like, Actually, find some compute, and it's expensive, especially for the bigger models. For example Falcon 180B came out, like the hugest open source model.[00:26:56] How do you evaluate this if you can't run it? Nobody liked it. It's really, so first of all, nobody liked it, but secondly, only the people who were able to find compute enough to run inference on this, they only had like, I can't run this on my laptop, and so that's why it's much easier, something like OpenRMS 7 to be, 7B, it's much easier, because you can run this on your MacBook.[00:27:14] It's much easier to evaluate. It's much easier to figure out the vibes, right? Everybody talks about the vibes as an evaluation check. If you're plugged in enough, if you follow the right people, if they say pretty much the same things all independently, then you run into a problem of whether they're repeating, and their stochastic parents are repeating the same thing, or they actually evaluated themselves.[00:27:31] Yeah, you never know. But, you never know, but like, I think on a large enough scale on Twitter, you start getting the feel. And we all know that like, OpenRMS is one of the top performing models, benchmarks, but also vibes. And I just wanted to highlight this vibes checks thing because you can have the benchmarks, you can have the evaluations, they potentially have contamination in them, potentially they not necessarily tell you the whole story because some models are good on benchmarks, but then you talk to them, they're not super helpful.[00:28:00] And I think it's a combination of the benchmarks, the leaderboards, the chatbot, because LMSys, remember, their ranking is not only based on benchmarks, it's also people playing with their arena stuff. People actually like humans, like, get two answers. I think they completely ignore benchmarks. Yeah, and then They only do ELO.[00:28:18] Oh, they do ELO completely, right? So that, for example, is just like people playing with both models and say, Hey, I prefer this one, I prefer that one. But also there's like some selection bias. The type of people who will go to LMCs to play with the models, they're a little bit specific in terms of like who they are.[00:28:33] It's very interesting. There's so many models. People are doing this in this way, that way. Some people are doing this for academic rigor only to test out new ideas. Some people are actually doing this like the Intel fine tunes of Mistral. Intel wanted to come out and show that their hardware approach is possible, Mistral, etc.[00:28:51] And it's really hard to know, like, what to pick, what to use. And especially on the bigger models, like you said, like the Llama 70B, the Falcon 180B. It's really because, like, who has the compute to validate those? So I would mention that, like, use with caution. Like, go and research and see if the biggest model that just released was actually worth the tokens and the money you spend on it.[00:29:12] To try and, if you're a business, to integrate it.[00:29:15] Distilling from GPT4[00:29:15] swyx: Since you said use of caution, I'll bring in one issue that has always been in the back of my mind whenever I look at the entire universe of open source AI models, which is that 95 percent of the data is derived from GPC 4, correct?[00:29:30] Which technically you can't use for commercial licenses,[00:29:34] Wing Lian: right?[00:29:35] swyx: What is the community's stance on this kind of stuff?[00:29:40] Wing Lian: I think from the community stance, like I feel like a lot of us are just experimenting, so for us, it's like, we're not going and building a product that we're trying to sell, right?[00:29:49] We're just building a product because we think it's interesting and we want to use it in our day to day lives, whether or not we try and integrate it. Personal use, yeah. Yeah, personal use, so like, as long as we're not selling it, yeah, it's fine. But[00:30:01] swyx: like, I as a company cannot just take OpenHermes and start serving[00:30:05] Alex Volkov: it and make money on it.[00:30:06] OpenHermes you can. Because the opening of OpenHermes, I think, is a clean up. That did after the regular Hermes, please folks, check your licenses before you listen to podcasts and say, Hey, I will tell you though, you could say the same thing about OpenAI. You could say the same thing kind of makes sense, where OpenAI or StabilityAI trains their diffusion model on a bunch of pictures on the internet, and then the court kind of doesn't strike down Sarah Silverman, I think, or somebody else, who came and said, hey, this has my work in it, because of the way how it processes, and the model eventually builds this knowledge into the model, and then it doesn't actually reproduce one to one what happened in the dataset.[00:30:45] You could claim the same thing for open source. Like, we're using And by we, I mean the, the open source community that I like happily report on uses GPT 4 to rank, for example, which is the better answer you, you, that's how you build one, one type of data set, right? Or DPO or something like this, you, you basically generate data set of like a question and four answers, for example, and then you go to GPT 4 and say, Hey, smartest model in the world right now, up to Gemini Ultra, that we should mention as well.[00:31:11] Which one of those choices is better? But the choices themselves are not necessarily written with GPT 4. Some of them may be, so there's like full syntactic datasets. But there's also, datasets are just ranked with GPT 4. But they're actually generated with a sillier model, or like the less important model.[00:31:25] The lines are very blurry as to what type of stuff is possible or not possible. And again, when you use this model that's up on Hug Face, the license says you can use this. OpenAI is not going to come after you, the user. If anything, OpenAI will try to say, hey, let's prevent this, this type of thing happening, and the brain, but I honestly don't think that they could know even, not that it makes it okay, it's just like, They also kind of do this with the Internet's archive, and also, I think that some of it is for use.[00:31:55] You use models to help you augment tasks, which is what GPT 4 lets you do.[00:32:00] swyx: Yeah, the worst thing that OpenAI can do is just kick you off OpenAI. That's because it's only enforced in the terms of service.[00:32:05] Alex Volkov: Sure, but just like to make sure, to clarify who they're going to kick out, they could kick out like News, for example, if news are abusing their service, a user of the open source, fully Apache 2 open source, for example, They won't get kicked out if they use both, just because they use both.[00:32:22] I don't believe so. I don't think OpenAI has a claim for that.[00:32:25] swyx: Well, we're not lawyers, but I just want to mention it for people to know it's an issue.[00:32:30] Wing Lian: And one of the things, like, I talked to someone recently, and I think that they also are like interested in it, but also to the point of like, right, if I use a model trained on data, using GPT for data, But I use that model to then regenerate new data.[00:32:46] Is that model, is that data okay? So like you start going down this whole rabbit hole. So yeah. All right.[00:32:53] swyx: Fantastic. Cool. Well, I think that's roughly highlights most of the open source universe. You also have your own models. Do you want to shout out any one of them? Yeah.[00:33:01] Wing Lian: I mean, I think like, I think Early on, Manicore got a lot of love.[00:33:04] I think it was mostly popular in, like, the roleplay communities. It was, it tended to be pretty truthful. It tended to be, like, have relatively good answers, depending on who you ask, right? But, I think for me, it was just, Releasing models was a way to try and, like, continue to build out the product, figure out what I needed to put into the product, how do I make it faster, and, if you've got to, like, go and debug your product, you may as well have it do something useful.[00:33:29] Awesome. So, yeah.[00:33:31] Finetuning - LoRA, QLoRA, ReLoRA, GPTQ[00:33:31] swyx: Okay, and then maybe we'll talk about just fine tuning techniques. So this is going to be a little bit more technical than just talking about model names and datasets. So we started off talking about LoRa, QLoRa. I just learned from your readme there's ReLoRa. Which I've never heard about.[00:33:45] Could you maybe talk about, like, just parameter efficient fine tuning that whole, that[00:33:50] Wing Lian: whole journey, like, what people should know. Yeah, so with parameter efficient fine tuning, I think the popular ones, again, being, let's, we'll start with lore, right? So, usually what you do is you freeze all the layers on your base, on the base model, and then you, at the same time, you sort of introduce additional Oh, this is tight.[00:34:08] No. You introduce, another set of layers over it, and then you train those, and it is done in a way that is mathematically possible, particularly with LORs that you can, then you, you, When you, when you train the model, you, you run your inputs through the base model, whose weights are frozen, but you, then you also run it through the additional weights, and then at the end you combine the weights, and then, and then, or you combine the weights to get your outputs, and then at the end, and when you're done training, you're left with this other set of weights, right, that are completely independent, and And then from that, what you can do is, some person smarter than I figured out, well, oh, they've done it in such a way that now I can merge these weights back into the original model without changing the architecture of the model, right?[00:35:03] So, so, that tends to be, like, the go to, and You're training much fewer parameters so that when you do that, yes, you still need to have all of the original weights, but you have a smaller gradient, you have a smaller optimizer state, and you're just training less weights, so you can tend to train those models on, like, much smaller GPUs.[00:35:27] swyx: Yeah. And it's roughly like, what I've seen, what I've seen out there is roughly like 1 percent the number of parameters that you're trading. Yeah, that sounds about right. Which is that much cheaper. So Axelotl supports full fine tune, LoRa, QLoRa,[00:35:40] Wing Lian: Q. Yes. So, so QLoRa is, is very similar to LoRa. The paper was, if I remember correctly, the paper was Rather, traditionally, most people who did Loras were, were, they were quant, they were putting the model weights in 8 bit, and then fine tune, parameter efficient fine tuning over the Lora weights, and then with QLora, they were quantizing all of those, they were then quantizing the weights down to 4 bit, right, and then I believe they were also training on all of the linear layers in the model.[00:36:15] And then with ReLore, that was an interesting paper, and then, I think, like, it got implemented. Some people in the community tried it, tried it out, and it showed that it didn't really have the impact that the paper indicated that it would. And from what I was told recently, that they re I guess they re released something for Relora, like, a few weeks ago, and that it's possibly better.[00:36:44] I personally haven't had the time. What was the[00:36:46] swyx: main difference,[00:36:47] Wing Lian: apart from quantization? I don't know. Okay. What was the main difference, sorry?[00:36:49] swyx: Apart from quantization, right? Like,[00:36:50] Wing Lian: Qlora's thing was, like, we'll just drop off some bits. With Relora, what they did was, you would go through, you would define some number of steps that you would train, like, your Lora with, or your Qlora.[00:37:01] Like, you could do Like, ReqLore, if you really wanted to, you would, you would train your LoRa for some number of steps, And then you would merge those weights into your base model, and then you would start over. So by starting, so, then by starting over, The optimizer has to find, like, sort of, re optimize again, and find what's the best direction to move in, and then do it all again, and then merge it in, do it all again, and theoretically, according to the paper, doing ReLore, you can do parameter efficient fine tuning, but still have sort of, like, the performance gains of doing a full fine tuning, so.[00:37:38] swyx: Yeah, and[00:37:39] Wing Lian: GPTQ? And GPTQ, so it's, I think with GPTQ, it's very similar to, more similar to QLore, where you're, it's mostly a quantization of the weights down to like 4 bit, where GPTQ is a very, is a specific methodology or implementation of quantization, so. Got it.[00:37:57] Alex Volkov: Wang, for, for folks who use Axolotl, your users, some people who maybe, Want to try it out?[00:38:03] And do they need to know the differences? Do they need to know the implementation details of QLora versus ReLora? Or is it okay for them to just know that Axolotl is the place that already integrated them? And if that's true, if that's all they need to know, how do they choose which method to use? Yeah,[00:38:22] Wing Lian: so I think like, I think most people aren't going to be using ReLora.[00:38:25] I think most people are going to be using either Lora or QLora. And I think they should have it. They should have an understanding of why they might want to use one over the other. Most people will say that with Qlora, the quality of the final model is not quite as good as like if you were to do a LoRa or a full fine tune, right?[00:38:44] Just because, you've quantized these down, so your accuracy is probably a little off, and so that by the time you've done the Qlora, you're not moving the weights how you would on a full fine tune with the full parameter weights.[00:38:56] Interesting.[00:38:57] swyx: Okay, cool. For people who are more interested, obviously, read the papers. I just wanted to give people, like, a high level overview of what these things are. And you've done people a service by making it easy for people to try it out. I'm going to, I'm going to also ask a question which I know to be wrong, but I'm curious because I get asked this all the time.[00:39:15] What is the difference between all these kinds of fine tunes[00:39:17] Wing Lian: and RLHF? Okay, between all of these sorts of fine tunes and RLHF. So all of these sorts of fine tunes are based, are, ideally, this, they are taking knowledge that the base model already knows about, and presenting it in a way to the model that you're having the model answer like, Use what it already knows to sort of answer in a particular way, whether it's, you're extracting general knowledge, a particular task, right?[00:39:44] Instruct, tune, chat, those sorts of things. And then generally with RLHF, so what is, let's go back, what is it? Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback. So if we start with the human feedback part, What you're doing is you generally have, you have like a given prompt and then you, maybe you have one, maybe you have two, I think, like if you look at with Starling, you have like up to what, seven different, seven different possible responses, and you're sort of ranking those responses on, on some sort of metric, right, whether the metric is how much I, I might like that answer versus or I think with like starling is like how how how helpful was the answer how accurate was the answer how toxic was the answer those sorts of things on some sort of scale right and then using that to go back and like sort of Take a model and nudge it in the direction of giving that feedback, to be able to answer questions based on those preferences.[00:40:42] swyx: Yeah, so you can apply, and is it commutative? Can you apply fine tuning after and onto an RLHF model? Or should the RLHF apply, come in afterwards,[00:40:54] Wing Lian: after the fine tune? Um, I, yeah, I don't know that there's There's been enough research for one way or another, like, I don't know.[00:41:02] That's a question that's been asked on Discord. Yeah, like, I definitely would say I don't know the answer. Go and try it and report back to me and let me know so I can answer for the next guy.[00:41:10] swyx: It's shocking how much is still unknown about all these things. Well, I mean, that's what research is for, right?[00:41:16] Wing Lian: So actually I, I think I saw on the top of a leaderboard, it was a, it was a mytral base model, and they didn't actually fine tune it. They, or they, they just did RLH, they did like an RLHF fine tune on it using like, I don't, I don't recall which dataset, but it was like, and it benchmarked really well.[00:41:37] But yeah, you'd have to go and look at it. But, so it is interesting, like going back to that, it's like. Traditionally, most people will fine tune the model and then do like a DPO, PPO, some sort of reinforcement learning over that, but that particular model was, it seemed like they skipped like the supervised fine tuning or Scott.[00:41:55] Axolotl vs HF Transformers[00:41:55] swyx: Cool. One thing I did also want to comment about is the overall, like, landscape, competitive landscape, I don't know. Hugging Face Transformers, I think, has a PFT module.[00:42:05] Wing Lian: Yeah, yeah, the PEFT, the Parameter Efficient Fine Tuning, yep. Is that a competitor to you? No, no, so we actually use it. We're just a wrapper over sort of, sort of the HuggingFace stuff.[00:42:15] So, so that is their own sort of module where They have, taken the responsibility or yeah, the responsibility of like where you're doing these parameter efficient fine tuning methods and just sort of like, it is in that particular package where transformers is mostly responsible for sort of like the modeling code and, and the trainer, right.[00:42:35] And then sort of, there's an integration between the two and, there's like a variety of other fine tuning packages, I think like TRL, TRLX, that's the stability AI one. Yeah, I think TRL likes the stability, yeah, Carper, and TRL is a hugging face trainer. Even that one's just another wrapper over, over the transformers library and the path library, right?[00:43:00] But what we do is we have taken sort of those, yes, we've We also use that, but we also have more validation, right? So, there are some of us who have done enough fine tunes where like, Oh, this and this just don't go together, right? But most people don't know that, so like Example?[00:43:19] Like, people want to One and one doesn't go together. I don't have an example offhand, but if you turn this knob and this knob, right? You would think, all right, maybe this will work, but you don't know until you try. And then by the time you find out it doesn't work, it's like maybe five minutes later, it's failed.[00:43:34] It's failed in the middle of training or it's failed during the evaluation step. And you're like, ah, so we've, we've added a lot of, we've added a lot more validation in it. So that like, when you've, you've created your configuration, you run it through and now you say. The validation code says this is probably not right or probably not what you don't, not what you want.[00:43:52] So are you like a, you[00:43:53] swyx: do some linting of your YAML file?[00:43:56] Wing Lian: There, I guess you could call it linting, it's sort of like Is there a set of rules out[00:44:00] swyx: there somewhere? Yeah, there's a set of rules in there. That's amazing, you should write documentation like This rule is because, this user at this time, like, ran into this bug and that's what we invested in.[00:44:10] It's like a good collection[00:44:11] Wing Lian: of knowledge. Yeah, it is, and I guess like, if you really wanted to, like, figure it out, I guess you could, like, git blame everything, and But, yeah, it's, so, I think that's always a useful thing, it's like Because people want to experiment but they don't, people will get frustrated when you've experiment, you're experimenting and it breaks and you don't know why or you know why and you've just gone down the rabbit hole, right?[00:44:37] So, so I think that's one of the big features that's, that I think I find important because it's It prevents you from doing things you probably shouldn't have, and it, and sometimes we will let you do those things, but we'll try and warn, warn you that you've done that.[00:44:50] I[00:44:51] Alex Volkov: have a follow up question on this, actually, because yesterday we hung out to this open source event, and I spent time by you a couple times, like when people told you, oh, XLR, I use XLR, it's super cool, and then the first thing you asked is, like, immediately, like, what can we improve?[00:45:04] And yes, from multiple folks, and I think we talked about this a little bit, where there's It's a developer tool. It's like a machine learning slash developer tool. Your purpose in this is to help and keep people, as much as possible, like, Hey, here's the best set of things that you can use right now. The bear libraries are, or the bear trainer, for example, is a bear trainer.[00:45:28] And also, maybe we should talk about how fast you're implementing these things. So you mentioned the first implementation took a week or so. Now there's a core maintainer group, right? There's like, features are landing, like Qlora, for example. Neftune, I don't know if that's one example of something that people potentially said that it's going to be cool, and then eventually, like, one of those things that didn't really shake out, like, people quickly tested this out.[00:45:48] So, there's a ton of Wait, Neftune is cancelled? I don't know if it's fully canceled, but based on vibes, I heard that it's not that great. So like, but the whole point that I'm trying to make with Neftune as well is that being existing in the community of like XLR or like, I don't know, even following the, the GitHub options or following the Discord, it's a fairly good way to like, learn these, Kind of gut feelings that you just, you just said, right?[00:46:14] Like where this, maybe this knob, that knob doesn't work. Some of these are not written down. Some of these are like tribal knowledge that passes from place to place. Axel is like a great collection of many of them. And so, do you get That back also from community of folks who just use, like, how do you know who uses this?[00:46:30] I think that's still an issue, like, knowing if they trained with XLR or should they add this to things? Talk about, how do you get feedback and how else you should get feedback?[00:46:38] Wing Lian: Yeah, I mean, most of the feedback comes from the Discord, so people come in and , they don't get a training running, they run into, like, obscure errors or, errors that That's a lot of things that maybe, maybe as a product we could catch, but like, there's a lot of things that at some point we need to go and do and it's just on the list somewhere.[00:46:58] Right that's why when people come up, I'm like, what, what were your pain points? Because like, as a developer tool, if you're not happy with it, or you come in and in the first, Takes you 30 minutes and you're still not happy. You leave the tool and you may, you might move on maybe to a better tool, maybe to, one with less frustration, but it may not be as good, right?[00:47:17] So I'm trying to like, figure out, all right, how can I reduce all this frustration? Because like for me, I use it every day for the most part, right? And so I am blind to that, right? Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. . I just know, I, I go do this, this, and this. It pretty much mostly works, right? But, so I don't have sort of that, alright, that learning curve that other people are seeing and don't understand their pain points.[00:47:40] Yeah,[00:47:40] Alex Volkov: you don't have the The ability to onboard yourself as a new user completely new to the whole paradigm to like get into the doors of like, Oh, no, I don't even know how to like ask about this problem or error.[00:47:53] swyx: Cool. The last few things I wanted to cover was also just the more advanced stuff that you covered yesterday.[00:48:00] 20x efficiency with StackLlama and Multipack[00:48:00] swyx: So I'll just, caution this as like, yeah, this is more advanced. But you mentioned Stackllama and Multipack. What are they[00:48:06] Wing Lian: and what should people know? Yeah, so, so, Stack Llama was, that paper came out, so Stack Llama I think was like, two, two, two separate, two separate concepts that they announced, so the first one was They being hugging face.[00:48:20] Yeah, sorry, yes, they being hugging face, so the first one being sort of like, this idea of packing, like some packing sequences together, so like, if we think about training data, right, your training data is, let's say, to keep the math easy, let's say your training data is 500, We, we, we, we will use the terminology words.[00:48:39] Let's say your training data is 500 words long, and let's say your, your context length, you know how much data your, that your model can accept is like, or that you want feed into your model. It's, let's say, we won't use tokens again, we'll we'll use it is it's 4,000 tokens, right? So if you're training at 4K Con or four 4,000 4K contacts and you're only using 500 of it, you're sitting like with the other 1500.[00:49:05] 3, 500 words that you're not using, right? And typically that's either filled with these PAD tokens, so I think I made the analogy last night that it's like having sort of like a glass here you fill it up with a shot of liquor and then you're and that's your training data and then you just fill it up with more water and those are your PAD tokens and it's just, it doesn't do much, right?[00:49:27] It's still the same thing, but you still have to go through all of that to go through all your training data. And then, so what Stack Llama showed was you could just sort of take your training data, append the next row of training data until you filled that entire 4k context, so in this example, right, with 500 words to 4k, that's 8 rows of training data.[00:49:48] But, the problem with that is, is that with a lot of these transformer models, they're very much relying on attention, right? So, like, if you now have this sequence of words that now, in order for the, the model has seen all of these other words before, right? And then it sees another set of words, another set of words, but it's learning everything in context of all the words that it's seen before.[00:50:13] We haven't corrected the attention for that. And just real quickly, since I said that that paper was two concepts, the other one was, I believe it was like a reinforcement learning, but outside the scope of this. So going from that, I implemented that early on because I was like, Oh, wow, this is really great.[00:50:29] And. Yes, because it saves you a bunch of time, but the trade off is a little bit of accuracy, ultimately, but it still did pretty well. I think when I did Manicore, I think it used sort of that concept from Stack Llama of just sort of appending these sequences together, right? And then sort of the next evolution of that is Multipack, right?[00:50:51] So, there was a separate paper on that, it was, I believe it was referenced, it got referenced in the Orca paper, where you could, you could properly mask those out using like a, I think it was like a lower block triangular attention mask, and then sort of, so, So, there's that. I did try implementing that, manually recreating that mask, but then one from the OpenChat, so he was helping with OpenOrca as well, and he had done an implementation of Multipack, and where he used FlashAttention, so FlashAttention So that was released by TreeDAO, and it was this huge performance gain.[00:51:35] Everybody uses it now, even the Transformers library now, they've taken all of these, like, people are taking all of these models and sort of like, making it compatible with FlashAttention. But in Flash Tension, there is one particular implementation that lets you say, Well, I'm sending you all of these sequences like you would in Stack Llama, But let me send you another, another, Set of information about, this is where this set of sequences is, this is where the second set of sequences is.[00:52:06] So like, if it was like, 500 words long, and you stacked them all together, you would just send it a row of information that was like, 0, 500, 1000, 1500, etc, etc, out to 4000. And it would know, alright, I need to break this up, and then run the forward pass with it. And then it would be able to, and it was much more, much more performant.[00:52:29] And I think you end up seeing like 10x, 20x improvements over sort of, I mean, I think FlashAttention was like a 2x improvement, and then adding that with the Multipack, you start to see like, depending on, how much data you have, up to like a 20x improvement sometimes. 20x. 20x. Wow. Yeah.[00:52:48] And I only know the 20x because I, like, before last night, I was like, I re ran the alpaca, I looked up the alpaca paper because it was like, I just need a frame of reference where somebody did it, and I think they used eight A100s for three hours, and they said it cost them 100. I don't, I don't think eight A100s cost, I don't know how much it costs right now.[00:53:14] But I ended up rerunning it. Usually a dollar an hour, right? Yeah, so eight. The cheapest is like a[00:53:18] Alex Volkov: dollar, a dollar an hour for one.[00:53:20] Wing Lian: Yeah, so that's still like 24, 25. But maybe if you're going on Azure, maybe it's like, maybe it's 100 on Azure. I mean, it used to be more expensive, like, a year ago.[00:53:31] Yeah, and then, so I re ran it with sort of like, I turned on all of the optimizations just to see what it would be. And like, and usually Multipack is the biggest optimization, so Multipack with Flash Detention. And it, I think I spun it up on 8 L40s, and it ran, and I didn't let it run all the way through, I just grabbed the time, the estimated completion time, and it was like 30 minutes, so it would have cost like 4 or 5 to run the entire, like, reproduce the alpaca paper, right?[00:54:00] Which is crazy. It's crazy. 20x,[00:54:02] Alex Volkov: yeah. I want to ask about, like, you said you turned on all the optimization. Is that the yaml file with xlodl, you just go and like check off, like, I want this, I want that? Yeah, yeah,[00:54:10] Wing Lian: so there's like one particular yaml file in there, That, there's one particular YAML file in there that's like, it's under examples, llama2, fft, optimize.[00:54:20] So, I think someone had created one where they just turned, they put in all of the optimizations and turned them on. I mean, it actually, it does run, which is like, sort of surprising sometimes, because sometimes, you optimize this, optimize this, and sometimes they just don't work together, but, yeah.[00:54:36] Just turn the knobs on, and like, fine tuning should really just be that easy, right? I just want to flip the knob and move on with my life and not figure out how to implement it.[00:54:47] Tri Dao and Mamba[00:54:47] Alex Volkov: Specifically, the guy behind FlashAttention came up with something new. You want to talk about this a little bit? You want to briefly cover Mamba?[00:54:53] Yeah, let's talk about Mamba. Let's talk about Mamba. So, what is Mamba?[00:54:57] Wing Lian: Oh, gosh. I

