 Okay great and we're live here from the Bushwick generator in Brooklyn for the New York City node of the open-media legal hack of global series of distributed events happening around the world to explore and develop solutions and creative ideas for musicians and creative artists you can the ideas to use technology to break through some of those barriers the legal obstacles the business model barriers that have been really difficult for musicians and creatives and composers in the past so there's some you know new opportunities lately with new technologies with new statutes music modernization act and just the times we feel maybe right to make progress and so we have asked a industry thought leader to join us who I'll ask I'll ask you just to introduce yourself and to provide some background but in short Jesse is is a pioneer in the space and has got a very innovative business model himself with new new is stands for new universal entertainment new universal entertainment so much more than an agency so we've asked Jesse to join us to provide some context in the industry to sort of unpack and give us some background maybe start to point the way toward what are the what are the areas that may be receptive and where the maybe good timing and a good fit and good value for the good hack so with that I want to thank you for joining us and let's explore some beats and some bites thanks Jesse man thank you all right so just a quick introduction my name is Jesse K and I run a company called new and new really lives at the intersection between technology brands and music and music is a kind of the belief is the the the lowest barrier to entry when we're talking about culture music is the universal language music is the great connector I even believe when you're first born your beat you know you know you're born because your heart catches a beat a rhythm with the world I really believe that that music makes the world a better place and I've been in the business for about 15 maybe even a little more plus years I started as a person throwing events in high school and in college I was a promoter putting together events and realizing that like the one thing that made every event better sure you needed interesting people and you needed refreshments but the big connector what made a party next level was having a good musical soundtrack or having musical performances and it just took the experience to another level and as a party promoter a young marketer putting on events I started to realize that this was a key formula to making every event better and just to give a little more background on myself out of college I didn't really have any family in relationships it was a business that I looked at very fondly from a distance I was throwing parties and I was starting to get to no entertainers and I did have like a fluke opportunity in high school to dance and a puff daddy music video and I was like holy cow what is this world this is an amazing industry going on and went to college for business and studied marketing and international business but as I got out of college I thought record labels especially electronic record labels were going to be the next wave I really felt like electronic music was going to be on the extent and electronic label would be a great place to learn because in a lot of ways traditionally in the music business over the past 20 30 years or 40 50 years the record label control the majority of the power in what was or in a lot of ways was the current or was the past landscape for the music business and you know they had a really good run in a lot of ways the record labels and in some ways they're having a good run again and we'll talk about that but I got into that business and then I started to realize that the record business and in particular the electronic record business was not much of a business it felt like they were giving away more records than they were selling and it felt like I couldn't really understand how they were creating revenue and opportunity when they controlled such small piece of the overall pie of the artist's career and there was a lot bigger opportunities working with artists so at that point I thought I was going to go to law school and I started gearing up to be a lawyer and you know maybe music wasn't going to be my calling and maybe I could have a law degree to fall back on or at least be a dealmaker with a law degree and a family friend started talking to me as I was studying and he was a lawyer he was a judge and he started asking me do you want to be a lawyer do you want to go to court do you want to do trials do you want to review contracts firsthand all the time and the answer to that was no and so he said it's important to understand the intricacies of the deal but you should be an agent that's where you get to work with the artists on their behalf and really help them break and so I started basically calling every agency in the book and begging them for an opportunity to to work with them and work for them and I called a bunch up and one agency called me and said yeah I just fired my assistant you know so why don't you come in and start tomorrow or start right away and I started working at one boutique agency and then learning from representing artists and working on the artist side we were doing all these different contracts for a big tour at the time was scream the scream tour the scream to tour I did the contracts at my first gig and then another agency that I called called me up about a month and a half later and said hey we liked you on the phone but we didn't have a position something just opened up would you want to come here where are you right now and I explained the company I was at he was very competitive and kind of a little bit of an old-school mentality was like I don't like that company I don't like that guy I'll pay you more please come here whatever it takes we just got financing and we'll let you skip the process of being an assistant and you can sign artists and be an agent so go in the boutique route I was