 Okay, welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the Monaco Crypto Summit. Here in Monaco, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE at Laurian Pistol here, Founder and CEO of Immutable Industries, focused on the advancement of technologies in art, entertainment, blockchain, across multiple sectors, great background in entertainment music, complying that into the convergence and to crypto. Welcome to theCUBE, Laura, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you guys for having me. It's been an incredible day so far. So we were just talking before we came on camera, your background and just the people you've worked with in the music industry, you've been there, very long part of your career from the beginning. Now you're on the wave of Web3, crypto, DeFi. So you know, there's a confluence of refactoring businesses. We're seeing that impact. And I think a lot of people, finance and entrepreneurial, the best brains are coming into the sector because it's an opportunity clearly to reset and refactor old antiquated business models and practices in a new way to achieve the same things better, faster, cheaper. Exactly, you know, and well, better, faster, cheaper is good sometimes. Other times, that's, you know, we'll see. But I think for me, coming in from the music industry was something that I honestly never expected to be involved in blockchain and futurist tech. It's always something that I admired, but I didn't really see, okay, here's how I can be involved in that. I was obsessed with it, but as I was sort of progressing my career as a music producer, I saw so many issues with the industry, the way capital came in, the way that it was distributed. I mean, these things are still happening today, right? But I was just constantly looking around for better solutions and how to make this work in a better way. So, you know, in 2017, when I started really diving into crypto, that was something where I saw a huge opportunity for the entire industry. The music industry is notorious for just sort of being behind the curve when it comes to new tech, and it's a shame. When you're in an industry that's full of art and innovation, you would think that it's something, you know, it's an industry that would embrace this position, and maybe some people do this, and I applaud those people very much, but in general, the music industry is kind of behind. We live a little bit in the wild west, not in the futurist way, but kind of in the old way. So, I'm just really excited to be able to bring these things into the industry. You know, it's interesting, I'm not in the industry, in the music side, but I've been in the software industry where you had the proprietary software, the rights, and people used to build software, and then when the company went under, the software was gone, lost forever. And then around the late 80s, 90s, open source movement happened, and it just changed everything. And I think, to me, I feel like this is a similar structural inflection point and change where rights are changing. People are still holding on to like, he can't use the copyright. And I even saw a stat that said with AI now, you can actually copyright every single melody, every single note in music, so that means like, who the hell's gonna develop anything? So like, our even rights even matter. So rights, ownership, art, mixing, funny story of my son a year and a half ago, mixed an old song from a band that wasn't around, and it became like a TikTok sensation. Hundreds of millions of listens, and then Spotify and Apple account was making like 20,000 a week, and DistroKid cut him off because someone went back and claimed the copyrights. But it was a mix of a couple different pieces of the song for a new melody. But because that wasn't his work, they just killed the middle man, killed the account. Right, but if there had been maybe an easier solution for him to go get those rights, so I actually used to be a rights and royalties negotiation specialist. I was on the phone with labels every second of every day. And from a producer standpoint, you're trying to find something that works for the artist, something that works for the label, something that you can arrange in perpetuity if possible. But it's just, again, there's so many people that have to just get on the phone. It's like a Byzantine system of like weirdness. Right. What's the solution? Right now, one of the favorite, it's super simple. Smart contracts related to publishing and royalties. Now, you still need probably in the interim someone to go out and the old school job for someone in rights and royalties is sitting in a restaurant and listening to see if the music is being played, right? And then you write it all down on a piece of paper. I mean, that's quite old school, but that still happens in a lot of places. So we can kind of move into smart contracts for the payment systems. And eventually we can move into AI to actually detect what music is being played where. And just to go not really on a tangent, but it's like, okay, well, are we taking a job away from someone who's supposed to sit in a restaurant and listen to the music? Well, I think we're developing a lot of new jobs by needing to generate the software. So