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August 11, 2023 is the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. What started out mostly as a spoken word artform has become a worldwide juggernaut. Thanks to the moguls who pushed the genre forward, hip-hop went from 0 to 100.In this episode, we rank the 50 greatest moguls in hip-hop's history. We reached out to industry experts — from artists to execs to media personalities — to help us compile the list. Friend of the pod, Zack O'Malley Greenburg, joins me to count them down from No. 50 to No. 10:39 How do we define “mogul”7:06 Honorable mentions09:10 The “Don't overlook their influence” group (ranks 50-41)16:19 The “Playing chess not checkers” group (ranks 40-31)23:38 The “Our impact runs deep” group (ranks 30-21)33:47 No. 2035:37 No. 1937:56 No. 1841:32 No. 1744:27 No. 1647:21 No. 1551:22 No. 14 55:55 No. 1359:09 No. 121:00:46 No. 111:02:16 No. 101:04:39 No. 91:06:44 No. 81:10:20 No. 71:14:06 No. 61:15:37 No. 51:17:11 No. 41:20:53 No. 31:29:06 No. 21:30:34 No. 11:33:22 Who got snubbed?1:35:42 What trends stick out from the list?1:41:21 Who would you pick to run your empire?Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuests: Zack O'Malley Greenburg, @zogblogThis episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fmEnjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapitalTrapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital's free memo.TRANSCRIPT[00:00:00] Zack Greenburg: ownership. Was just such an important thing for Nipsey. Such an important thing for Berner. And, you know, interviewing the two of them, I would say, their mindset around ownership was the closest I've ever seen to Jay Z.[00:00:13] Dan Runcie Intro Audio: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.[00:00:39] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: This episode is a celebration to hip hop's 50th anniversary. This is a countdown on the 50 greatest moguls ever in hip hop. I'm joined by Zack O'Malley Greenburg, friend of the pod, and we both reached out to. A bunch of label heads, executives, people in hip hop that would know best. And we put it together in an aggregate list.And we're here to break down that list today. We talk about what does it mean to be a mogul? What are some of the considerations we made when we were looking into this list ourselves, how the results looked, what surprised us? What were the snubs? What were the misses? And what can we learn from this overall?And if Zack and I were putting together our dream teams, what would that look like? This is a lot of fun. Really happy with how it turned out. So let's dive in.[00:01:25] Dan Runcie: All right, hip hop's 50th anniversary is right around the corner and we decided to celebrate it in the only way that we know best countdown hip hop's greatest moguls and I'm joined by Zack O'malley Greenburg, who reached out to me about this. I was really excited about it and we spent some time over the past couple of weeks, reaching out to people we know, making sure that we have the best insights looking through and making sure that we had all of the. Breakdowns to share. So Zack, I'm ready for this. How are you feeling?[00:01:55] Zack Greenburg: I am stoked. Yeah, I mean, you know, 50th anniversary of hip hop. We reached out to 50 different judges. amongst, you know, the sort of, the most respected folks from, you know, label heads to artists to entrepreneurs, you know, I think we've got half of them, roughly half of them replied since in their votes, we're going to keep their individual votes anonymous, but, you know, Dan could tell you about some of the judges.Yeah, and it was just really fun to kind of mix it up, you know, I think the thing about this list, a lot of these characters are just kind of an apples to oranges comparison as you'll see once we dive into it, but that's the beauty of it, right? I mean, how do you, you know, compare like a pioneering executive to like a modern day artist mogul? And we really kind of left it in the hands of the judges. And we just said, basically the only guidance was, this is a business focused list, but you know, you can rank artists, executives, people who are both. It just, whatever your definition of mogul is, that's how, you know, that's how you should rank them. And people submitted lists and obviously the higher they rank somebody, the more points we gave them and, you know, the lower they got, but, you know, so there's some people on there who are like accumulators. They ended up on everybody's list, but not so high, but, you know, as a result, they ended up on the top 50.And then there are some who were just like, not ranked at all by most people, but had a couple of really high ranks so that they made the list. So I think it's a pretty cool mix.[00:03:10] Dan Runcie: Right? It's kind of like how we look at artists. There's some artists that have just been consistent, steady through and through each year. You'll always get some reliable output from them, but then there are other artists too. They were the best for a certain amount of time. Maybe they cooled off for a bit.Maybe they came back and that's kind of the way music is too. One of the things that. I was asked whenever I was reaching out to people about this was the same thing that you posed earlier. People wanted to know, how are we defining mogul and we left it up to their interpretation. It is a term that means different things to different people, but maybe for the sake of this conversation, let's kick it off here.Zack, how do you define mogul? And how did you define it when creating your list?[00:03:51] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, I mean, to me a hip hop mogul, more general is just, you know, somebody who not only is a business person, but has some degree of ownership, in whatever it is that they're doing. that's not the only definition of it for me, but like, you know, when I was putting together my rankings, I thought, you know, who are the owners?the same time, you know, people who are executives who are in a decision making place. you know, that counts for something. And I think also, you know, if you're an artist, and you simply have some control over your own work, you maintain your copyrights, whatever, like that counts as being a mogul. So, you know, specifically when it comes to hip hop, you know, I'd say people who are, you know, definitely getting in charge of your own work, but also creating new lines of business, you know, influencing the culture. but you know, a way that they've got some skin in the game from a business perspective, you know, that, kind of thing.That's kind of how I looked at it. but you could see from the votes that, you know, everybody had a slightly different definition too.[00:04:47] Dan Runcie: Yeah, there was definitely a lot of correlation with the artists who tend to be the ones that are the wealthiest. They end up at the highest rankings in on some of those lists, too, but it wasn't exactly correlated because there's a difference. And these are some of the things I kept in mind, too, with the mogul definition, thinking specifically aboutinfluence and impact, were you having, or did you create opportunities for others around you? Were you able to be a bit of a kingmaker or queenmaker in your respective right? Was there a impact in terms of other generations that either looked and modeled how they're doing what they're doing and looking at you as some form of inspiration with that?So there's the indirect impact and influence, but also the, Indirect piece of it too. So there's the money piece as well, but then what do you do with that money? And then that's how I had went about it. And similarly, everyone had their own unique spin to it.[00:05:42] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, for sure. And, you know, and I think the definition changed over time, of what a mogul really is, but when I was putting my rankings together, I think the idea of starting something new, you know, that's also paramount, amongst all the criteria as well.[00:05:55] Dan Runcie: Right? So, of course, Zack and I had our list, but we reached out to a number of people and several other label heads, executives, and people that are in the game.So thank you all to your contributions. We couldn't have done this without you. And if anything, it helped add a variety beyond just you and I, getting and putting our list out there. It added a more full scope and like anything. Oh, this is how you look at it. Interesting and being able to pull unique insights there.[00:06:21] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, for sure. you know, one thing I think we probably ought to point out, on the list, you know, the list is, heavily male. but it's about only 20% women on the list. you know, we did everything we could obviously to make it more equitable, but, you know, the votes are the votes.And, you know, I think there is a bit of a reflection of sort of the state of affairs over the past half century, you know, unfortunately, like many parts of music business, hip hop has been, you know, heavily overindexing for males. So, you know, here's hoping that when 50 years to do a hundred years of hip hop, you know, we'll have even things out a bit or completely, let's say maybe even, you know, made up for lost time, but I think some of the spots on the list, you know, the rankings do kind of reflect an industry reality that we've seen, unfortunately for 50 years.[00:07:06] Dan Runcie: Right? And hopefully this gets better. We do feel and you'll see when we talk about some of the people here, glad about some of the names that got mentioned. Of course, there's always room to be able to have more and hopefully for hip hop's 100th anniversary. If when and people are breaking that down, there's hopefully even more representation there.So, with that, I think it's probably good for us to get started right before the list, but talk about some of the honorable mentions. So, there were people that didn't quite make the cut of 50, but we still wanted to highlight them and the work that they. Did here. So a few of those names here to give a shout out to.So we have Cindy Campbell, Jermaine Dupree, Audrey Harrell, Jay Cole, Damon John. What comes or what do you think about when you hear those names?[00:07:55] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, you know, I mean, Cindy Campbell, I think in many ways you could look at her as the first promoter in hip hop history, right? I mean, you know, we're talking about 50 years of hip hop. That's 50 years from that first party that. She and DJ Kool Herc through, you know, in the rec room on Cedric Avenue.And, I think the idea was that they were going to raise a little bit of cash so she could go get herself a new back to school wardrobe. Now, if that's not, you know, entrepreneurship and hip hop, you know, from the very beginning, I don't know what it is. And so I think Cindy deserves a ton of credit, for being there at the very beginning, you know, but I think on the honorable mentions to a lot of the folks that are on here, you know, or maybe like a little bit, you know, not exactly falling on the same radar, you know, for the list. So like, you know, Damon John, obviously he did with, you know, creating FUBU and, you know, everything he's done as an entrepreneur, it's incredible, but it, I think it's sort of like more of a national brand that is, you know, apart from hip hop and so is his personality, right? Like you see him on shark tank or, you know, whatever, like he sort of moved past, I wouldn't necessarily categorize him, as just hip hop, although he's had a tremendous impact on hip hop.So I think probably that's why, he wasn't on more lists. It's not to sort of ding him his impact, which is considerable.[00:09:10] Dan Runcie: Right, and I do think that of course, music is one element of hip hop. You do have fashion, you do have others. So music definitely got weighted heavily in this list, but Dave and John and his influence in fashion, and there's other people in fashion and we'll get into them in this list too, but we can't overlook everything he did there and some of the more unique and clever marketing tactics that came from food booth that other people did who will mention in this list as well. 1 person that I do want to highlight here from that list 2 people. So, Jermaine Dupri want to give him a shout out as well. Just everything he was able to do with.So, so Def records. He was part of that movement in the 90s, where you saw LaFace and then all these other groups in the South be able to come up, do their own. There was a so so deaf sound, a so so Def vibe and his ability to do it both in rap, but also have a bit of the soul there. Some of the epic production that he's been involved with, even outside of hip hop, thinking about albums like Mariah Carey's Emancipation of Mimi and others, even though he didn't always do everything in hip hop. I think that some of his influence can't go overstated there. And then the second person who's similar in that regard, I would say is Andre Harrell. We talked about him in past episodes, especially the bad boy one, but everything that he did from Uptown Records and then moving on to Motown Records and gave in many ways helped give Puff the blueprint for what he was able to do years later.[00:10:37] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think Andre had a lot of successes, also had a lot of failures, not necessarily, you know, through his own doing, the time, but definitely somebody who deserves, you know, a hat tip at the very least. And, you know, I'm sure Puff would agree about that too.[00:10:52] Dan Runcie: Agreed. Agreed. All right. We ready ready to get into it.[00:10:57] Zack Greenburg: Let's do it.[00:10:58] Dan Runcie: All right. So in the initial group here, which we're calling the don't overlook their influence group. This is people who are ranked 50 through 41. so in order we have Ethiopia have to Marion at 50. She was the former CEO of Motown. We have Top Dog, co founder and CEO of Top Dog Entertainment. We have Mona Scott Young from her work at Violators and more recently Love Hip Hop. And what she also has done with Hip Hop Homicides and some other multimedia projects. We have T.I. with everything he's done with Grand Hustle and Multimedia. We have Eazy E with Priority Records. Many ways pioneering so much of the stuff we saw.We have Todd Moskowitz, L. A. Reed, Craig Kalman, former CEO from Atlantic. We have Sylvia Roan and then tied for 40. We have Desiree Perez and Steve Stout. What are your thoughts on that group list?[00:11:55] Zack Greenburg: Oh, man, I don't know. Maybe we should just pick out a few here and there that we thought were particularly interesting. I mean, you know, I think Ethiopia is a good example of somebody who would be higher up if she were identified, you know, solely as a, you know, as a hip hop mogul, but she's had kind of like a pretty wide reach, you know, especially in R and B, and pop. I mean, some of the stuff she's done with Erykah Badu, NeYo, Stevie Wonder, you know, like over the years, you know, wouldn't be classified as hip hop, but it's worth it nonetheless. just think that, you know, being kind of like in between, in between genres, you know, resulted in her being down a little bit further on the list.But, you know, somebody who had a tremendous impact. you know, I would also, I would highlight TI here, you know, the self proclaimed King of the South, but, you know, in terms of, I remember the years when, you know, we were putting together the Forbes list and, you know, kind of looking at, you know, kind of regionally who is most important to me.Yeah, he was sort of like. The Jay Z of the South. And he was really, especially when he was having that moment, you know, getting a lot of songs on, you know, national radio and, kind of being in the public eye, I mean, had a tremendous business focus, you know, he was always interested in sort of like, what's the next thing that I can create?and you know, that kind of entrepreneurial energy, you know, I think, especially within the context of the South, like taking the blueprint, from guys like Jay Z, you know, I think he certainly deserves a mention. I kind of thought he'd end up higher here, but I guess he's been, not as, especially in the music front lately.and then I would definitely highlight, Desiree, you know, she's somebody who's been behind the scenes for a really long time, with Jay Z and rock nation, but like. she runs rock nation. And although Jay Z obviously has the final say in things, you know, a lot of things that you see, come out of that camp are, you know, her doing and have her fingerprints all over them.And I know some of y'all might have seen the Book of Hove exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum or the Brooklyn Public Library that was a Desiree Perez production and, you know, she said that it was like her emptying her 80, 000 square foot storage unit into the library, but, you know, but to have, you know, that kind of, impact at a place like Roc Nation and to help, you know, Jay Z do what he's done, you know, I think those are all worthy, of notation and, you know, I think she deserves her spot there for sure.[00:14:09] Dan Runcie: Yeah, Desiree is someone that has been working with Jay Z for a while now, and I feel like she deserved a shout out on Jay's verse in Pound Cake, the Drake song. You know where he's like, Dave made millions, Lyor made millions. I feel like Desiree should have gotten a shout out there too, but yeah.I'm glad that she got mentioned here. Two other names I'll run through quickly. Steve Stout, someone who I thought would have ended up higher, and I know that, you know, it was interesting to see how the results played out, but I do think that one of the best marketers that we've seen come through hip hop.He was ahead of the curve in a number of ways, dating back to the 90s with seeing the men in black sunglasses and everything that he's done there from his time working with Nas, everything that they've done, whether it was the firm or, him being a record executive himself and then showing as well, how he's able to do it in advertising and bringing a lot of these companies and brands that didn't necessarily align or think about being related with, you know, hip hop culture and those elements to be able to do it.You look at a company like State Farm and how we now look at what that company has done. And a lot of that is through his work and obviously with what he's done at United Masters. So shout out there and I also do want to give a shout out to Mona Scott Young mentioned her earlier, but she was a right hand to someone who will mention on the list as well coming up soon with everything she did in Violator, this is back when, you know, Q Tip and Busta Rhymes and that whole crew were doing their thing. And then later, I know people have a lot of polarizing opinions about love and hip hop, but if you look at the career opportunities that were created for people that have came through, and the longevity that she's granted, a lot of people that the record industry forgot about that she was able to continue to give opportunities for think about the trick daddies, Trina's and folks like that. I know people hate to see them arguing on camera, but would we have Cardi B where she is today? If it weren't for the platform of love and hip hop, and she's continued to do things with other vocals on the list that we'll get into. So I do want to give a shout out to her[00:16:08] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, definitely a worthy shout out. And we could probably go on and on about even just like the tent in this bracket here, but I suppose we ought to, we ought to move on to the next room before, before we run[00:16:19] Dan Runcie: indeed. Yep. So the next group is playing chest, not checkers. So at 39, we have Dave Mays, founder of the source 38. We have Irv Gotti, founder of Murder, Inc. 37, Cardi B 36, Lil Wayne 35, Nipsey Hussle, 34. Steve Rifkin, from Loud Records 33, Missy Elliot. 32 Birder from Cookies, 31 Kevin Lyles and 30 Chris Lighty.[00:16:47] Zack Greenburg: Oh man, this is a pretty stacked bracket, I must say. I think that, you know, there are a couple of names that stick out to me here. I'm going to go with Nipsey and Berner, because in a funny way, I think, they have like a sort of a similar, a sort of similar strategy, which is like, you have a very clear idea of what it is that you're going to do.You own it, and then you, you know, you continue to own it like ownership. Was just such an important thing for Nipsey. Such an important thing for Berner. And, you know, interviewing the two of them, I would say, their mindset around ownership was the closest I've ever seen to Jay Z. and they really understood from the beginning that they had to own all their music.Own all of their branding own, you know, the companies that create on the side and then they can monetize it later. And, you know, with Nipsey rest in peace. I mean, he was just on the cusp of, of kind of like becoming a mainstream superstar, you know, when, his life ended all too soon. So, I think what Berner is doing with cookies is really fascinating like Berner is, you know, you want to talk, lists. I mean, he's in the top five, probably the top four or three at this point, in terms of net worth for actual, hip hop artists. And that's because of the success of cookies and, you know, there's been, a lot of ups and downs in the cannabis business lately, but like the amount of ownership that he has, you know, I think it amounts to about one third still of cookies, which is, you know, a billion dollar brand. When we gets legalized, you know, like he's going to see the fruits of his labor and, that focus on ownership I think is really going to pay off on the longterm.So I would highlight those two guys, in this tier as the ones that, I think were the most impressive to me. That's not to shade anybody else, but,[00:18:25] Dan Runcie: Yeah, those two guys are also two of the few people who I see people still wearing their merchandise on a regular basis. Granted, I live in San Francisco. There's a cookie store here. So, I mean, I know there is a local connection for sure, but same with Nipsey Hussle. I mean, sadly, it's now been over 4 years since he passed away, and you still see Crenshaw shirts.He understood, Nipsey especially, understood exactly where everything's going. And it's just so sad that, you know, it was gone so soon. Two names, I'm going to shout out here. I'm going to shout. I'm going to shout out Cardi B and I want to shout out Chris Lighty. So Cardi B talked about her a little with the Mona Scott young piece, but she's entered and ran her rap career more uniquely than other artists that we've seen at her level have. And I think that speaks a lot to just where the game is now. It's been over six years since Bodak Yellow came out. And it's been over five years now since her debut album. This is someone who hasn't put out a studio album in over five years.And hasn't gone on tour in a traditional way, but it's still doing her thing. And I think this is one of the things that's unique. She finds interesting ways to monetize herself and to put herself on. She's like, Hey, I can do these private shows and they're going to pay me, you know, 1. 5 million or 3 million just to do a half an hour set.I'm going to do my thing. I'm going to be there at Super Bowl weekend. I may not be performing at the Super Bowl, but I'm going to go do these private shows for Bob craft or the fanatics event or all these things and collect the checks. it's very interesting to see younger artists to do that Lionel Richie playbook, but she is like, Hey, I don't necessarily have to do that. And even though people always do try to, you know, loop her into the Nicki Minaj versus Cardi B beef, she still has lended her hand and extended it to other young artists, especially women in the game, whether it's Ice Spice and others, whether she's doing it through her talents and others. So she's someone that I hope as she continues on, you know, into her thirties and into her forties can continue to rise up this list.And then Chris Lighty talked about a little bit with Mona Sky Young, co founder of Violator and everything they're able to do there. Sad that he was taken away so soon, but if you have not heard this yet and if you haven't listened to the podcast, I highly recommend the Mogul podcast series that was done several years ago on it.It was done by Reggie Yose, who is Combat Jack, who has since passed away as well, but I highly recommend that if you want a full breakdown on everything Chris Leite did. Violator and after that was truly one of the early ones looking at product partnerships and a lot of the things that we see now that are common in hip hop.[00:21:07] Zack Greenburg: And, you know, if we didn't have Chris Lighty, I don't think we would have had 50 Cent. I mean, at least not to the extent that we have him. you know, I mean, I remember writing my first story about 50 and like for Forbes, maybe 2008 and sitting down with Chris and just kind of like hearing him lay out the plan.And again, it's the emphasis on ownership, right? you know, Chris Leidy, I think was the one who really pushed, 50 to take the equity in vitamin water and his parent company, rather than just do an endorsement. And, you know, obviously that became a huge, deal and really like a model for so much, not only of hip hop, but like other parts of the entertainment industry, you know, I think Chris definitely deserves a spot, maybe even should be a little higher. and you know, probably also, there's, you know, again, all these folks deserve a shout out, but Kevin Lyles, I think is, got one of the most inspirational stories. you know, it's another person, I think we've both interviewed a bunch of times, but, you know, just his journey from intern to president of Def Jam and I think seven years. And he just did it by working harder than everybody else like he wasn't an artist that got put there because he had some hit, it wasn't some kind of like nepotism deal, you know, he just outworked everybody and, you know, he had the talent and, you know, the horsepower to just like get it done. And to make that journey within seven years. So I think it's, for people who are listening and, you know, want to do something like that with their own career, you know, study Kevin Miles because he was able to make it, without being, you know, some kind of like preternatural, singing talent or something like that he just did it on smarts and work ethic.[00:22:39] Dan Runcie: And one of the few people that co founded a record label and sold it a decade later for hundreds of millions of dollars, which is what he did 300 as well. Right? So of course, not 300 now underwater, but everything he did with Lyor and Todd, there, is impressive. There's not that many black founders in general. In tech, any sector that have built and exited companies for several hundred, a million dollars, the way that he was able to be a part of that. So, hats offhim.[00:23:09] Zack Greenburg: yeah, I think it takes a special kind of guts to be able to, you know, I mean, he was a well paid executive with a cushy music job, you know, to leave that world, start your own thing. I mean, I know they had, you know, big backers and everything, but like to take a risk once you've already experienced that level of success and to go out and start something, you know, as opposed to starting something from scratch when you have nothing anyway.I mean, it, takes a lot of gumption to do that. So, you know, again, yes, a pretty cool second act for Kevin miles.[00:23:38] Dan Runcie: Indeed, the next group here, our impact runs deep. It is Nicki Will Smith at 28, Swiss beats 27, LL Cool J, 26, Coach K and P, 25, Julie Greenwald, 24. The E40 23, Pharrell 22, and Rick Ross, 21.[00:24:01] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. I think, that's a pretty strong, deck there. And I think also, you know, here, you find some people who, you could argue should be higher or lower based on, you know, how much of their career was done in the hip hop music world, right? Like Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Will Smith.Obviously those are huge crossover acts. but I think they all got a lot of points from some of the voters because, you know, that is in one way, the measure of a mogul, like you're diversifying your portfolio and whether that's by owning different things or, you know, by getting into, different types of performance, you know, on the silver screen, I think that's a viable path too.but just from like a purely musical entrepreneurial perspective, I would highlight, Swiss Beats and Pharrell, who I think, you know, the two of them are more influential than anybody in terms of like, I'd say Swizz in terms of art and Pharrell in terms of fashion. and you know, some of the things they've done around those two areas and, you know, Pharrell certainly, now with LVMH, but also before with Ice Cream, Billionaire Boys Club, you know, he was very active in starting his own things on the fashion side.And, you know, kind of inspiring artists to do that. you know, would we have had a Yeezy if we hadn't had Pharrell, you know, doing what he was doing and, you know, and even doing what he did with Adidas? you know, I don't know about that. And, Swiss beads certainly, you know, not only from the art side of things, but you know, it's a really impressive art collection.I did a story on him a few years ago and, you know, he's got like, Jeff Kuhn sculptures and Basquiat's and Warhol's and his, you know, like in his foyer. I mean, it's, pretty impressive stuff. but the way that he moves behind the scenes, as sort of like a corporate brand whisperer, at places, you know, like Bacardi, Lotus, you know, this goes on, you know, I think he, he's sort of like more quietlyinfluential than, some folks realize. And, you know, certainly has been earning, on par with, you know, with all the, you know, most of the names, if not higher than most of the names we've mentioned so far. and you know, what he's done on the, both of them, what they've done on the production side, also hard to top.So that must count for something as well. I kind of went more than one shout out there, didn't I? So[00:26:06] Dan Runcie: Yeah. No, that was good. That was good.I'm glad you mentioned the two of them though, because if you didn't, I probably would've called the other one out. The thing about Swiss as well, everything that he's done with versus specifically also embodies this idea and definition of a mogul because he was able to be.A kingmaker in the sense of creating opportunities for others. He did that through the equity that he was able to give all of those early participants in versus in trailer itself. And then additionally, with the careers that we're able to have a boost because of. everything that happened, with the matchups from versus specifically, you look at someone like Ashanti, who is now doing tours and pop it up every now and then she wasn't doing that before her versus and her battle versus Keisha Cole was one of the not, if not the most watched one that we've had.You look at Jadakiss and everything that he's been able to do since his epic showdown against, with Lox versus Dipset with that versus you look at Jeezy versus Gucci Mane. I know that versus definitely had its peak popularity during the pandemic, but that kind of stuff that he was able to do with Timbaland, I think also speaks so much to everything that he's been able to do there.And another person I want to mention to that was in this group as well that I think is similar is LL Cool J because I think similar to the way that. Swiss beets is Ella is also with someone that's been involved with multimedia with everything from the jump. He was the 1st artist to truly breakthrough from Def Jam and did it as a teenager.So, of course, he gets plenty of shout out for that, but he's also always been trying to find ways to look out for that next generation of artists. And he's been doing some of that more recently with rock the bells, and that's its own. Company and entity now where they have a festival coming up as well to celebrate things that are happening with hip hops anniversary.So it's been cool to see him do things as well. And I'll give a very brief shout out here to, coach K and P because they, similar to how I mentioned, Kevin Liles were able to build and grow a company and then sell it for, I believe, forget the exact sale price for, quality control. But they were able to do that thanks in part to a lot of the work that Ethiopia had done, helping to give quality control, the platform that it did, and especially in an era where I think it's harder for a record label to have a true brand, they were able to help give it a boost.[00:28:36] Zack Greenburg: That's true. And on that note of labels, I think Julie Greenwald, there's a mention, you know, she and Craig Kalman, who's mentioned, in an earlier grouping, you know, run Atlantic together. And there's a lot of, of music that we wouldn't have seen if it had been for the two of them, you know, running the show over there.So, shout out to Julie. I mean, the only one actually we haven't discussed here with E40 and Rick Ross. And I don't know, you know, probably get moving, but, do you think Rick Ross deserves to be number 21 on this entire list? Like ahead of Pharrell, ahead of, you know, some of the other names on here. I was surprised that he was ranked this high.[00:29:09] Dan Runcie: I love the spicy questions. Cause this is what people wanted to hear the podcast about, right? They wanted to hear one of us, you know, poke the bear a little bit.If Rick Ross was able to nail that dive in the pool, do you think you would have ranked him higher?[00:29:21] Zack Greenburg: Ha ha ha ha ha ha. No, no, I wouldn't. I mean, I still know. I mean, you know, like I get it, you know, he's called the boss that he must be a mogul, You know, and, some of the things he's done in terms of, you know, Bel Air and Maybach music and all that. Sure. But like, you know, when you put them up against like some of the other ones, did he really do something new or was he more just like following a, blueprint that had worked for others before and, you know, executing it to a degree success, but like, again, not, you know, not to the level of, let's say Pharrell.I think maybe I just, I'm salty that he ended up ahead of Pharrell. I think Pharrell is just way more influential and Mowgli, but, I don't know. What do you think?[00:29:59] Dan Runcie: So, I've read 2 of Ross's books and I interviewed him once on Trapital. I think that, to your point, he did follow the blueprint that we saw from others. I think he is smart about the types of partnerships he does, but it does feel like a ditty light. Type of playbook that he's been able to do and build.And I do think a lot of it makes sense. He may not necessarily have the large media entities the way that he does. Although I do think he's overdue for some type of comedy show or some type of reality show just following him around because I think he's hilarious. And anytime that he gets that, it could just generate something unique.And I'm sure he's been hit up about it. I do think that he's done well for himself. Just thinking about. Now, how his career is growing, I think it's been what, 16, 17 years since hustling 1st came out. I think in this range, there is some flexibility there in terms of like, where people are in certain ways.I get why he may not necessarily be as high. I'm sure if you looked at the net worth or the earnings, that some of the people that are lower than him may actually be higher. I think 1 of the knocks potentially is although Maybach music was cool. I wrote about this in Trapit as well. I think there was a missed opportunity.And part of that comes from, huh, did Ross do all the things that he probably could have done from a leadership perspective to especially like, when Meek Mill and Wally were beefing and stuff. And I think Ross had a bit more of a laissez faire approach to things, which in some ways is kind of the opposite of King making as we're talking about this, right?Can we really bring folks together and make something larger than it is. I think it was a bit tough in general for people to try to do everything themselves, try to be the boss of this label, which is signed to a different label because Rick Ross was signed to a different label than MNG was himself. And I think anytime you have that type of dynamic, it's just splitting the leadership interests. So I hear you.[00:32:00] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. So then how much of a mogul are you, if your label is really, you know, so I guess everybody's labels on somebody else's label and have you distributed by something, but you know, it's like when they're like multiple labels kind of, you know, intertwined with your label, it kind of causes the question.are you really the boss? If you have several bosses that you're answering to, but you know, I think actually though. in Rick Ross's defense, what he's done with Wingstop, I mean, that is pretty unique and, I don't know that anybody else on this list has something comparable in that space.So, you know, maybe that's why, I think, you know, by virtue of that, you could put them pretty high up. And maybe that's what some of the judges were thinking, you know, but he also ended up on a lot of lists, you know, so some of the judges just kind of like, maybe we're getting to some of the judges sent rank lists, and they're like, you know, this person is the top and they should get the most points and other people were like, here are my people.And you can just rank them evenly. and I think Rick Ross ended up on a lot of those lists. So, you know. I think again, maybe like I was alluding to earlier, he's a bit of a compiler, nothing wrong with that, you know, you can get into the hall of fame by compiling 3000 hits, but, it's interesting to see how, how the opinions differ. That's the whole fun of it.[00:33:06] Dan Runcie: He runs his business is almost like how a small business owner would in a number of ways where he has a bunch of car washes and, you know, his is 1 of the family members does that he has his wing stops, right? He has that. And it is a bit of this, like, mogul dumbness from that perspective in terms of like, okay, I have my hands in these things and I've hired people to have, you know, different roles within that that doesn't necessarily have things in aggregate. It's a bit more of the strip mall mentality as opposed to the, you know, building a skyscraper that could then build other skyscrapers, but it's something worth mentioning, but I hope we keep that up with a few of the other rankings we have coming up as we dig into the top 20, here.So, yeah, let's start with 20. So, 20, Queen Latifah, I think that she and, Ice Cube, who we'll get into in a minute, were one of the first that noticed, hey, I may not be able to do this rap thing forever, what are areas that I can expand this multimedia empire and everything I'm building.She was able to do this with Living Single, the show that was Friends before Friends was, and even the way that she was able to show young black people that were having, you know, highly sought after roles, but they still had their interpersonal dynamics. It was cool. It was refreshing. It was aspirational, which I do think that a lot of the black sitcoms were in the 90s.And she was able to do that, continue finding ways to put other people on as well through the work that she did. She was also willing to take risks. Like I remember when she was in set it off, people had a bunch of questions about, Oh, you're going to play a lesbian in this heist movie. What is this going to do for your career?And she was willing to do that. And I think she is always, you know, be willing to take risks. So, you know, shout out to her and I'm glad that several people have mentioned her[00:34:56] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. And I think she gets credit for, like you say, diversifying her portfolio. you know, into the acting world. it's worth noting, you know, she was barely ahead of Rick Ross. but you know, there is a big difference between 21 and 20. It's the top 20. So, again, I think, you know, she was a bit of a compiler, but there were a couple of people who ranked her in the top 10.and, you know, I think just like in terms of the breadth of her career, you know, the longevity, the diversity of the things that she's gotten into. you know, even if it's not as much ownership as somebody, even like a Rick Ross, it's just like, having your hands in a lot of pies and like that really counts for something as a mogul.So, I think it makes sense to see you there.[00:35:36] Dan Runcie: Agreed 19 is Eminem. So let's talk about it. How do we feel about Eminem in 19?[00:35:43] Zack Greenburg: You know, I think it's a weird one, honestly. you know, there's no doubting, his lyrical prowess and where, you know, where he kind of stacks up as part of like the pantheon of lyricists, like fine. But is he really a mogul? I mean, he's somebody who has been, you know, very reclusive at times. Who has, you know, kind of gotten in his own way at other times. I mean, I could see ranking him up here though, just by virtue of ownership of the music and sort of like the quality and quantity of his catalog. you know, what he did with D12, you know, he did have shady records and, you know, and all that.So again, you know, there, there is kind of a layer cake of a label situation, like some of the folks who mentioned earlier across, but, you know, that was at least important to him to set up, you know, as his continued ownership of, You know, his work and, you know, certainly when it comes to like raw commercial prowess, you know, Eminem, is one of the best selling hip hop artists of all time.If not the best, depending on how you look at it. And just, you know, simply by virtue of the amount of revenue he generated, you know, throughout the late 90s and early aughts at the peak of the sort of CD age there. you know, that deserves, some kind of something, even if he wasn't running around starting his own, you know, side businesses as much as some of these other folks[00:37:02] Dan Runcie: Best selling artist of the 2000s by a pretty strong amount, I believe, and has the most of any genre, right? And the most streamed song of the 2000s as well, at least on Spotify with Lose Yourself, and I'm pretty sure Till I Collapse and maybe a couple of others aren't too far. Behind as Will Page as Spotify's former chief economist said, anytime Eminem farts or burps or releases anything on a streaming service, it provides a huge bump to everything in this back catalog.So, I still laugh about that, but I do think that speaks to it there and. If, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he was one of the first hip hop artists to have a Sirius XM channel himself.So that's something that's unique and obviously Sirius is still doing its thing. So, shout out to him there. A bit higher than I probably would have ranked him, but that's why it's interesting to get the group results here. Ah, this one's gonna be spicy. Number 18. Your boy, Suge Knight.[00:38:02] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, you know, I mean, I think this is one of the tougher ones on the entire list. You know, this is not like a list of, Ms. Congeniality or Mr. Congeniality, as you'll see, you know, some of the other names on here. Obviously, you know, Suge is in jail. he's been involved in the death of, you know, human beings that like that is, you know, not sort of like what you're after in a mogul here, but, enough people, you know, I guess felt that the business, if you just, you know, looking at it from a pure business perspective, was enough to put them up here. And, you know, there is no arguing that death row at its peak was one of the most influential record labels, you know, not just in hip hop, but of anything. I mean, any genre, when death row was at its hottest, I don't know any, kind of moment where any other, you know, you'd have to stack that up against peak Motown or, you know, Atlantic or something like that, but, you know, that was really like a, peak moment. So, you know, I think this is one of the things we run into on this list like if somebody exhibits, a level of, you know, sort of business ingenuity, you know, that counts for something and, you know, the other things that you do in your life and your career, you know, we'll detract from that, but, you know, what you did at your peak, I think will get you pretty far in a list like this when people kind of count, you know, we kind of count sort of like the ceiling as opposed to the average, in some cases. So, I don't know. What do you think?[00:39:27] Dan Runcie: These are the two most impressive business moves that Suge Knight has done. Number two is shaking down Vanilla Ice to get his points for everything that he did on the album that had Ice Ice Baby there. Because he was able to use that money to then start and co found Death Row with Dr. Dre. That's number two.Number one is at the 1995 Source Awards where he publicly makes his Call to attract Tupac to say, Hey, I know you're in jail, but we're riding with you. Tupac wasn't signed there at the time, but he knew that this was an opportunity. Tupac likely needed somewhere to call a home and he called his shot. He was able to make it happen.I know everyone talks about the diddy shot about, you know, being all in the video death row. And that, of course, is infamous in its own right. But I think the number one thing that should night did is that that said. those 2 things speak to what should night is, 1, it is that muscle and the prowess of being able to overpower a situation and then take advantage.And I think those were things that he was good at. That said, I don't think he was necessarily strong as a. Business leader, the company imploded in large part. And I don't think it imploded because of Dr. Dre, it imploded because of all of the things, all the shenanigans. And I think for what he was building, some of that just got a little too close to the sun, unfortunately. And, that's Chuck Knight[00:40:49] Zack Greenburg: And, I think that, you know, in some of the reporting I've done over the years, One of the things people say is that Shug and a lot of the guys around him, you know, it wasn't that they were necessarily like that. It's just they kind of had been watching too many bad gangster movies and the music business, didn't know what to do with somebody like Suge Knight.And so the more he kind of like played this role, the more he grew into it to where, to the point where he was actually living sort of a bad gangster movie. and sort of like created, turned himself into a monster. Yeah, so I think like the evolution. or the evolution, of somebody like Suge Knight is sort of fascinating in terms of like what you can, what sort of playing a role can do to you, over the course of time.[00:41:32] Dan Runcie: Agreed. And well said number 17 here is America's most wanted ice cube. I'll start here to kick things off. I think that Ice Cube, like Queen Latifah mentioned earlier, was one of the early ones who had said that he knew that living and doing everything off a raft wasn't gonna last forever. And I think a lot of it was because he experienced some of the brunt and ugliness of it.I mean, we've all seen the Straight Outta Compton movie. He goes into Jerry Heller's office. He starts smashing shit. He releases no Vaseline. There was definitely a no fucks given that carried through even after he was done with NWA, but he saw what this industry is like as well and then that's when he starts writing screenplays.And then that's how Friday because the thing becomes a thing. And then. His career just continues to take off after that he still dabbled in rap and did his thing, but he definitely became known early on for one of the people that took a risk with cube entertainment and everything that he was able to do there.And with any of the movies that he had, whether it was the movies with Mike Epps and plenty others, I do believe that most of these movies were pretty profitable. And he was able to. Do it work within the confines that he had and just continue to build everything he did from a career. We've seen him expand as well into everything that he's done with the big 3 specifically giving a home for basketball players that can still play, but maybe they can't make, you know, a 13 person NBA roster anymore.I do think that some of his more recent news highlights that are a bit more politically driven or him walking around with Tucker Carlson and probably take it away from some of the more prominent memories of Hugh Ice Cube is, but yeah, that's why I had had him or that's why he, I think deserves to be, you know, where he is, on the list.[00:43:27] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. And I think it's interesting, you know, you see, Eminem, Suge Knight, Ice Cube, all together, you know, they're all, inextricably connected to Dr. Dre. one way or the other. Right. and you know, would there, would Dre have been Dre without the three of them? you know, at different phases of his career, you know, I don't know, I mean, I think certainly what, Ice Cube did as part of NWA, you know, I wouldn't say that, that NWA was like.like a business first organization. But like that wasn't the point of NWA and if it hadn't been for NWA, I don't think you would have been able to have business first organizations come out of hip hop in the way that you did. and certainly, you know, somebody like Dr. Dre, so. I think he gets extra points for that.and, you know, this is probably why, you know, he was again, I don't know, was he compiler? He was, you know, he had like a lot of kind of middling, a lot of lists, a couple of top 10 votes, you know? So, you know, I think again, everybody has their favorite and he's up there for a lot of folks.[00:44:27] Dan Runcie: Agreed. Number 16 is Drake. Should we poke the bear again?[00:44:33] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. Does Drake deserve to be at number 16 on this list?[00:44:37] Dan Runcie: This one surprised me, I was very surprised at the number of people that had him on the list, because you can make a case for the opposite, right? It's similar to the M and M thing, but almost to the extreme because M and M, yes, most commercially successful artists, XYZ. There's other artists that are less commercially successful at M and M that did more in that mogul definition but for Drake, it's even bigger of a Delta between these two, because here you have the most streamed artists of all time. So clearly commercially successful on its own, but people believe that OVO. Records or OVO sound itself actually could hurt an artist's career. And when you think about that, you think about some of the other multimedia things that he's done.I know he's been active as an investor and I know that people like Nicki Minaj and others have said, Oh, you know, Drake's a low key billionaire. He just doesn't want you to know it personally. Again, he may be, I mean, I'm not sure what he may not disclose, but it isn't always just about wealth. It's like, what opportunities were you able to create for each other?I do think it's good. That drink has been able to have different people that have been working alongside that. I think did get a bit of that drink stimulus package. And I think that's something that is quite debated, but I do think that. I feel like 21 Savage has definitely benefited from it. I mean, he was already commercially successful, but for him and Drake to do a joint album together was huge.I think it was the same way that it was huge for Future and the same way that the Migos going on tour with Drake in 2018 was huge for them and anything else that Drake continues to do from that perspective. So I think it is, you know, debatable, but I mean, people do definitely add some weight to the artists themselves.[00:46:18] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. And, you know, I think he should be around Eminem and whether they're both too high is an open question, but, you know, there's no doubting the commercial viability of what he's done. He did start more side businesses in Eminem, right? With OVO, whether it's the label, the festival, the clothing line, you know, he started a whiskey brand called Virginia black, which I tried once.It tasted okay. but I don't think it's selling, you know, I don't know if he's even still doing it. yeah, he is definitely involved as a startup investor, so maybe, you know, we'll see some exits and we start to think of him differently at that point. But, yeah, you know, again, I think it's, some voters just kind of overweighted, you know, musical prowess and pop culture influence.And if you're talking about that, I, I don't know anybody who's been as influential in the past 15 years. I mean, he's, you know, he's the most streamed artist of all time and that's got to count for something.[00:47:08] Dan Runcie: Right. I know his cannabis line failed, but there's a lot of people, even people that we'll get to in this list that have also had failed or struggling cannabisbusinesses. And, there's a lot that we could discuss there, but moving on number 15 is Sylvia Robinson, the originator.[00:47:26] Zack Greenburg: I think she deserves to be in the top five, personally. because if there were no Sylvia Robinson, yeah, I mean, I don't know that we have hip hop and, you know, it's, you know, for those who don't know the story, she was running sugar hill records with her husband, Joe sylvia was actually a child star singer herself.And, you know, they kind of had this like middling existence with their label. And then all of a sudden she's at this birthday party that she didn't even want to go to in Harlem and she sees Lovebug Starsky up on the microphone. A hip hop hippie to the hippie to the hip hip hop. You know, this is early, early seventies.She's never heard anything like it. All the kids, you know, hands in the air, like you just don't care. And the whole thing. she tries to get Lovebug to sign. There's some kind of dispute, like with his management, never happens. And so she just goes to the pizzeria in New Jersey, finds three kids, get him, gets them to talk real fast over this record is how she described it.and that's, you know, that's Rapper's Delight. That's the first hip hop song on Wax. That's the first hit. you know, that sort of spawns the whole genre. So, you could certainly argue, that, you know, she, borrowed or she hired, hired people who borrowed or whatever to do this, you know, like the idea that, that the first hip hop, track on wax was like, you know, originated in a pizza shop in New Jersey is really unfortunate cause it started at the Bronx, but like, you know, Sylvia came from Harlem.She, you know, she, she knew that world. Like, you know, she was part of the music business and, for better or worse, she took hip hop from being, you know, just basically like spoken word in person kind of thing to being, you know, national events. Would it have happened eventually?Yeah, I think so. But you know, who knows? I mean, it could have taken years longer and if it took years longer, you know, are we going to have the eighties with like run DMC and Def Jam and all that? Like, you know, I don't know. I mean, it, could have taken a lot longer to get off the ground if she hadn't done what she'd done.And, you know, I don't think we, I don't think we should really be dinging Sylvia Robinson for her Machiavellian tactics, given some of the other people on this list, you know, we're talking like Suge Knight and whoever else, you know, there's quite nefarious characters, you know, as we get higher up too in this list.So, you know, I don't think anything she did was. remotely as bad as, as like a lot of the dudes on this list. and, you know, so, you know, let's, I think we give her her due and yeah, I would definitely put her higher, but, you know, I think that's part of the deal when, when you have somebody who's that early on.You know, people are going to say, Oh, well, you know, the total gross is not quite as much as so and so or whatever the case may be. And she wasn't as famous as some of the artists. So, but you know, she's up there, I mean, ahead of some pretty big names, Drake, Eminem, what have you. So, I think she's getting some flowers here[00:50:00] Dan Runcie: The total gross knock is always one that makes me roll my eyes a bit because even if you take out the inflation aspect and the amount of money that's now in the industry, this is something that happens with pioneers in any type of industry. They are the ones that take the early hits to make it possible.She and her work is what made it possible for rappers to like, she and her workers have made it possible for the message and anything else that we then see after that. Yes. Sugar Hill. records did have its struggles, afterward, like many other labels. But what do you think about broader context of the eighties being a very tough time in general for black music?And there were only a certain number of decision makers in power that could make that happen. Yeah. You have to take that into account. And then additionally, she did stuff outside of even just this record label itself. As you mentioned, she was a recording artist herself. She also owned a nightclub. So there were other mogul type things that she had her hands.And so shout out to Sylvia, who knows where this would be without her.[00:51:00] Zack Greenburg: And probably worth caveating also that, you know, she did have some, Disputes over paying artists, as the years went on. So did like really a lot of people on this list is we could do like a whole separate, you know, like has some kind of dispute on how they pay artists. So, you know, that, that's probably worth noting too, but yeah, I mean, so does everybody else.And, you know, I think she deserves her flowers.[00:51:22] Dan Runcie: Number 14, Dame Dash,[00:51:25] Zack Greenburg: Another, another hot one coming in. I mean, I think a lot of people would disagree with this, but you know, some people would put them even higher. I mean, I think he might be the most polarizing name on this entire list. Like some people had on top five, you know, some people didn't list them at all.you know, I think it kind of comes in. We've had this conversation before. Would there be a Jay Z without a Damon Dash? you know, I mean, I think so, but it's that part of the, you know, we've talked about him in the context of startups and do you, you know, you need a different kind of founder for your like pre seed days than you do for your series B.you know, if you're like a mafia, family, you need like a wartime Don, you know, versus like a peacetime Don or whatever it's called. But like, you know, I think, Dame Dash is a wartime Don. He's a seed stage startup founder. and he does it fair as well. You know, when it comes to like the growth stage and the corporate boardrooms and stuff, but, you know, there's no denying his brilliance.you know, I think what he did, you know, certainly with rock aware, you know, expanding, the Roc-A-Fella empire beyond music. you know, maybe he realized that Jay was eventually going to leave and that they just, it wasn't going to be forever. And so he wanted to get his hands into, you know, as many different areas as he could, but, you know, there's like a lot of pro and a fair bit of con, but, you know, I think again, he's one who, you know, the pro outweighed the con, he didn't kill anybody, you know, so there's some people on here who did.yeah, the con is only like so much con in my opinion.[00:52:56] Dan Runcie: This conversation makes me think about, that backstage documentary that. Roc-A-Fella had put out after the hard knock life tour. And there's that infamous scene of Dave dash yelling and swearing at Kevin Lyles, who was at Def Jam at the time about the jackets and where what logo was supposed to be, or something other than that.And thinking about that in context now of like, you know, how we talked about Kevin Lyles and everything he was able to do from that run and still can continue to do. And with where Dame Dash is, is in his career, Dame Dash doing his thing. I think he very much lived through and practice and preach the ownership standards that worked for him, where he has Dame Dash Studios, Dame Dash this, and he's been able to.Create exactly what he wanted to. We heard him on that infamous 2015 breakfast club interview where he's yelling at DJ Envy and Charlemagne about, Oh, well, if your son wants a job, can you get him a job here at power 105 or whatever? No. Well, I can do him at where I'm at. And as comic as the delivery was, there is some aspect of mogul dumb.That is a bit of that King making aspect of, okay, can you create opportunities for others around you? What those opportunities look like definitely vary. And I think that is a factor. So I do highlight that is something that Dame is able to do. And Dave is also similar to he's similar to a polarizing basketball player in the sense that the media may look and be like, why do you all fuck with this guy?Like, what's going on? But if you ask the people that are actually in it, a lot of that would be like, oh, well, you got to look at Dame dash, Dame dash is the guy. And when I have. Interviewed. I'm sure you've interviewed and talked to many of young artists, too, or young label executives, too. A lot of them will reference Dave Dash.A lot of them will look at what he was able to do alongside Roc-A-Fella, almost in the same way that, you know, players will swear by Kyrie or swear by James Harden or some other type of athlete that may be polarizing in their own right. And the media is like, Oh, why do you all like this guy? And it's like, Oh, well, no, you don't understand.So there's something about. The people, and obviously I say that being self aware is us as people more so on the media side, as opposed to being in it themselves. But there's something about these young artists and moguls as well that have always looked up and respected what Dame has built. And even though it may not resonate, like, personally, I acknowledge that.[00:55:23] Zack Greenburg: I would say, if you're going to make a basketball reference, Maybe not personality, but like basketball style, I'd almost liken him to Carmelo Anthony, you know, like he's an isolationist. He's a scorer, like, you know, he may not be very good at distributing the basketball, but like, you know, you throw him the ball in the corner and he's going to find a way to get it in.And, You know, like a lot of people wouldn't think that he belongs in the Hall of Fame at all, you know, but some people would, be insistent on it. So, you know, yeah, I think that sort of like singular focus, you know, you could definitely give him credit for that,[00:55:55] Dan Runcie: Agreed. Number 13, we are Cohen.[00:55:58] Zack Greenburg: man, another like bulldozer of a human being, but, you know, certainly somebody who, you know, maybe he has also got the finger roll, you know, like he, he can have a light touch when needed. you know, I think just like in terms of longevity, we talk about longevity with some of the names on this list, you know, Leroy was there in the very beginning of hip hop, you know, managing rappers, and it gives the road manager run DMC, taking the leader