able to skip the mail room and skip the kind of traditional routes of being you know how it works in the kind of larger firms and I was able to go out there and sign talent and I quickly started signing acts and they started pretty quickly taking off I mean the first act I signed was clips I don't know if anybody in this room knows clips they had a song called grind in they were the first artist signed to Pharrell's record label and the album took off and we toured the world and that was kind of my first artist representation experience was an act that was you know on tour with Nelly in arenas and then on tour with Jay-Z throughout Europe and then on tour with 50 cent when he was coming out when the college market and really just being the first line of defense for everything live but also learning the intricacies of endorsements and technology deals and so at that point I worked as a talent agent for another firm for a couple years at that agency and then I moved to LA and started working the video game business and really getting an understanding of what was the digital revolution and what was happening in the music business and or at least what was happening in Hollywood at the time under this digital revolution and look the music business was doing really bad it was just like devil digital revolution was destroying the business and I mean I started to see new opportunities in technology and started to immerse myself in new technology players and and with the new technology players I moved back to New York after three years in LA and started new agency which is my company today it was a different form back in the day but it was really focused on the kind of divide between representing artists which I signed and developed a lot of artists and also bringing together New York's technology and music scene and kind of shining a light on these new companies coming up that I believe was going to be the savior of the business and then about four years ago we changed the model altogether to be this new age music kind of culture marketing firm which is where we're at today and so in terms of the landscape today the good news that I would say and this is for people learning about the music business and the people in the music business is that for the first time in 20 years there's growth and not just growth double-digit growth last year 2017 started to show a spike in the music business overall and that's in numerous sectors right the recorded music business is starting to make not just money but a lot of money again more venture capitalists and venture funding is coming into the music business which wasn't for a long time at most for a long time people thought music was taboo or an industry that couldn't make money and couldn't figure itself out was archaic and the way it was thinking and it was right it was run and really empowered by the record labels which was a model that just doesn't make sense in this day and age right who's buying records like even the concept of a record label doesn't make sense I mean and you know they had a good run they had an error where you could sell a $20 CD that may cost a dollar at most to make how much does it cost to make a CD 19 cents 15 cents let's say a dollar to make and be able to sell it by the 20 millions and they were not being transparent with artists accounting practitioners and the power was in their hands the power was in the gatekeepers hands it was in MTV's hands it was in clear channels hands the way music got out was completely controlled by a certain circuit and it was a very profitable one for a long time and it hadn't been and digital and Napster and Apple and iTunes and there was a couple other instances where the music business really lost control of their product and their business and decimated it and so it took a long downward spiral and that was my whole career was working in this business where people continue to talk about the good old days and how it used to be and how it'll never go back and for them it won't go back that way because we got a new business here and there's a new opportunity for models and I'll tell you more artists are touring than ever before more it's easier than ever to make music you could be in your garage you could be in your bedroom you could be off of just a laptop and make beautiful huge records you don't need to go into these very expensive fancy studios that are dying out to like the hit factories now you know apartments and probably a much better business for them than they were or could be right now in the music side there isn't really the same business for recorded music in that kind of that old-school mentality there's still some area for high-end recordings but more music can be made than ever there's less barriers to entry than ever I mean you can put your music up to YouTube you can now even as an artist just as of this month you can put your music direct to Spotify you don't even need a label or a distribution partner to go there and you know I a lot of credit goes to the streaming services for figuring out a system where you can now get paid as an artist and millions and millions of dollars are going out unfortunately a lot of that kind of portion is still going to record labels because of current deals that are in place or still a kind of a reorg of the business which is something that we're gonna get to talk about I'm excited for the afternoon breakout sessions because we can really talk about where the opportunities are to kind of reinvent the model and to hack the the current system but it's it's really it's a it's a time where with social media artists can talk direct to their fan base and they can create direct relationships with with their fans and it's just it's a great spot to be in for for an artist that wants to be in control of their career because there's more power than ever in the artist's hands and they don't need to go traditional routes and there's more and more case studies popping up where you can be successful and hopefully that brings a middle class back into