this is normal. I mean, I've heard that argument before. Oh, bank tellers are going to be put out of business by the ATM machine. Turns out there's more branches now. Right. So, okay, this total weighs there. I mean, people say that alike. I mean, but it does bring up the next gen. So the creator, the young artist, the ability to collaborate with smart contracts, the removal of the middle person in all this, the intermediaries. Right. Is it really the key, right? I think it is the key. And like I said before, removal of the middle person, some people would look down on that. I think it's more efficient systems. When you have more efficient systems, you have more efficient societies. You can create bigger and better things. So is there a change process that has to happen there? Yeah, of course, but this is humanity. This is history. This is what happens. So I... Okay, so you're a pro. You've been through the business. You got the scar tissue. You got the experience. You got the brains. Now you're here in the front of a new generation. A lot of pioneering going on. A lot of chaos, a lot of confusion. Some people, you know, blood's building on the ground. There's a lot of stuff going on, right? That is opportunity. What are you up to? How are you attacking this market? How do you look at it? What's on your mind? Yeah, I mean, so what's funny? I've actually been spending the last few years sort of directly advising individuals and companies in the music industry. So everyone from artists to label executives, content distribution executives, licensing teams and publishers, and sort of explaining, you know, here's how things work. Here's how we think they're gonna go. And here's how instead of running away from that and trying to block your artists from using that system, we can actually use this to enhance the financial pie of the music industry instead of just trying to steal a piece of everyone else's pie. Like that's what I really want to do is the industry pie can get bigger. We don't need to like steal your blueberries, you know? They're picking up crumbs and fighting over crumbs. Exactly. Industry change. And I understand why it's scary. Like I really, really do. I've lived through this, but it's going to be true. What's your advice to them and what's their reaction? Is it like, yeah, they get lip service or like, yeah, we're trying my best. I'll stop drinking, I promise. You know, I mean, I've heard, I tried last week. I mean, are they actually getting it done as though they don't know what to do? Yeah, well, I think it starts with individuals. So I've actually spent a lot of time working with individuals on education and how they can take that information to their companies or implement that in their companies. So it's on sort of a corporate level. It is slower. That's okay, that's expected. But educating sort of individuals, like I said, that's what I've been doing for the past few years is what's really been helpful because if you just kind of do this overnight, I understand it's not going to happen overnight. But being able, like I said, to figure out, okay, we grow the financial pie for the whole industry, like this accumulates, this helps the health of the industry. And like I said, I grew up in the industry, I care a lot about the industry, I actually want to see good things happen. Like it's in my heart, in my soul to make the music industry. So Lauren, I got to ask you, so as you see the industry changing and it's going to be hard to get people to go through transformation, they have to get there. Otherwise they'll be extinct, and we kind of see that. Is there new brands emerging that have a clean sheet of paper? Because I'm a young artist, I'm thinking to myself, okay, if I can rent my own ticket, and by the way, brands become platforms, there's a big trend you're seeing with NFDs and these great Web3 platforms. So I got more social power, I got a collective intelligence, I got network effect, I got fans. All that's tapable now for my monetization standpoint. Are there new agencies, new brands emerging that's artist friendly like this? I mean, that's one of the reasons we're here to begin with. Like I'm obviously just going to mention digital bits because they're literally creating NFTs for brands. Like I'm here because I believe in what they're building. Their model is applicable to brands, it's applicable to artists and athletes. It's, I actually truly believe in what they're building and how they're doing it. NFTs is a faster way to achieve what we thought we were going to achieve with sort of the tokenization of a person or like an individual brand. NFTs I think is a better way to do that. Obviously NFTs are tokens as well, but it's a different type of thing than an ICO. It has more versatility and it's got the same kind of characteristics. I think you can build more community with it. You can maintain the value of the token itself, the non-punchable token itself a little bit better. And you can build community around it. What are some of the companies you're advising and people you're advising? Are they record labels? Are they executive, like an executive coach on one hand, business consultant on the other? What's some of the range of? So I actually advise a