On this week's episode, Simi and Feyikemi discuss the Grammy's introducing the 'Best African Music Performance' category, how they feel about music this year so far, the United Masters and Sarz Academy partnership as well as Asake's new album 'Work Of Art'. They also put you on to their favourite shows & songs.Make sure you watch the episode on YouTube & listen to the playlist - F&S Rotations on Apple Music and Spotify, updated weekly.Send fan mail & enquiries to: contactfands@gmail.comFollow us on Twitter & Instagram

On this week's episode, Simi and Feyikemi discuss the Grammy's introducing the 'Best African Music Performance' category, how they feel about music this year so far, the United Masters and Sarz Academy partnership as well as Asake's new album 'Work Of Art'. They also put you on to their favourite shows & songs.Make sure you watch the episode on YouTube & listen to the playlist - F&S Rotations on Apple Music and Spotify, updated weekly.Send fan mail & enquiries to: contactfands@gmail.comFollow us on Twitter & Instagram

Imagine a future where anyone can be a musician. Now ask yourself what that has in common with building Twitter Spaces. The answer? Org-based innovation. On this week's episode of Dev Interrupted, we're joined by the talented Pablo Jablonski, the engineer responsible for leading the team behind Spaces. Today, Pablo is reshaping the music industry as the VP of Engineering at United Masters. In this free-flowing conversation we unravel the intricacies of building Spaces, discuss Twitter's pivotal role in public discourse and break down some of the historic challenges faced by Twitter's engineering team.  Pablo also explores how United Masters is bridging the gap between artists and their dreams, empowering them to take control of their own destinies. Taking cues from his time at Twitter, Pablo and his team are building a platform that aims to dismantle the music industry's traditional hierarchies. Show Notes:Register for our summer series! Learn more about United MastersSupport the show: Subscribe to our Substack Follow us on YouTube Review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify Follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn Offers: Learn about Continuous Merge with gitStream Want to try LinearB? Book a Demo & use discount code "Dev Interrupted Podcast"

UnitedMasters and Translation CEO Steve Stoute returns to the show, fresh off a new deal with R&B star Brent Faiyaz for a reported $50 million. Brent had his pick at multiple major labels, but chose to stay independent with UnitedMasters.We talk about how independent companies can compete with majors on upfront money, competitive advantages in the music industry, and more.Steve and I also chat about the industry at-large: AI, entrepreneurship, subscription prices and more. Here's what we hit on:2:19 The ups and downs of entrepreneurship 06:11 Building two companies at once10:56 Positioning UnitedMasters in the music distribution space 13:16 Does anyone in music have a moat?15:56 Why Brent Faiyaz chose to sign with UnitedMasters27:33 Should the DSPs raise prices?30:07 Artists and creators becoming mini-media channels 36:58 How NIL (name, image, likeness) is like the independent music business37:19 Is Steve going to strike more NIL deals?45:52 Why every artists needs a Chief Technology Officer54:30 Separating real from hype: blockchain, to web3, to AIListen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuest: Steve Stoute, @SteveStouteThis episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fmTrapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop's biggest players by reading Trapital's free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPT[00:00:00] Steve Stoute: They used to have a moat, but no longer do they have a moat. And I don't think anybody independent music has a moat. I think Distro kid has a lane and TuneCore has a lane, and United masses have a lane. And, you know, others have, certain strengths about them. but, I think the only moat you have is the moat that is a true result of the success that you have. If people choose you and you build a strong business, and you're growing, that's the quote unquote moat. [00:00:27] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.[00:00:55] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: Today's episode covered a wide range of topics, but the key thing that's central to it is artist independence, and we're able to sit down with none other than Steve Stoute, who is the founder and CEO of United Masters founder and c e o of translation, and has been working in music and entertainment.For decades now. This is actually his third time on the podcast, and we covered it all. We started the conversation talking about motivations and how you were able to stay consistent as an entrepreneur, given the ups and downs of that lifestyle. Then we talked about translation, United Masters, Artist Independence, a bunch of trends happening right now and how.A company stays through all of the waves of technology waves, whether it's blockchain from a couple years ago to web three to where things are with AI now. Really fun conversation. Steve always brings it in these talks too, so it's a really great listen, hope you enjoy it. Here's our conversation.[00:01:53] Dan Runcie: All right. We're back with the Trapital podcast. Yeah. We got the one and only Steve Stoute here. I think this is your third time on the pod. [00:02:00] Steve Stoute: Really? I thought. I guess I thought it was twice. Thought This was my second time. [00:02:04] Dan Runcie: We did one time. We was at Empire Studio there. Yeah. We did it virtual during the pandemic, and then we got this one.[00:02:11] Steve Stoute: Oh, well, I'm fan of it. very early. You were? Yeah, I was on it very, very early. I think you're a good job. [00:02:18] Dan Runcie: Appreciate that. [00:02:18] Steve Stoute: Thanks for having me back. [00:02:19] Dan Runcie: Thank you. Yeah. These conversations are always good. And I wanna start this one and a place we haven't started others. I feel like we normally dive into the business, but take it a step back.You've been building businesses as an entrepreneur for decades now. How do you stay even keeled? How do you stay consistent with it, just knowing the ups and downs that naturally happen with building businesses? [00:02:42] Steve Stoute: Well, the fact that I appear to be even keeled is a compliment because, I certainly am emotionally attached to the businesses I build.I know there's, you know, the saying, don't be emotional about business, but when I'm building something from an original idea that I have, it's, you birthed the idea. I'm emotionally attached to the success of it, and the organization around it and the perception of it. So, you've been through those tumultuous cycles, so you tend to not chase the highs or chase the lows.and that sounds good. but it is definitely harder to do that when you're emotionally attached than, you know, understanding the theory that you should do that. And I think experience helps a bit, takes the edge off. But yeah, I would say to you, you just, like, for me, I've been able to sustain the energy andsustain through the ups and downs, through, sort of expecting them and not, chasing the highs like that's where the big mistake is when something great happens or a series of great things happen, you know, respecting it, but not chasing it because I believe that that's still not, gonna prevent the tumultuous time from coming. Because [00:03:56] Dan Runcie: I think the tough part with that, and this is something I know I struggle with too, it's tying your own satisfaction, your own esteem at particular points with those highs when things are going well. Yeah. And it's great to say those things, but I know even myself, it's tough to be able to stay even keeled when things are going well. The phone starts ringing more, you start getting more opportunities, more looks for things. Yeah, yeah, [00:04:20] Steve Stoute: Yeah. And it becomes more hectic. And then you have to hire more people. And then that creates another set of problems and responsibilities. And look, building a business isn't easy. I said it, the shop, know that the biggest mistake that I see is the glorification of entrepreneurs like, almond entrepreneurs. So therefore, like, you know, the sacrifice that it requires, to be able to know that failure is imminent or success is imminent that you may have an idea and you can go years without realizing the opportunity and it may go to somebody else. people ask me, how do I do it? And, you know, I'm here in San Francisco, I was, You know, in LA the day before that I was in Miami, the day before that, the day before that I was in LA again, it's like, it just keeps going. And like, you know, not seeing your family an d sacrificing some of the comforts of home or the comforts that you have of a routine, it's also part of the sacrifice. So it's not easy, and you have to really be committed to it. It almost has to be your A plan, your B plan. Your C plan is that plan, like you won't find joy or fulfillment. in doing anything else. At least that's how I feel. [00:05:39] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think a lot of it's accepting those trade-offs and knowing that you can't do it all. I think I've heard you talk about this on the shop as well, whether it's so-and-so as the birthday party, so-and-so as the this, and yeah, it's great if you can line up and do those things, but you've chosen this life to be able to be in LA, be in Miami, be in New York, and back to back days and Yeah, doing that requires this type of commitment to it and you can't do everything. [00:06:04] Steve Stoute: Yeah. and hiring great people, is part of it. but putting your own personal comfort is certainly not a priority. [00:06:12] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. Interesting you brought up the hiring piece because I think you've definitely built up a reputation as someone that's always operating on 10. So you naturally wanna surround yourself with people that are at that level. What are some of the things that you look for to see, okay, does this person have the edge? Cuz you know you're gonna be running all the time. Can they run with you? [00:06:36] Steve Stoute: it's very hard to, you know, resumes or LinkedIn pages, whatever you use can tell you a lot, but they don't measure resourcefulness or effort, right? So those things do not appear in any aspect of looking at, a person's profile. So I've learned through failure, you know, I may have not, I may have, I have high, I have hired and fired. you know, 3000 plus people, you know, so you learn what are the qualities or what are the questions to ask, to try to help, mitigate that the kind of person you need for your company. It doesn't mean that person's bad. You could have made a bad hire, not because the person's not good, they just don't fit your team. I mean, you see it in the NBA all the time. Players on somebody that was on the Lakers or somewhere else goes to another team and then all of a sudden they do well cuz it's the system, it's the culture, it's the coach. And that's the same thing with employment. Like, you just may be good just not for this company. So understanding what you specifically need versus, oh, this person worked at, so tech high, or they worked at Google, they worked at Airbnb, we want that right? Pulling them into a startup or pulling them into that culture or pulling them into that product not made completely, is completely different, specifically in our case, than what they were doing over there. And not every single job transfers one to one, whether it's the music business, the tech industry, the marketing business. We hire people at translation all the time. They came from Ogilvy. It's like, well, that has nothing to do with us, right? Or they come from Goodbee and you're like, well, that ain't gonna work here, right? Why? Just because the way we are, set up, what they may be used to, the programming that they run versus what we run, they, you know, may not be a great culture fit. And so, knowing that helps mitigate that risk. So knowing who you are, knowing what kind of people respond well to your culture is an important aspect. Not only just the mission statement stuff. Yeah, great, But like really innately knowing it and feeling what works.What are the common attributes of the people that are successful at your company that are more nuanced based and knowing how to identify that in others and what other companies share those values so that people that come from those companies tend to do well at your company.[00:09:05] Dan Runcie: You mentioned how this is a tension point in music in this industry. I think we've seen it from time and time, whether it's the record label side and folks on the creative versus streaming and tech coming in and some of the pushback there. I think you've been able to have a good vantage point with both of these because you have a ad agency and you also have a music distribution service.The talents, the skills needed for one, may not make sense for the other, but they also have a bit of a unique identity there. How is it with that perspective?[00:09:38] Steve Stoute: Difficult, hard. at the onset of starting United Masses, I put translation in united masses under. United Masters, Inc. And understanding that in order to do that, to build a marketplace that has creative or brands on one side and creative and culture and cultural impact and creators on the other side, and building that marketplace takes hiring unique people because we sit at the convergence of culture, technology, and, storytelling. Mm-hmm. So you need people who are prolific at least two of those three things, every single person. And that's the only way you have a shot of getting that convergence to work as one and hiring for that and building organization structures around that probably is the most important thing. That I do every day is understanding where could we be more efficient in that model? What kind of people do we need in order to accelerate that model? How do we scale that model as a result of the talent we have and the talent we need? That is very difficult, and it is probably, it's definitely a top five priority, from the CEO. [00:10:56] Dan Runcie: And I assume as well, part of this is required with the nature of how you've positioned United Masters, right?If you don't have these differentiating factors, if you don't have this tie in to culture or trying to present sync opportunities or things like that, then it could easily be seen as another music distribution service. And that's not what Well,[00:11:17] Steve Stoute: Dan, you've been following the company very closely before you could be, just another distribution company before that became popular, I had this idea with that differentiating factor seven years ago, right?So I knew from the onset that distribution was table stakes. and the building of United Masters with translation and power powering the brand sync opportunities, the influence and type of opportunities, was something that I had the early vision on. So yeah, it's important, but it's not important in response to, oh, all of these, you know, distributors in the market now, so you need to X, Y, Z. I was doing the X, Y, Z before they even had the idea to be in music distribution, to be honest with you. And a lot of these music distribution companies that you see are coming out, are looking at United masses and honestly copying it. Some of it they can't copy. That's fine. some of it they can't copy. It's 20 years of experience in, you know, running record companies and building an advertising business to be able to do this. So you think you can replicate the outcome without replicating the process, which I've never seen actually happen, the theory is right? But to replicate it, to hire the people, to have the credibility in the marketplace to speak to brands and hire the type of people needed to pull us off. Good luck, I do believe, and I am supportive just to add to all of that, great distribution companies that support independent music, that have something to contribute to the independent music movement are welcome and everybody, you know, rises as a result of it. So I'm not necessarily, I don't look at. at these other, distributors as competitors, I look at us as contributing to an industry that's, changing the music business dramatically and if you have something to bring to the table, it's beneficial to all. [00:13:17] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And I think for United Masters as well, you've been able to have your moat essentially as you've described it. You have the years of experience, you have the ability to connect dots in ways that others don't, and that's led you to land some of the artists you have.You have a recent deal that's been announced with Brent Faz and a long-term partnership there. Can you talk a bit about that deal and how things came together? [00:13:43] Steve Stoute: Well, a moat is a bit of a stretch. I don't know if we have a moat. We have a great business model that certain artists, labels can find use of.[00:13:56] Dan Runcie: Do you think anyone has a moat in this space?[00:13:59] Steve Stoute: No. No. The record companies, the traditional record companies had a moat, when physical distribution was a barrier of entry, right? It's very hard to press up 500,000 CDs or vinyls or whatever it is. and distribute it to 7,000 points of distribution. That's not easy to do for a small, a single individual or a very small business. So that was their mode. They also had a monopoly on radio and, MTV, you know, MTV doesn't matter at all and, for music per se. And, radio matters much less than it used to. for discovery, right? So they used to have a moat but no longer do they have a moat And I don't think anybody independent music has a moat. I think Distro kid has a lane and TuneCore has a lane, and United masses have a lane. And, you know, others have, certain strengths about them. but, I think the only moat you have is the moat that is a true result of the success that you have. If people choose you and you build a strong business, and you're growing, that's the quote unquote moat. but other than that, I don't think anyone has, a clear defining advantage that no one else can replicate, right? A nd just because we have the brand stuff doesn't mean that that's the, you know, I wanna believe that's very important to the artists. But somebody else may have another thing that is if marketed well and that's what they think their advantages. I don't have the ultimate advantage cuz you know, brands and brand partnerships in sync may not necessarily be what you find most valuable. It could be a distribution company that creates and manufacturer's merch and you're like, oh shit, that's the one I want. Mm-hmm. Right. So I don't, wanna say that specifically. We have that. [00:15:56] Dan Runcie: That's fair. I do think that that mentality is part of the differentiating that I think is lost in music overall to some extent, because I think that you have few record labels that truly have unique brands. I think you have few music streaming services that have unique brands, and when you have something, it's clearer to be able to say, who is this for? Who is this not for, right? And clearly, I assume you were able to do some of that with Brent Faz and that partnership. He saw something with how you all do business and said, okay, this is for me.[00:16:32] Steve Stoute: Yeah, Well, Brent is a very, very unique talent. I obviously he wants to be with something that. A company, distributor, or partner that represents values that are there to him. So creativity is extremely important to him. The fact that we do have translation really matters in that instance cuz brand partnerships is something that he holds near and dear to him. He also was very respectful of, my, you know, reputation and what I've accomplished and chose that over others who, you know, was offering more money but didn't have the, same values that he had or shared values he didn't share their values. He was very particular about that everyone who knows him knows that, he's high taste. So he wanted to be with, you know, a brand, a distributor, a partner that was, had a sense of premiumness to it. That was important to him. So I think the combination of those three things and, you know, just our chemistry, his manager Ty, is also a fantastic, really intelligent, guy who I've developed a great relationship and a lot of respect for, also played a very significant role in this partnership. And we're gonna do great things together. I knew this day would come, I knew where so much respect for guys, like maybe maybe for Toby, right? Toby Nii, who, I keep screwing up his name and he keeps making fun of me screwing up. His name is actually part of his name now. When I say it. But, I have so much respect for him and fat because we've done so well together and, they've committed to us and we've committed to them. And it was a proof point that an independent artist can be successful, can be, you know, a global brand. And I directly tie the work that we've done with Toby and, and others. And others. He just comes to mind. I spent a lot of time with him for why Brett chose us. Brett chose us. and now you got Brett who sold out his tour in three days around the world and shit. That kind of star deciding to stay independent, not go with a major label. And they offered him everything, all the money in the world. And I knew that trend is gonna happen. That's gonna happen, man. You're gonna start seeing this happen all the time, like, you know, the one moat, again, back to the legacy labels that they have, is that because they own your masters, when your contract is up, what they do, their, their thing is start to give you back the shit they took from you, right? So now you leave, you finish your 8, 5, 7 album commitment, whatever it is, right? And it's no longer can they give you any more money to stay. So they go, we'll give you back album one. And you're like, I'll stay on Sony because now Album one reverts I'll stay on Universal cause album one reverts. So they stay stuck in the system because all they do is now give you back what you shouldn't have never given actually, or they never should have taken. So they hold you cuz you're tethered to that, right? And no matter what, an independent distributor can't give you your first album that you wrote, because you never had in the first place. You never, you know, so you never had it in the first place, however. So that's the moat that they have with legacy acts that will stay. So it'll be hard for legacy acts to leave when they can give you back that kind of stuff. But the new artists who are building their careers are considering independent distributors such as myself or others, at the same consideration set as they're considering a label. If you can give 'em money and you can provide them services, look man, you know, people talk about like, oh, these labels have a service. We picked up our systems. We distributed a song, from a great, great young artist, good man, superstar Pride outta Mississippi has a song called painting Pictures. The song was released in October. The The song moves like this, my building, just, I don't know, 3000 streams a day or something like that. and then all of a sudden, on February 6th, it goes from 3000 to 9,000 or something like that. Our systems catch it, right? We're looking for the second derivative.We're measuring acceleration. Boom. We find it, Two or three days later, other labels. It goes from 9,000 to 27,000, and then five days later it's compounded to fucking 400,000 streams, something in a day. It's crazy. But we already have identified it. all the labels are offering the money, three and a half million, 4 million, this, that, and the third.He chose to stay with United Masters. Everybody said, well, they can't get you this. They can't do that. Songs gonna be number one at radio. It's not like they have an advantage anymore, you know what I'm saying? It's like, it's not even like a problem. It's Mm-hmm. nothmm. if it was like a heavy lift, the artist made a great song. We gotta work it at radio. There's a formula to that money is part of that formula, right? And we can do it. it. Somebody can't do it better than us. Universal can't do it better than us. They don't like for artists to think that, right? They would like the perception of that to be true, but it's not the real marketing is coming out of, you know, the artists themselves and your relationships with Apple and Spotify and other distributors and YouTube, and we have the same relationships they have. So the new artists know that. They don't see, the only thing the record company can really give them that they believe they can get, that they can't get an independent is money. And I hope the Brett Fires deal just shows that we have money too. It's like, [00:22:18] Dan Runcie: How big is that money difference? Because I think that's the one thing that people do. [00:22:21] Steve Stoute: It's getting smaller and smaller as the record companies are losing. They're letting people go. their margins are getting smaller and smaller. They're firing a lot of people. don't know if no one talks about this. this, but they're not running around writing those big ass checks like they used to anymore. They Hell no. no. No, no, no, no, no, no. [00:22:41] Dan Runcie: Because I think people will look at a deal like the one that Drake did last year. Yeah. For instance. And they're, say the Ruter mal is somewhere 300, 400 [00:22:50] Steve Stoute: It was more than that. Much more than that. But that's different. They have Drake's, remember what I told you, they got Drake's masters, right? That's different than an artist starting from Drake releasing the first. song with Trey songs. All right, whatever. When he started his career, like if Drake released a song today that Drake considers an independent music company, at the same rate that he, looks at a major label cuz the major label can't say anything to him today that will make him believe outside of money that they have an advantage. [00:23:25] Dan Runcie: This topic too, reminds me of something similar because we're talking about the record labels and the streaming service as well, who's bringing in money, and there's all this debate right now around pricing for these services. The record labels want those prices higher. The streaming for songs? Oh no, for the monthly subscription that customers pay.[00:23:45] Steve Stoute: Oh, oh, okay. [00:23:46] Dan Runcie: Yeah, yeah. So they want the hire, the streaming services, well, a few of them still want to keep them as low as possible, but we're seeing things trending in that direction. You owning a music distribution service, relying on that streaming revenue as well, where do you take, what's your take right now on pricing on the consumer side and Yeah, [00:24:08] Steve Stoute: A few things there. Number one, the record companies had the opportunity when they held all of the leverage. To control pricing, to control pricing for the customer, as well as the price per stream. All these things were set up at a time when the record companies, you know, got big advances from Apple, you know, got ownership in Spotify, so they were cool with whatever was going on. As they're starting to lose market share now they need to go find growth, and the only way to find growth is go to the streaming services and say, charge more money so we can make more money. But the problem is that if the artist got the lion share the money, rather than the label getting the lion share the money, the current pricing model will work really well. The artists, if they were independent and they were receiving 80% of the money that came from streaming, and it went to each individual artist, they'd be fine with it. They'd be making a lot more money than they're making right now. The independent artists are making a fortune of money. Go ask russ. Go ask Toby. Go ask Brent what he's done for so many years. Why he stays independent, because they've really received the lion share the money. The record companies have bloated overhead, whether it be office space, employees and salaries of their CEOs and shit like that, and whether they're public or or not. In the case of universal, it's public. They need to show growth, and they're losing margin on how much money they're making per album or release, And the only way to find growth, real growth is the diversify of their business, which they haven't been so good at. There's not that many entrepreneurs insider, a record companies. Jimmy Iovine was one. Dr., Jay-Z was another, but there's not that many. You don't see that many. I'm not making this up. So you're talking about CEOs who were fat and happy, now all of a sudden have to innovate and they don't have a person that can make beats by Drake. They don't have a person who's gonna create the next thing.So now they gotta go to apple and Spotify and squeeze more. The problem is their leverage with Apple and Spotify have sort of, gone in the other direction. They don't have as much leverage as they had seven years ago, eight years ago, 10 years ago. ago. So that's the landscape. I the artists should get paid more money. That's we built our model to do, make sure the artists get paid more money and have great partnerships with, the platforms. And that's how I see it right now. yeah. So to answer your question on pricing, whether or not Spotify or Apple should charge more, I mean yeah. If they're gonna continue to grow so that you don't wanna price it so that people start canceling subscriptions, right? You gotta price it right so that it keeps growing. Cuz the more they grow, the more the pot of money grows. But before I get to even worrying about what they're charging, I need to worry about the artists are getting the lion share of revenue, and that's what we, stand for United Masses, and that's what we've been able to accomplish today. Okay. [00:27:33] Dan Runcie: And at least for the artists that are part of United Masters, they don't have the rights holder relationships that the signed artists do on the record label. So that side doesn't necessarily affect them as much. I think you definitely addressed that piece of it. I think the other side of it is looking at streaming prices on all the video services and how Netflix and all these other services have definitely expanded beyond their 9 99 price point.And then for you all as a business, knowing that a company like Spotify, which does have lower churn than a lot of those other companies as well, if prices were to increase 10%, that's 10% more revenue, at least for the streaming revenue side of the business. For a company like United Masters given the cut you have [00:28:16] Steve Stoute: Again, yes. and at some point you can raise the price to the point where somebody says, you know what? I'd rather not do that. I'd rather have an not that service. I'd rather listen to it free on YouTube, or I'd rather deal with ads. It costs too much. I don't know what that price is, but there's absolutely a point of diminishing return and setting any price. You gotta just know what that price is. So rather than me sit here and go, yeah, they should raise prices, which I could easily say, cuz it's beneficial to me. I want them to raise prices and continue to grow. Cuz as that pot grows, there's more money to be distributed. If they price it wrong, it hurts us. That's my only point. [00:28:59] Dan Runcie: That's fair. I get that. This topic as well, reminds me of another thing that I wanted to chat with you about. [00:29:07] Steve Stoute: We're talking about, reminds you of something else. That's great. That's how you write, you write like that, you find all these, comparisons, to different business models. in fact, you know, that's why I'm a fan of what you guys do of what you do. but it's funny when you say it, actually, reminds me of[00:29:22] Dan Runcie: That's funny. That's funny. I was actually gonna say, this isn't a random reminding, this is actually something you had said in that episode of the shop. I think it was the last one you did. You were, I think Drusky was on there. A fewer folks were on there. Yeah. You were talking about dollars that were moving from traditional tv Yeah. And going towards creators. Yeah. And how much of an opportunity that is. And I know you, with the business you have with translation, a lot of your work has been focused on doing these traditional TV partnerships, whether it's with a State Farm or some of the other clients you have.I'm curious to hear how this type of transition impacts your work and what opportunities you see and how you may have be thinking about the future on that side. [00:30:07] Steve Stoute: So the media buying companies, people who buy media for brands are seeing and advising that television ratings outside of sports are going in the wronging direction and advising to put that money more into digital channels that are primarily driven by creators. The creators have deep connections with their fans. The creators can create a network effect. So you can hire, you know, 50 creators who who have deep impact in different regions, communities, and you can buy against it. and sort of create marketplace momentum around a movement, a brand, a product, whatever it may be. My question toski is, this thing is shifting in your direction or what are you doing to prepare for it? I said something so long ago on, on my man Swae. I said that that artists are going to become mini media channels. I said this six years ago, mini media channels. If you look at the artists and you look at them like what cable channels were, you watch ESPN, they have an audience, you watch Turner, they have an audience, you watch Discovery, they have an audience. The artists, the influencers are gonna be exactly like those with obviously much smaller audiences, but the relationship between the artists and the audience or the influence in the audience is where the media money is going. ESP N, Turner and Discovery are prepared for that. that. Their organizations are set up for it. They stay on brand so that when the money comes their way, the brand knows, whoever's spending money against it knows exactly what they're getting and the kind of audience that they have. What What are the creators doing to be prepared for that movement of revenue coming to them? How are they set up for that? Because in the beginning it starts to look like, oh shit, this is all found money. But I'm saying, this is not just found money. This is the new industry. [00:32:23] Dan Runcie: Is there anyone that you see that's doing a good job of this right now? Or any creators that are ready for this moment [00:32:29] Steve Stoute: there's so There's so many of them. A lot of YouTube creators are doing it. You know, mr. Beast disguise, I mean, you know, the names. They all, you know, have created, you know, products that create lines around the block. I mean, you know, you don't look at it this way anymore because, she's transcended what you first seen her as. But Kim Kardashian is that she's the ultimate influencer. She's the influencer's influencer, right? Right. And she's built billions of dollars of business as a result of using her culture, her influence. that started with Instagram and social media. So like yeah, we've seen a lot of people do it, right? The musicians are now starting to do it right, because they're starting to realize Rihanna and Fenty. And others are copying or copying or seeing that, look, the streaming business is great and touring is great, but my impact, my movement, because of my digital footprint can allow me the opportunity to sell other higher margin items, like beauty products like lingerie, like footwear. So understanding your influence, whether you're a musician or personality and who your audience is creating opportunities for a lot of money to be made. [00:33:50] Dan Runcie: And how does that shape the type of work that translation will continue to do in the future working with creators? [00:33:58] Steve Stoute: Well, our number one responsibility at translation is to be lockstep with culture and lockstep in real lockstep. So as we help provide solutions for brands, creative, strategic solutions, We understand that what I just said about where this business is going and the influences and their impact that they have, we're very fluent at that. So it doesn't impact us in a way that says, oh, now we have to change our business as a result of this. We just create in these new landscapes, right? Like, it doesn't impact us at all. In fact, it hinders. The more bigger traditional agencies who have not even wrapped their brain around diversity culture, they're still running an old playbook. This new thing, they hope goes away, but we've seen this over and over again, right? It's the dilemma that happens, the innovation dilemma that takes place and whether you do it yourself or you get disrupted by somebody else. if you hold on to what you've done, you'll be disrupted. When we built translation, we built it under the manifesto of translating culture for Fortune 500 companies. And translating always needs to happen. It's why I came up with the name, everything needs to be translated, right? So the fact that tr culture needs to be translated and because it's translated and it changes, you have to be clear and understanding of it. I talk about that all of a sudden, the speed of culture, the speed in which, you know, someone can become an overnight success. Like there's a tape, a footage. You should run it, in this spot and I'll send it to you. Where Lil Nas X, goes on, he eats a piece of pizza January, 2019. He's eating a piece of pizza on Instagram. And He's like, yo, this is Nas X I got 1000 plus followers on spotify. I got 3000 on Instagram, you know, a couple, you know, thousand views on YouTube, but I think Old town Road is gonna be a hit. and I'll see you guys a year from now, literally a year to the day he has on a white fucking mink eating pizza. And he is like, you know, it's little Nas x 30 million on spotify, da da, da. And that's no different than skims disrupting spanks in a year. Like that's no different than other. Everybody is ready for the, that's the speed of culture and it's fast. It'll never be this slow again. Like that's a fact. So being a brand of an agency, a creative company, a influencer or whatever you are, if you are not aware, prepared, built for that speed, you will get left.[00:36:59] Dan Runcie: The other area that's move in just as fast, probably even faster is NIL and everything happening there with [00:37:06] Steve Stoute: This you of NIL? You were gonna say that, that reminds me of NIL deals. Oh shit. How the fuck did he do that? That reminds me of a great piece of pizza. I just had Steve again, NIL deals. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. [00:37:19] Dan Runcie: And I think we've seen a lot of fast movement there. Yes, we have. You've definitely probably see plenty of opportunities cuz I think the space is very unregulated. There's random things happening. [00:37:32] Steve Stoute: Yeah. And yeah, you should go look at, just so that you properly, as you definitely, know my work and have been, very much appreciative of my contribution. I did a documentary at LeBron James called student athlete that came out five years ago. You should look at that. You should play clips of it. We followed four athletes over a year that were high school, that were college athletes. One of 'em got injured and fucking, like, had to sleep in his car because you know, you are a D one athlete, you get injured, you don't make it to the pros. You don't get any fucking health insurance anymore. They fucking cut you. That's the end of it. Right. So you're playing for this lottery ticket and you don't get shit. And the fact that these student athletes don't get a chance to actually get a great education because they have fucking practice every day or games on Friday or traveling to get to a game all over the place. But the school benefits from all of the advertising dollars. And all of the conference dollars was something that we put a highlight on and it was really, making it and seeing these stories. You felt like this is of modern day slavery. Mm-hmm. So NIL deals the Wild, wild west, the transfer portal as well. So you had NIL deals and the transfer portal happening at the same time. What is this doing? This reminds me of the independent music business, because now these student athletes really now are independent business people. They can change schools with less friction than they could have five years ago, 10 years ago. Forget it. you change schools, you had to sit outta here. You couldn't do this, you couldn't do that. By the time you could play, you know, you lost a step or you weren't the same, or you were too far removed from the game, whatever it may be. So the hindrance of that made you stay at the school and not go through that problem. That was the way they kept you. Well, it's certainly not fair that the football in which you have to stay three years, right? And basketball pay for 90% of all of the other scholarships That the fucking sports program had. And yet these guys don't get any money. It is not right, you know, think about players getting thrown out of bowl games because they got tattoos, free. It's crazy. So I'm all for NIL deals and I'm happy, it's the wild, wild west. And I like the fact that there's a guy or girl on campus make making $2 million a year balling in a fucking Porsche Bentley or investing his or her money, whatever they're doing, helping their family. I'm happy for the fact that they are getting a chance to monetize their impact beyond a scholarship, that is fantastic, but definitely a education that is not the same because they're practicing the amount of time they're practicing and traveling. The way they're traveling, this is the least that they can do is get paid for their services. And the NCAA got away with a lot for a very very long time. You should look at that. Look, when the student athlete, it's a bylaw, right? that actually became a thing and why it was set up that way and what it means and the implications of it. It was a way to hog, tie or build a moat so that these kids would never leave. As college sports grew and the money grew, all of a sudden it became, these assets, right? Became really lucrative. These conferences became very lucrative, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in TV deals. I'm happy for it. In fact, we represent the Big 12 and, shout out to my man, Brett, who now runs the Big 12. He came from running the Brooklyn Nets. He, I worked with him when he moved the Nets from New Jersey to Brooklyn. Then he went over to run a aspect of Roc Nation and now he runs the Big 12. He's the future of collegiate sports cuz he understands the music industry and the brand building industry. He understands the business of running sports team, the nets, the arena, the Barclays, bringing in talent to fill that arena pricing, dynamic pricing, media deals. He did it all. And now he's taken that combination of skills to Big 12 and he's once NIL deals. In fact, that's his competitive advantage because none of those guys who run all those other conferences, they're all like, shit, we gotta give these NIL deals. The students are gonna do X, Y, Z in this transfer portal. What are we gonna do? Brett's? Like, this is what I've been doing my whole career. I can't wait to set up NIL programs, bring brands in, you know, treat these students athletes like the same way we treated artists in my previous career. it's dope and, it's way, way, overdue. This reminds you of, [00:42:46] Dan Runcie: Didn't remind me of something, but I was gonna ask you, is this an area that you would work more directly in through translation, through the agency, working with the [00:42:54] Steve Stoute: Yeah. I mean, yes. Look, it's not like, again, we represent the Big 12, so our contribution to that, is adjacent to a lot of that kind of stuff, you know, there is an opportunity to set up a. a division that works specifically on NIL deals. I think it's much more, urgent that the CAAs do and the UTAs and the WMEs have that because their brokers of that kind of stuff. Where they have talent and they brands and they put 'em together, we do that for our clients. We don't do that as a industry trade. We don't just like connect random brands with, you know, artists unless we are, or athletes, unless we are doing much more immersive experiences and creative for those brands. But, you know, I'm happy we represent Beats. We did the, Beats deal with Bronny, then we did the commercial with Bronny and his dad with LeBron and like I love that. I love it. Not only for that story, but the fact that again, this 17 year old kid signed a deal with Beats. And we can actually market that and advertise that as, without him losing eligibility or whatever the fuck these guys were coming up with is dope.[00:44:07] Dan Runcie: Right. Especially given that everyone was gonna make money off of his name. So I'm glad he can do it himself. [00:44:12] Steve Stoute: Of course, like, you speak to Jalen Rose about this like when they're at Michigan man, the Fab 5 and these guys, [00:44:18] Dan Runcie: Oh, that was bad. [00:44:19] Steve Stoute: That's terrible man. Selling jerseys with their name on it and these guys. like, everybody's looking at investigating the, what they did and what did Webber do and what he did to try to feed his family. You can't even afford to get your family to come see you play. Mm-hmm mm-hmm. Well of course corruption's gonna be in it. You mean, I can't eat? I have a scholarship though. And my parents can't even come see me play cuz we can't afford it. You don't think that's gonna lead to corruption? What are you crazy?[00:44:47] Dan Runcie: It's this weird juxtaposition where I think either, Webber or Rose talked about this in that documentary [00:44:52] Steve Stoute: It's the coach by the way.Yeah. Gets paid $10 million, in most, towns or cities in America, the highest paid employee of that city, or town is the coach of the football team. Yep. Or the basketball team. They're the highest earning person in the entire city. [00:45:09] Dan Runcie: Yeah. They save at the state level too for the Colleges [00:45:12] Steve Stoute: Then they get deals with Nike and the coach makes the player wear Nikes or Reebok or whatever it is, the coach makes that decision. Everyone's making money except the student themselves, but they're getting a scholarship. [00:45:27] Dan Runcie: Right, it's crazy [00:45:28] Steve Stoute: And definitely an education with an asterisk next to it.Isn't that fair? Are you fucking outta your mind? [00:45:35] Dan Runcie: It's crazy. It's crazy. I'm glad this is happening and I'm glad we're seeing this shift. [00:45:41] Steve Stoute: Yo, pull up student athlete. When you do this, I'm you the edit right now. I'm gonna send you the Lil NAS thing and the student athlete thing. Oh yeah. We'll throw it in there. Put it in. That's why we're doing video. video. [00:45:52] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no. That's why we, no, this will be good. And then we have the clips and everything. Yeah. Shifting gears, last time you were on, you talked about chief technology officers and why artists need to have tech side folks on their platform. Yeah, [00:46:06] Steve Stoute: Yeah, brother. [00:46:07] Dan Runcie: Yeah, How have you seen this develop the past couple years since? [00:46:10] Steve Stoute: I haven't, the artists that obviously have the foundational truth is as technology is becoming much more important in content and video services, every artist needs a chief technology officer. That's the foundational truth. The practical reality is that that's not gonna be the case, which is the opportunity for platforms like ours to be extremely useful in providing tools, intelligence, information that is allows the artist, the influencer to take action in a very user-friendly way to help grow their career. So essentially, we wanna be the Chief Technology Officer as a platform for all of these artists. I believe that to be true. In fact, in building our platform, the remit to my engineers is that, that we have to anticipate what the artist's needs are. And build that for them. We're it for a community of artists. We're not building it to best interface with Apple or Spotify or YouTube. That's one part of it. 80% of it is what do you, I say all the time, man, I'm about to put my name in the system. I'm about to upload my first song. That experience. If I nail this, I'm gonna change the life for me and my mama. I'm gonna become my dreams. I'm gonna be able to quit this bullshit job and really live out what my talents are when I hit this button and upload this song. That's how they feel. to build a technology that's empathetic to that, and then as they continue to grow, make sure that they have the tools and they need information in order to do their thing. That's what I tell each and every engineer that comes into my company. [00:48:17] Dan Runcie: That trajectory makes sense because if you're starting out, you're a dependent, you're not gonna have the resources to hire someone to pay them 1 50, 200 a year, whatever it is to be a CTO on staff. Yeah. How could you leverage the partnerships you have? Maybe if you get to a certain point, you could have someone internally. [00:48:35] Steve Stoute: Of course. Of course, you know drake and, you know Beyonce and Pharrell and they have a version of a chief technology officer, somebody who, their interaction with technology is seamless and smooth and they understand it and they have relationships and, you know, they could speak with the tech leaders and be able to find the value and where the integration and partnerships can best take form. Up until you get to that point, we should be the platform to provide that for you at scale[00:49:08] Dan Runcie: Artists as well. This is also valuable because there's so many new things that are always coming. Obviously I talk about them often in capital. You're evaluating themself for your own business, whether it's a couple years ago, whether or not we should be building something on the blockchain.A couple years after that, should we be involved with Web 3? Should we have NFTs and 2023? AI is the big thing. [00:49:33] Steve Stoute: Can I talk to you about that? [00:49:34] Dan Runcie: Yeah, [00:49:35] Steve Stoute: But go ahead, ask the question. I'll get into it.[00:49:37] Dan Runcie: Yeah, so I was gonna ask twofold how you look at it for yourself with the businesses and then also the value add and advice you give to artists that are considering this.[00:49:46] Steve Stoute: Yeah, So let's, I take a step back for a second. Whether 20 years ago as technology, you know, sort of more consumer facing technology 30 years ago has been, is taking shape into, is taking shape. The popularity of code or the popularity of, you know, technology outside of just the internet itself. It wasn't immediate frenzy around it. It didn't, like, it was just happening. It wasn't like front and set of the media. And I think part of it is like there weren't that many day traders like Uber drivers are traders and school teachers trade everybody's trading stocks. So now that you've built applications that allow people to day trade and everybody could be a stock analyst themselves, the technology has gotten a lot of media attention and a lot of that media attention I do believe has escalated the fact that it becomes top of mind. But yet the application of that technology may be premature. Agreed. So every with the metaverse, oh my God, everybody are you doing in the Metaverse? We're in the Metaverse. We're in the Metaverse. You in the Metaverse. What is the Metaverse? Is Fortnite the Metaverse? That's not the Metaverse, the Oculus is the Metaverse. No, that's not the Metaverse is gaming in general. The Metaverse. Well, whatever. But before we could even get to that, NFTs come, well fuck the Metaverse. It's the NFTs. Well, the NFT, you got a NFT. You got a What's your character? What's your character? Who you got a character? What's your character? What's your vetas? don't have a character. Let me see your crypto wallet. What's in your crypto wallet? What's in your crypto wallet? What's in your crypto? Okay, now we just went to the Oh shit. Fucking AI. you use chatGPT. How we gonna, it's like, yo, bro, could we just chill out? Stop. and the media writes it and then everybody just runs around. Thinking that they need to be prolific and like force themselves to find the application. cuz they don't wanna be left out like, let these things find, use cases that stick and therefore the products and the applications that come out of it will then take hold. But like for you to just run to crypto wallets and metaverses and ai and the, it's like, it is so overblown. And what I was telling my team about is what happens is like take crypto, like the media is incentivized to write it all the way up, right? write it all way. You gotta get this, you gotta get this, you gotta get this. They write it all the way up and then as soon as the shit melts, they fucking write it all the way down. So they still win because they fucking made everybody feel like it was important. And then, They start shitting on it and everybody has to read that because they wanna know why they're shitting on it. And then while they're shitting on it, they fix the next thing. Metaverse da da da it's like, it's funny to me cuz I could it's obvious actually. It's funny because it's obvious, but yet people sort of work themselves up, like, you know, I deal with CMOs all the time. They're like, you know, what are we gonna do in the metaverse 18 months ago? They don't even fucking bring it up anymore. Right? Why were you bringing it up 18 months ago? Cause you read it in the New York Times because it was on some news channel and you don't even bring it up anymore. [00:53:08] Dan Runcie: The dialogue around this heightened into the fomo. Everyone has the fear of missing out on all this.[00:53:14] Steve Stoute: Not me. I think I don't have any FOMO on shit that's not real. And I'm not saying it's not real, I'm saying until it has practical applications that affect my life or my business really.[00:53:29] Dan Runcie: How do you determine what that is?[00:53:32] Steve Stoute: I don't know, Talent? testing, I don't know, like that kind of thing. [00:53:39] Dan Runcie: It's interesting, right? Because I feel like we could go back to two years ago, and I remember, I think that was around the time that NFTs were having their craze and artists could've been like, oh, well, what if we could release a N F T on United Masters or something like that?Yeah. Or what if we could do this? And it's one of those things, in hindsight, of course the right answer is, yeah, that I don't think we need to do that. [00:54:01] Steve Stoute: Let's stay the you ask anybody who worked with me, I never, ever bought that that bullshit. I'm like, look, until that young kid, that 17 year old kid, 16 year old kid in Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, los Angeles, is me that they're willing or want to buy an album as an NFT. I am not gonna allow Discord chatter to say that's where my business is doing.[00:54:30] Dan Runcie: I think that's a good example here, because so much of the chatter around this stuff is hyped up by people that are in it. People that were buying NFTs or music related NFTs or things like that were people that were talking about this on the regular, on Discord and Twitter, but it's not the 14 year old [00:54:48] Steve Stoute: guy, you know?and he's my man. But, he owns, Royal. [00:54:51] Dan Runcie: Oh, BLA? [00:54:52] Steve Stoute: BLA, you know, right? You know he put out an album, right. right. You know? Mm-hmm. Oh [00:54:55] Dan Runcie: yeah, I remember that [00:54:56] Steve Stoute: Remember 11 Million in that, right? DJ [00:54:59] Dan Runcie: and then Naz had done something on Royal a couple months later. [00:55:02] Steve Stoute: Right. But you so very smart, very, very smart. Made $11 million on an album. Everybody was like, that's the example. NFTs the whole thing. When you ask people, like regular fans who are fans of DJs that listen to EDM music and you say, you know that album blah da da da, they don't even know what you're talking about. That album that did that was purchased primarily by people that was in that business, the Discord community. It wasn't the general music community that bought it or even was aware of it. It was the people in that community. That's fine, that's fine. That's good for him. It's good for that community. Perfect. But to try to say that that applies to every, the industry at large now, and now the 16 year old kid in Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, whatever, is gonna now want that. That's not the right idea. And you know, it didn't require testing and learning for that. You could just do the work on it, do the math on it. Now there's aspects of the NFT, the blockchain technology, I think is very important, for payments. Yeah. So, I see that application, everything has an application. It's like AI is gonna, is fantastic. NFTs and crypto, and all of its fan the metaverse Fantastic. I just think this accelerated frenzy and FOMO sometimes get you to lose focus on what about it is really important to your business. And what I learned in the frenzy of the NFT marketplace or Web 3 was. The value of blockchain to payments. Payments in the music industry are very difficult because you have many people contributing to a song and, the rights holders need to have something that bound them right on these digital forever. Right. Until they decide to change it. And the blockchain does really good with those agreements in being able to put, you know, 17 people writing one song, whether it be a sample or just original writers, whatever it may be, and allow them to have these digital contracts that make sure everybody gets paid fairly precisely automatically. That part of it I like, I mean, for my, business, I like all of it. Mm-hmm. But specifically, for our business, [00:57:23] Dan Runcie: Does anything about AI spark interest or application in the same way? [00:57:28] Steve Stoute: Well, with AI, I'm trying to figure out, I'd really like it for education. So, you know, if I'm giving you tools, look at Uber, right? And They tell a driver, you know, peak times 4:00 PM this area, the town, the driver know where to go. The driver could be of any education level, but the tools that are provided to that driver, apply to, you know, whether you speak perfect English, you know, your learning English, your education level varies. The simplicity of what they provide you to be a small business is absolutely brilliant. You should look at the backend of Uber. You should see what an Uber driver sees. it'll amaze you. For our artists, I look at them like that. So, where I think AI can be really good is an understanding like when you post during this time, this is when the best time you get results.This is the type of content that works best for you. the, you know, release of songs when you should release them. The timing of it. I think utilizing AI to provide education around building your business can be very helpful for us, because of the fact that it can pull all that information and then provide a very easy way of understanding the best way to move forward based off the intelligence that it gleams.[00:58:47] Dan Runcie: There's so many applications of it, I think both internally for companies like you mentioned, but also how you deal with your stakeholders, how they then deal with their fan bases. It'll also be interesting to see just the bigger picture, what that next big thing is, how people are gonna react to it. A lot of it is accelerated by, How people live in bubbles themselves in a lot of ways.If you're only spending your time on Twitter, on Discord, you're just seeing the frenzy. You think everyone is there with you. Yeah. I remember a year ago I was at a dinner and this was right at the height of web 3. It was a lot of industry professional folks in there, and I remember being the person saying, you're all saying that we're gonna be on web 6 a year from now.There's people, the average person really isn't tapped into this. I don't think we're moving that fast. And a lot of 'em looked at me like I was crazy then. Yeah. And I'm like, it's my job to follow this stuff. I'm not a Luddite here telling you this. This is just the reality. So, [00:59:42] Steve Stoute: Well people, a lot of times people fight, try to solve problems that don't exist. Yeah. Right. Like it's like, you are saying web 6 and all that, we haven't even gotten to, you know, look, we still don't even know what the fuck 5G does yet, right? It's like, let's be really analog about this topic, yeah, we're fixing that, with AT & T but just in general, the regular con general consumer, you ask 'em about 5g, they see it on their thing. They're like, my text didn't go through any faster and my videos are still, you know, it's, Yeah. It's still like cycling. So I thought I had 5g. So sometimes things create more media momentum than the practical consumer experiences and a lot of times, spend a lot of time trying to solve problems that actually don't exist.[01:00:35] Dan Runcie: Agreed on that. Agreed on that. Well, Steve, before we close things out, the first interview we did, we talked about where United Masters was, where the future was, and I believe you told me, [01:00:45] Steve Stoute: but I did pretty good when I look, I haven't seen the interview, since, but I don't know if I did pretty good in my prediction. Do you remember? [01:00:52] Dan Runcie: You said we are in the first inning of this cause I think I asked you, what does the future look like with exits and future? You said we're in the first inning, we're early in this perspective. What inning do you feel like we're at now and what do you see for the future of the business.[01:01:07] Steve Stoute: I believe that we're still in the the first third of the innings. I think we're in inning to bottom of the second, you know, top of the third kind of thing. and the reason why is because now money is back into music. When I first sat with you, There was no vC money in music businesses anymore. They'd fucking ran. They lost all that money with all those other, you know, versions of this idea for reasons that make perfect sense, that the money had up, the money was going to social media and, you know, FinTech and a bunch of the other things like why me? Why music. And in the last five years, whether it be catalog sales or, independent music now being discovered by financial systems, Goldman Sachs and the others investors more, mainstream investors have realized that there's growth there and there's globalization of music and all of the things that bring energy back to the industry and that the record labels don't have this. Choke hold on it like they used to have. And it's not as difficult and to understand, which was another thing that people didn't understand about the music was They made it so difficult. People thought it was like a business that was so hard to figure out and all that other kind of stuff. Cuz over the rights. But because it's now become clear where I used to have to explain it to every single person. They're like, so you're competing with Spotify, like, no, you'd have to explain. it. They understand it now, which is cool. So now money's in, which means more entrepreneurs are gonna come in and build services like ours and other alternative services tools. The fastest growing segment of the music business is independent music. The fastest growing aspect of the music business is global music. Global music, the record companies never dominated because English speaking music was the only thing that really mattered. I mean, you just about it, Bad Bunny headline Coachella, right? How many people don't even know what the fuck he's saying? I mean, if there's 80,000 people there with maybe 65,000, don't know what the fuck he's saying. Yet they're dancing, all this great music coming outta Africa. Mm-hmm. That people are just going crazy over. That never happened. At the rate this has happened. Now, all of that independence rising globalization and music rising and money coming in. Is now you're about to see the acceleration of what can happen as a result of the momentum. It was always headwinds. And now I would say in the last year, it's been tailwinds. It's an exciting time. It's a very exciting time. it's an extremely exciting time. it's no longer in the dark. It's no longer something that, you know, big business. it wasn't paying attention to. Everybody sees it now. and when everybody sees opportunity and money and. Value creation and the fact that you can disrupt this, you know, a hundred billion dollar business of the music business, it can be disrupted because the barriers of entry has completely been removed like every other industry where the barriers of entry has removed, money goes into it, entrepreneurs come into it and new value is created. and I think that's being recognized as we spe