artistry because it really feels like you know in the past decade or so you either made it where you were flat broke and it was hard to do it in between and now there's all these tools that can make itself sustaining for artists to create music and distribute music and to galvanize a fan base all over the country all over the world and super serve their fans and we're seeing more and more brands and advertisers coming into the music space and we're seeing more and more artists interested in working with brands it's a it's a great time for for for music branding there's so much noise right now and advertising and there's how do you cut through that noise a lot of it can be with utilizing musicians and especially emerging musicians their fan base is so engaged and you can super serve those fans and and those fans are really interested in what an emerging artist has to say so it's it's great for emerging artists it's also great for the top level artists that are able to command more money for tickets and sell really great VIP packages and artists merch and artist partnerships are going to a new level artists like Kanye West are able to partner with Adidas in true partnership form and make a ton a ton of money you know create billion dollar brands and I think it's just really the early days in growth right now because with with rights and with publishing and with artists in control of their brands and in control of their careers and getting smarter and more entrepreneurial it's a big opportunity for artists as we know it to change the rules and for new players to step up and we see it we see like one of the hot conversations right now is the re kind of formation of the business it's the record label of the future so to speak it's what a modern-day music company looks like in terms of rights in terms of all the different pieces of the pie if it's touring if it's advertising if it's if it's publishing and and the right-tolding right holders for publishing recently obviously this this big ruling pass and and and just last week or I think now two weeks ago it was signed off on with the music modernization act and this just it opens up so many opportunities for a new examination a new look at the publishing business as we know it because again these systems were created for a long time ago and have not been modernized and people don't have the answers which is what's interesting right now for all of us you know sitting on a saturday in brooklyn and all the folks at mit that are watching this content this is an opportunity to literally reinvent the business and I come from a background of representing artists and I think it's important to to think and take artistry and take artists mentality into into everything that's being considered it can't be a bunch of hackers deciding where the music business is going I think it requires different culture diversity and stakeholders at the table you know artists are the most creative forces that I know they are on the finger of the pulse of what's going on and they can shape culture better than most because they've got the penchant to take bold risks and they've got a tribe like fan base that they follow what they're saying a community behind them so it's a really interesting time for artists and I feel like artists need to be more actively involved in in writing the future I mean I know Jay-Z love him or hate him took a bold step in buying and creating his own streaming platform sure everything that guy does is good business but I think you know one big statement there was that he was able to be an artist at the table with Apple and Google with YouTube and Spotify you know all these tech folk are you know launching these big platforms that are in a lot of ways controlling a large funding source of the music business and to have Jay-Z at the table as one of the big five with his own platform I think is is an important statement and hopefully something that other artists will will get behind because when it comes to publishing when it comes to controlling rights it is so complicated I know that we can simplify it a little bit but it really is who wrote on a song who didn't all the intricacies of how that song is made and produced and distributed and how you attach that all and then systematize it and then be able to trace the financing of it and if it's being paid on played on the radio or if it's being played at a restaurant or if it's being played at a sports arena or if it's being played by a DJ or if it's being played on Spotify or on Apple music every single one of those rules are different every single one of those deals are different and so it's very complicated to track that and I feel like the blockchain and all of the bright minds and energy going into the blockchain is the perfect platform to help reinvent in so many ways the rights and the what rights tracking system and really empower artists on another level and creators on another level and so I've been a big proponent of like look music business is back and everyone's making money and in particular ways the labels made so much money off of the equity that they held on Spotify that like tearing a really powerful position again but this is not a time to rest on your laurels this is a time to get back into the lab and understand that there's more money and there's more opportunity than there's been in a long long time and now's the time to rewrite the rules and to write them in a way that is going to be beneficial for the creators and the users of the music and the consumers and ultimately for for the modern times because again we might have to write that faster than ever in this day and age but right now the system in place is clearly not working to the best of its ability and we got a chance here to fix that and so that's what we're here to do thank you and we can do a Q&A I mean if there's any questions about anything in particular that you want to chat about or we can get right into it but like I'm happy to answer questions from my perspective and dive into any area in