couple of brands I can't completely speak about in the music industry, but from the executive position, I do advise individual executives from the label and the content distribution side and sort of how to implement Futurist Tech into their company a little bit better and sort of what the real things that are going on, the new things that are going on. I actually just took on a role for a company called Cyber Yachts, which I'm really excited about. This one is just gonna be fun, international music, entertainment, fun. So. You need some media up there? We'll have it do interviews. Yeah, you can come on the Metaverse Yacht and the Physical Yacht if you want to, Monica's a great place for that. That we will be here, absolutely. So tell me about the future of some of these big agencies you mentioned, because if you look at the market right now, you assume out content is king, distribution is con, right? That's what they say. There's a lot more distribution now more than it seems content. Maybe that's maybe on some perspectives, but it seems like there's a lot more outlets looking for better content. Always. Is that distribution is hungry for the content? Or is there more content than distribution? You know, I think it just depends on the type of content. If you look at the content that's being distributed over say social media, for example, there's a plethora of content. So there's actually now this new hierarchy there where you have to really scrap to get to the top. So in a weird way, you're seeing that sort of mimic. We see how societies work, right? So like now that's become very hierarchical and that's almost mimicking the way the traditional industry has been developed. So we go through these cycles, you know, it's... It must be hard for like a record label to try to do the A&R job when you have more artists emerging from TikTok, Instagram, the social networks. I would say their job's probably gotten easier. You think because of the filtering? Well, yeah, now you can view so much talent in a tiny amount of time online. Now, do I know what they are like live? Do I know how they perform? No, I gotta go figure that out. But before you had to go to clubs and sit in there and run around a city. You can only be in so many places at one time. And chase content down, look it down. All right, so what's the most exciting thing that you think's happening in the whole crypto world that people should pay attention to that's going to impact some of the mainstream? What's the most important thing? Well, something that's actually somewhat unrelated to music, which is government adoption. Sorry, but hands down, that is the most exciting and important thing that is going on right now. Then adopting it and embracing it is important. Adopting it, embracing it, new regulations coming out. Are you happy with the progress? Yeah, I mean it takes time. Right now, the biggest sort of country that's done it is El Salvador, so. And now Monaco's leaning in. Now Monaco is obviously leaning in. It's exciting, it's really exciting. To me, I think digital bits and what you kind in earlier is that there's a legitimate crossover between the physical asset, digital asset world, and now the tough parts, in between the details and the gaps, the contracts, the royalties, compliance, what does that even mean? Right. How is that going to get sorted out? Do you think it's just going to settle itself out on its own or self-govern a little bit of an iron hand in there? It'll be a mix. I mean, there's a lot of trial and error going on right now as far as governments. Like I said, there's really only a few places in the world that are doing it. I just, I applaud these places for their bravery because don't get me wrong, it's going to be a struggle. There's going to be failures and successes and being willing to be one of the countries that does that. It's, that shows some grit. I really respect it. And the upside if they get it right, it's huge. Lauren, final question, what do you have to next? What's on your mind? What are you working on beyond this consultancy? What's around the corner for you? What do you see self-dots connecting in the future? Well, you know, I'm really, right now I travel quite a bit. I spend a lot of different, you know, a lot of time at different conferences. I spoke earlier a little bit about an education program that I'm developing with an alliance with Draper University in El Salvador. So I want to finish the programming for that. We're going to scale that out across multiple countries. And that's everything from education for governments and education for people that maybe just recently heard of Bitcoin and they don't even know how to go about seeing what it is. Five G in emerging countries, pretty potential there. It is, absolutely. Laura, thanks for coming on theCUBE sharing. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Lauren Bissell here on theCUBE, I'm John Furrier live in Monaco for the Monaco Crypto Summit, Digital Bits. We've got a big Gala event tonight with Prince Albert and Ten Attendants. A lot of action, a lot of big news happening here. All the players are gathered for the inaugural Monaco Crypto Summit. I'm John Furrier. We have more live coverage after this short break.