FEW TANG CLAN!!! We got pissed off this week. They out here playing reindeer games with the culture. We stumbled across a vile example of appropriation. And you know us. We ALWAYS find a way to spin things into a conversation with a more broad or global view. We wanted to get to the bottom of what makes a culture vulture and who fits that description. Go on and make room the tag...#ConversateForAFew #CFAF Topics: 00:00 - Intro 1:31 - How Hip Hop Was Invented meme 3:45 - The negative impact of Hip Hop appropriation 9:13 - United Masters further perpetuates mockery 15:17 - History SHOULD NOT BE distorted 19:47 - A quick history of Black music being white washed 22:54 - The 4 types of Culture Vultures 26:00 - Who are the Media Vultures 44:09 - What happens if Jewish people were spoken about this way? 47:13 - List of potential Media Vultures 51:00 - The cyclical effect of Media Vultures 57:19 - Artist Culture Vultures 58:17 - Executive Culture Vultures 1:11:43 - Are there any Unintentional Culture Vultures? 1:13:22 - The Justin Timberlake Debate 1:20:20 - The Lyor Cohen/Dame Dash Debate 1:25:56 - How to NOT be a Culture Vulture 1:27:20 - To sum it all up... 1:29:00 - One last plea to save the Culture from vultures. Subscribe to the Conversate For A Few YouTube and hit the notification bell! Apple Podcast: https://bit.ly/ConversateForAFewApple...   Spotify: https://bit.ly/ConversateForAFewSpotifyGoogle Podcast: https://bit.ly/ConversateForAFewGoogl... Follow and join the conversation on Instagram and Facebook!http://bit.ly/ConversateFacebookGrouphttps://bit.ly/ConversateInstagram

Leaping from Math to Kingdom MusicFrom the culture and traditions to instruments and melodies, music has become a powerful form of expression and a healing balm. Massin is a gospel music artist from Zambia, Africa. He's an International award-winning creative who is using his gift to reach and minister to the world. Massin has collaborated with other artists locally in his own country, throughout the United States and internationally with artists from around the world. He shares with us how it is to be an artist in Africa and how he took the leap to use his gift for the glory of God despite many drawbacks. He also shares the importance of strategizing, watering your gift consistently, and allowing God to use you to break through to the other end.If you are creative but feel stuck on where and how to start using your gifts to make an impact, this episode is for you!Now, let's jump in!Key Highlights from the Episode[00:01] Episode intro and a quick bio of the guest, Massin[02:47] What does the culture of Zambia look like?[05:58] How Massin's love and talent for music came about[08:39] How he focused on music while still in an accounting job[12:45] Massin's definition of success in the music career[14:12] A quick announcement [15:52] How dreams are nurtured in the African settings [20:29] The life of a music artist in Africa[26:44] Massin's next leap of faith and the best ways to reach out and connect[30:16] Ending the show and call to actionNotable Quotes Transformation should always be spiritual before it becomes physical.What God calls you to do should be the primary thing in your life. Everything else is secondary. God's gift of music should not be taken casually. You should put on the entrepreneurship cap because that is kingdom business.God gives provision for the vision He gives you.Connect With us:MassinWebsite | https://www.thatboymassin.com/Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/thatboymassin/Twitter | https://www.twitter.com/thatboymassinEmail | Thomassingwa@gmail.comYouTube| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyMGJiLLXbB6SalIt_9jEcwRachel ScottWebsite| https://rachelgscott.com/Website| http://the5leaps.com/Instagram| https://www.instagram.com/iamrachelgscott/Facebook| https://www.facebook.com/iamrachelgscott

Interview by MikalaTV https://www.instagram.com/_mikalatv_/ We recently sat down with Dallas emerging artist BigXthaPlug for an exclusive “Off The Porch” interview! During our conversation he discussed his upbringing in Dallas, getting into a lot of trouble growing up, getting a scholarship to play football, learning not to trust others very early on, his dad pushing him to rap when he was younger, choosing to take a positive route when it came to dealing with his anger, building his craft while spending time in solitary confinement, submitting his music for music reviews when he first started, United Masters reaching out, making his best music on the toilet, and much more!

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Maisha Leek, Managing Director of Forum Venture Studios. Maisha has had an amazing career in corporate innovation, company building and venture capital, and we talk about the new Venture studio model and some of the things that she's seeing in the world of venture. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage and experiment with the best and the brightest, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started. Interview Transcription with Maisha Leek, Managing Director of Forum Venture StudiosBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Maisha Leek. She's the managing director of Forum Venture Studios. Welcome to the show, Maisha. Maisha Leek: Thank you Brian. I'm excited to be here.Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you because you've spent a lot of time in all the different cross sections of innovation. So corporate innovation, company building, venture capital. Can you tell us about your path and journey in this innovation space? Maisha Leek: Sure. I'd love to say it was all brilliantly planned. There's a lot of trial error, error, error, error, and then trial again. I actually got into this world in the interesting route. I was for a long time in Washington DC. I was a policymaker and a fundraiser. And in DC we had oversight of most of the science and innovation agencies. So, everything from NASA to Noah to National Science Foundation, which is about the $54 billion proposition, which is a lot of responsibility. And we work with your tax dollars, placing the best bets we could to jumpstart the economy or to just position the United States to be competitive. And so that turned in everything from investing in commercial space flight. You see that now with SpaceX and Virgin Galactic and other companies. Those aren't the only ones. And investing in the advancement of batteries, which leads to all of the electric vehicles that we have now and, and sort of their ability to compete with their combustible counter parts.I knew I was far from all the action that everybody was in, in Silicon Valley and wanted to get closer to it, but by happenstance, met the founder of United Masters. Which was a music and tech company. And did not know what I was doing, except that I was an operator. I knew how to build out teams and build out a company and spent my time doing that. And we had the right as Silicon Valley goes investors. So had Ben Horowitz on our board. And David Drummond on our board. And was really active in managing those relationships. And when I was thinking about what to do next after spent some time at that startup, I had an executive coach and friends, they were like, you got to get into venture.And I'm like, that sounds really boring. And their suggestion I think is really apt for folks who are thinking about it. They suggested I would be good in the space because I had experience to do this on Capitol Hill, operating across a range of subject matters. And knowing to be sort of a generalist that can go deep in certain areas and analyze information and make quick judgements.My first experience was at Adventure Studio at Human Ventures. And that really influenced what I decided to do after that. And most of my time in the venture space, outside of being an angel investor or participating SPVs has really been in the venture studio space. I love it because of the close connection you can have with the founder and the founding team. It's not sort of like write a check. I'll call you once a month kind of thing. We're in it with them. But it also leans into the place where I'm strong. Which is I'm a really great operator and being able to do that with founders and helping them not make the same mistakes I've made in other companies that I've built or independent of that, also gives me great joy.So, I've done four Venture Studios - Nike Valiant Labs, Human Ventures, New Lab, which are across the series of categories. New Lab is Frontier Technology. Nike is really best to describe with CPG. Human Ventures, which is in large part direct to consumer. And Forum, which is B2B SaaS. And they all have their challenges. But again, I love the model. I'm an evangelist for the model. Brian Ardinger: Let's talk about that model. You know, people who've followed the show and that have heard more and more about Venture Studios, and if you've been in the space, you're hearing different flavors of what Venture Studios are. So can you talk about what is a venture studio from your definition and what were the differences between the different ones that you've started and where you're at currently with Forum. Maisha Leek: The term studio, when it's combined with venture, actually originates from Hollywood, which I did not know. Essentially, like the idea that the studio from ideation to putting it into theaters would be responsible for the build. Like they collaborate with some folks, but they wanted to sort of own the vertical of the product that went out to market. And Venture Studios do just that in a venture context. We are building small businesses as fast as possible.You do different things depending on the category, and there are few ways the model sort of shows up. On one extreme, they're starting with just the idea and there's no founder. On the other extreme, you've built out a business and you're hiring in a CEO. Most of the venture studios I've worked with sort of lean to the front end where we really are interested in and get really excited about the founder. And really help them determine what to build.And that's really a question of what the problem is that they want to solve. It's not really starting with a solution. And then we take them through a process to de-risk it, diligence it, figure out who the real customers are. What needs to be true for the MVP, and then bring it out to market. Most venture studios do that.I think that where we get variation is the degree to which the idea is evolved before the team that's going to live with the problem goes out into the world. I think that's where folks tend to have differing points of view about what's most important. And a lot of it's logical. Venture Studios exist because we have a better risk profile than a founder doing it on their own.I can get into why that is, but you can imagine it's just our expertise. And depending on the Venture Studio and their point of view about what they have to offer in terms of the early ideation, you have some organizations or groups who really want to use every insight that they have and stand up a company. And others who believe that the founder who's taking the risk should do most of that work. That's how folks are making those choices from what I've seen. Brian Ardinger: Yeah, that seems to be some of the key differentiation. It's how much additional resources perhaps are put towards it. So, some venture studios are very much hands-on. They have a team of developers that the founder can work with to build out, you know, early-stage prototypes and things along those lines. All the way to, obviously capital's involved.But it, it's interesting to see even the last three or four years, how that model has evolved. You know, some of the earlier venture models, you know, High Alpha out of Indianapolis or Highland Beta Toronto, they're looking at different models. You've got Nobody's Studios out in New York and the Philippines. And then you've got, obviously some of these, what were more traditional startup accelerator programs, whether it's Techstars or others that are, are looking at kind of a venture model where again, it seems to be how do we find the early founder with some magic sauce. And then put the magic sauce together to create companies together. Rather than looking for a company out there, which would be more, I guess, a traditional venture model in general.Maisha Leek: It's interesting. I love how you put that last point. The debate, I think, amongst people who are in the venture studio space is like, well, what matters more, the idea or the founder. I think that the way they're setting up venture studios is really an answer to that individual group's point of view on that question. I personally believe that the founder is the one thing you cannot de-risk. Human beings are human. And you know, you can pivot a company, you can pivot a strategy, you can change who is sitting where. But when it comes to the founder, you really wanna have conviction before you build. And I think a ton of folks are seeing that as the whole game. In large part, because early-stage investors are only looking at the team, right? So, it stands to reason that where venture studios can really play the game super, super well is making sure they've got that really, really tight, and then getting into the idea and the problem space from there.Brian Ardinger: And that makes perfect sense. You know, at the earliest stages, most ideas are crap, and they have to be worked through. And so the uncertainty itself, you're looking for somebody who can work through that uncertainty and adapt to the changing things that they learn along the way. Maisha Leek: A hundred percent. And somebody also who has a game plan for themself, which I find doesn't come up as much. But you know, I was talking to a founder this morning that was having a rough day, early on a Monday. And essentially, am I making the right choice for my life? How do I do that? Having a plan for all of those rough moments, it's like one of the most important things an investor or even a studio or a founder can put together before they even dig into the idea, because it's your right. The way a business shows up today. Fifteen years from now, it's going to be completely different. And really having a game plan for how to address the uncertainty, the significant amount of volatility that you'll face and keep your head is probably some of the most important details about being a founder that I don't think get enough of your time.Brian Ardinger: So obviously a founder's a core component to creating any new company. What are some of the ways that you both source founders and what do you look for. Maisha Leek: This is the best question. It's also the hardest. There are a range of approaches. I think that over time you start to build a network of founders that trust and know you.And when you say that you're standing up the studio and that you want to build, they tend to refer people that they're really excited about. Just starting from scratch. I mean, you really do want to spend time doing what we're doing right now. Demonstrating your capabilities in conversations and writing. Really posting a ton. Trying to draw people in.Being a judge at competitions. Talking to your network of other investors. There are a ton of folks that are further down the line and they meet founders who are too early for them to consider for their deals. I've talked to my entire network about getting folks to refer those folks to us. And then also not being afraid to look in places that you don't suspect. And so at the studios that I've worked with, we always have a complete open door. We do not require a warm intro for you to engage us. That's intentional. You're a needle in a haystack. I don't want to have the door closed. And when I have talked to every and anyone about the studio model, about what we can offer, about how to think about joining us.From a profile perspective, there's what I'm looking for and then there's like where those people are. I have the same challenge any startup has. Who is your customer? Right? I went to the first one. There are about like three types of people, right, that are very stages of availability. There are folks that are experienced founders who seek out venture studios because they've had to do it alone before. And they know that doing it alone is not worth it. it's not efficient. They want to move quickly, understand if there's real meat to their idea, and dig into that fast. They tend to come to venture studios actively, actively always talking to founders despite how deep they are into their build. It's just going to be top of mind for them. There's a ton of people who don't see themselves as founders but have all the experience. These are my favorite to cajole and to taking the risk. They tend to be a human, we used to call them the person behind the person, right? These are folks that have COO roles or Head of Biz ops or revenue, or chief of staff roles. They spent a significant amount of time learning how to build a business by being the number one, number two, or the sidekick to the person that's doing it.They've got to learn the category really well. They have a ton of insights, and they might be thinking, well, my next role is to sort of be the number two. Invariably though, based on that experience, they have strong points of view about what's missing from the market. They just had to do it. And they have all the experience of an experience founder, and I'd like to almost always pull those people in and have them think about what it might look like if they were in a leadership chair.Brian Ardinger: In that particular environment, are founders coming to you with an idea or a series of ideas that they want to explore? Or are they coming to you saying, hey, what do you know out there? What are you seeing from an opportunity perspective? And I'll sift through that and pick one that might resonate with me. Or what's that, I guess, spectrum of coming in with an idea versus coming in with a blank slate.Maisha Leek: it's a mix of both. The last like profile of somebody who might come to us as like an entrepreneur, someone who's been inside a big company, and they're always the first task with standing up the new thing. And so, you're hearing the mechanics like that folks have internalized. To your point about ideas, it depends on the studio, right? But I've seen folks come in with a strong point of view. I know exactly what I want to build. I know exactly the problem I want to address. Sometimes that's exciting. Sometimes that's problematic. Our process in the early days is designed to tear your idea apart. And so, if you're wedded to it, it can be a bit challenging.And then folks that don't have an idea, I've spent time with a number of business designers helping them think through the problem that they're really excited about and pulling out the thread that might be the one that we want to dig into. The trick of all of that in terms of founders is like, you should have a strong point of view about a problem space. You don't have to have the idea fully formed. So, you should know I'm fired up about logistics. I've spent 10 years as like the head of business development here and I really want to pull this apart. I have less experience than that, but I have actively been tinkering. Because I think that this problem that I've experienced is really a challenge. Those are the best people. They're ready to go. They've got a chip on their shoulder and something that they want to address. And Venture studios a really great place for them. Brian Ardinger: Yeah. I often talk to founders and that, and like you want to find those founders that want to spend time with that problem and or customer segment because not necessarily having a solution around it, but you know, they know they're going to be spending 5, 7, 10 years of their lives. You want to get up every day focused on that and really digging into it versus, I'm just chasing the next greatest trend because it sounds like the next thing to do. Maisha Leek: Fastest way to burn yourself out or to get frustrated really quickly. Because we're talking about years and years of your life. You got to love the problem or the customer.Brian Ardinger: You mentioned on the corporate entrepreneur side of things, and have you seen different flavors of this Venture Studio model being deployed, I guess within a company versus externally Forum Ventures? Maisha Leek: I have, yeah. I have a ton of friends that are leading innovation teams inside big companies, and they frequently connect up with Venture Studios primarily because we can help them move faster. Internally for the corporates, what can be an amazing opportunity can also be your challenge. The innovate team, is a great opportunity to build against the problems either facing the business internally, like so you're building for inefficiencies within the business, and you want to build tools, services, platforms, whatever.And then some who are only thinking externally around mark, market cap or market share. It's like, all right, we are really tight with these customers. We want to expand to these others. Let's build out small brands that can go help us expand our reach, essentially. And the challenge for folks inside a highly matrixed organization that are building a studio or building an innovation team is really like who amongst your colleagues can actually play in that sandbox?It's not always what you think. They are of the generals. The guys and gals who've been around the company forever. They know where all the bodies are buried. The new sandbox has switched on. They're like, great. I want to jump in there and play. They're the deal maker inside the company. Not always. They're great, right? But not always the profile, the founder you want to look for. You're really looking for folks that really are ambitious about standing up something new. Are great storytellers inside the company but aren't wedded to company culture in a way that will slow them down. There are a ton of tricks for leaders of innovation teams that are internal on how to draw those people in and protect yourself from the rest. That's a story for another time. Brian Ardinger: The other topic I want to dig into, obviously venture studios require money or capital and, and they differ than a traditional, I guess, fund investment and that. Can you talk about the Venture Studio model from the investor side. And why that particular path versus, I guess, a traditional fund. And what's different and, and what's good or bad about the different approaches?Maisha Leek: Like I've heard people describe it a few ways. Some LPs describe it as like investing into an index fund. When you get a batch of companies at a cheaper rate. That's fine. Feels a little off brand. I think that for investors in large part, the value is that you get a de-risk asset faster and equity in that de-risk asset cheaper than you would finding a company on your own.And so, I find that LP is into venture studios have been brought along on that narrative journey. They can see the numbers. I mean, Venture Studios at this point have so much track record. I mean, we're perhaps like maybe 20 years in in terms of Venture Studios being around. Don't quote me on that. And essentially the track record, you know, suggests right that companies that come out of venture studios have like a 30% higher success rate than the ones that are stood up on their own.They return to fund faster, they have a 72% chance of raising their subsequent rounds C day and CB that, you know, all of the conditions are really right to make it something that's super, attractive as an investment. And investors into studios I think are, are dialed into that. And more and more now that more and more venture students are coming online across a series of categories.Brian Ardinger: Talk a little bit about how you see the Venture Studio, the life cycle of a company. So, if it's one thing, if you build it yourself and you go out and raise venture capital, you're building all your teams yourself, you're scaling it. Where in the Venture Studio model, obviously kickstart it and stand it up, does the company itself, when does it go on its own or does it continue with the studio or talk about those inflection points. Maisha Leek: Yeah, I think it's a, that's actually a strategic question for the studio, and also a good opportunity to provide advice to founders that might be listening in. Essentially, the best studios in my experience, have a time boxed plan for your journey. Doesn't have to be rigid. There's less likelihood of success when it's a sort of a meandering X metric that we'll move you through. I mean, really strong venture studios have a plan for after your company is built, the MVP, the number of people that you need on your team, how we're going to prepare you to go into the market to raise money, the number of customers we want you to have, and then move you through.Your question was about like what's the long tail of support? Really great Studios show up in the way that great funds would. Once you're a portfolio company, our interests are aligned with yours. We are a hundred percent dialed into your success. If you need something. Phone home kind of approach. And I think that having the staffing or the plan for that is really helpful for a founder to hear when they're evaluating venture studios that they might engage with.Right after I have my set of customers, after I've done my raise, what is our relationship going to be is the right question to ask there. But I've seen a range of folks on how they navigate that. Sometimes it's ad hoc, the GP is the only person interacting and sometimes it's, there's a real plan with a platform team that folks are tapping into as they're on their growth journey.Brian Ardinger: What are you excited about? Are the particular trends or the particular things that you're really digging into in 2023 and beyond? Maisha Leek: Yeah. I am personally super excited about logistics and transportation. I think that personally that it's an exciting moment for a few reasons. One, the technology allows us to do this more efficiently than we ever had. The migratory patterns that we saw post covid are pretty fascinating. We once had Class A, class B, class C cities. It's sort of turned that entire dynamic on its head. It's sending people your way, Brian. Brian Ardinger: Exactly. Maisha Leek: Yeah, and I love that. I don't know what that means, but I love it. I'm very excited about it. From a macro perspective, you know. I'm a millennial, right? So, this is like, I guess the fourth or fifth global crisis that I've lived through. What's really exciting about that, to the degree that can be exciting, is I think that folks are in a very salt of the earth, meat and potatoes way, rethinking their relationship with work and their responsibility for their own careers and lives.And I think it's going to lead not surprisingly to a surge of people starting their own businesses because they want to be, they want to take ownership right for their futures. And I'm really excited about that. I also think that the conversations that younger generations, gen Z, for example, are having around work, will lead to hopefully the resurgence of labor unions.I think that there is a period of time where we sort of walked away from that because you know, the worker and the employer were really at a better eye to eye level sense. I think that we're seeing a lot of the convulsions out of the tech sector teach us that that's not the case. And we do need a fair arbiter to make that work.I come from a long line of union workers. And so, in the venture world, I'm excited that venture studios are no longer taboo. I was mentioning earlier when I first told people I worked at Venture Studios, they were like, oh, it's not a fund. And now all, every day I hear somebody talking about getting into the space. I think that's great. I think Venture Studios will be the really strong gateway to capture those other three trends that I mentioned. You know, people are reconsidering their relationship with work, their expectations of what good company stewardship have changed, and just our needs from an infrastructure perspective have shifted because our behavior and venture studios are going to be best suited to dig into those problems and questions for us. So that's what I'm really excited about. We'll see, I'll watch this back in five years and see if I was right about anything. For More InformationBrian Ardinger: I'm excited about it because anybody who can help move ideas faster into the ether and create value along that way, that's what we're all about. So, I'm excited to hear your journey in the future. And in the interim, if people want to find out more about yourself or about Forum Ventures, what's the best way to do that? Maisha Leek: I am hyperactive on LinkedIn and getting more and more active every day. Definitely DM me. Definitely reach out. I'm also an angel investor. I'm standing up a syndicate in the next little bit here. I'm really, really, really obsessed with small businesses and founders. I mean, my family has come from five generations of entrepreneurs. It's really game changing work, and I'd love to be a part of that. So hit me up there. Brian Ardinger: Excellent. Well, Maisha, thank you again for being on Inside Outside Innovation. Looking forward to continuing the conversation and best of luck. Maisha Leek: Thank you, Brian.Brian Ardinger: That's it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. If you want to learn more about our team, our content, our services, check out InsideOutside.io or follow us on Twitter @theIOpodcast or @Ardinger. Until next time, go out and innovate.FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER & TOOLSGet the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HEREYou can also search every Inside Outside Innovation Podcast by Topic and Company.  For more innovations resources, check out IO's Innovation Article Database, Innovation Tools Database, Innovation Book Database, and Innovation Video Database.  