particular that you want to talk about can I use your uh sure of course unfortunately sorry there you go so that was probably the most optimistic iteration of what's going on in the music world that I've heard in a long time and I'm not so optimistic but first question is is your position fairly universally held in the emerging your colleagues and competitors equally optimistic I think it depends on how long people have been in the business right because if you saw that era of the 90s and the 80s where you were just minting money it was a different ballgame I think that a lot of artists though are seeing control over their content and I feel like they're definitely experiencing that but yeah there's it's tough because with all of this music coming out and all of this content being created what Spotify I think has 20,000 new songs a week coming out on it how do you differentiate yourself and it's a much smaller piece of the pie but um I mean I think that yeah the proof is in the pudding if you look at the overall trends and the forecasts and the data more money is coming back into it than a long time ago compare this era to 15, 20 years or 25 years ago there was a lot more money in music so you know for me from my perspective someone that's been in the trenches for 15 plus years I've been pushing a rock up a mountain to get any momentum and now there's more and more money coming in there's more and more people asking about the business so I definitely feel positive I feel momentum and I feel like times are changing and I feel like more bright minds are talking about music than ever before but maybe some of the kind of old guard which is still very much in place and in power wouldn't share that sentiment and probably wouldn't encourage things like this in the same capacity and this is from my lay person's outsider perspective what it looks like to me is that Spotify has taken over the entire pie and Groovshark and Pandora you know they've got so much you know roadkill on the side you know existing in Spotify's wake it seems like everything is it's you know what happened with WhatsApp or Uber you know there's been this ridiculous capital flight to the single winner that managed to build you know create the network effects and brought everyone onto its platform which is Spotify it means everyone else was a loser and we sort of forget about all the losers that now exist I'd love to know first of all if I'm wrong about that and second you said there's a lot more money coming in where is that money going to whom what are the successful what is what did the money interest think it are the successful projects out there I mean title I don't think is succeeding as far as last I heard title was about to go bankrupt but I might be wrong about that I mean look Spotify it's definitely Spotify's time right they went public very recently they were very successful so far on the market they spent a ton of money almost as a Netflix-esque model where they could lose 900 800 million dollars that they're spending into the music business putting behind artists putting behind campaigns putting in their own brand and and making it up on valuation and on on the stock but I don't necessarily think that if you look at it it's not just Spotify in the music business right now I mean companies like Live Nation are their stock is at an all-time high and I feel like with Spotify there's YouTube there's Apple music all of these players are there and there's now room for the next iteration it's so I don't think it's an only a Spotify one-trick pony right now in the music business I think that they're a big winning case study that's bringing a lot more interest and has kind of helped us get past the era of illegal downloads and I think they were really successful in creating this next chapter but I don't know if the future spotifies I think for Spotify I don't even know what Spotify's future looks like it could be a data business it could be a hits business of its own where it's putting out its own music they're an interesting position because they've got a lot of market share but they're definitely not the only trick pony I mean I think Apple is getting more subscribers regularly and understandably so and I feel like YouTube is definitely the most streamed and most used of all the services at this point and I think so there's a lot of room for growth where that money is going to it's going to the right holders so yeah I mean more artists are touring and there's more money made in the live space and that's great and that's a big revenue stream but when it comes to who Spotify is paying out and who YouTube is paying out and who Apple's paying out it's whoever owns their rights and a lot of times artists are signing over those rights to publishing companies to administer because there isn't necessarily the best way to track that and to record labels to promote them and so yeah more money's coming to artists but it's a trickle down from some more of the traditional houses at this point still even though if an artist is putting their music up direct on Spotify they're going to see a much bigger piece of that pie and it'll be a lot more transparent although it still doesn't make perfect sense none of these accounting principles are super transparent and clear and I think it's a big issue in the business and I feel like transparency can really be helped and I think will be a big game changer in terms of putting more control on the artist hands VCs are making their bets on platforms that are coming up on content creators VCs are betting on record labels of the future because I think they see new opportunities for new systems to come up I think VCs are betting on rights holders and publishing companies VCs are getting into I mean obviously the the platforms like Spotify did very very well for VCs and 10 cent music out of China is coming here into America and they're launching a music publishing and record label so it's just they're more interested in the rights they're more interested in the rights holders they're more