Rory Felton has spent most of his past two decades in music being pro-artist. He developed talent and sold millions of records under his Militia Group label that he co-founded and eventually sold to Sony. In the early days of social media, Rory worked with Top 40 artists and majors to monetize on these new platforms. That's why it was ironic that Rory was recently criticized for being anti-artist. Rory founded HitPiece two years ago. HitPiece is an NFT marketplace focused solely on music collections. While in beta earlier this year, unauthorized NFTs from big-name artists became available for purchase on HitPiece. HitPiece was hit with wide-spread backlash from artists, the RIAA, and many others for copyright infringement. The company quickly went dark while the team recalibrated its business.Months later, HitPiece has now re-launched. This time with strictly-authenticated collections on-site from rising artists like ATL Jacob, Pyrex Whippa, and proven commodities such as Rick Ross. A metaverse add-on is also in the works to virtually display purchased NFTs. In many ways, the industry-wide blowback changed both Rory and HitPiece. The company's intent has stayed consistent from the get-go: to make NFTs easy for both artists and fans.Rory joined me on the show to cover what went wrong with HitPiece earlier this year, why this relaunch is different, and the opportunities and challenges NFTs have inside the music industry. Here's everything we covered:[2:58] Rory's two decades in the industry pre-HitPiece[6:07] “Best time in human history to be an artist” [9:19] What went wrong with HitPiece's beta release[13:33] Re-gaining industry trust after the backlash [16:22] Did HitPiece consider rebranding?[19:12] How HitPiece built a collection with rising star ATL Jacob[20:27] Web3 co-existing with industry, not replacing it[27:34] Building out a music-centric metaverse [33:32] How HitPiece will compete against Facebook, Opensea, and other big players[35:57] Types of NFT collections on HitPiece[39:00] How to win the music industry in 2022 and onward [43:17] HitPiece plans for 2023Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuests: Rory Felton, @Roryfelton Sponsors: MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop's biggest players by reading Trapital's free weekly memo.TRANSCRIPTION[00:00:00] Rory Felton: We think this space is for everyone. And we think that the smallest artists on the planet can actually benefit from Web 3.0 in a way that maybe streaming isn't changing the game for them right now. For instance, we've worked with baby developing artists that are making more money from Web 3.0 in one launch of an NFT collection than they would over two to three months from streaming. In general, we all think music's the coolest thing in the world. And so we want to revalue it in a way that maybe NFTs allow us to that technology hasn't enabled in the past.[00:00:40] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level. [00:00:60] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is Rory Felton. He is the co-founder and CEO of HitPiece, a company that's bringing artists and fans together through NFTs in real life experiences, metaverse experiences and more. HitPiece is one of our sponsors this quarter for Trapital, and I wanted to have this conversation because Rory and HitPiece have had a very interesting past couple of months. Back in February, they launched a platform, but there was a ton of controversy surrounding it because a lot of artists had their music and their NFTs for sale on the platform without their consent, and understandably so, it created a bunch of frustration and news around some of the consent around NFTs, some of the perception around the space overall and how that impacted Rory and the team. So in this conversation, we talked about it. We talked about how that happened, why it happened, and what Roy and the team are doing now moving forward for that not to happen in the future. And then we talked about what does HitPiece look like now moving forward, what are the opportunities more broadly for Web 3.0 companies in music, what are some of the challenges, what are some of the artists that they're working with now, like ATL Jacob, who just signed with Republic Records. So we talked about that, and Rory has a ton of experience in the music industry, even before HitPiece. So we talked about how that shapes his current strategy and what he thinks successful look like, not just for HitPiece, but for the overall industry moving forward. Great conversation and tons of insights, and especially for a lot of the founders that have built stuff messed up and want to hear what it's like to keep things going. This is a good one to listen to. Here's my chat with Rory. [00:02:39] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we are joined by Rory Felton, who is the co-founder and CEO of HitPiece. But before we talk about HitPiece or anything like that, I know you've worked in music for a number of years and you've had a few different hats in this industry. What attracted you to the space early on? [00:02:58] Rory Felton: Oh, man. So when I was 15, I started playing music and I learned pretty quickly that I really couldn't write songs very well. So when I was 16, I started putting on local shows for artists booking regional acts, and that naturally turned into putting out records for artists. And in the nineties, we were manufacturing CDs, so I actually learned the process of printing, shipping it to a factory, calling distributors, trying to get them to ship out our CDs to retailers. And that's how I started. In 2000, I moved out to LA to go to school at SC, was a little bored and started another record label. Our first few records did quite well. I think our first record almost went gold, and so that created enough revenue to really fund the company and grow that record label. And for the next 10 years, we ended up selling millions of records. I developed dozens of artists, felt really proud of what we accomplished. Sony Music later invested in the company and later acquired the major artists that I worked And I took a breather for a moment because working with artists can be a lot of work and can be emotional and and challenging in so many ways, but also fun and exciting. And I ended up finding a real passion for the technology side of the music industry. I really wanted to have sort of a macro impact on the industry in helping artists create new technologies to connect with their fan base, develop new business models. And I saw, sort of saw the old record company structure or record deal structure is sort of a little bit antiquated, and there are so many technologies here that could allow artists to directly connect with their fans and connect and create new and unique revenue streams. And so I spent several years in the early 2010s helping top 40 artists sell music and merchandise in stream on social media like Gaga, Green Day, Snoop Dog, Tim McGraw, A$AP Rocky, all the major labels. And I did a couple years overseas on a volunteer trip and then came back to the music space really on artist management initially, but also in blockchain. I bought Bitcoin in 2014 and was always really curious about blockchain's application to the music space. And in 2018 I co-wrote a white paper on digital collectibles for artists and could not get anyone's attention back then on this space and the idea of fans buying digital merchandise from artists and connecting with them and the idea of an artist creating a layer of community ownership and what they were doing. And then obviously fast forward a couple of years, the NFT space, that specific protocol has really taken off four creatives and four artists. And I decided to jump in full time to apply this innovation to the music industry 'cause I saw so many opportunities for artists to take advantage of it.[00:05:43] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And one thing there before we get to the HitPiece part of it where you are today, selling your record label and everything there to Sony, what is it like watching the current movement now with other record labels being bought up by other record labels, especially the majors or just some of the catalog purchases there? Because I'm sure you did this in a very different market than what we're seeing now. [00:06:07] Rory Felton: Yeah, so a lot of people don't remember this, but in 2006 to like 2011, it was really hairy for the record industry. There were a lot of unknowns. Downloading was here, digital like iTunes and its competitors, however, streaming as a paid streaming format really hadn't taken off or really been fully established. And so you had these massive problems still with file sharing and people just assuming music was free, right? And just downloading it without paying for it from all sorts of websites. And so there was this moment, an era where like, gosh, golly, we don't know if these major labels are really going to figure it out. And kudos to them, they struck some really savvy deals and made streaming something that really, really worked. So today's era has been amazing. I get really excited for artists that are able to have huge liquidity opportunities if they've built a catalog over their lifetime. And then also I get really excited just as more opportunities to finance your career than there ever have been. You can now borrow against your catalog. You can borrow against your master rights or publishing rights to fund something you want to do moving forward. You could never do that 10 or 15 years ago. So you have players like that in this space. You have distributors in this space, almost playing like record labels and advancing monies to artists, but allowing artists to keep their masters. And then you have record labels sort of playing as distributors. And so you have all these middle men kind of playing as different roles. And I think it's great 'cause artists have more opportunity now than they've ever been. I've been saying this for a few years. It is the best time in human history to be a music artist. It was so hard in the nineties and so hard in the early 2000s to stand out, and now even though we are in some economic challenges right now, and just the macro economy, it's still really the best time in human history to be a music artist. [00:07:59] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think that's generally where I land with this too. I know that there's a lot of people that have a bit of the nostalgia and yearning for being able to sell CDs and being able to make the money off of CDs, but it was still a market that had tons of gatekeepers. And even without Napster, I still think that there would be a lot of challenges 'cause there were a bunch of CD sales that were of bad catalog that weren't exactly of new things, but we could go all day talking about that. But it was a fascinating time for sure. But fast forwarding a few years though, with HitPiece, of course you have the idea and you see the opportunity to be able to make it easier for artists to monetize and take advantage of what's here. And I know that earlier this year, the launch day didn't go the way that you had wanted it to. And there was a lot of press and some negative things written about just the intent and where you all were trying to go. And I know that there are also a few artists too, whether it's like Jack Antonoff and a few others that had some complaints about how it went down and after reading a few of those, I definitely saw some of the responses and from your perspective as well, but I never really got a good, clear sense for what was the . Intent and what would this have looked like if the launch had went as well as it could have, so it'd be great to hear a little bit about that, because I feel that's the part that was a little bit missing in some of the discussions about what had happened. [00:09:19] Rory Felton: Yeah. So first and foremost, I really believe in innovation, and I really believe in enriching artists, and artists being able to control their music and what they're doing. And so we were looking at this space and thinking about like, man, if I put on my music fan hat, what's the ideal experience I want as a music fan? What would I love to have more than anything? And platforms like Spotify and Apple Music has sort of trained us to feel like everything could be in one place. And so we put together this idea to create an experiment where we tried to show artists and labels and rights holders, hey, this is what the future could look like. Here's sort of this private game experience that we think would be really fun to onboard a huge number of people into this space very quickly and create a massive revenue stream for artists and rights holders. And where we really messed up is we failed to put the proper guardrails around it to where too much of it was public too fast. And that was something that we definitely messed up with. We were having active discussions with hundreds of artists, managers, major record companies. We had showed them what we're doing. Hey, what do you think of this experience we're creating? And all the feedback that we received was highly positive. Everyone was really excited about this potential future for a platform that could turn on a whole new revenue stream for them without a lot of work. One thing I've experienced as a manager and a record company founder is that artists are so busy. They're in the studio making music all the time. They have to go on tour, they have to make content for social media all the time right now. They're so busy doing all these things you don't want to add just another thing to their plate. And so we've always tried to make it, what's the easiest way for them to onboard into a new space without having to create a huge amount of work for them? So that was our intent. Clearly, we failed to have the proper guard rails around it. And we took down the beta after a few weeks. And there were obviously some artists that expressed some frustration with it. And since then, we've had conversations with hundreds of artists and labels and managers and industry leaders, sharing with them how we feel about this space, what we think is coming, and the overall sediment has been really about excitement and enthusiasm. about what's coming in this space and the opportunities that are being created for artists and rights holders in this space. [00:11:39] Dan Runcie: Got it. So if I'm understanding correctly, it's like you were trying to show, okay, this is what it could look like. Let's give you an example of what this could look like. Like, if your Taylor Swift, like this is a type of revenue stream that you could unlock, but the presentation of it was more so, hey, here's where you can buy Taylor Swift's, you know, access to her likeness or access to her music. And you were trying to more so show a demo as opposed to an actual marketplace. Do I have that right? [00:12:07] Rory Felton: Yeah, it was definitely a live demo. There was no music used on the website. As a music rights holder myself, as someone that's worked with artists for decades, we would never utilize music in a way that was infringing on their rights or unapproved in any way. And that's something that I think really got lost in the storm of it all is the fact that there was no music on the website. We had some marketing language on the website, and again, we've looked at this as a beta experiment for a small audience. It was by no means built or intended to be exposed to the world at large. But we did have some language on the website that was not fully fleshed out at the time, again, like many beta experiments are. [00:12:49] Dan Runcie: So was part of it also as well that the beta was meant to be a bit of a closed opportunity, but then it leaked, or then it got out? [00:12:58] Rory Felton: It was public and that was an error on our end. You know, we failed to have the guardrails built around to cut off certain sections or functions of the website that shouldn't have been made public.[00:13:08] Dan Runcie: Got it. Okay. So since then, how has it been having a lot of these conversations? 'cause obviously you were able to drum up a bunch of support leading up to February and you still had plenty of connections now with artists that we'll get into soon. But what was it like having those conversations, whether it's with labels or others where you're trying to communicate not just what happened but also build up a bit of trust given the impact?[00:13:33] Rory Felton: Yeah. What we found is that, well, having been in this industry for two decades, I have a huge number of relationships from, you know, the tops of the major record companies, major publishers to many, many, many managers of both developing artists and some of the biggest artists in the world. And they know me, right, so they knew my heart, they knew where I was coming from, and I just was able to be honest with them, and say, look, we moved a little too fast here. We built this product a little too fast without fully flushing out where we should put certain guardrails in place, and the response was, hey, look, we get it, no problem. We're looking for solutions in this space. We need easy ways to launch collections to audiences that might want to be interested in this. And right now everything on the market feels a little too complicated, right? NFTs and Web 3.0, it feels nerdy and it feels complex. And I think a lot of the early people in this space may have made it that way on purpose so that there feels like there's a level of like seniority or gatekeeping to it. And we've approached this and been like, no, this is actually pretty simple. This is actually making what has existed in the world of music already, such as VIP experiences, and fan clubs, and even, like, DRM music, and it's creating it on a layer of new technology that actually gives more ownership to fans and actually deepens relationships between artists and fans. And so that response has been really exciting and I think that's what's contributed to us being able to onboard the large volume of artists that we have onboarded so far and continue to have exciting conversations every single day with folks across this space. [00:15:14] Dan Runcie: Have there been any lingering impacts since then? Like, obviously there's the initial response and things have happened. But since you've relaunched. And it does seem like, as you mentioned, you still are stable of artists and there are a bunch of folks that you're working with but are there any lingering impacts from what had happened? [00:15:30] Rory Felton: I would say there's probably still some artists that just don't want to have anything to do with the NFT space. I think that in general, there's still a lot of misunderstanding around what Web 3.0 is and what it can enable, and there seems to, generally speaking, a level of negative sentiment towards NFTs in some categories of the music industry. But that seems to be sort of a blanket feeling or sentiment towards NFTs, not necessarily what we're doing.[00:15:58] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I've heard that from, was just talking to a few people about this earlier this week, and we've heard it as well, just the polarizing nature of it that's bigger than HitPiece. And I think it's something for a lot of companies to navigate, but it's not necessarily at one company itself. But, I guess, leading up to the relaunch recently, were there any talks at all about rebranding or anything like that? 'Cause obviously I know that staying with the name is also a statement in itself. [00:16:22] Rory Felton: Yeah, clearly, we thought about every sort of path we could take. You know, we even thought like, do we want to do this? Like, is this worth the battle, right? And what we decided at the end of the day was, look, some folks thought we were doing something we were not doing at all. Our intent was completely misconstrued, and we felt like if we were to shut it all down and say, you know, good night. It's almost like the people that were creating this narrative would've won or that narrative would've become true, right? In our hearts, in our feeling, and everyone at the company that's at the company that was experienced all that, we all felt together, like, look, this isn't what we are doing. This isn't what we're all about. Like, we should stick with it and see this through because we felt like the brand was now very well known for better or worse, and it's up to us to sort of, to see it through and show to the world that, no, this isn't what we were trying to do. We're actually making something amazing, we think, for artists and so far, in the collections that we've launched has done really well for the artists that we've worked with. So that's what led to our decision to stick with the brand and keep going. We could have posited to a whole other brand, but everyone would just say, oh, those are the same folks that did this. So what would be the point of that? Because it's still me. Unlike a lot of people in this space, I've never been anonymous, right? I've always been completely public with who I am. HitPiece was on my LinkedIn, on my branding since early last year. I didn't hide from any of this. I engaged with anyone that wanted to have a conversation and still will. So it's not in our nature to hide or to run away. We think that Web 3.0 is still a huge game changer for both developing and establishing artists, and we want to provide incredible solutions for artists. [00:18:10] Dan Runcie: And what was the hardest part for you personally during all of this, as the founder, as the leader of the organization, but also as a human being dealing with the fallout and just trying to keep things moving?[00:18:22] Rory Felton: Oh gosh. I think for a little bit, like, you know, personally I'm a father. I'm a husband, and so for me, it's just not letting what some people in social media or in the media might say about me impact who I know I am and who I am to my family. First and foremost, that's always most important to me. So that was probably the biggest challenge and, you know, clearly, it's not something that we wanted to happen, but we're really excited and bullish on the future right now. [00:18:48] Dan Runcie: For sure. And I think you have a lot of reasons, too. One of the artists that you have, ATL Jacob recently signed a deal with Republic Records. And I think he's someone who's definitely been rising quite a bit, and I assume that's a partnership that you are able to land in the most recent months. So what did that look like and what has it been like working alongside someone like him and then seeing the growth continue?[00:19:12] Rory Felton: Yeah, Jacob was amazing. We are so blessed to really have just the perfect time to connect and meet him and hear about what he thought about this space, and what he wanted to do, and had that sort of build a collection together that really made sense for his brand and offer value to his super fans that really you can't get any other way. And so that's what we're really excited about. We, of course, knew he was in conversations with major labels at the time and knew something would happen in that space. We just feel honored and privileged that we get to be his partner for Web 3.0 because he's clearly an incredible talent that's had huge success on the producing side in the last couple of years, and I think we're going to see him break out as an artist over the next year and reach completely new milestones as well in his career.[00:19:57] Dan Runcie: And what was it like for what he was able to do specifically on HitPiece? 'Cause I think a lot of people that see artists, they understand what it's like to be on a major label, but from an economic standpoint, like what they were able to do with a platform like yours, there still is a bit of questions, and this honestly may lead to some of the confusion some artists may have about NFTs, Web 3.0 in general, so obviously you may not be able to share all the details, but, like, what did things look like for him right now with what you've all been able to work on and what he's released, and what that ends up looking like for him? [00:20:27] Rory Felton: Yeah, so he's building a beautiful collection of art that's going to be completely collectible, and those tokens will be connected to incredible in real-life experiences. So some of those tokens can be redeemed for a studio session with ATL Jacob. So rather than, typically in the music industry, right, you have to go through a manager or you have to go through a record company. You have to go through gatekeepers to get to someone on Jacob's level. Here we're saying, no, let's break down all the barriers and say, actually through Web 3.0, you can have an incredible experience, and you could work with, you know, a producer that spends six months at the number one rap producer chart on Billboard. Like, you can actually work with them and make a record together, right? Experiences like that we think are incredible, exclusive merchandising items. And being able to essentially build a really connected VIP club of sorts that will get you access to experiences, to events, to really in- person, one on one time with these artists and producers that people love. You know, this is what I think Web 3.0 is all about. It's creating experiences that are unparalleled in other parts of the music industry. [00:21:40] Dan Runcie: So given those experiences, and I think those are definitely things that fans and everything value and things that he could likely build a career standalone on. Is there any particular question or thought about when an artist-producer like him goes in, does a deal with a major label as a bit of it like, oh, well why did you need to do that? Like, you could have continued working here, like, part of the promise is getting more inherent value for the work itself. Was there any tension there at all with him or even with some of the other artists? [00:22:11] Rory Felton: No, because every artist is different, and every artist gets different types of opportunities. And to me, Web 3.0 is not about being in Web 3.0 only and forgetting about the rest of the industry. It's not like you release your content or your music only as NFT and you don't do streaming, right? It's not like you do that only and you don't go on tour, or you don't sync your music to film and TV, or you don't do brand partnerships. It's just one part of the bigger puzzle of connecting with fans and connecting with bigger audiences. I think this huge opportunity for artists to connect with fans through Web 3.0 while also doing partnerships on the record side that they want to do that work best for them and their brand. For Jacob specifically, he has a whole record label, Wicked Money Family, that he can do. He can sign new artists, too, and they all can go through this bigger system. That's not something that not every artist can just do on their own, right, being able to plug into a bigger system is great for him. What it does do is it may limit what type of content an artist can mint as an NFT on their own, such as if you're in an exclusive recording contract, it may limit or prohibit what specifically you can do with music. But those are always open discussions, and every single recording contract is unique and specific and different, and provide artists and labels with all sorts of different rights.[00:23:35] Dan Runcie: Got it. So for someone like him, and I guess as well thinking about how you're building the business, I do feel like your stance essentially is that a company like HitPiece can work, and they don't necessarily have to be exclusively here. They could work with majors, they could work with others. Do you feel like that mentality is similar to other founders you may talk to in Web 3.0 or with NFTs? Because some of the folks I talk to, there's a bit more of that dogmatic approach where the purpose of our platform is that you don't need to do that. [00:24:08] Rory Felton: Yeah. So first and foremost, every partnership we have with an artist is non-exclusive. They could do a collection with us and go to a collection with anyone else or on their own using their own software at any time. That's something that I believe in. I believe in, like, we're not here to be an exclusive partner in any way. So I believe in artist freedom. Artists should have the freedom to do a record deal if they want to. Artists should also have the freedom to say, hey, look, I'm going to stay independent. I'm going to build up a balance sheet of masters and publishing that I own, and I'm going to leverage that in the way that I want to. I think every path is different for each artist and some work for others, and some don't work for others. And I've seen artists stay independent, build balance sheets of masters, and publish they own, and be tremendously successful. They build these multimillion-dollar businesses that they can operate and function like their own business. And then at the same time, that can just build up their leverage for if a major label wants to do a deal with them, they're saying, hey, look, my business is already doing millions of dollars a year. If you want to be in business with my business, you've gotta make it worth my while. To me, it's about, I think Web 3.0 increases leverage for artists if they embrace it and engage that community. But by no means would I look at it as a dogmatic Web 3.0 anti-record company approach. I don't think that's it at all. I think we're already seeing major labels enter Web 3.0 and allow their artists to try things in Web 3.0 that I think is really exciting. And every conversation I have with major labels and people at those companies is it's curiosity, it's intriguing, it's fun. They are by no means looking at it as a do-or-die or like you said, a dogmatic approach. I come from the music industry. I think maybe some other founders in this space don't have two decades of music experience, and so they're wanting to disrupt an industry that they think needs disruption. Whereas I know all these, all my friends that work at labels or at management companies, I mean, they bleed for artists. They put their heart and soul into trying to break new artists, and these are the people you want to be a part of your business, right? You don't want to just alienate them and cut them off. That being said, historically, some record deals have been a little unfair for the artists, right? And I'm not trying to say that that's not the case, but I think innovation like Web 3.0 is continuing to increase artist leverage and continuing to give them more options. More options is really what it's all about. [00:26:42] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I think even the point that you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, just your stance on streaming itself and what it unlocked for the business, that is a bit more of that holistic perspective as opposed to some others that, you know, I think the belief that music should have inherent value, which it should. I think it's a bit of that dichotomy, and to be honest, you hear less of that from the record labels with, most of the time, it maybe from some of the founders and folks outside of the industry. But it's a fascinating time. It's a fascinating time. And I know that with you, you're not just thinking about NFTs and things minting for HitPiece, you're also having a metaverse, you have the Lounge and having that as an opportunity for artists, and I know that's something that's continuing developing as well. What does that look like and what does that opportunity look like for artists? [00:27:34] Rory Felton: Yeah, so one, we realized there's a small but growing population of people that love to collect music as NFT format. I think of NFT as it applies to audio music as a new format, just like there was vinyl, there was downloads, there was streaming. NFT is sort of a new type of format for music, and there wasn't really a centralized place to play all your music. There are a couple of apps butting up that allow you to sort of plug into your wallet and play your music collection. We wanted to create a space that allowed a collector to display NFTs that they're collecting from music artists on the wall, but also put them on a record shelf if they're music NFTs and allow people, allow them to come in and play their own music, allow other people to come into a fans room and play their music. I've seen that a lot of these metaverse spaces that fans are using to share their NFTs are almost like part business card part, like, showing off and bragging to their friends and their community what they own, what they collect. It reminds me a lot as being a teenager of collecting CDs and records that were hard to find from really, really new artists and sort of bragging with your friends that you got to them earlier than they did. And we wanted to sort of mimic this experience in a really cool, beautiful, metaverse space and also be a space that artists could brand and create their own version of, as well as invite their VIP community to be a part of, be it virtual record listening parties or virtual tour kickoffs where they could display or present new music. One functionality we have that artists are taking advantage of is token-gated releases. So they might release regular releases like they always do but put out maybe a limited edition mixtape that is only available to people who buy an NFT to access it. And so you go into the Lounge, our system reads that you have that NFT in your wallet and it unlocks access to music that you wouldn't otherwise have. That doesn't just have to be music. It can be all sorts of content. So the idea is you're rewarding your most engaged community token holders with really cool experiences. We speak with artists that want to create experiences that get updated every single month, so keeps fans coming back to this space that they almost treat like a social media platform or like a website, but the artist gets to control it entirely themselves.[00:29:58] Dan Runcie: I feel like the fan piece of this is the unique piece of this, and I know that's a bit of the broader conversations that people have had about the metaverse, but being able to have that type of way to actually physically show what you have, and I think this is a piece that was missing a bit from, I'll call it the first stage of the NFT boom, right? We saw a lot of people changing their profile picks, but ultimately, how do you create the opportunity for people to have some type of visual that you can see, right? Like, people are buying vinyls right now. People want to be able to have those vinyls visible or no different than buying DVDs or VHS tapes back in the day. Part of it was the medium itself, but you also, it was a statement of who you are. Having some type of collection that can show that I think it's valuable, plus all of the exclusive perks that they can get from their favorite artist or from their type of experiences. I do think that that is something that a lot of fans would value, assuming that it can be somewhere where the people that they want to see those things also are engaged in.[00:30:59] Rory Felton: Yeah, we see there's millions of people around the world that build up massive record collections on their wall. And when you go into their house, it's often the main feature of their house is their record collection. And oftentimes, that's tied to a really high-end audio system as well, depending on where you're at and your lifestyle, right? And we wanted to sort of create that experience for anyone or everyone in the metaverse space. And so that's what the Lounge is built around, is sort of to cater to that type of collector, if you will. I think we're still very early in the Web 3.0 NFT space, clearly with where the economy's at. I think we're going to start to see some huge growth over the next year or two, but we wanted to build these tools now for people so that when more and more people start to come into this space every month, every quarter, they're already ready for them to sort of plug into. And in fact, in a certain sense, it provides more utility for all NFTs. So you could buy music NFTs anywhere you want to on the internet and be able to pull them into this Lounge space we've created for them to perform, to play, and to share with their friends and their community.[00:32:05] Dan Runcie: So this leads me to the age-old question I'm sure every venture capitalist asks at some point, how do you compete this against Facebook or Meta and their offering to eventually try to do this similar type of thing? But obviously, you have a more of a specific community. But I do know that with a lot of the different types of metaverse experiences, that type of thought is something that's likely in the back of the minds for a lot of founders.[00:32:30] Rory Felton: I think that there's clearly dozens of metaverse spaces that already exist. We're not necessarily looking to create an entire universe. We just want to create experiences and artist-branded experiences. And I think potentially we see a future where these artist-branded virtual slash metaverse experiences can be interoperable with a metaverse space that Meta is building or with the other ones that exist right now, such as Sandbox and Decentraland. We, of course, being a blockchain-based company, we believe in decentralization. We think that that's a value to be recognized and to be held up. And so if we continue to see other metaverse spaces built on the same or similar blockchains, I think we're going to see them be interoperable in new ways that may currently just not exist yet. [00:33:22] Dan Runcie: And would the same type of logic apply as well for the marketplace that you all have, given folks like OpenSea or some of the other broader platforms? [00:33:32] Rory Felton: So our big differentiator from a platform like OpenSea is we only allow authenticated artists to mint NFTs in our platform. One of the big challenges I see with some of the secondary-focused NFT marketplaces is that it's a wild west still. There's an insane amount of content that infringes on other people's rights that use all sorts of artists' name, image, like this audio without any sort of permission, right? And unlike a lot of people in this space or some people in this space, we actually believe in copyright. We think that's really valuable for artists and artists investors, and we really wanted to make sure that we prevent it as much as possible, people minting content that they didn't control through our platform. And so when fans or collectors come to HitPiece.com, they can feel assured that everything on our platform is authentic, is real, is coming from the artist that says it's coming from. And that's also why we were the first NFT company to integrate with Audible Magic. Audible Magic allows us to scan every single piece of audio file that gets uploaded to HitPiece to be minted as an NFT. And we test that against their massive database of over a hundred million songs to see if that song has been registered previously or as a copyrighted work from a record company or an artist. And we've already been able to say, hang on, that song's copyright. We need to confirm whether this artist actually controls the copyright of this audio file. And so we want to make sure that only the authenticated parties, the owners of works are actually able to mint NFTs of their creative content through HitPiece. So that's a big difference I see versus like the secondary markets of the world. But we also think ours is a little bit more just music-focused, right? Music NFTs are a little different than PFP projects or artwork NFTs, and so it really requires a different experience than maybe what some of the secondary markets that appeal to every one offer, if that makes sense.[00:35:31] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that makes sense. And I assume that some of the guardrails there to make sure that things are authenticated, to make sure it has the right copyright and licensing, also tie back to ensuring that what had happened back in February doesn't happen again. So part of that authentication, I'm sure likely may slow down some of the process, but it is how you ensure that everything that is there and what is transparent and seen is ultimately what you're trying to actually sell. [00:35:57] Rory Felton: Yeah. I don't think an experience that we've built, that you can go to HitPiece.com and see right now really exists anywhere else, and we've really tried to focus on making, one, authenticated protecting rights holders. And two, just make it super simple and easy for both artists who are new to this space that may not fully understand all the language and this new terminology that's come around, make it super easy for them to create their own collections and start minting NFTs with their creative content. And then also just make it super easy for music fans, you know, that haven't purchased an NFT to be able to collect one. I would say that really a small, small number of music fans overall have still entered Web 3.0 or acquired an NFT, be it for free or purchase, and there's still a huge amount of education that platforms like ourselves need to do and others about how to onboard into this space.[00:36:52] Dan Runcie: So for you all, specifically, with the folks you have on board before and up to this point, is ATL Jacob, is he the most successful artist or the artist that's made the most money on the platform so far? [00:37:04] Rory Felton: So ATL Jacob's collection has not launched yet. We have launched a variety of collections from artists like Surf, and we have a couple of collections dropping tomorrow. This interview, of course, will be out after this date. From King Midas, who's a Baltimore artist, and from Pyrex Whippa, who's a multi-platinum producer slash artist, a part of the 808 Mafia. He's worked with artists like Future, Juice WRLD, DaBaby. And his collection also involves granting people rights to collaborate with him in the studio. Some actually get a limited-edition skateboard from him. And also some of them actually get a limited edition beat kit from him as well. So there's all these cool, both digital and in real-life experiences, tied to token ownership, which we believe in. [00:37:50] Dan Runcie: No, that's solid. [00:37:51] Rory Felton: But beyond those, we do have some other, like, multi-platinum slash diamond level music artists, Grammy-nominated artists that we're looking to announce really, really soon.[00:38:02] Dan Runcie: Any hints as to who they may be? [00:38:05] Rory Felton: I'll just say we have a lot of love for Atlanta. [00:38:08] Dan Runcie: Okay. [00:38:08] Rory Felton: Atlanta moves the culture. Atlanta's, like, where my heart is. I love going to Atlanta. I think everyone in Atlanta is just coming. Being in LA for 20 years, like Atlanta's so nice. You have that southern hospitality, but you have that hustle and that combination of both. Like, I just love being in Atlanta. I love the vibe of Atlanta. [00:38:25] Dan Runcie: All right. We'll definitely look out for that one, for sure. Thinking about the company and hearing how you're building it, though, it does make me think about this article that you had written a couple of years back. I think it was an article you posted on LinkedIn actually is like, How to Win the Music Industry of 2019-2025, and you're describing what the type of company would look like and what type of things they need to have in place. And now that we're a couple of years past that, what are you seeing in the industry now, and is there any specific company that you think is checking all those boxes? [00:39:00] Rory Felton: Oh, man. I think when I wrote that, it was one of those, like late night, man, why doesn't this company exist? You know, if I had a hundred million dollars, this is what I would do, right? And it's interesting, I see companies doing bits and pieces of that, and what's fascinating is like I sometimes forget that I published that article, and I've even had, you know, investors and venture capital people reach out, nothing to do with HitPiece. They're just really curious about what I wrote, and they're like, this is it. How do we do this? And it's been fascinating to see that piece impact, if you will. No one's doing all of that, but I'll gladly compliment folks that I think are moving in that direction. United Masters and what Steve Stoute built, I think, is incredible. If you would've told me several years ago that someone could enter the music distribution space with a similar offering to other platforms out there, I never would've thought someone could truly compete. But kudos to him and his team, they've completely proved me, and I'll think a lot of people wrong. They've made a huge impact in, again, creating more opportunities for artists who can own their own content and not necessarily feel like they're stuck to have to do the traditional record deal. I think what they're doing is pretty amazing. Let's see, who else? I got to give out props to Downtown Music Holdings group. I think they're doing a huge amount of innovation in this space, both on the record side, on the distribution side, and on the publishing side. I'm a huge fan of Songtrust and what they built and that offering. I tell every music artist to work with if they do not have a publishing deal, sign up with Songtrust. It's a super easy admin deal that just creates a great solution that captures money that you just cannot capture any other way. I try to tell every music artist, I'm like, look, if you're writing your own music, you're writing your own songs, you're not going to get all your money that's due to you, just through your PRO. Artists, unfortunately, they're so busy, so much going on, they don't fully understand that. And so it's, like, the artists that I've seen turn on to a platform like Songtrust, they've literally turned on five figures plus in revenue in a quarter because that money is just sitting there if they don't capture it, eventually just goes away, which is really sad. So those are my shout-outs. Those are companies that I think are doing it well. I think with that piece, if I were to critique it now, I think it's a little too broad. There's a little too much going on for one company to do. But I'm a big fan of companies that, you know, believe in artistic freedom and innovation and providing more tools and opportunities for artists while also actually creating real success for them.[00:41:26] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think what sticks out about those two companies is both the partnerships and the fact that there's, you know, overall companies that are tying both of them together, right? So United Masters is obviously tied to the work that Stoute had done with or is currently doing with Translation on the ad side. And then that also informs so many of the partnerships and just how he has been able to help think and expand things there. And then Downtown, specifically how they've been able to just reorganize a few of the things and then restructure to just understand, okay, what could that stack look like. What could it have to have all of these companies underneath, but in this way that feels practical, but not in this way of, you know, a company trying to check every box that's the hottest topic right now. [00:42:12] Rory Felton: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think companies are wise to, that are established in at scale. They're wise to take their time with Web 3.0 versus jump into it head-on per se. And I would encourage everyone to experiment. I think you can experiment in this space and try new things without having to go completely in. And of course, we're a great solution to experiment with. But there's clearly a variety of opportunities out there to do things. And quite frankly, no one knows exactly how the NFT innovation's going to be utilized in a few years from now, right? We have our hunch. We think it's going to be connected to real-life experiences and real amazing virtual experiences. However, I think there's all sorts of innovation that maybe hasn't even been created yet for its application, such as to ticketing and other categories as well. [00:43:05] Dan Runcie: Yeah, there's so much more to explore. We're still in the early innings with this. I'm excited to see what's next. But before we wrap things up, let's talk about what's next for you all. What does 2023 look like? What are the big things on the roadmap? [00:43:17] Rory Felton: Yeah, so as you mentioned, we've been building the Lounge metaverse space to connect artists and fans as well as give fans a great way to display and show off the collections that they own. So that's going to be launching soon. We clearly have some really amazing collections coming up from some really top-tier artists that we're excited to announce really soon as well. And then we fully built out now this completely self-service solution for independent artists to come in and start minting NFTs with their content. We haven't really focused on presenting that or pushing that yet to the independent community at scale. But that's something that we are looking forward to. We felt that it was best, hey, look, we want to establish that there is interest and demand for this space. That's why we focused on more established artists, artists with audiences initially, but really we think this space is for everyone. And we think that the smallest artists on the planet can actually benefit from Web 3.0 in a way that maybe streaming isn't changing the game for them right now. For instance, we've worked with baby developing artists that are making more money from Web 3.0 in one launch of an NFT collection than they would over two to three months from streaming. And I think this again goes back to humanity and society sort of revaluing music. In general, we all think music's the coolest thing in the world. We all think music is the most divine thing that we get to participate in as humans. And so we want to revalue it in a way that maybe NFTs allow us to that technology hasn't enabled in the past. And I think more than ever this concept of a thousand true fans is truer than ever, right, if an artist doesn't need to be a pop star to make a living. They really just need to cater to a niche of dedicated fans that love what they're doing. And NFTs and Web 3.0 really allow that artist to benefit from that type of model more than ever before. [00:45:08] Dan Runcie: I know. It's fascinating. It's an exciting time to see all the developments and what's going to come down the pipe for you all, what's going to come down for everyone else. It's going to be an exciting time. That's why so many of us are in this industry, right? But before we let you go though, where can people follow along with HitPiece if they want to stay and tap with what you have coming on, or if they want to follow along, where should they go?[00:45:28] Rory Felton: Yeah, so clearly you can go to HitPiece.com. You can just put in your email if you don't want to sign up yet and just follow updates from us on our email list. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @joinHitPiece. You can even follow me on Twitter or Instagram if you'd like, @RoryFelton. Everything's open and my life is really an open book for everyone.[00:45:48] Dan Runcie: Awesome. Thanks, Rory. This is great. Thanks for coming on. [00:45:51] Rory Felton: Thanks, Dan, for your time. We really appreciate it.[00:45:54] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