interested in in the publishing catalogs they're more interested in in the new platforms that are coming up so there's nothing more viral uh than music and I feel like it's feeling comfortable again and systematized in a way that VCs can wrap their head around how they're going to get their money back so you said the word part to figure out is there opportunity to empower independent artists to disintermediate the server client model and platforms do you see opportunity now for that it seems like the next several years the platforms will dominate but do you see also a path to ultimately disrupt the platform to blockchain or other digital technologies to empower direct from creator to listener models yeah I think in order to disrupt and a real opportunity for artists it's it's too prong one the infrastructure needs to be created that they can digest and can easily work better for them than what's currently out there so I think that's on on guys like you the hackers to kind of help launch new systems that make more sense for artists and are easier to maneuver and then the bigger or the other component is the promotion right in a in a sea full of noise how do you stand out how do you mark it how do you get your music heard and seen and felt and experienced and this artists deep down that's all they really really want so I think it's going to be a combination of a creating the right infrastructure that benefits artists that's easier to understand and then on top of that partnering it with the promotion uh and and and media outlet component that's going to be able to allow these artists to be seen and felt and heard I think there's a big opportunity for another MySpace 2.0 for music I mean Facebook doesn't care necessarily about artists and that component in that way so where is that community for artists right and where where could you put that out um MySpace broke so many great artists and it was such a breakthrough platform at the time and I mean I talk about opportunity right there it's what's the social network for musicians to not just connect with themselves but with consumers and their fans I mean YouTube is different YouTube is its own place YouTube isn't just about music either YouTube is everything across the board uh YouTube is now put in a smart team and it's growing and I think YouTube is in a really interesting position I mean look a guy like Drake with one microphone can sell out basketball arenas all over the world with no off days like he's doing way bigger numbers than the NBA and this could be all over the world like him by himself squares up against the NBA and it's not even close but yet sports in general and the NBA makes way more money in brand spends than music does and I feel like YouTube's not trying to necessarily solve the problem for the artist although it's a big part of it but I think YouTube could solve an even bigger problem which is how to help brands feel comfortable spending even more money in music which is clearly that bigger of a opportunity to connect with really you know inspiring authentic content so I think that's part of it and then also yeah I think YouTube needs to figure out how to empower artists and um and put more money in the right holders hands too so I think YouTube has big potential I really am bullish on them and I love their team but I don't think that necessarily that's the only opportunity for for for innovation sure okay here we go um could you speak a little bit so part of the trend that's happening that's especially relevant for this legal hackathon is um that music modernization act that you mentioned and some other trends you know that that the web and just the app and mobile um and perhaps blockchain emerging um capabilities make possible to do some of the um goals that you just laid out something something that's much more simple for artists a theme of your talk so far has been ever more direct between the artists and the consumer and some of the other themes something that uh the people at open music initiative suggested that we focus on is um a vision for a global database which you know could be distributed could be federated but basically a global authoritative source of data for all artists or call them rights holders say the composers the performing artists perhaps producers and the well the works I guess I would call it like the songs themselves so that we could find all the songs find all the rights holders and match them and then perhaps somehow make that available for you know so it's accessible publicly and can be integrated with any kind of creative and emergent even business models and apps and services one of the questions I have for you in view of that vision and you know the trend is what are the you know issues and obstacles and also maybe opportunities and possibilities from moving toward a globally interoperable source of data on the artists and the art in theory I love that idea I think that that's some of the direction that the music modernization act is trying to lead us into and opening up those doors and kind of hopefully forcing the hand a little bit towards that because there's a big problem there's different systems and there's different organizations so I think there's the two main problems I see with that uh that we need to overcome is a past tracks all of the past catalog or the the the all the the music out there if it's 20,000 new songs coming on Spotify alone each week you can imagine how many millions upon tens of millions of songs that they need to go back to categorizing which is doable uh or maybe not maybe we just focus on going forward and every transaction that's made with the past system just automatically updates so I think a new system needs to be created but on top of that all of these other fragmented systems that are already in place have to follow suit so now that that law is passed I feel like the next stage is to create kind of deals and arrangements with the current players in the place in the space that will help us access their catalogs and create a fair