In this week's episode, we interview Stevo who talks about managing OG Parker, never getting tired of records going platinum, his love for Atlanta and more!Stevo is a music manager and A&R at United Masters. He could borderline run for Mayor given how well respected he is in the Atlanta community. Coming up in music without a mentor, Stevo truly embodies the slogan of his alma mater, Clark Atlanta: "Find a Way or Make One". He talks about how 2 of his producers, OG Parker and Romano, embrace the exact same attitude. It's no surprise they are behind some of today's biggest hits (Megan Thee Stallion, Dua Lipa, Chris Brown, Lil Baby, etc.).WATCH this episode on YouTube:https://youtu.be/MzJqJ9S2jskFOLLOW Stevo on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/stevozone4WATCH the music video for "Sweetest Pie" by Megan Thee Stallion & Dua Lipa (prod. OG Parker and Romano):https://youtu.be/K7JrX7PHGBEThe One More Time Podcast is hosted by H3NRY (music producer and mixing engineer) and Playback Ben (music manager and marketing consultant). We created the show to have genuine conversations with genuine people about music. It is a platform for people in the spotlight and those behind the scenes in music to tell the stories about where they've come from, where they're at, and where they're going.FOLLOW and TURN ON notifications to make sure you NEVER miss an episode!FOLLOW One More Time, H3NRY and Playback Ben:https://www.instagram.com/onemoretimecasthttps://www.instagram.com/h3nrywitha3https://www.instagram.com/playbackbenhttps://www.tiktok.com/@onemoretimecasthttps://www.tiktok.com/@h3nrywitha3https://www.tiktok.com/@playbackben

TikTok has reshaped the Internet in under a three-year span, but if its parent company, ByteDance, has its way, the platform's dominance is just getting started. This week I brought Stan founder Denisha Kuhlor back onto the show to discuss TikTok's ambitious plans for total media domination.In the past few months, TikTok has announced plans for several new features — each aimed at competing with current media giants such as Google, Spotify, and Ticketmaster. Features include extending video-length capacity to 10 minutes, the TikTok Music streaming service, better internal search capabilities, and a ticketing platform, among many others.Recent history in Western culture is not kind to companies trying to be an all-in-one platform. Google and Facebook stumbles come to mind. To predict how TikTok might fare, Denisha and I hit the new features point-by-point, weighing TikTok's advantages and disadvantages at breaking into each. Here's our main talking points: [0:50] TikTok's masterplan[7:02] Prediction: 10-minute-long TikTok videos[11:50] Prediction: TikTok music streaming service[15:43] Prediction: Enhanced TikTok search[22:00] Prediction: SoundOn music distribution[25:42] Prediction: In-app ticketing [29:46] Are consumers creator or platform loyal?[33:18] TikTok's impact on creator economy [37:22] TikTok's geopolitical issuesListen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuests: Denisha Kuhlor, @denishakuhlor  Sponsors: MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop's biggest players by reading Trapital's free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION[00:00:00] Denisha Kuhlor: It has become this trend where we have more affinity to the platform and the platform's ability to curate the content than some of these content creators themselves. And in a world where I think these content creators are so driven to following the algorithm and getting promoted by the algorithm, what they don't realize is kind of the uniformity in content that is created.  [00:00:30] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level. [00:00:50] Dan Runcie: All right. We're joined again today by Denisha Kuhlor, who is the founder and CEO of Stan. And today we're going to talk all about TikTok. And TikTok has been a topic I know you and I have talked about offline, we've both covered it and have our opinions on it, but I want to talk today about talk's grand plan to try to take over everything. Just to name a few headlines from the past couple of months, TikTok is planning to extend into 10-minute long videos. It is launching its own music distribution service called SoundOn. It filed a trademark for its own streaming service called TikTok Music. They are enhancing their search function to identify key terms. They're also adding in a text-to-image option as well so that people can start to do that. And it sounds like a lot, the company has grown quite a bit, so it's understandable. But do we think that TikTok is going to be able to do all of these things? What's your thought? [00:01:47] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. So TikTok's been really interesting to watch these last few months and honestly, really from inception, my initial hunch is that it's hard to do a lot of things well. And as TikTok grows and somewhat through replication and also a bit through innovation, I do think they're going to struggle to really get to scale for all the new features that they want to launch. [00:02:11] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think the tough thing with this, and it's something that has been ingrained with big tech companies for a while is when the big social network grows and they have this huge following. TikTok now is the fastest to reach 1 billion monthly active users. We can see the trajectory of it potentially getting to be as big as Facebook is now. And Facebook, of course, is another company that has tried and is still trying to do every possible thing under the sun. But I think the part that's important is there are a few examples when these companies have succeeded. Instagram copying Snapchat is of course the primary example that people often look back to, but more often than not, most of these attempts don't actually work that well. And one of the reasons they don't work as well is because they don't necessarily solve a true need that the core users are looking for to be solved from that app. And I think that's one of the important things about Instagram Story specifically because Instagram Stories copy Snapchat worked because Instagram already had a hub of influencers as its core users. And these core users wanted to be able to both post pictures, but they also didn't want to feel the pressure of needing to have this polished picture that was on their feed all of the time. So their thought was, okay, if they could copy this feed that they see Snapchat's doing, they already had the core users there and having something that's more ephemeral. It can go away in 24 hours was perfect. It worked as good as you could probably expect it to. And honestly, it worked better than Snapchat because Instagram already had the home base of those core users whereas Snapchat, at the time, they had a bit of penetration from Gen Z, a bit of DJ Khaled here and there, but it just wasn't to that same level. And I think when you look at a lot of the other attempts that Facebook has tried to copy from others and even Instagram as well with seeing with Reels, that's the piece that I go back to. If these successes and these copycat attempts haven't worked, it's usually because there's some type of disconnect between what the core users on that app are looking for and whether or not that new feature helps them do that.[00:04:23] Denisha Kuhlor: Totally. And I think it creates a culture even internally for these organizations of duplication versus innovation, right? So now you see these organizations going and seeking the desire to duplicate and get to market as quickly as possible, whereas before they had no choice but to be innovative. And to do that, I think they really had to listen to their users and the folks on the app. So it also just even changes, in a way, the culture of what the app is about because now folks are so used to see or expecting to see things that have already been done before, rather than excitement towards really where the platform could take things. [00:05:01] Dan Runcie: Yeah, it's interesting because, on one hand, I do understand the aspect of copying what's already successful. You see it's there and you know that you have those users on your platform already. So why not make an attempt, why not use your resources, especially because of how much money these companies print on ads, then, yeah, you could take the chance with Google having its Google X or Facebook opening up its own VC firm or in many ways, treating all these new initiatives as its own VC firm. But to your point, you do lose the innovation and that's exactly why these apps became relevant in the first place. They offered something newer. They did it in a truly unique way. And when you think about why TikTok has blown up, the genius of it is that For You page. They made it so frictionless to be able to stay entertained, to scroll. You don't have to think about who to follow. You don't need to do any of those things. And that is its biggest strength, but I think it also makes it very challenging to have any type of new feature that is harder or requires more user- input or more activity than the mindless scrolling that has worked in its favor up to this point.[00:06:11] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I completely agree. I feel like the For You page really was the magic and to, in some ways, see them stray away from that, or even improving that in other ways does feel a little unfortunate. Some of the features that you listed, while exciting, I think are just not necessary in the sense that so many other folks are out there doing it. But it will be interesting to see how it fits within maybe the grand scheme or the grand vision for TikTok users and creators. I mean, when it comes down to maybe offering a more seamless experience, then it gets a little bit more interesting. But how big of a problem is that right now for creators, especially when you think about, like, some of the plays towards distribution and features around that? The problems don't seem prevalent enough to justify the investment. But maybe there's a grand vision within all of that, in which it makes more sense. [00:07:02] Dan Runcie: So let's break those down. Let's go through each of 'em. Let's start first with TikTok extending into 10-minute videos. I do feel like this is probably the least friction out of each of them, but what's your thought on this expansion and clearly a move to compete more directly with YouTube? [00:07:18] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I think this one is interesting because it really, in some ways, is probably the least painful in the sense that if content is compelling enough, you could argue that an individual is just going to keep watching, if the initial, you know, piece of content is compelling enough. What actually is, like, somewhat fascinating to me is that in some ways you could argue that TikTok took away or has hindered people's ability to focus for that long of time. So going to like the corollary of now having 10-minute videos, I do think will be interesting 'cause it's like a different habit, right? Even just focusing on something for 10 minutes versus like 6 seconds is a very different habit. So to see how or to see what type of users actually adapt to that, I think it will be interesting. I do think though there'll probably be some niche communities that emerge as a result of that feature who do want to take deep dives much to content, right? There's folks that like read casually about the music industry and then folks that like really, I think, deep dive, much as a testament to Trapital's content. And so I do think, like, some interesting, like, subsections of the feature will rise. However, I think the bulk of the users aren't even, like, able to watch a video for that long.[00:08:33] Dan Runcie: I think that if it is extending the videos into that length, I agree with you. This is the least friction one. I think it does have the highest likelihood of success. But if I'm thinking about music videos specifically or something that ends up being at least that length, it changes the format to look like what the videos for the most successful YouTubers often look like and the science that goes behind that. I'm picturing what NBA YoungBoy does in the beginning of his videos or even someone like MrBeast. There's some hook there that gives you some tease and that keeps you engaged, just to make sure that you end up watching the whole thing to see what it is. So I feel like if artists start creating music videos or start creating videos in general to be more like 10 minutes. And I think the format of how those videos look will be a lot different and everything will be how do we keep people engaged so that, okay, if we keep them for the first 15 seconds, how do you get them for the next 15 seconds and after that. Like, you can't have these long buildups that I think you can have for certain types of videos on YouTube, just give the audience. But I think it will change things in that format. No different than when MTV blew up, there was a type of video vibe that people tried to go after. I think that if this is the route that TikTok is really trying to go. I think we may see videos lead more into that where, yeah, everyone does start creating videos where you may look like you're trying to be a YouTuber. You're trying to be a TikTok dancer, whatever it is. But I feel like that's where it could head if it's as successful as it could be. [00:10:04] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, that's actually really interesting in the sense that a lot of folks, like, point to their desire to use TikTok because it does feel like less polished, in a way more authentic. I was listening to a podcast where a TikToker says she makes more content on TikTok because she has to like, yeah, just be less prepared in a way or prepare herself to get on TikTok in the way you would for on Instagram. So I think if that does happen, it'll probably have an effect they don't want, which is a longer timeline to people creating and posting content. And like, just a harder barrier to entry because now folks will feel like, well, I don't have all the things needed to start a TikTok or to really start posting on TikTok, which is really against, I think what the platform did in its early days. [00:10:50] Dan Runcie: Right. Yeah, you're right. That whole instant, making it easy as possible is part of it. It almost brings me back to Vine to an extent. Maybe that's a better comparison for what this looks like 'cause of course someone like a MrBeast or NBA YoungBoy, they have big teams at this point. But some would be able to take a Vine and having this whole narrative story in that 6-second, 7-second clip, maybe it's getting a bit back to that. But even that takes time and there's clearly a difference between that. And, you know, while Vine was popular, it didn't blow up the way that TikTok has blown up. So I feel like you're right. It may change the app in a way that users aren't ready for. But we'll see. I obviously know that this is kind of what happens when you're trying to do everything. You're going to risk having some type of frustration that comes from the core users. [00:11:37] Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly. Much to your point, I do think there will be a really active, like, community or communities around that in which like 10 minutes of content works really well and TikTok is just like an easy medium to do that [00:11:50] Dan Runcie: For sure. All right. The second one here, this one I will be interested to dive into. TikTok Music and TikTok filing this trademark. It clearly wants to launch its own music streaming service. We had heard rumors about ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, wanting to do this, but how do you see this one playing out?[00:12:09] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, this one, I just kind of felt like, okay, like another music streaming service You know, one, I don't think people realize or really think through just like how complex streaming services are as a business. I mean, thankfully, you know, a lot of platforms have kind of, pioneered some of the heavy lifting that came with making deals with labels and really like getting the content onto the platform. But that's all still to be said that it's a very unique and complex business model that's driven on another party, right? And how another party feels about giving you access to your content? What does seem somewhat interesting about it is, in the same way that TikTok democratizes content creation and the barrier to entry to post, you could probably argue that it in a way, democratizes that for music, and so more artists are able to get more volume or traction as a result. And so I do think if they focus on maybe content from newer creators or newer musicians who don't necessarily have some of that on the platform, that could be interesting, like in terms of a new streaming platform being able to get access to these independent artists at rates that could be favorable. I think that's interesting, but I don't know if that works at scale. And frankly, like, songs from independent artists, I don't think, is enough to keep a consumer satiated. And there's an even harder barrier to entry to have two streaming platforms at once. [00:13:35] Dan Runcie: Yeah, this is the one I'm probably the most skeptical of its success and for very similar reasons. Say what you want about Spotify. I know people have a number of issues about how that platform is operated and how it distributes its money. But the fact that it's helped the music industry, A, get to this point, says something and just the type of deals it's been able to negotiate to make it all work the way that it has that's enabled all the other types of revenue-generating opportunities that have came from it. And then additionally, it's hard to get to that point. Again, you may not agree with all the decisions that they make, but it is very hard to get to that point. And while I understand, from a strategic perspective, why TikTok may initially want to do this. Of course, if you have and you own the top of funnel that exists in the industry today, why wouldn't you want to at least think about what it could be like to keep that attention on your platform? If your platform is where discovery is happening for both the new fans, for artists to get initial exposure, and for that, you know, the record labels are already seeing, I understand why you would want to think about keeping more of that in-house. But it is a lot tougher than they think for the reasons you mentioned. And also going back to the usability of the app streaming services are a type of consumer experience that requires much more active engagement. People don't just scroll through Spotify and Apple Music. You're going there actively to find something that you're looking for. I mean, I don't even know that many people that are actively relying on that discover weekly playlists to find anything. You're still searching for the things that you want. Even if you're looking for a playlist, it's probably that's much more catered toward the mood or genre that you have. So I think anything that requires that level of agency or action from the consumer side will always be a bit of a challenge for TikTok there. So yeah, I'm skeptical on the success of that one. Unless it tries to go more of the YouTube route of things, which ties back into the 10-minute video things that we talked about before. There's some potential there, but even there, I think there's still some question marks.[00:15:41] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. I'm aligned with you there. [00:15:43] Dan Runcie: Yeah. The next one is TikTok Search. A lot of us had seen the viral tweet that someone had. I don't Google I TikTok. And a lot of that spoke to how a lot of folks in Gen Z are looking for information and I get it, I've even done it myself, my wife and I were recently searching to buy a new mattress. And you know what? I didn't want to go through a Google Search and just read some sponsored content about a mattress. I wanted to see a video of someone unboxing this thing to see what it looks like. [00:16:10] Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly. [00:16:10] Dan Runcie: And TikTok was the quickest place to do that, even quicker than YouTube. YouTube's going to show me a mix of explainer videos and then also concept from the company. I just wanted to see some random person be like, oh, hey, here's what I think about this bed. And here's what I think about that bed. It was quick, it was easy. So I do think that that works, but I think there's a few caution flags with it. A, I still think that even though TikTok was able to offer that, there's still deeper search functionality that went into how Google got to be as good as it is, even going back thinking about 20 years ago about like why Google succeeded where Lycos and AltaVista and all those other go.com, .com era search engines didn't work. So I don't know if TikTok has all of that baked in to really go beyond just, you know, people like me looking for random purchases that they want to look through here or there or just want to look up a certain topic. And I also think the other bigger, more important pieces, the misinformation, and just being able to correct for that because that's already been an issue on TikTok. And I think that could potentially continue if there isn't some way to relegate what's happening in search. So, high likelihood success, but still some trepidation. [00:17:23] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, this one is one I'm actually a little bit more excited about. I do think it's really interesting, like in the sense of search, because it is something that we naturally do more. I first started to search on social media using Instagram. And I think they've even done a greater job of like adding more functionality to do that search, whether it's by location and showing you things surrounding that location or even venues or event spaces. So I think that it's a growing feature and a great feature. Like you said, the reviews, whether people sought them to be that way or just inherently more, right, they're showing you video. Most times they're talking through it and you can just consume and walk away with a more educated viewpoint for a time that's favorable, right? A 30-second or 1-minute video can really give you a lot of feedback about whatever you're searching. I think, honestly, this is where a TikTok should spend some time doubling down. I think we want to see more of that functionality from them playing around with maybe the highest use cases, whether that's locations or certain venues, or even like festivals. As I think about it, like, I see so often on TikTok, like you can see a certain event from multiple vantage points and understanding what it's like at a festival from someone in VIP versus general admission versus backstage, even, right? Like, Rolling Loud, you see, like, every single vantage point, even sometimes down to the artist manager with them. So I think, like, them doubling down on a few use cases that really highlight the immersiveness of search is something that excites me. And I think just naturally follows up on what the users are already doing on the platform. [00:19:02] Dan Runcie: That ties into the another announcement I saw from them about enhancing its ability to search for things locally, or being able to find things from that level because to your point if you are seeing multiple vantage points at Rolling Loud or at Coachella, you may want to meet up with someone that is there, or you might be able to see their vantage point. You might have times I've been to a music festival and it's like, where are you? I'm at the main stage. But what part of the main stage, you know, they got this quarter over here, they got that quarter, but if someone could just do a quick, like, boom. And maybe that could be even easier than them trying to send me a FaceTime video or something like that, where there's no service, but if they could at least post it up on TikTok or wherever, then it could be like, okay, I see your angle. I'll be there. I'll come see you in a minute.[00:19:44] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I think that's great. And to that point, too, it kind of like puts on other users in terms of like, okay, wow, I didn't enjoy my experience at like Rolling Loud 'cause I was GA. So maybe VIP is worth it to me or I should consider doing that. And so I actually think more artists should be embracing and recognizing that search feature. The only thing is too is because so many people are using it, you in real-time, right, seem to get updates. So like, Kizz Daniel who's come under fire in Tanzania for not showing up to his performance. I already, like in my mind was like, well, Kizz Daniel was four hours late to his DC show. And how did I know that? Or DC or New York? I'm sorry, but how did I know that? Like, because I saw it on TikTok and so that's like twice in a row. So how likely am I as a fan to justify the cost of a ticket in the event that he is going to be near me? So I think it's like a good maybe transparency or accountability measure. But with that search, we maybe do sometimes need to recognize like, what do they say that like, people are most likely to post or leave reviews when they either have a really great experience or a really bad experience. And so sometimes you might not just get what the true experience is in the case of like a service-based search. [00:21:02] Dan Runcie: That's true. That's a really good point. And that goes back to the quality of the results and how they can find a way to measure that piece 'cause I think that's the piece that ties back into why Google has been good at what it does over its competitors. So that TikToks can actually survive and not, you know, become someone else that may do video search even better. [00:21:23] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. And maybe, you know, to the extent they would consider this, like, there's an opportunity for collaboration, right? Like Google's done a great job of, you know, when you ask certain questions, they have a definitive answer, but they also pull like multiple sources. And so what if, like, on a Google search, you search a restaurant and you're also seeing like TikToks in the area? I think the aggregation of that repository of information could be really great. And also a way for them to continue to like maintain their dominance in search. [00:21:55] Dan Runcie: Let's take a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsor. [00:22:00] Dan Runcie: Definitely. So the next one, this one's interesting, music distribution. TikTok recently launched SoundOn, which is a service that in many ways is set to compete with a lot of the music distributors. And I think similarly, it could be seen as its opportunity to capture its top of funnel attention as well. You already have the artists, why not make it easier for artists to use your platform, to distribute the music that they have? What are your thoughts on this one? [00:22:31] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, and this isn't personal, but I'm just not really excited by music distribution. Nowadays, like in a lot of ways we're listening to a song on a streaming platform is a commodity, right? Like listening to Drake on Apple Music sounds the same as, like, Spotify. I feel that way with music distribution, like, as a consumer, the consumers have no idea, right? They just know they go to their streaming platform and the song is there. The reverse engineering of how it got there and the back end is really not of much interest to them. On the artist side or for them to do this, I think it requires a really deeper investment in artist education. And so I'm curious to see, you know, especially as they double down on creator programs and things of that nature how willing they are to invest both on a content and community side, but also a capital side, in artist education to incentivize users to distribute through that platform. When you think about switching costs in terms of getting set up on a new platform and just probably some of the like new things you have to adjust to by doing it. I feel very underwhelmed hearing about this, and I'm really curious to see how it goes. [00:23:39] Dan Runcie: I think you called it right in the beginning. Music distribution is a tough business. It is purely a commodity at this point. And I think you can win a few ways. You win by trying to achieve massive scale with it, which Distrokid clearly has just given everything else. But if you don't have that scale, you try to find something unique to position yourself with. I think we've seen that a bit with United Masters, but even that's a bit of a unique business model because, A, they've done a bunch of partnerships with different platforms and companies in sports and entertainment to try to use that as a way both to attract artists and give them an opportunity. But it's also attached to an ad agency with translation, which essentially can, you know, offset any costs or anything like that if there are already losses that come through with the business. So that part of it is unique there. But then even with some of the other services, I think a lot of them have adapted their business models over time because that customer service piece is so timely. It's so expensive. And yeah, when you have an artist that maybe generated less than $20,000 a year, and they're calling your service every other week because they're trying to feed their supporters and making sure that every one of their fans can get their music. How do you justify that cost when you want to be able to support the fans? But the economics of it don't make sense if you're also trying to compete with Distrokid where it costs very little money to be able to use their service on a regular basis. And the same could be said about TuneCore and the others. So it's a tough business to enter. [00:25:16] Denisha Kuhlor: And I think, you know, artists and management teams don't really have any particular affiliation to, you know, to like any platform. Maybe there are things that they like about certain platforms or that keep them there. But when you talk to artists and management teams, it's kind of just this is what we use, it works, it gets the job done. And it's not an area of the business as long as things are working, they're going to particularly spend a lot of time overly evaluating. [00:25:42] Dan Runcie: Right. The next piece of this and the next thing that TikTok's been trying to do is ticketing. And while this is less of a big initiative the way they have it right now, it's an integration with a Ticketmaster who, of course, owns most of the medium size to large venues from a ticketing operation, given their relationship with Live Nation. I have to imagine that TikTok's ultimate stream would actually be trying to do what we just saw from Spotify to try to launch its own ticketing service. But even that has plenty of issues and challenges there, but what's your take on at least this first step of the Ticketmaster integration for TikTok and where it could go from here?[00:26:23] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. On the ticketing side, it's interesting. And just like having a background in venture and tech and startups, like, I've seen a lot of folks try to solve ticketing in many areas, right? The curation that comes with ticketing, ticketing from all over the world and in different currencies, and just a better user experience overall. I will say while I don't think I'm, like, particularly mad at TikTok's, like, foray into ticketing, I do think it's a missed opportunity to probably focus on like events that have organically grown through the platform. And something that's like so interesting is I think you've seen more and more promoters or even event producers, like really like leverage TikTok to create those events and grow their followings in their community. And that's not what TikTok's ticketing platform is really targeted with as evidenced by, you know, a partnership with Ticketmaster. And so while I feel like it's somewhere in the direction, I do think it could be a bit more directionally accurate by focusing on, kind of the, yeah, the smaller organic events that just naturally have grown through TikTok and like TikTok partnering with those events to help users produce more content and like, it can truly be mutually beneficial in a way that I think some of those event organizers would welcome. And so while I could understand why they went for the validity and reputation that comes with a bigger brand, such as Ticketmaster, I think they could have got more bang for their buck with a smaller, more targeted partnership with folks that already found interesting use cases to grow ticketing for the respective events.[00:27:54] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I feel like there's a bit of a balance there because I hear you and I do think that it ideally would be, yeah, great for them to double down on the creative uses of the, especially some of the more emerging artists that are using this platform to bring folks together, right? Almost similar to what you may see people trying to do, whether it's seeing things virtually in Twitch or bringing those types of audiences in real life to particular things. I think that's really cool and unique. I do feel that for TikTok though, specifically with what we're seeing them do on the music side, in the back of my mind I always wonder, okay, if it weren't for Doja Cat and Megan Thee Stallion and some of these other major artists that are using the platform, what percentage of their impact is making up the overall pie of TikTok Music? Just thinking about that, they had that pie chart from a few years back about the genres and how hip-hop was over-indexed and how Megan Thee Stallion was the most popular artist. So if you're trying to cater to the biggest artist on your platform, you know, Megan Thee Stallion and Doja Cat are definitely at the Ticketmaster level of what they're doing. So if they are going to have an event, could you have something that keeps them in, right, because I think that the more organic things that we've seen likely are more of a direct competition to what we see from Eventbrite, let's say, which I think is much more in that sweet spot of everything from like a birthday party up until you get to like, you know, a small club concert or event, right? But then obviously Ticketmaster is everything else. So yeah, it's like, my heart wants to be like, oh yeah, stay with the types of cool events you've had. But also just thinking about how YouTube leaned into its biggest customers and like, if you're TikTok then yeah, it's the Megs, it's the Dojas, and ones like that. [00:29:38] Denisha Kuhlor: That is interesting and I think a good corollary. Maybe it does, like, trickle down on more of like a hybrid approach. Yeah, that's interesting. [00:29:46] Dan Runcie: I do think this taps back into something that you had mentioned before just about the platform itself and as this platform continues to grow, where does the loyalty sit for the consumer, right, whether it's with the artist or with the platform. [00:30:03] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. I think this is such a big thing, right, and that comes with building a fan base or even just like your notoriety on TikTok. You see the changes that were made to Instagram and kind of everybody from the Kardashians, right, calling them out. And I think it has become this trend where we have more affinity to the platform and the platform's ability to curate the content than some of these content creators themselves. And in a world where I think these content creators are so driven to following the algorithm and getting promoted by the algorithm, what they don't realize is kind of the uniformity in content that is created. Even when it comes down to, like, some of the events or experiences or those types of videos, sometimes, like if you've seen one, you've seen them all. And I think that's why there's other creators, whether it's, like, more comedian-focused or other topics that really excel because it forces them to kind of have to do something different, even if they do have to be relatable. And so unfortunately I think that, you know, artists who are employing TikTok and kind of using this, especially as they build their name and their brand, need to think a lot about like, okay, I have X amount of followers on TikTok, but the barrier to entry to get someone to follow you on TikTok looks very different compared to other platforms. And then taking that a step further, it's like, what does that mean? Because while people might like you, how willing are they to migrate to another platform? They ultimately have that ultimate affinity and loyalty, in my opinion, to TikTok. [00:31:38] Dan Runcie: I couldn't agree more, and it makes me think about how I use these apps today. For instance, we're recording this now August 26th, and this is a few hours after DJ Khaled released his album and Jay-Z had his four-minute-long verse on GOD DID. And I've seen everyone from ESPN's account to all of the hip-hop blogs and everyone else posting about this. And of course, you get it. And it's all these memes you see about people posting, okay, what Hov did on this track and they're getting photos of LeBron's best games or LeBron's game six against the Boston Celtics and things like that. But I bring that up because speaks to the uniformity of how all of these platforms or all these accounts on these platforms end up doing the same types of things because they know it works and they know what is effective. And it comes to the point now, when I'm scrolling through Instagram, I don't really know who the account is that is there that's posting something that I see unless it's something that's super specific to that person, right? Like if a friend is posting something from, you know, one of their kids starting in kindergarten, then it's like, okay, I know that that only comes from you. But if someone's posting something that's happening in media or something, that's happening in the news, you have to, like, look at that account at the top to really know who it is. And I think that's something they probably got from TikTok more so that, unless you're really looking to see where that account's coming from, it's a bit hidden now, right? Like that's part of, I know some of the frustration people had had, whether it's with Google searches or how social media was sharing links and they made all the links look the same, whether it's something from The Wall Street Journal or your friend's blog, right? And it kind of goes back to that point. [00:33:18] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. And it probably has like real implications for the creator economy now that we're talking about it, like, I think, you know, living in New York, I see, I like casually probably see a few TikTok creators a month and maybe even sometimes I follow them. But you know, what's interesting? Like, rather than noting, other than noting to myself, like, oh, I follow them on TikTok, kind of the like je nais se quois or like the magic of like, oh my God, like I'm seeing this person in real life feels like it's disappeared a bit to me in a way that used to exist with YouTube or some of these other platforms where it felt like a weird, like breaking of the screen. But now that everybody's behind the screen and as a result, even some of the content they're showing is so accessible. I do think it probably, like, leads to this dynamic of where we're just like, okay, let's just see interesting things. The people creating said interesting things are no more interesting in some ways than like you or they just did a great job at doing this. And I see that with, there's a lot of debate and, like, discourse around some of the lifestyle blogs or, you know, like people showing their lifestyle, like waking up in the morning, like obviously, you had to set the camera up before to do that. But a lot of folks in the comments argue like this is just a type of content. Like, it's a type of cinematography that people like to view and people like to see. And so as a result, these people are continuing to make these videos, but if that's just a type of content that people like to see, TikTok is simply going to provide that content all the time, regardless of really any affiliation to one creator, which makes it a lot tougher on these creators, I think, to build these networks and conversely artists.[00:34:55] Dan Runcie: Right, and this brings me back to the whole issues that people have with Web 2.0 to begin with and why they wanted to be able to solve some of this with Web 3.0. It's because the platforms commoditize your content, and then in return, they're the ones that hold the power. [00:35:10] Denisha Kuhlor: You know, I think though folks have to be honest. In some ways, it's what the user likes or what the, yeah, the users do like this because if not, you know, we're long past exclusives being standard in the industry, but if not the exclusives would've worked. Like having, you know, Chance the Rapper's album on Apple Music for two weeks, that would work. But the industry shied away from that because ultimately consumers cared more about choice and the ability to choose and experience and be exposed to all types of artists. And so I do think it's a dangerous game because it doesn't recognize like that's why malls exist, right? Like, you go and you want to go to multiple stores. And so I do think sometimes while I understand and recognize and very much like honor the need to, you know, differentiate and be able to have your core audience and provide to those things, I think we'd be remiss if we also didn't realize, like, natural human behavior comes from choice and like the brevity of choice. And so that's sometimes the interesting thing between Web 2.0 and even Web 3.0 and with crypto, for me, because ultimately, like, the barrier to entry is so high, right, to get someone, a true fan to download an artist NFT because that insinuates their true fans. And I think a lot of artists have actually had to face the music in some ways with realizing their perceived fan base isn't as big as they thought and the mechanism to realize that has been some of these drops.[00:36:40] Dan Runcie: Well said, well said. The engagement piece and what you need to have a true fan is harder than people think, so, yeah, I couldn't agree more. Well, we're getting to the tail end, but before we close things out, we have to talk about the elephant in the room for TikTok, and that is its geopolitical standing and all of the things that it wants to do while, whether or not they will be successful, a lot of it depends on the company's viability in the US and whether or not it's current status, especially given the fact that the Chinese government does have this data and there are unknown questions about what that means, what it can do with this data, how do you see this piece it?[00:37:22] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I think it's tricky in some ways, because, you know, as consumers, we're now kind of privy to the implications of tech and big data. And even just being on our phones, being on our phones in general, what I will say is and a lot of the like research indicates that true, like avid TikTok users are just, like, hooked in a way where they don't or they might say to you they don't care. Now how much is that true, I guess we'll find out. But I do think it's concerning because maybe to some extent, we don't even fully realize everything and all the factors that are at play here, right? Like, you're just giving that summary, I'm like, whoa. But as a user coming on every day, you're not thinking about that. And so often with big data and some of these platforms, in a way, you don't realize just the implications it had until it was too late, right? Until we're now talking about the ramifications of a platform existing in that way. And so I think it's going to be really interesting to see how, seriously consumers want to take it and beyond consumers, like the US, the US in general. I mean, I would be remiss if I didn't say that some of the data is concerning, right, learning about some of the data TikTok has access to is concerning. But ultimately like as more and more people post and the ecosystem grows larger and there's now 10-minute videos and your favorite artists are on there and they have a streaming platform and all these things in this ecosystem, it starts to get hard to really stray away. And so I think that's going to be a challenge because it feels like it almost has to be a collective push for folks to disintermediate from the platform. But I'm really curious your thoughts on this, too.[00:39:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah. So the first attempt of this was in fall 2020. So it was around two years ago at this point, when Trump had tried to shut down TikTok. That didn't work for a number of reasons. There were a number of things going on in the world that the attention just wasn't there. And I don't think that the argument was made in a concise and effective way that could have necessarily gotten the job done. And TikTok had other challenges at the time, Kevin Mayer had his short term and then he had left shortly after. So there were a number of issues there. This though, I think that even though you're starting to hear some senators say certain things about it, I think things will be pretty mum, I would guess, until the 2022 midterm elections coming up just 'cause think from a strategic perspective, they want to keep momentum on things that they can confirm can get votes. So while I think I've probably heard more of the concern, if I'm being honest, coming from democratic senators, their biggest concern right now is okay, how can we continue to try to celebrate Joe Biden's victory so that they can not lose seat coming up with this election, I feel like. And because of that, like, we kind of see how this whole thing plays out. I do think though that we could be facing a potential situation where it's almost like the Facebook thing where people know that this is an issue, but it's not going to happen proactively. It happens reactively. It's going to be like, when shit hits the fan and then people are going to be like, oh shit, now we need to do something. [00:40:27] Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly. Exactly. Out of curiosity, how do you think TikTok, and I'm sure it'll vary, right, but how do you think TikTok is going to be used with the upcoming election cycle? [00:40:37] Dan Runcie: Oh, good question. I don't see it impacting 2022 as much, but I could see it playing a factor more so in 2024 because I just think that even though there's plenty at stake coming up with this election, the presidential elections always get more in place. I do think that, especially as this group of voters does tend to grow and as more and more older people do get on TikTok, a lot of the same types of activities and nefarious behavior that we saw on Facebook here is going to make its way onto. TikTok. The bigger challenge is though, I think, it's even tougher to navigate all those things. I mean, we even saw that there was misinformation back in 2020 when you had a lot of the Black Lives Matter uprisings and people, they were censoring certain things related to those hashtags. So I do think that those things are going to cause big problems. I think the difference though, and this is part of it is that when these issues happen for Facebook, it's one thing if you have mark Zuckerberg coming to Congress and it can kind of be this thing where he could be media training, he can kind of have these like, you know, haha moments where it's like, Senator, we sell ads, that's how we make money. That doesn't exactly work with the Chinese government in the same way 'cause I don't think that that type of congressional hearing would necessarily work in the same way. So it would have to be some type of, you know, harder crackdown that happens with it. So, yeah, it's tough. I feel like we're not going to see anything actually happen until shit does hit the fan. And unfortunately, that could be the 2024 presidential election in the US, but maybe it could be something sooner. [00:42:19] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, no, we'll definitely have to see how it plays out. I also think we could potentially see, like, new candidates that come to the result from easily being able to build followings on a platform like TikTok. So I'm curious to see what, like, TikTok- native candidates emerge as well. [00:42:36] Dan Runcie: Right, like kind of like how Obama was the Facebook champion in 2000. [00:42:41] Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly. [00:42:43] Dan Runcie: Yeah. It's funny, right? Because I feel like, you know, back then it was like, oh, look at all the great things that Facebook could do with 2008. And just, I think given some of the political leanings at the time, but then 2016 in many ways was a very opposite case with it. So I do feel like we're a bit more jaded and cynical of the powers of social media than we were then. But there is always a candidate that rises up with these things, that does these things, right? Like, I don't know, thinking back to the days of candidates that are just entering a different thing or new platform, whether it's Bill Clinton going on the Arsenio Hall Show playing his saxophone or something like that. Like, who's going to be that on TikTok? I don't know. I don't follow any politicians on TikTok. I'm sure they have accounts, but I'm sure they'll probably be doing that. And who knows? They'll probably have a debate on Hot Ones for all I know. [00:43:35] Denisha Kuhlor: It's definitely going to be interesting. [00:43:37] Dan Runcie: Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, this was great. We covered a bunch in this, so we'll definitely have to revisit this topic at some point. And we'll see how TikTok succeeds over this for the next few months. I think we both have our internal scorecards ready, but we'll definitely have to touch base on this again at some point. [00:43:54] Denisha Kuhlor: Agree. Thanks so much for having me.[00:43:56] Dan Runcie: For sure. Thank you.[00:43:58] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