opportunity for everybody to know what's going on with artists and uh with the artist's music and the rights holders and it's it's it's a complicated animal I know that we think it's simple but I think smart minds really need to be dedicated towards it and the current rights holders and system in place has to be willing to play ball to creating this um and it really needs to be led by the artists and the rights holder creators uh in terms of policy and I'm glad that the government agreed with that and went forward with the act but I think um if we started from ground day one right let's say it's post music modernization act let's build the dream system and then let's incorporate the players from there that might be a key way to do it but it'd be amazing to have the big publishing houses and rights holders with the largest catalogs on board to do this because otherwise how are artists going to do this you got to kind of buck the system and the only way to do that is to kind of have um history on your side oh I'm sorry if you mind okay I'll do it fast um so there's a little part of what you said in there that I want to follow up on partly because next weekend we'll have quite a few more venues of the open media hack um Kansas City in particular has got a lot of artists um that are going to be part of all the teams and I think Brazil is also very focused on artists we'll have a bunch of Berkeley College of Music people at the media lab next weekend so in the spirit of um the part of what you said about looking day forward leaving aside for the moment how to the migration for the huge corpus of data and the tangled you know um web of systems that were inherited looking day forward as a person that's you know been successful in the sort of agency and the I guess in the realm of getting people involved and you know in finding a way to connect with with people in markets in context connect them with art how what are some ideas or directions people should be looking for how you know maybe artists that are 10 years old today and that are going to become aware soon and have art they want to share we're the we're the points in the value chain like a garage band or at the web or on um Instagram that's a big thing you know um we're we're we're they could discover how to um get themselves into a system and where the incentives could be aligned such that they they would seek to do that like that seems like a big campaign to me and I'm not even sure how to get my head around we're what are successful approaches to starting to tackle that do you have any advice yeah I've got I've got a system called the uh rock star business plan and that's basically how you go from ground up to global scale as a musician and in this day and age in particular uh where all the tools and times are changing I think it starts with the product I mean I think it starts with the with the actual what you're putting out in the world if it's a t-shirt if it's a song or if it's an album I think it really starts with the quality of the product and then I think it's the vision and uh where you want to go and your personality and how you position yourself towards getting there and then the next step I would say is about assimilating a team around it there's a little joke it takes a village to break a brand I mean to break to break a band uh it's because it does it requires not just an artist and I think it's really important to have a team around you from management to agency or agents to who's helping you on the record label side to publishing I mean you've got to think about yourself as an artist at this point like your um a corporation you know and I think you got to think about yourself and in that regards like you're uh actually your own company and not just an artist putting out music um so it's a lot to kind of wrap your head around that might require partnering there and then I think from there it's really about um getting distribution how do you put your music and your product in the right people's hands and I think at that point um it could really move on to partnerships um and and you know who you can connect with if it's who you can share audiences with to get more attention um and who you can connect with that's going to bring more people towards what you're doing uh I think distribution is really important I think you got to know where your audience is I think you got to super serve your audience to some extent and I think you got to be thinking on a global level I don't think it's really just about locking down your block or your neighborhood or your uh community I think uh to really make it um to you know from five fans to five million fans uh you've got to be connecting in different markets and playing for a much bigger market than just your local space you got to be thinking not just national but global in this day and age our speakers and kind of aces in the hole from in the industry and with the technology and the law had a question can you introduce yourself too I am Anjali Krana and I was an entertainment lawyer for the last 10 years up until a couple months ago and I guess I'm still an entertainment lawyer I just don't really practice the same way and this this is pebble since we're on camera um so uh you had mentioned the difficulty of updating older works and uh the same there's just kind of the same problem in the law as well as the you know depending on when the work was made it's subject to different rules um and I'm really I'm curious as to from looking at the numbers from your perspective do you feel that how do you I think a system that works going forward is going to have to be able to in order in order to be adaptable in order to really last it's going to have to be a system that treats works the same regardless of those the pre-existing baggage and I'm wondering from your perspective whether you feel that that will make things harder or easier for a new artist who are trying to break because the rules affect them both positively and negatively right now and I'm just curious as to how you think that's all gonna look when things when you when the constructs that are sort of artificially making them different are removed yeah that's a great question I would say that it's going to affect them both positively and negatively I wish it was as simple as just saying it's going to be better for artists uh that there's less barriers to entry and there's more data and there's more information I think that it is going to be in a lot of ways a lot less red tape so me and you could make a song right now and we could put it out and it could go viral and all of a sudden we're like never before the toast of the town but how you sustain that and how you just do it beyond once is going to require more than just a flash in the pan and it's going to require infrastructure and team and it's also going to require a lot of consistent hard work and talent and luck and all sorts of different elements so I think that um and it's harder and harder uh because there's so much noise out there to sustain and so I feel like in some regards these new technologies and these new tools are going to be great for artists because you can get out there faster than ever and you can there's less red tape but in some regards it's going to be a lot harder uh and I think uh there's a lot more noise and there's a lot more competition and there's a lot more to understand and some artists just want to be artists right you know what I'm talking about and they don't want to be a corporation and they don't want to be thinking about all of these new intricacies and all of these new tools and what all that means they just want to focus on what they do their craft their passion and uh I think it's probably a lot harder for artists in this day and age to wrap their heads around what it means and I think that it's going to be a little bit of an evolution and a generational switch where artists five years from now are going to have a much better understanding of what it means to be an artist in this era versus um you know some of the kind of older artists that are just kind of wrapping their heads around what Instagram and Spotify and YouTube and your phone all means um to the overall like success ratio of what an artist's career looks like sure hey um my name is Brian so I'm sitting down again because I can but I was going to ask is this kind of since it's the last question this is more of a maybe a summary but you have you work a lot of advertisers you are obviously very connected in the music industry let's say someone here you know you've got a lot of tech people a lot of lawyers a lot of just very smart people let's say someone develops MySpace 2.0 like you mentioned earlier what is I wouldn't say the path to market but who's going to take the most convincing is it inertia is it the publishing houses like you talked about just let's say someone something great comes out of here how how do you make it happen how would you make it happen I mean it's a little bit of a similar roadmap when it comes to breaking a band as it is breaking a brand in this day and age we kind of take a similar mentality and it starts with the product so if the platform works if the platform is convincing if the platform uh has benefits outside of what's in the market I think that's very important it has to have a vision for what it's trying to do instead of just being this kind of new age place for musicians to connect what's the higher purpose and how's that translated and then I think it's really about I mean obviously all the elements of the Rockstar business plan apply but I think it starts with getting the artists on board I think if you've got the artists on the platform then and they're sharing and they like it and it's a place where they want to premiere their new music uh the nice thing about artists in particular musicians is not only are they influencers they're influencers with talent and if they put out new product they've got millions or tens of thousands or hundreds or even more fans that are willing to follow them and and live and breathe what they have to say so if there's new music and new product being delivered um unquestionably fans will be there and at that point you have audience and once you have audience to scale uh a whole new world of opportunity comes in there um so I think that it's it starts really with the product and then it's about getting adoption from the talent but uh if musicians believe in it and they're sharing music their fans will follow one more um like it's we actually have two more is that all right great Jonathan and I have a couple business models I want to run by you because I feel like now we're living in the world where to the extent we're living in the world where every single individual has more power than the largest media empire had 50 years ago haven't we and now you everyone can get paid through micro payments why about 15 years ago I was debating with a writer for the New York Times who was lamenting the fact that there are a billion people in China who can read his material how is that a terrible thing from a writer or an artist perspective but for the fact that we'd never revenue model 15 years ago that should be a phenomenal thing now that we've got the ability for everyone whatever if it's blockchain uh or micro payments or whatever the system is then mowing isn't there a pretty simple model where everyone every individual controls their own media empire and they should be doing everything in their power to get that new media to as many people that below them on the media tree as possible and get as many micro payments as possible so let's say I trust uh I trust Daza on his music taste so I'm part of I'm underneath Daza's uh music umbrella and he trusts me on uh television ideas and so he's part of my flow and then there's people upstream from me who are making either video content or upstream from him making music content wouldn't it be incumbent upon each of us to try to spread our net as widely as possible so that every single person in our little Ponzi scheme our little