ICEMADEIT.  A name that already looks and feels iconic. In my own words, it's clean and simple. Mathew Rosensweig, who operates under the pseudonym, ICEMADEIT is an original content producer, podcast producer, and creative artist. Matt is currently working with United Masters, a music distribution platform that exists specifically to help artists monetize and grow through advertisements and brand sponsorships. He's produced, managed, and launched podcasts at United Masters, and has booked guests by the names of Russ and ASAP Ferg.  Today we dove into the mechanics behind Joe Rogan's success in podcasting, why the WWE isn't delivering the content people enjoy, why the modern record deal doesn't make sense and the real price of Matt's VVS diamond grills.  Visit Matt's Site - https://icemadeit.com/ Follow ICEMADEIT on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/icemadeit/ Thank you for helping us become a top 10% podcast in the world! Previous Guests Include https://open.spotify.com/episode/4GLGc7gqDDDZdRqj4qlmwT?si=3306a470764646d5 (Rob Dyrdek), https://open.spotify.com/episode/2h9bHhMmQmL8WSSYDcj2mf?si=2a61889cb6244fe4 (Samad Savage), https://open.spotify.com/episode/2hudFx2Bh0no9aOpNVAfhL?si=b7f7c14b327f434b (Travis Chappell), https://open.spotify.com/episode/7r7aODbOtia2BjhG5GRcHh?si=ae47b9a90c21405d (Austin Belcak), https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ceJNa3MAyZlk8Lw3rsW1Q?si=e901236209e948f5 (Young Benny), https://open.spotify.com/episode/0qZVBnOGSUcAmt4EFphNcR?si=38763a2013084f6a (Adam Miller), https://open.spotify.com/episode/6lPiZinAXh3yDdSnLShDiA?si=74dc6a03560b4de9 (The Real Johnny Bravo), and more. Please Join Our Email List for Special Offers, Q+A's, Live Podcasts, and More - To Join, https://www.sullybop.com/ (Scroll to the Bottom of This Page) Links Below: _ Watch the Video Version on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5yW2ZNS4Iq7ff_EeKe3HkQ (YouTube) @sullybop on Instagram Search 'BOPCAST' on any platform! (Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube) Visit https://www.sullybop.com/ (SullyBop.com) for more information. Big shouts to the folks who make this possible: Video - https://www.instagram.com/ferrarib98/ (@ferrarib98) Logo - https://www.instagram.com/ryannkelly20/ (@ryannkelly20) Producer - https://www.instagram.com/minishep13/ (@minishep13) Theme Song - https://www.instagram.com/jello.wav/ (@jello.wav)

After years of shepherding the careers of Nas and other legends, Steve Stoute's returning to music with his new company, United Masters. Here, he speaks on his journey and the road ahead.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After years of shepherding the careers of Nas and other legends, Steve Stoute's returning to music with his new company, United Masters. Here, he speaks on his journey and the road ahead.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Good Morning Nashville ☀️ We want to welcome you guys again to another episode of Black Men Vent Too. We present to you guys today our first episode into our ALL NEW SEASON for the month of July . As we've mentioned, this month we will focus squarely on “Music & Entertainment” in a black man . This season will host artists, producers, and musical minds across the city to come and vent about how they deal with the pros and cons of the industry as a black man

Today we're joined by the one & only Goldie Harris. With years of experience in the music world, Goldie is United Masters' Artist Marketing & Promotion Manager, as well as the founder of 24:OURS, her own platform to support creatives, cultivated community, host events, and more.  Goldie introduces Brooklyn up-and-comer STVSH, as well as Venezuelan singer/songwriter Yarge.  We tap in with multidimensional Tampa duo They Hate Change on the heels of their debut project, explore the many sounds of LA-based trio Grouptherapy, and ride out with a late night delivery from Lavender, amongst much more.  01 "X-Ray Spex" by They Hate Change  02 "Who Gon Please Me" by STVSH 03 "Truth Be Told" by grouptherapy. 04 We Don't Know a Thing" by tomcbumpz, Ivri, & Souly Had 05 "I Feel Like I'm Blue" by Léa Sen 06 "El Vuelo" by Yarge 07 "Alter" by Luca 08 "3:45/buslane" by lavender  Art: Sarah Goldstein *Not 97 is powered by The Orchard & Human Re Sources © NOT 97. All music ℗ & © their rights holders, used by NOT 97 with explicit permission. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we discuss United Masters partnering up with Coinbase, Elon Musk buying Twitter, Stripe enabling crypto payouts and more. and more. Enjoy!Opening Clip https://twitter.com/harmony_holiday/status/1517636999368175617?s=21&t=ZQaeuaV--ttNqp2MblVyXw_________________Sound Selection: Couldn't Wait For It - Blxst, Rick Ross  Podcast Intro by E. JonesTwitter: @vsmikehistoryInstagram: @verusmikehistoryFanbase: @versusmikehistoryVisit our website versusmikehistory.comSubscribe for exclusive interviews patreon.com/versusmikehistoryDonateversusmikehistory.com/donateSend music/film/current event topics to info@versusmikehistory.com

On this episode of the FreeGame Podcast hosts Brian Onrea and WLPWR catch up on what's new in music industry this week. We also interview Manager, A&R, and founder of Stay Lowe Ent, Steven "Stevo" Dingle. Steve shares his FreeGame on the ins and outs of managing producers, his work with OG Parker, Romano, Sakura, Heavy, Milo, Maco and more. Steve talks on his new endeavor with United Masters and what it takes to stay in the game. **** Subscribe for more episodes ➡️ https://youtube.com/c/WLPWRTV ****Are you in the Atlanta area and need a studio to record at?Come to BNDWTH Studios in East PointWe offer 4hr blocks in our A and B Rooms.We pride ourselves on amazing customer service, highly skilled engineers, and competitive prices.Call us today at 404.228.1386 Or email us at Booking@bndwth.netCheck us out at bndwth.netAre you a business owner who wants to have your ad featured on our podcast?Hit us up now for prices and availability at 404.228.1386Or email booking@bndwth.net Follow us:https://instagram.com/FreeGamePodcasthttps://instagram.com/WLPWRhttps://instagram.com/BrianOnreahttps://instagram.com/stevozone4Recorded at:https://instagram.com/BNDWTHAudio recorded by: Tessa Harchysenhttps://instagram.com/auntietessa

Brian Kelly is a NY artist best known for unique, melodic style music. With over 5k followers and subscribers on Twitter and Instagram his, content has over 100k streams total since 2020. Brian has collaborated and performed with Lil B, T.I, BAPE, AKOO, FACEBOOK, United Masters amongst other names as well. He has released FOR THE FANS vol 2 back in August 2020. He has been focused on creating wellness, unity and opportunities for society and his community Website - https://untd.io/r/AzEzsHt53rvG other music(For Fans vol 2) - https://unitedmasters.com/m/5f50fc0783332604a52df965

Dazayah Walker is the Head of Investments at Quality Control Music, the label behind today's most trendsetting artists like Lil Baby and Migos, Dazayah. She maintains QC's investment portfolio, particularly within the startup space, which spans well beyond just music and entertainment. Being a 23-year-old venture capitalist is difficult as is. Now tack on being female and black? “It's been a journey”, as Dazayah Walker shares with us in this episode of the Trapital podcast.Dazayah's path to becoming a Venture Capitalist is as unorthodox as you'll find in the venture capital world, but she's stuck to the same principles that got her that opportunity to begin with — seeking out mentors, surrounding herself with a supportive community, and taking the learning process day-by-day. Before overseeing QC's investments, Dazayah worked on the music side for the label. She began as an intern for QC, and worked her way through the ranks at the same time QC was taking the music industry by storm. Not only is Dazayah breaking down doors, but she's also trying to leave them open for future aspiring VC's with similar unconventional backgrounds. As Dazayah continues to learn the ins and outs of venture capital, she plans on creating initiatives to educate others about the world she operates in. To hear Dazayah's future ambitions, plus everything else we covered in the show, reference the video chapters below: [0:00] Dazayah's goals with her role[2:13] Dazayah's Transition Into Venture Capital[5:29] What Is QC's Investment Thesis? [6:35] The Pros And Cons Of Involving QC Artists Into Investments[9:16] What Does Dazayah Look For In A Company Before Investing? [10:49] QC Investing Beyond Just Music and Entertainment [10:45] Dazayah's particular interest in Fintech[12:56] QC's and Dazayah's Involvement With Techstars[14:48] The Challenge Dazayah Faced Breaking Into The VC World[16:04] What Programs Have Helped Dazayah Adjust To The VC World? [17:40] What Was Behind QC's Investment Into Riff? [18:50] QC's Investment Portfolio Explained [20:00] “You Can Do This Too And This Is How”[23:30] Music-Wise, What Is Dazayah Most Excited About QC In Near Future?Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuest: Dazayah Walker, @dazayah   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop's biggest players by reading Trapital's free weekly memo. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands-----------Dazayah Walker 00:00Finding success here and having a strong track record and proven portfolio and then be able to use that as a way to show people you can do this too, and this is how, let me show you how, let me be that person to help you understand and be a part of it.Dan Runcie 00:23Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. Today's episode is with Dazayah Walker, Head of Investments and the Operations Manager at Quality Control Music. This is an exciting role to have at a time like this. QC has been on a run the past few years and has really shaped what hip hop is sounded like, from artists like Migos, to City Girls, to Lil Baby, and then on the other side of this hip hop investing activity is growing faster than ever, and we're seeing more and more artists getting ICAP tables, getting involved with deals. So it's a really exciting time to have a role like this. I talked with Dazayah about what it's been like from her perspective, and representing and getting roles not just for QC as a firm, but for the artists that they represent, and how she has navigated the record label growing as fast as it has the past few years to venture capital landscape and how she's been able to navigate that and a whole lot more. Had a great conversation with her. Hope you enjoy it. Here's my chat with Dazayah Walker. All right, we got Dazayah Walker here today, who is the Head of Investments at Quality Control Music. Dazayah, welcome to the pod. Dazayah Walker 01:42Hello, I'm so happy to be here. Super excited. Let's do this. Dan Runcie 01:46Yeah, so one of the things that stuck out to me about you and your career, you had started as an intern at QC, and you've risen up the ranks there as the label as not just a record label, but as an entertainment company. And now with a corporate venture arm or brollies just continue to grow and expand. Dazayah Walker 02:05Yes. Dan Runcie 02:06Walk me through the steps. What was it like from when you started to where it is now, just with how fast things have been growing there? Dazayah Walker 02:13Yeah, it's been a great journey and experience for me, with this being my first job. There's been a lot of learning curves with that in itself. But it was definitely a privilege and a great opportunity to be able to see the growth of QC, because we've expanded in so many different ways since I started as an intern, and being able to be a part of that, witness that, learn from that I couldn't be in a better position. Dan Runcie 02:36And is there anything specific with the role that you have now that had drawn you to it or something specifically because I know you had started a bit more focused on operations? And then now we're obviously seeing much more on the investment side. But was there something about that opportunity that pulled you in? Dazayah Walker 02:52Yes, so getting to this side was definitely a path of, I would say divine ordering because me entering the opportunity at QC. Starting as an intern, I thought I just wanted to do music, work my way up to being a music industry executive. But as I became more in the groove, and learning more of the things that I like, things that I don't like, I really had to find my place. And when I discovered what venture capital was, because when I was at Spelman, I was an economics major. So I kind of have like, I've always been surrounded by that when I was in school, just the finance, track and everything like that. But me venturing into music was me following my passion or what I thought was my passion at that time. So when I discovered what venture capital was, it was actually kind of crazy to me that I hadn't learned about it when I was in school, considering the impact that Morehouse, our brother institution has, as far as their representation of black men in venture capital. It was just crazy to me that I was at an institution right across the street and had no idea that this industry even existed. So when I stumbled across VC and began learning about it, I just saw the opportunity for artists, athletes and entertainers to be involved and was curious as to why more people that look like us aren't represented in those spaces. So that's when you know, my research and dedication to being in this position really started. And then from there, you know, bringing that idea and really helped become what we're building today with quality Ventures has been amazing. Dan Runcie 04:26So talk to me about that piece about bringing this idea together. So was it you seeing the opportunity and seeing how much of a disconnect there was and then going into the team at QC to be like, hey, there's something big here and we have talent here that could be just as influential. Dazayah Walker 04:42Yes. So it was a moment where I had to really think about what legacy do I want to have, what value do I want to add, and being in this position, you know, I built relationships with, you know, our entire team. So I was somebody that, you know, they trusted and when I, you know, have something to say they were listening, and you know, they embraced any idea or anything that I had. So by, you know, telling them and showing them, you know, the opportunity that exists for us in this space, it was well-received. And now here we are deploying capital, making investments. And my goal is really for us to have that same little level of influence and impact that we have in music in the venture capital space, as well. So having that same strong presence and footprint in that industry, too.Dan Runcie 05:29So what does that thesis look like? What does that investment goal look like for QC specifically, because I'm sure it's more than just the financial aspect? There's the pitch and how it can help intersect and how the music itself and everything you're doing on the media and entertainment side can help with the venture opportunity too?Dazayah Walker 05:48Absolutely, so our biggest thing is adding value, adding strategic value. So for us being in a unique position of being that entity that defines culture and creates culture, I feel like we're uniquely positioned to leverage our artists and our athletes to really help grow these companies that we see as potential winners.Dan Runcie 06:11And are there ever any specific moments where folks are reaching out? And there's, of course, the interest in having QC on the cap table, but then people reaching out about specific artists, whether it's like, oh, well, we want to have City Girls on here, specifically, or we want to be able to have a Lil Baby on here? How has it been with that piece of advice, I'm sure that could be an interesting discussion, especially from your landscape with all of that. Dazayah Walker 06:35So that happens a lot as well. And it all boils down to seeing if the artist even aligns with what you're building. Because when you're working with early stage, or pre-seed stage companies, that may be the very first version of whatever they're building, there's so many more iterations yet to happen. And as the entity continues to grow, and transform, the artists that they thought may be ideal for what they're building as a representation may not be as they continue to, you know, redefine what it is that they're building. So yes, you know, we get opportunities all the time for our artists, which was another reason why, like the opportunity to bridge the gap and intersect music and technology was so evident and clear to me, you know, to pursue and to do, because those opportunities and those deals are always flowing. But really being in a position being someone that knows how to evaluate those opportunities, and educate, you know, the artist, or the athlete or whoever may be to let them know, like, this is why this is a good, you know, opportunity or something to look at and this is why it isn't.Dan Runcie 07:41I also imagine that there's likely people that may be reaching out because they may want just the exposure that may come right, they may be like, “Oh, well, if y'all invest can Lil Baby, give us a shout out for the product on some song. And I could see there being you know, some pushback on that, because obviously, you all would see the opportunity as being greater than that.” But how was that piece of it been? Because I know, I've heard similar from folks in the entertainment space when they're looking to have not just celebrities, but artists specifically on the cap table.Dazayah Walker 08:13Well, personally, I don't think a founder having that mindset is necessarily wrong because in the VC ecosystem now, capital isn't an issue. So getting the money having people to, you know, write a check for you isn't the hard part. It's actually once you get that money, how can you use that, you know, relationship that you now have to help build your company or grow whatever it is that you're building. So I feel like a founder having that perspective isn't necessarily a bad thing, because you want to have partners that can help you grow your company and add value in different ways. So if there is an opportunity for an artist, if it's something that they really love, you know, to be an ambassador for it, and to push it.Dan Runcie 08:58So when you're evaluating startups, and when you're evaluating artists, or not artists, founders, specifically, what are you looking for, like, what is your criteria set? And what are those things whether it's tangible or intangible that you're looking for that clears that over the hurdle to be like, Yes, this is what we want to invest in?Dazayah Walker 09:16So I would break it down into three things. The first thing I would say, what is the problem that you're trying to solve? Is this a problem that is unique to you and from like, or where you're from? Or is this a problem that is affecting a wide market of people? So first, understanding the problem, and if the solution that they're attempting to build is a solution for the greater good? The second thing is really understanding their team, like, who do you have helping you build this? What people do need a position to help you build it? And like how much traction Have you gotten so far. And the first, and I think the most important thing is the founder, when you're working with companies that are likely pre-revenue, maybe they have a very, very early version of their product, you're placing a bet on the founder. So knowing the type of person to look for, or the type of characteristics to look for in a founder, I think are very important. Somebody that is determined, somebody that is all in like willing to make the investment themselves because how do you expect me or someone to make an investment when you haven't even, you know, fully invested yourself in this in this idea? So I will say those are the top three things that I look at when I meet with founders and new companies.Dan Runcie 10:33That makes sense. And then in terms of the industries themselves, is there any type of sector that you're particularly looking for, or any other type of industry that you feel is most aligned with what QC or Quality Ventures is after?Dazayah Walker 10:49Yeah, so as a company, Quality Ventures isn't looking in specific industries and verticals. I know a lot of people think since you know, we have Quality Control Music, we're looking strictly at music-based companies and startups. And that's not necessarily true. Like I said, our whole thesis is really about us being in a position to add value. But for me, specifically, I really like looking at fintech companies, I think that Fintech is the next market to really boom so paying attention to the trends, paying attention to what people are saying, paying attention to what problems are they need to be solved. So for me personally, the industry of interest to me is fintech.Dan Runcie 11:28And what is it about fintech specifically that sticks out to you or interest you?Dazayah Walker 11:32I like it because I think it's time for a change as far as how money is viewed, how money is moved. Like I know, you probably have seen how crypto, everybody's talking about crypto, and preparation for the metaverse, like, all of those things are happening strategically. And by being aware of what's happening in fintech, you know how the money is moving what the future of money and finances look like. So that you can kind of put yourself in position to not only be educated about it but know how to make your next move when it comes to what the future looks like.Dan Runcie 12:05Right? That makes sense. And I think especially when you look more broadly at the definition of FinTech, and you look at companies like Coinbase, and you look at some of the partnerships that they've had with organizations like the NBA, or even the United Masters, there's clearly an alignment where even if it isn't in the quote-unquote, entertainment landscape, this touches so much. So that's why I think you see so many artists and companies in this space that want to tap into all these areas, even if they're not necessarily what you may think is in that industry. Dazayah Walker 12:38Exactly. Dan Runcie 12:39And with that, I mean, for you, I know that another partnership that QC has, at least on the investment side, from what I've seen is in Techstars Music, and I saw that you're a mentor there and that QC more broadly as a partner. So how has that experience been?Dazayah Walker 12:56It's been amazing. Just the Techstars music team in general have been a great like resource for us. So when the program, when we joined the program last year, we kind of were thrown in when things were already in motion, like they were already preparing for demo day, the companies in the cohort were already selected. But now I was able to be a part of the process of you know, picking the companies for the new cohort, being a part of like all the member meetings and the mentor meetings. So with me still being in a very early part of my career, I'm always looking for opportunities to learn and experience new things. And Techstars has been an amazing teacher for me. Just seeing things from that perspective, working with an accelerator, like working with founders and seeing them in that perspective has definitely helped me I feel like become a better venture capitalist, just seeing things from different angles and different perspectives. Because honestly, once I made the decision to transition into venture capital, I was a little discouraged because I am entering it through a very unconventional background. So any opportunity that I have to learn and observe and ask questions, it's been amazing, because it's been it's been a rough journey for me to be able to confidently say, this is what I'm doing. I know that I'm uniquely qualified to do that thing, and, you know, moving like that. So it's been a journey, Dan, I tell you,Dan Runcie 14:22I could imagine I mean, there are not many people that look like you that are doing this type of work. And when you compound that with what people already may assume is standard for what they expect for people working at, the type of company you work at that just compounds it further. I mean, what are some of the things that you had done early on to try to, you know, either break through that or try to navigate that the best, and I could only imagine how tough that could be at times.Dazayah Walker 14:50Yeah, I would definitely say reaching out to people asking questions, really being a sponge, absorbing as much information and knowledge as I can. Because making this pivot into an entire new industry is scary, because like, I built my network in my name and music. And now, I feel like making a career shift almost as still such an early point in my career was very, very scary. But some of those same like tactics and things that I did to be successful or reach the level of success that I had in music, I applied those same principles to me, you know, trying to achieve a level of success in venture capital. So really finding mentors and finding a community to learn from to be supported by and to be supportive of, and just taking things day by day. And knowing that every day is an opportunity to learn something new, and, you know, not taking opportunity for granted because I know I'm in a very unique and special position. And I'm grateful for the position that I'm in. So really showing people why I, you know, I'm deserving of the role that I've been placed in.Dan Runcie 16:04Definitely. And I also think, too, whether it's programs like HBCU, VC, and obviously, you representing that being an alum from HBCU them recognizing that this is a pipeline that not only is a challenge, but how can they help bridge that gap? And, you know, are there any specific organizations, whether it's like that or others that have been helpful for you as you've gone along this path?Dazayah Walker 16:26Yeah, so definitely HBCU BC, considering I was a fellow, that was an amazing program with amazing teachers, and I've really been able to, like tap into that community, which has been amazing. Another community that I'm really grateful for is Black VC and the Black Venture Capital Consortium, both of those organizations have been super supportive and welcoming of me. And it's things like that, that are very important for not even just me being a young black woman, but you know, being a person of color trying to enter another space that is male-dominated, white-male-dominated. So just having that comfort of knowing that there are people that support you and want to uplift you and see you do amazing things.Dan Runcie 17:11Yeah, definitely. I could see that for sure. I could see that. Well. Let's circle back quick. I do want to talk about some of the public investments that you've made. I know that Riff was one of them, that you all were in, was that one of them? Riff, yes. Okay. So what was the process like for that investment? What was it that attracted you about that company?Dazayah Walker 17:31Well, Riff isn't one that I necessarily, like found from the beginning and worked all the way to the point where we cut the check. But Riff has been an amazing company in our portfolio, I'm super excited for what they're building, just seeing them being disruptive and combining elements that we as consumers love, I'm really excited for the journey of Riff and being able to be a great partner to them, and just seeing them grow. And you know, being along that journey in that ride with them, but they're definitely building something amazing. And I'm excited for, you know, the masses to really, you know, tap into it, learn about it, and really get engaged with it.Dan Runcie 18:10Yeah, I can see that. Are there any that are public that you've worked on that you can talk more about?Dazayah Walker 18:17Yeah, so one of my favorite companies in our portfolio, which is actually one of the companies from the previous class of Techstars. It's called Faith. And this is one that I really, really loved. Because not only did our relate to like the platform, just to give you a little bit of background Faith is an app for fans. It allows fans to come together and really live within their fandom. And with me being a past fangirl, I immediately fell in love with what she was building. And the founder, she's a black woman, she's a solopreneur, which is a challenge in itself. So just seeing what she's built so far, the amount of traction that she's received, and just how far she has come has been super inspirational for me, you know, being involved, even in like the due diligence and saying, I think this is a great company, I think this is one that we really should pay attention to, to the point of us actually deploying capital to that company. That was super cool, and really amazing. And that's another company in our portfolio that I'm super excited about. And I feel like not only will my generation, like, enjoy the app, but the generation underneath me will as well, so…Dan Runcie 19:23Nice. That makes sense. Yeah. And I feel with apps like that in platforms. I mean, not only do you have the direct connection, but I'm sure you being able to have the connection to it. I mean, these are the type of things obviously it's still early stage, you know, but gets marked up you continue to have that influence over it and you never know where that could take you. I feel like that's kind of the exciting thing, especially for the people I talk to you that are that start their careers in VC, as opposed to the other way around the, you know, the folks that may have done something on the product side and then go into vc.Dazayah Walker 19:56Yeah, but my goal overall, really is to, you know, find my groove in this and really, you know, find success for myself and I define success within this space is being able to invest in companies, have exits, and you know, have a strong portfolio, so that I can get to the point where I'm able to educate and inform, because I feel like, part of the reason why a lot of artists, athletes, and entertainers, which is, you know, the people that I'm used to working with and being around, which is why I really strongly urge them to get into this space, and why I feel like I'm in the position, and the person to really do that work, is because they don't know, like, there's that kind of barrier. Like they may see things on social media of other artists that have invested in Gods, you know, there's money back, but really having someone there to educate them and be that bridge and that conduit from, you know, them being in the position and the level of influence, and you know, the reach that they have, and showing them and being that person to bring deals to them to help them leverage that so that not only are they able to, you know, be represented in this space, but build generational wealth for them and their families. Like that's the bigger picture. And that's the goal for me. And that's the work that I really want to do and look forward to doing. So finding success here and having a strong, like track record and proven portfolio, and then being able to use that as a way to show people you can do this too. And this is how, let me show you how, let me be that person to help you understand and be a part of it.Dan Runcie 21:32Yeah, that's powerful. Because I feel like especially for you or you're in your position now. There's a lot of people that I'm sure look at you being like, oh, Dazayah, how can we get in that? Like, how do you were able to, you know, connect those dots. And then you obviously, you know, I'm sure you feel like you're deep into yourself, you're learning as you're continuing to grow. But you know that in the near future, you will be able to have enough. And that can look like a number of things, whether that's a course or some other type of platform to just share and disseminate this information. Because not only is it important for people to hear it, it's important for people to hear it from people who you know, look like you they if you want to inspire, you know, especially if there's black women across the country across the world, I want to hear it, the more folks that could share their experience, the better that is.Dazayah Walker 22:16Absolutely, I agree 100%. Like, the more you know, the better position that you can put yourself in. And I just think it's a lack of knowledge, people just not knowing, like, what these things mean, how to get in on deals, how much to invest, like, there's so many layers to it. And I feel like if people were a bit more comfortable, they'd be more open and investing their money in other ways than the traditional stocks and bonds or, you know, how people see fit to save their money or invest their money, I should say. Dan Runcie 22:47Yeah, especially now I feel like we're seeing things like whether it's the accredited investor rule or other things just continuing to be challenged, we're gonna see more and more people investing the definition of an investor and who can get involved with things. As those barriers continue to lower, the options increase. And when that happens, it just provides more space for education. So yeah, you're definitely on the right track with all that stuff has ever said. 100%Dazayah Walker 23:13Thank you. That really means a lot. Thank you.Dan Runcie 23:16Yeah, well, um, I know that, you know, we've covered a lot in this. But before we let you go, I do want to get a quick take from you on what are you most excited for? What's coming through the QC portfolio for the rest of 2022? And I guess portfolio, that'd be more on the artists side. Specifically, what are you excited for on that front. Dazayah Walker 23:36I'm just excited for the continued growth of Quality Control as an empire. It hasn't even been 10 years that QC has been in existence. And for us to have made so much leeway, create so much history have so much impact within that 10-year window. I'm excited to see what the next five years look like for us. But even just in the next year, in the next 12 months, I'm excited to see the continued growth and effort of our team, like our team has grown dramatically. So if we were able to do and accomplish so much with such a small team, I'm excited to see what the next 12 months look like for our expansion and our growth and just everything to come and everything that we're building, publicly and silently. I'm just grateful for the position that I'm in and be able to be a part of that and even say those things. So the next year it's going to look like a lot of wins continued success and growth and expansion for all of us.Dan Runcie 24:38That's exciting. I feel like the past decade for QC has been incredible. I think it's so tough for indie labels to be able to have that type of run in the fact that they have says a lot. So I'm excited. I mean, as a fan of all of this, I'm excited to see what happened. But yeah, before we let you go, is there anything else you want to plug or let the Trapital audience know about?Dazayah Walker 25:00I should say this is great, Dan, I absolutely love what you're doing what you're building, you're spreading a message that needs to be heard by so many. And you're not only inspiring me, but you're inspiring people that you may not even know that you're touching. So keep doing the work that you're doing. This was awesome. Thank you so much.Dan Runcie 25:19Thank you. I appreciate that. Appreciate that. We'll do. Thanks, Dazayah.Dazayah Walker 25:23All right. Thank you, Dan.Dan Runcie 25:28 If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review, tell people why you like the podcast that helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

The three different ways you can pay for your music to be uploaded to all DSP's. Just want to let you guys know all of the options and making sure your getting the most bang for your buck by not letting distributors charge you too much for releasing your music. Distrokid vs United Masters vs Songflowr

Earlier this year I was inspired to pick up a hula hoop and I dove into learning hooping on YouTube and found Debra Cohen! This feisty woman inspired me to keep going with my hooping journey. I was blessed to be a guest on her show. She candidly opened up about her experience as a child that she pushed down. After suffering from whiplash from a car accident, Debra had a flashback from her childhood and this was send her into finding healing through a passion of music, yoga, and hula hooping. In the 1980's she was in a new wave band toured New England and had one radio hit, Boston Nights: https://open.spotify.com/track/5N9CoyDUlwrUhX50o0Q624?si=O0rDM0KTSZ6Gv2NfwArB-g She travelled the Middle East in 1999-2000 and discovered Judaism. Started "Hoolahooping" at 65 and teaches free class online to older adults on Zoom. Opened merch store for unique t-shirts in 2021. Writing and recording music as a United Masters artist. Check out her more here: https://aslifehappens.org http://www.unitedmasters.com/debra-cohen-music http://www.debracohenmusic.com Her powerful song can be found here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di-Y6OCYeGc Find the books she mentioned here- The Courage To Heal- https://amzn.to/3ptCgHF The Courage To Heal Workbook- https://amzn.to/3HbtgwK The Awakened Brain- https://amzn.to/3qv1BAl 1980's new wave band toured New England and had one radio hit, Boston Nights: https://open.spotify.com/track/5N9CoyDUlwrUhX50o0Q624?si=O0rDM0KTSZ6Gv2NfwArB-g Someone out there needs to know they are not alone and that they can survive. Perhaps you are a parent or friend of someone trapped in an abusive relationship and need to know how to help. My goal is to share awareness, offer empowerment, and educate others about emotional traumas and domestic abuse. Here I will share my story and also stories of courage and healing from Survivors, Coaches, to Therapists/Counselors. Find me here- https://linktr.ee/melindakunst Find help and info here- National Domestic Violence Hotline- https://www.thehotline.org/ Safe Horizon- https://www.safehorizon.org/ https://www.domesticshelters.org/ https://internationalwomenshouse.org/get-help https://www.domesticshelters.org/resources/national-global-organizations Sexual Assault Hotline- https://www.rainn.org/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/melinda-j-kunst/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/melinda-j-kunst/support

UBI is definitely a key role inside this life span we are living today. This interview featuring united masters C.E.O Steve Stoute talks about the importance of NFT'S & Crypto Currency also known as Bit Coin. With a very professional background the company Coin Base plans on merging with united master with a partnership of longevity that will allow artist & producers get their Fair Share of difficult work thats been put in for many years. The artworks are in motion and people want to recover from the matrix platforms far as Spotify, apple music, nintendo, amazon music, tune core, reverb nation, sound cloud and many more brands. Take a listen to this podcast segment if have not yet listen to. Get to understand why was this interview important in the first place. We deserve our fare share click on the subscription icon and make universal basic income vulnerable today.

Dear Life Warriors, I want to dispel the myths on mental illness! Meet my friend,  Natasha Bowman, President of Performance-Renew, Attorney, Tedx Speaker, Published Author, Professor and she has Bipolar Disorder. Natasha shared in a recent post on Linked In, "This is the face of someone with Bipolar Disorder. When most people think of someone with mental illness, they often think of someone who shows visible symptoms. Because of the stigma we don't get the support we need" Overcoming mental health stigma is only one part of a larger effort to foster an organizational culture of psychological safety. That stigma prevents us from talking openly about mental health issues and prevents those who need help the most from seeking it.I had the pleasure of interviewing Natasha where she shared a little bit of her story and why it was important to let people know of her diagnosis. Bipolar disorder, formerly called manic depression, is a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings that include emotional highs (mania or hypomania) and lows (depression). You are not alone. Statistics shows that 1 in every 5 people suffer from this disorder and you do not have to suffer in silence.Subscribe to us on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DearLifeWarriorsPurchase my mind cleansing journal: https://www.30daystoanewyoujournal.comAbout Natasha Bowman:https://performance-renew.com/Recognized as a Top 30 Global Guru for Management, Natasha Bowman, JD, SPHR has labored to transform the American workplace from the inside out for nearly 20 years. As a champion for employees, she's worked with a broad range of organizations as a c-suite HR executive to create an engaging environment in which employees are respected, genuine leaders are cultivated, and top performance is achieved. Natasha is an award winning, modern day pioneer of workplace equality, inspiring organizations to not just pay lip service to workplace rights but craft highly-engaged cultures where every employee is truly dignified and valued for their contribution. Because of her ability to diagnose workplace issues and provide proven solutions to organizations, she is often referred to as The Workplace Doctor.Natasha Bowman has developed a reputation as an expert workplace consultant through her firm, Performance ReNEW and as a labor and employment law attorney. Her clients include Forbes, Hearst Magazines,4A's, Anomaly, Redscout, Translation LLC, United Masters, Stashed, The Freeman Company, SmartBrief, Wiley Publishing, The Touch Foundation and Manhattan College to name a few. Apart from her rich expertise and cross-sector experience, she brings an ardent intellectual commitment to the field by serving as an adjunct professor of human resources for distinguished institutions such as Georgetown University, Fordham University, Manhattan College, and The Jack Welch Management Institute.She is a sought after TedX and international keynote speaker for conferences and organizations worldwide and has shared her passion for creating positive and engaging workplaces by speaking at the HR Congress in Nice, France, New York Police Department, The City of Detroit, Ford Motor Company, The Employers' Association, Temple University, Harvard University, Toledo Public Schools, Microsoft, and the Society for Human Resources Management just to name a few. Her expertise is frequently quoted in national publications such as Forbes, Business Insider, U.S. News and World Reports, Bloomberg BNA and HR Magazine.#dearlifewarriors #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoachingtips #mentalhealth #professionaldevelopment #softskillstraining #leadershipdevelopment #performancerenew #natashabowman #executivecoach #Tedxspeaker #laborlawattorney

In this episode of No Nonsense Music Marketing, we dive into the details of how UnitedMasters reached its $550 Million Valuation.Links from this episode:Omari Music Promotion: www.omarimc.com/promotion Tunecore Discount (Receive 20% off your first upload with our link): https://www.tunecore.com/?ref=omarimcpodcast&jt=omarimcpodcast Merch: https://musiquo.com/$OMARI Coin: https://rally.io/creator/OMARI/ Other links mentioned in this episode:Source Article:https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/10/29/unitedmasters-series-c/

Pre-save and pre-add wordsmith's new album called “Bittersweet” wherever you get your music. It drops September 17th  You can find wordsmith on most platforms @wordsmith and on instagram as @Wordsmithmusic  Wordsmith's TED talk: https://youtu.be/AsUcY8FXHWI  Support Rise with a Purpose: https://www.risewithapurpose.com/    25 minutes correction it is Berklee City Music: https://www.berklee.edu/city-music    Wordsmith is a Baltimore-based songwriter, performer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. In 2009 he opened his independent label NU Revolution Entertainment. Since its inception, distribution and licensing deals with INgrooves, United Masters, Redeye, and APM Music helped the company flourish! Wordsmith has released 6 albums over his career, became a Grammy Voting Member and earned winner of Best Rap/Hip Album for Perspective Jukebox at the 16th Independent Music Awards. Wordsmith continues to use this platform to strengthen partnerships with major brands like: Netflix, ESPN, NFL Network and WWE to name a few. 2019 brought prominent features in the hit shows Russian Doll (Netflix), Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix), Preacher (AMC), Skam France (UK TV) and recently had two songs featured in the video game NBA 2K21 Next Gen! Continuing to expand the company, Wordsmith officially opened his nonprofit “Rise with a Purpose, Inc.” and delivered his first TED Talk via John Hopkins University in 2021. Partnering with the US Department of State to fund performances and workshops in countries around the world to strengthen multicultural ties, Wordsmith has brought his influential music to Azerbaijan, Haiti, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Angola and Ukraine. During the pandemic he performed Virtual Tours for Panama, Tunisia, Tanzania and Ukraine to keep the cultural connections strong!    The Best Music Podcast #36 | Wordsmith — Rap | Bittersweet, Virtual Tours, Rise with a Purpose    0:00 Intro  2:30 Warm-up questions  06:45 Clean lyrics  12:00 Defining success  14:30 Virtual tours  20:40 Rise with a Purpose    Time of day Songwriting: Inspiration Songwriting: Listen or not to listen? Performance anxiety #musicians #songwriter #songwriters #composers #musicmajor #musicmajors #musiceducator #musiceducators #musiceducation #podcast #thebestmusicpodcast #clips #musicpodcast #singer #guitarist #guitarplayer #trombonist #trumpet #violin #viola #cello #bass #brass #trombone #mandolin #banjo #drums #percussion #timpani #marimba #oboe #sax #saxophone #clarinet #basoon #alto #soprano #tenor #piano #keyboard #musicians #songwriter #songwriters #composers #musicmajor #musiceducator #musicpodcast #singersongwriter #musiceducation #singer #trumpet #violin #viola #cello #bass #trombone #musiclife #musicmaker #musicteacher #drums #percussion #saxophone #clarinet #guitar #piano #podcast #thebestmusicpodcast #musicislife #musicindustry #PandoraPodcasts    Logo, Intro Video, and Branding: Arron Leishman  Audio and Video: Zach Ramey zacherylramey@gmail.com  Dan's Thumbnail Photo: John Mollura Photography

Sha'carri Richardson Hate, On Instagram dancing on crates, Emmanuel Acho, Candace Owens, Spotify paying podcasters a lot of money in new ways, United Masters giving indie artist 1 million advances. Enjoy & Subscribe!

Welcome to Episode 86 of the Asian Hustle Network Podcast! We are very excited to have Quinn Wang and Kristine Hara on this week's episode. We interview Asian entrepreneurs around the world to amplify their voices and empower Asians to pursue their dreams and goals. We believe that each person has a message and a unique story from their entrepreneurial journey that they can share with all of us. Check us out on Anchor, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, TuneIn, Spotify, and more. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a positive 5-star review. This is our opportunity to use the voices of the Asian community and share these incredible stories with the world. We release a new episode every Wednesday, so stay tuned Quinn is a UCSF-trained cataract surgeon and 2x Duke alum (BA, MD) who graduated with highest distinction in English Literature. She has published papers in leading journals such as Ophthalmology, designed and implemented a randomized clinical control trial, and pioneered bilateral cataract surgery in private practice. Outside of work, she regularly cycles up mountains and occasionally climbs up volcanoes (on skis.) Kristine is a 2x founder who graduated from UC Berkeley with degrees (BA, MS) in Biology, History, and Information Science. She has authored academic papers in data mining and computer science, piloted studies in computational cancer research and evolutionary genetics, and shorted the fastest market crash in history. When not working, she enjoys road tripping across Africa and exploring ghost towns. She was also previously at Pandora and United Masters. Please check out our Patreon at @asianhustlenetwork. We want AHN to continue to be meaningful and give back to the Asian community. If you enjoy our podcast and would like to contribute to our future, we hope you'll consider becoming a patron. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianhustlenetwork/support

Before he was the manager for Nas and Gwen Stefani, before he was the producer for the film 8 Mile, before he was getting into fights with P Diddy and 50 Cent, Steve Stoute was an entrepreneur. He's always been an entrepreneur - starting out shovelling snow and selling mortgages. And boy has he got some stories to tell, like what Roger Moore said to him when 007 met Steve and Bono in a bar in Monaco. Find out how Steve is turning the music industry on its head as the founder of United Masters, having recently raised $50 million from an all star trio: Apple, Google and Andreessen Horowitz. “As an entrepreneur, your job is to have an idea, build out the vision so that it's clear, and that people can buy into it. Employees, outside partners, strategic partners, bankers, whatever it may be, you have to get people aligned around your vision.”Steve shares his journey, from growing up in Queens, New York, around the birth of hip hop, to investing in music producers, and creating and producing albums for Gwen Stefani and Nas:“Once you start getting momentum and you have heat, you know, heat attracts heat, people want to be around what's hot, and working with Nas and then LL Cool J and Foxy Brown, Mariah Carey, Lauryn Hill and the Fujis...” Steve has learned from Sit Paul McCartney, has had public fallings out with 50 Cent, founded an advertising agency - Translation - and now with United Masters has created a record company that gives artists back their power. “Don't listen to the noise, be irrational with your pursuit of perfection, be irrational with your belief in your idea. And don't allow people to tell you that you can't do it. They're actually just putting their limitations on themselves, on you.”We chat about:The impact the rise of hip hop had on himTaking advantage of every opportunityFounding the record company in your pocketHis darkest days as an entrepreneurLinks:Book - The Tanning of AmericaWant to receive our podcast on a weekly basis? Subscribe to our newsletter!

Steve Stoute has helped shape the culture for over 30 years. He's responsible for making Nas a mainstream artist, he's the brains behind corporate partnerships with Reebok, Jay-Z, and 50 Cent, he's a pioneer in building a bridge between the corporate world and Hip-Hop, and is wildly considered a marketing genius. Aside from advertising, he's responsible for introducing several artists to the world of venture capital, including Nas. His most recent venture United Masters, is a new age record company for independent artists that allow artists to distribute their music to streaming services while retaining ownership rights.  In EYL 137, we covered everything from the benefits of being an independent artist, advertising, bringing corporate to culture, the current state of record companies, venture capital, the financial literacy movement, and more. #stevestoute #unitedmasters #marketing  EYL University: https://www.eyluniversity.com EYL University 60% Off Sale Annual Tuition  Host IG: https://instagram.com/earnyourleisure?igshid=19xmzxzu82xmx Guest IG: https://instagram.com/stevestoute?utm_medium=copy_link Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Janie Korn is a New York-based visual artist, curator, and content producer. Her works have appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, New York Magazine, Interview Magazine, Refinery29, Garage, ArtNet, among others and worked with brands like United Masters, Nordstrom, and Amelie Pichard. https://www.instagram.com/janiekorn/

A first good news after a scam of a month and a dream that I question why ? So big d country LLC is not only a travel agent but also a record label!! Very excited for my new instrumental song release this may 8 ! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bigdcountry/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/bigdcountry/support

Track List: (0:00): derrickcomedy – Hip Hop X khoa – geneva (1:44): S.K. Fusion - ¡ GO ! (Legend v.4 promo) (3:50): S.K. Fusion - Fantasy X EESUCK - OPEN A DOOR (Koitsu 2021-03-31_17h45m53 Mashup) (5:33): Afrikano - Life Is Good (8:29): Future & Drake - Scholarships [KEIFERGR33N Remix] (11:26): marguins – LIGHTNESS (13:58): veryolddog - i just popped a xan can't feel my face (15:12): BLEARY JERRY - TURNIN' HEADS (17:00): Mist3r – Syrup (19:02): SVULNIER – SWAG (20:44): unseen - 4 IN THE MORNIN (22:49): BERRYMANE- TOO LOUD (25:35):

Apple recently partnered with music distributor UnitedMasters by infusing  $50 Million into their company.  This week we look at  Apple's new relationship with UnitedMasters and see if the seemingly innovative offerings by United Masters will ultimately help indie artists grow their brand and make them more cash.New Book: DESTROY Digital Media PlatformsTraxBox | Competitive Streaming™ READ: DESTROY Digital Media Platforms Find Out Why Your Content Everywhere Gets You Nowhere...Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the show

What's good Few Tang Clan!?! I ain't gonna talk you to death describing this episode. We just got on and freestyled this one. We enjoyed it though. Hopefully you all will enjoy listening to this conversation as much as we enjoyed having it. Make room for the tag...#ConversateForAFew #CFAF Conversate For A Few YouTube Channel - Subscribe and hit the notification bell! Apple Podcast: https://bit.ly/ConversateForAFewApplePodcasts Spotify: https://bit.ly/ConversateForAFewSpotify Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/ConversateForAFewGooglePodcast Follow and join the conversation on Instagram and Facebook! http://bit.ly/ConversateFacebookGroup https://bit.ly/ConversateInstagram --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/conversateforafew/support

Today we talk about United Masters and the 50 million dollar investment from Apple, Amazon Halo, KD and Michael Rapaport Twitter exchange, and couple of under and overvalued stocks. Wells Fargo and US BankClick HERE to follow our social links Click Here to submit a random story Music by: Eric MayleekAlso check out - Swurl.io If it wasn't for them we wouldn't have thought about doing this.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to learn everything you need to know about owning & growing a music business. Download our ebook, '6 Steps to a Profitable Fanbase' Follow @Elliot.Tousley and @JamesLandry_ on Instagram Check out Denovoagency.com to see how we can help you grow a music business --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/denovoagency/support

In this episode, the flamingos talk about if each person likes sharing their meal with someone. The guys give their thoughts on the Space Jam movie trailer. Kanzi asks Awab about Godzilla vs King Kong movie. YAD talks about DMX being hospitalized, and the guys talk about how influential X is to the game. YAD gives his thoughts on the Quavo & Saweetie drama. Apple $50M investment in "United Masters". YAD & Awab talk about the Champions League's upcoming intense matches. Local: The guys talk about who is the #1 HipHop/R&B artist in the UAE, and they discuss music releases from Marwan Pablo "CTRL" EP, and a slight talk about AKA Keyzz album "Roots", and Soulja latest song "Charlestone". Flamingos Picks: YAD l Soulja "Charlestone", Adam Nabeel "Like That". Hawsa "Bread.

Before NLE Choppa would turn down a $3-million-dollar record deal at just 16 years old, signing a distribution deal with Steve Stoute's United Masters.Before he would drop the song Shotta Flow, which currently has over 34 million views on YouTube, and before he would get cosigns from Meek Mill, LeBron James, Birdman and Stevie Wonder.

Dont pay tunecore money when its free!! I have gone through the best free music distributors online. freshtunes.com released my first album beatchain.com did as well along with levelmusic.com If you want royalties sign up with United Masters  http://www.unitedmasters.com The most you pay a one time fee of $10 to $20 dollars. The other distrubtors ask for $20 to 40 dollars for each release. https://open.spotify.com/artist/7aPUo4MM4qcCE6HHAKmnft   Register All Music http://www.ascap.com (I'm with ASCAP) http://www.bmi.com   Write and or Produce all you music to receive royalties.

On this episode, your hosts Natasha & Stephany talk their sh*! on: •Racism •Rapping •Bringing women pleasure •Bible Study •And more! In ‘Trendies’ we discuss Ashanti vs Keyshia Cole, and more. In ‘Put Yourself in My Shoes’ a leaked compromising video is mentioned. IG: https://instagram.com/yaassi_United Masters: https://unitedmasters.com/yaassi_IG: https://instagram.com/hk__billyUnited Masters: https://unitedmasters.com/m/LettingItGoTune in every Wednesdays for more! We love hearing from you so feel free to rate, like, comment and subscribe. Email: Talkyourshitpodcast@gmail.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/talkyourshitpod/Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalkYourShitPod 

Emerging New York rapper Dontae recently dropped his new EP “H8 The Game” and is currently gearing up for 2021. Stopping by On The Radar this week we spoke to the rapper about his partnership with United Masters, the ups and downs of being an independent artist, his new EP + more!Follow Gabe on IG: https://bit.ly/39TJYmPFollow On The Radar On IG: https://bit.ly/3n3tP1QFollow On The Radar On Twitter: https://bit.ly/2VYj8lmFollow On The Radar on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2VWjJnBFollow On The Radar on Tik Tok: https://bit.ly/2JNPcWIFollow On The Radar On iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/39UZUW1Follow On The Radar On Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/370ITYD

This week on Bridge the Gap Podcast the guys go over the #endSARS movement in Nigeria (12:21), the Supreme Court nomination, Dave Free’s departure from TDE (28:24), expectations for Drake’s Certified Lover Boy, whether time should be held the same for all artists, the Jeezy vs. T.I. Verzuz battle (42:55), Andre 3000 leaks, NBA Youngboy’s United Masters deal (57:47), Kanye’s Joe Rogan interview and much more.

Kicked off the Virtual Podcast Tour 2020 w/keezayfooliano make sure you go check out his new single that just drop on youtube, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, United Masters & More. Artist coming up in Boston Supporting the Black Lives Matter Movement working & unifying. Check Out his single What You Want➡️ https://youtu.be/XAY5BwbhGCA & Prey➡️ https://youtu.be/KYoPp89-9qU. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/6seventeenpodcast/support

We dive into the musical world of Natalie Nichole of Indience Music Group. We explore how Natalie was discovered by Nick Cannon and how she became the CEO of her indie label. Indience Music Group doesn't only finds talent but is talent; which makes them different from the rest. From her living in LA and traveling with the WILD N OUT Crew to her learning the industry and making her own way. With a new single out every single month Natalie consistently puts out fire like Russ, owning her masters in partnership with United Masters and making waves all over the world. This young Super Star has a lot in the works and does it all independently! Candle Lit Natalie gives us all the feels! ❤️

The team begin by discussing the dynamics and the process by which the government makes decisions during the current #Corona pandemic in #SouthAfrica. The conversation leads to #mentalhealth challenges that men face and advice on how to deal with them. Jimmy Wiz' distribution deal with Steve Stoute's United Masters leads to a discussion on distribution and deals for independent artists. Appreciation for Jimmy Wiz ATJ Lost Files, Xplosive Dj's Plan B EP's and the development of Maglera Doe Boy's career. No Hidden Agenda Podcast Available on; #iTunes #Spotify & #Soundclound smarturl.it/nhapodcastep

• PRE POTPOURRI. What’s new in the mind, body, heart, and soul (4:59)? • MUSIC POTPOURRI. We start with Keyshia Chante vs Top 5 (6:17). Is SZA having label issues with TDE (10:21)? Meg Thee Stallion says that Tory Lanez shot her (16:48). Trey Songz (24:47). Kehlani and JoJo show solidarity by removing Tory Lanez off of their respective songs for their respective deluxe albums (28:30). Tik Tok announces a partnered deal with United Masters (32:23). Keep It or Leak It; LeBron James new Tune Squad jerseys (39:05), Lil Uzi virtual concert (40:29), Logic mixtape (42:39). We got Shoutouts: Mario Rigby for kayaking across Lake Ontario (45:13), and The Breakfast Club, Sway, and Angie Martinez for being inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame (47:33). New Music Report (49:22): Pharrell x Jay Z (52:28), Nas (56:36), blackbear (59:16), Lecrae (1:00:29), Vic Mensa (1:03:30), and more. Finally we ask the question, What’s In Your Rotation (1:14:28)? • POST POTPOURRI. Nick Nurse wins NBA 2020 Coach of the Year (1:19:04), a vital update to the Masai Ujiri situation (1:21:57). Find us on Twitter/Instagram/Youtube @truenorthviews. Find us on Facebook @truenorthviewspodcast. Search ‘True North Views Podcast’ on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you listen to podcasts to subscribe today. WE DO NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO ANY OF THE MUSIC THAT WE PLAY FOR REVIEW PURPOSES. WE DO NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO ANY IMAGERY THAT IS NOT OUR OWN This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

In catching up, Sade goes to her first show, post-quarantine, Pro gets an unexpected gift and also comes to a realization. Sade and Pro also confront a recent issue they've come across and share their intentions on sharing music. They move on right into topics - starting with the two big singles of the week from Drake (33:21), Nas (42:00) and the new Tik Tok x United Masters partnership (51:24). After they revisit some crazy trends (1:04:53), Sade brings up a situation and gets Pro's thoughts on it (1:18:05). The duo continue to quick fire through some more topics: new Radio Hall of Fame inductees (1:33:19), Ben Shapiro's take on “WAP” (1:41:57), news from the Jam Master Jay case (1:48:08), and SZA v TDE (1:50:03). This week's “If You Don't Know” features music from Savvy The Savior, nonSense, Eddie Rockwell and P.Ro$e (2:02:00). Stay Plugged with The Lyrical Fix Pod Beat by Yosonova

 Arrest the Cops who Killed Breonna Taylor.  Washington football hires the first black football president. Canadian football League cancels the season.  Alex Smith is cleared to play football. Tik Tok Partners with United Masters to allow artists to release music directly from TikTok.  Can you go back after your partner cheats? I will give my view on it.  Shoutouts: Dexter Williams | Fitness Trainer-https://www.instagram.com/dexfitness21/ Ashleigh Peroney  | Fitness Trainer & Mental Health Advocate-https://www.instagram.com/ashleigh_peroney/  PG Child | Music Artist-https://www.instagram.com/iampgchild/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/ProvokingTheConversation NOW AVAILABLE ON: Spotify Anchor Apple podcast Radio public Castbox Google Podcast Overcast PocketCast --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/provokingtheconvo/message

Happy Monday! Today I talk 2020's top earning TikTok stars including Addison Rae, Dixie & Charlie Damelio, etc. Also, Addison Rae Launches Item Beauty, TikTok Partners with United Masters, and wtf is happening to the U.S Postal Service? Enjoy!

Music feeds our souls. What message do you let nourish your heart and mind? Anthony "Wordsmith" Parker comes to the table to talk about his journey to become the motivational artist and amazing human being he is now. You can find his music, videos, news stories and links to his social media accounts HERE. The following is a brief sample from his website linked above. IN 2009 WORDSMITH OPENED HIS INDEPENDENT LABEL NU REVOLUTION ENTERTAINMENT AND SINCE ITS INCEPTION DISTRIBUTION AND LICENSING DEALS WITH INGROOVES, AWAL, UNITED MASTERS, REDEYE AND APM MUSIC HAVE HELPED THE COMPANY FLOURISH. RELEASING 5 ALBUMS AND A HOST OF SINGLES OVER THE YEARS WORDSMITH BECAME A GRAMMY VOTING MEMBER FOR HIS NUMEROUS SONGWRITING CREDITS AND EARNED WINNER OF BEST RAP/HIP ALBUM FOR PERSPECTIVE JUKEBOX AT THE 16TH INDEPENDENT MUSIC AWARDS. WORDSMITH CONTINUES TO USE THIS PLATFORM TO STRENGTHEN PARTNERSHIPS WITH MAJOR BRANDS LIKE NETFLIX, ESPN, NFL NETWORK AND WWE TO NAME A FEW. 2019 BROUGHT PROMINENT FEATURES IN THE HIT SHOWS RUSSIAN DOLL (NETFLIX), UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT (NETFLIX), PREACHER (AMC) AND SKAM FRANCE (UK TV), WHILE SEVERAL OF WORDSMITH’S SONGS HAVE SHOWN UP IN MOVIES, VIDEO GAMES AND ONLINE VIDEOS THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER. RECENTLY, WORDSMITH’S MUSIC WAS FEATURED ON THE HIT TV SHOW ESPN FIRST TAKE! This episode was recorded and published during the COVID-19 Pandemic and published during it. Love in action is listening to understand, not to react. You can find us on different mediums to listen and subscribe such as iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, TuneIn,  iHeart Radio, PodBean, Cast Box and more by clicking here. We are very anxious to hear YOUR feedback at our first jump into this and want to hear the good and bad so we can keep doing the right things correctly and correct the things we are not. Please contact us at sean@thecometothetablepodcast.com for any and all feedback, comments, show suggestions and the like.  A special thanks to the musical talent of our friend and guest of the show David HaLevy for writing and performing the sound to our intro and outgoing music.  Check out the Ruach Guitar Facebook Page he makes by hand and plays as well as on Instagram.   We are very humbled and grateful for this personal touch to the show and cherish it greatly.   תודה David! Enjoy the 60-second audiogram below from the episod

Today on the show we had Steve Stout call in where he spoke about Independent Artist Dominance, "Urban" Categorization, United Masters and more. Also Charlamagne gave "Donkey of the Day" to an unknown Hip Hop producer JW Lucas for his disrespectful tweet on Breonna Taylor, and even threw a "Petty Party" in his comments. Moreover, we also had friend and political pundit Angela Rye call in to speak on the future election, the economy now and more. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

(NOTE: This episode was recorded before Monday's unfortunate news. Rest in Peace, Naya Rivera 1987-2020.)This week Gold & Gram return discuss Juice Wrld new album (11:35), arrests made in Pop Smoke murder case (15:30), sending love to Naya Rivera (19:20), Jada & Will Smith's Red Table Talk (24:49), Kid Cudi & Eminem (52:35), United Masters, NBA Youngboy's tried to get his masters (58:15) R.I.P. Lil Marlo (1:13:08)Intro Song: Tory Lanez (Stoccato) | https://youtu.be/Oqb0EvOGgBEOutro Song: RJmrLA ft. 1takejay (Enough Rounds) | https://youtu.be/8RTaPg4oDY4

(NOTE: This episode was recorded before Monday's unfortunate news. Rest in Peace, Naya Rivera 1987-2020.)This week Gold & Gram return discuss Juice Wrld new album (11:35), arrests made in Pop Smoke murder case (15:30), sending love to Naya Rivera (19:20), Jada & Will Smith's Red Table Talk (24:49), Kid Cudi & Eminem (52:35), United Masters, NBA Youngboy's tried to get his masters (58:15) R.I.P. Lil Marlo (1:13:08)Intro Song: Tory Lanez (Stoccato) | https://youtu.be/Oqb0EvOGgBEOutro Song: RJmrLA ft. 1takejay (Enough Rounds) | https://youtu.be/8RTaPg4oDY4

(NOTE: This episode was recorded before Monday's unfortunate news. Rest in Peace, Naya Rivera 1987-2020.) This week Gold & Gram return discuss Juice Wrld new album (11:35), arrests made in Pop Smoke murder case (15:30), sending love to Naya Rivera (19:20), Jada & Will Smith's Red Table Talk (24:49), Kid Cudi & Eminem (52:35), United Masters, NBA Youngboy's tried to get his masters (58:15) R.I.P. Lil Marlo (1:13:08) Intro Song: Tory Lanez (Stoccato) | https://youtu.be/Oqb0EvOGgBE Outro Song: RJmrLA ft. 1takejay (Enough Rounds) | https://youtu.be/8RTaPg4oDY4

Baltimore-based rapper, musician and entrepreneur Wordsmith makes hip-hop with a strong motivational message. His mission is to entertain and educate through a message of purpose while providing clean, quality, marketable Music for the Masses.  In 2009 Wordsmith opened his independent label NU Revolution Entertainment and since its inception distribution and licensing deals with INgrooves, AWAL, United Masters, Redeye and APM Music have helped the company flourish. Releasing 5 albums and a host of singles over the years Wordsmith became a Grammy Voting Member for his numerous songwriting credits and earned winner of Best Rap/Hip Album for Perspective Jukebox at the 16th Independent Music Awards.  Wordsmith continues to use this platform to strengthen partnerships with major brands like Netflix, ESPN, NFL Network and WWE to name a few. 2019 brought prominent features in the hit shows Russian Doll (Netflix), Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix), Preacher (AMC) and Skam France (UK TV), while several of Wordsmith’s songs have shown up in movies, video games and online videos throughout his career. Recently, Wordsmith’s music was featured on the hit TV Show ESPN First Take!  Continuing to expand his company Wordsmith partnered with the US Department of State to fund performances and workshops in countries around the world to strengthen cultural ties. To date Wordsmith has brought his influential music to Azerbaijan, Haiti, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Angola and Ukraine.  Always looking for a new challenge a chance meeting with Tonya Robles, VP of BSO, brought an opportunity to write new narration for Carnival of the Animals with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. A second opportunity came when Wordsmith was asked to host the 2018 BSO Gala with special guest Cynthia Erivo and in June 2021 he will join the 250 year anniversary of Beethoven’s birth with a new interpretation of “Ode to Joy” and new original text for Beethoven Ninth.  Still, with Hip Hop being Wordsmith’s first love he has collaborated with notable acts Chubb Rock, Skyzoo, Camp Lo, Sadat X, Jaz-O, Ruste Juxx, Grand Daddy I.U. & his cousin Roc Marciano over the years. https://wordsmithmusic.com/ https://www.instagram.com/wordsmithmusic/ https://www.facebook.com/Wordsmithmusic https://twitter.com/wordsmith https://www.youtube.com/Wordsmith

Today on the Music Business Podcast, we invite the Head of Artist Marketing at United Masters, Dave Melhado. UnitedMasters is a music distribution platform that also offers artists unique brand partnership opportunities with organizations including the NBA. Prior to joining United Master Dave was Director of Marketing at Roc Nation. He’s also worked closely with developing and promoting the careers of NLE Choppa, Gunna, Young Nudy and more.In this episode we cover how United Masters works as a distribution platform and what resources and information it offers to assist artists in building and maximizing their fan engagement. Dave also dives into what goes into crafting unique stories to build an artist’s brand and fan base. As always, feel free to leave a comment or a review on what you thought about the episode on Apple Podcasts or on the Music Business Podcast instagram @musicbusinesspodcast. We’re also very excited to connect with our community on Patreon, MusicBusinessPodcast.com/Community. We look forward to you joining our community! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mattias Tengblad is co-founder and CEO of Stockholm-based Corite, which believes it can revolutionize the way artists generate money from their recorded music.Corite is, at first glance, a simple digital distributor, in the same core space as TuneCore, CD Baby, United Masters, Ditto etc. But it has a key difference: Corite enables fans to directly invest in artists themselves  – and then take a share of money paid out to these artists from future streaming royalties. As such, it enables fans to collectively act like a record label, financing artist campaigns while financially benefitting from an act's success.Tengblad previously worked in eSports (as Head of Digital Development at MTG) as well as spending nearly five years at Universal Music Group as Commercial Director in Sweden, where he launched both UMG's flagship playlist brand, Digster, and the major's own DIY upload service, Spinnup.Corite released its platform in beta in October 2019, and has since run over 25 campaigns that have raised over $30,000 for artists during its Swedish pilot. In the past two months, it has launched out of beta in Europe and raised an inside seed round to fund its growth.

The Morning Machine morning show w/ The Greene Machine weekday mornings 6-10am EST! LIVE on 102.6 The Situation Follow on IG @TheMorningMachine Facebook @The Morning Machine Follow Ritz Carlo on United Masters and IG @TheRitzCarlo

Bands are one of the "ABCs", right? Got you. Mark sits down with two rather groovy humans: Alicia Perrone and Victor James, the "modwave, modsquad genre-bending" power duo that is the band Fans of Jimmy Century (FOJC). Normally fans are in the audience. They are not the band. And who the hell is Jimmy Century? We get to the bottom of all of it, with the music group you've heard on "Get Hard", "Ray Donovan", "Gossip Girl", "Law and Order: SVU", "The L Word" and "Finding Nemo 3D", to name a few. Their recent song “Best of My Generation (All The Way)” distributed by United Masters is an official NBA Song for MVP 2019 winner Giannis “The Greek Freak” Antetokounmpo. Also, Mark checks in with his Aunt Susan in Vermont. Plus, new groovy in the MRE YouTube. Recorded at the Reasonable Desk at the Raymond Chandler Memorial Bachelor Pad, Hollywood, CA. Recorded by Mark Roman. Mixed & mastered by Ollie Holliday.

The guys dive into their first interview with Issacoupe ! A local rap artist from the Boston area. They discuss the business aspect of the industry, United Masters, his new song HIGH END (Now streaming on all platforms!) and much more. He let us in on some of what he's going through as an upcoming artist and even how he got his name. Tune in and give his music a listen!!!! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Steve Stoute’s focused, man. After years of shepherding the careers of Nas, Foxy Brown, and The Track Masters, Stoute’s returning to music with his new company, United Masters. Connecting brands has always been Stoute’s expertise. As founder of the Translation ad agency, he united Dapper Dan and Gucci following a fashion uproar this summer. Here, The Commissioner speaks on his journey and the road ahead. Original Pub date – Nov 13 , 2017

Steve Stoute’s focused, man. After years of shepherding the careers of Nas, Foxy Brown, and The Track Masters, Stoute’s returning to music with his new company, United Masters. Connecting brands has always been Stoute’s expertise. As founder of the Translation ad agency, he united Dapper Dan and Gucci following a fashion uproar this summer. Here, The Commissioner speaks on his journey and the road ahead. Original Pub date – Nov 13 , 2017

Thanks for checking out the podcast. This week... Pitbull Parallels New Zealand Mosque Shootings Internet Radicalization American Flag Steve Stoute and United Masters As always subscribe, share, and review. www.noplayinthisride@gmail.com www.twitter.com/NoPlay247 www.NewJaxCity.Net www.soundcloud.com/brooksonthebeat

Representing North Carolina, Dev T. Smith graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2013. As a multi-dimensional artist, content strategist, and wordsmith at heart, Dev has worked with companies such as Black Enterprise, eBay, United Masters, and Revolt. With a genuine care for the culture, Dev aims to help shape frames of thought in a positive way. In this episode of our Driven Minds Podcast, Dev chats with us about cultural economics, value creation, and putting in the work that got him to where he is today. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/drivensocietypodcast/support

For our first LIVE podcast, your favorite co-hosts Bri & Swaggy Zee sit down with their good friend Rell Knoxx (@rellknoxx). This week, the team dives into this week's hottest topics including Tekashi69's arrest & consequences, the retirement of Waka Flocka, the true trap introduction, Hip-Hop vs. Realty TV, how the recently announced United Masters deal with the NBA will change the game for music consumers & sports fans moving forward and so much more. Special thanks to Rell Knoxx for pulling up on us this week! Don't forget to like and comment us on Soundcloud & rate and subscribe to us on iTunes. #NotForSalePod

Blue Yeti Microphone: http://www.bluemic.com/products/yeti/Spreaker (where my podcasts are stored): http://spreaker.comPodcast Page: http://passpodcast.comSubscribe to iTunes: http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1129939263It was a busy, yet quiet week of sports. I still have a fair amount of content to get into. Hope you enjoy & if you don't hear it enough, thank you for the support. #podcast #talker #PASSPodcast #PodcastAboutSportsNStuff #thePASS #Sports #Music #Artists #Gaming #Technology #Spreaker #rva804 #branding #blueMicrophone #richmond804 #podcastLife #blymibt #plymibt #podsInColor #professionalRecordingEngineer #AirpodsEscape Promos: Suicide Hotline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/Domestic Violence contact: https://www.thehotline.org/ Intrepid Genius: https://www.intrepidgenius.com/ Peachie Clean RVA: https://www.facebook.com/peachiecleanrva/ iFinancial by Tierra: https://www.facebook.com/iFinancialbyTierra/ Airtight: https://grittycityrecords.bandcamp.com/album/airtight-ear-tite Unlimited by Sxcrifice: https://soundcloud.com/sxcrifice/unlimited J Turnkey Solutions: https://www.facebook.com/jturnkeysolutions/ Podcasts: Random Observations with Ash: https://anchor.fm/random-observations/ Soul Gab with Ash & Jazz: https://anchor.fm/soul-gab-with-ash--jazz Miss Blog God: https://anchor.fm/MissBlogGod/ Single in the City: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/single-in-the-city-572764 Thinking out Loud: https://soundcloud.com/user-920199678/tracks Melanin Uncorked Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/melaninuncorkedpodcast/tracks Sports: NFL Week 12: https://www.foxsports.com/nfl/schedule?season=2018&seasonType=1&week=12NBA & United Masters: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2018/11/09/with-new-nba-deal-unitedmasters-builds-a-bridge-to-radio-alternative/amp/ Markelle Fultz: http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25331596/markelle-fultz-philadelphia-76ers-see-shoulder-specialist Zlatan to AC Milan: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2806937-la-galaxys-zlatan-ibrahimovic-reportedly-agrees-to-eur2m-ac-milan-offer Stuff: Goku in Macy's Parade: https://kotaku.com/goku-is-in-the-macys-thanksgiving-parade-for-the-first-1830608823 NBA Jam Basketball: https://kotaku.com/heres-the-actual-basketball-from-the-cover-of-nba-jam-18305992522 million gamerscore: https://kotaku.com/the-world-record-for-highest-xbox-gamerscore-is-now-two-1830611495N 64 mini: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/11/reggie_n64_classic_mini_is_not_in_our_planning_horizon_but_wouldnt_ever_rule_it_out Palm Phone review: https://www.engadget.com/2018/11/21/palm-phone-review/ Music:Netflix starts new hip-hop show: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/cardi-b-chance-the-rapper-and-t-i-join-netflix-hip-hop-competition-show-rhythm-flow/ Ass of the week: ESPN loses 2 million subscribers: https://www.engadget.com/2018/11/22/espn-lost-two-million-subscribers/ Neck man caught AGAIN: https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Caught-in-The-Neck-of-Time-Man-in-Viral-Florida-Mugshot-Arrested-in-Alabama-501085752.html

On this HEATED episode of the MYCRAZYPODCAST: We PASSIONATELY discuss Tekashi 6IX9INE's Federal Indictment (00:30), United Master (apologies to United Masters for saying the wrong name throughout the podcast) NBA Deal (26:50), Once Upon A Deadpool Trailer (32:44), and Much More! Also Our Merch Store has been delayed... But We Will Be Up VERY Soon! Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/mycrazypodcast iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mycrazypodcast/ Also, you enjoyed the video please remember to: Like, Comment, and Subscribe!!! Remember to Connect with Everyone Involved! Website: MYCRAZYPRODUCTIONS - MYCRAZYPRODUCTIONS.com YouTube: MYCRAZYPRODUCTIONS - https://www.youtube.com/MYCRAZYPRODUCTIONS Instagram: MYCRAZYPRODUCTIONS - https://www.instagram.com/MYCRAZYPRODUCTIONS Matt Thompson - https://www.instagram.com/thethompalomp/ Josh Balogh - https://www.instagram.com/thejoshbalogh/ Jim Donohue - https://www.instagram.com/dr_jimboslice845 Dustin Baudendistel - https://www.instagram.com/dustybones13 Facebook.com MYCRAZYPRODUCTIONS - https://www.facebook.com/MYCRAZYPRODUCTIONS Twitter MYCRAZYPRODUCTIONS - https://twitter.com/MYCPRODUCTIONS Josh Balogh - https://twitter.com/passtheinhalor Matt Thompson - https://twitter.com/thompalomp Jim Donohue - https://twitter.com/JTDonohue91

This week, Ryan talks about entertainment lawyer Erin M. Jacobson's recent article in Forbes about the Twitch and its effect on musicians. Twitch is a platform that has benefited many indie artists by helping them build their fan base through live streaming. But Jacobson argues that the platform could be harming musicians as well. Ryan discusses the article and also gets an opposing view of sorts on the subject from music industry journalist Cherie Hu of Forbes and Billboard. Cherie also talks to Ryan about Spotify, United Masters, and more! Rate/review/subscribe to the Podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google Play. Follow Ryan @ryankair and the Podcast @thebtbpodcast. Like Break the Business on Facebook and tell a friend about the show! And visit www.breakthebusiness.com to get a copy of Ryan’s Book “Break the Business: Declaring Your Independence and Achieving True Success in the Music Industry.”

On Friday Apr. 13, we partnered with Daysnatchers to bring out a mixed crowd of industry hopefuls, brand owners, producers, etc. to experience Soundbyte. Soundbyte is a talk series where our panelists and attendees explore the relationship between tech, music, and culture. Our panel was moderated by Dev T. Smith, a multi-platform producer killing it at Revolt, and featured David Ponte, CMO & co-founder of Audiomack; Yaya Mazurkevich, experiential producer at United Masters; Nigil Mack, VP of Urban A&R Republic Records; Daria McCall, Marketing Manager Afropunk; and Detavio Samuels, President of Ionedigital. Tweet us your thoughts! @Drivensociety --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/drivensocietypodcast/support

Does your business have super fans or customers that would buy anything your company offered? United Masters is a new company that Google has invested in because it is giving artists the opportunity to interact with their fans in ways never seen before which may disrupt the music industry. What about your business? What are you doing to cater to the best customers or clients your business has? Taking time to think about your top customers could lead to new opportunities. Click here to watch this episode on YouTube Facebook: http://bit.ly/2ntaWI7 LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/gallagherdylan Link used in today's vlog: https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/15/united-masters/ "music by Corey Gagne Not The King https://soundcloud.com/coreygagne"

(0:00-44:35) JB opens the show talking about the person dragged off a United flight. Then we get into the Masters and Sergio Garcia finally winning. JB then talks Tim Tebow, Mets, the first week of baseball, NBA playoffs coming, and more. Intern Alyssa Naimoli then gives her NHL playoff preview, breaking down each series. (44:35-56:08) JB takes calls on the NBA MVP debate...is it Russell Westbrook or James Harden? Two callers weigh in on why they believe Westbrook is MVP while JB says Harden.