pyramid scheme get in the most positive sense of the term gets a micro payment across the entire system it seems to me that's that's going to be the model of the future and whoever figures out how to create this beautiful pyramid of endless perpetual redistribution of content down the media pyramid in perpetuity and always gets their micro payment all the way up up the stream to the creator as long as we can tag it as long as we can mark watermark the music control the music in some sort of online repository so there's no theft of the music isn't that the model for distribution the future completely uh creator empowered and then the power of their own viral networking wow that's a you're bending our minds you are you are you're on you're on to some to some to some no this is i look at this is the kind of futuristic thing of of i think this is where it's going where there's so much content and so much data out there it's creativity versus curativity right it's about curating the content what's more important in this day and age there's so much content out there is it the actual creators of the content or it's the curators that are telling you what to listen to if you have a trusted curator and you're my man when it comes to television and you're telling me these are the three shows i gotta watch those are the shows i'm going to watch because you're my trusted source so i do think that there's with a day in age where there's content and information overload and that's why i hate when people say i'm busy like of course you're busy in this day in age you can't not be busy there's so many emails texts social media phone like there's so much information coming at you that it's impossible not to be busy because there's so much coming at you how do you be productive how do you disseminate all of this and it's true i feel like there's more power in the curators hands than ever especially the trusted curators that can really speak to what you need and what you want so it's reconfiguring because there was an error where the curators were locked now there's these new curators that are coming up that are defining the new times because there's so much data coming at us so i love that it's a curator versus curator a creator versus curator and i think there's a lot to this going to the next question and another aspect of it was connector when you was talking about pyramids or maybe more likely graphs and networks okay sydney who are you sydney and what are you thinking yeah a couple things i feel like my name is sydney here participant co-organizer and i'm just here to share my thoughts thank you so much jesse what a fantastic talk you've been been able to share with us um we might be circling this question a little bit like for me this makes me think about you know a lot of these independent artists artists out there who don't really want to be sharing in their revenue streams and people like chance the rapper who you know have been harnessing this independent artist model and from my perspective and i would just like to know from your perspective what is an industrious artist you know how what what what does that mean defined an innovative industrious artist if that's fair industrious meaning that they are creating their own their own grant like it's it's as a means of understanding growth and understanding exactly what it means to be their own brand and kind of not it's sharing in their revenue pie right you know somebody that's just okay so the definition and this is very hard on scale but my definition of an industrious artist is an artist that understands and controls the relationship with their consumer and that's different than it used to be you go to tower records and you have no idea the record labels don't know who their consumers are and tower records for some part barely knows who their consumers are same thing with Spotify putting your artist your tree up on Spotify you don't know who your consumers are you're not speaking directly to them so where it goes if you're an industrious artist same thing with at a concert a ticket master when you're putting your concerts up with live nation or ticket master you don't know who's buying the tickets to your show so you don't know who's in your room on instagram you don't know who your fan base you know who they are if they like your picture but you don't own that fan base you're not controlling that conversation you're just using facebook's platform or instagram's platform and as soon as they change that algorithm like they did with facebook you can no longer directly communicate with your audience that you built on that platform because the rules change and if you want to send a post out to them for them to see if to pay now so i feel like in this day and age an industrious artist is an artist that knows that and can control that conversation with their audience and is working towards a place where the artist relations with their consumers is their own and as much of it is possible as their own as they can possibly have the artist to consumer relationship that i think as we continue to have later on today we can't be focusing on that absolutely that relationship so great anybody else great yeah great so we'll we'll wrap up this segment so that is a good setting of the table and creating some context and some common terms also some potential you know options and priorities for things to hack some good ideas so next up here in new york we're going to probably break into a few teams we've got a little list of you know ideas and projects that we can choose from on the menu we can come up with some new ones and then when we're when we're done with that probably we'll ask for a note taker for each team and then we'll basically report out and share with each other what we came up with and um then there's an opportunity for some dinner and some drinks saturday night and bushwick and a comedy show um call the what is it oh we're the bit it's the bit coin ha ha um okay so so check back at legal hackathon.org for all that and so much more