 Hello and welcome to the Noise Careers podcast. I am your host, Jesse Cannon. And yeah, obviously this isn't my normal filming thing, but I forgot to film an intro for this video. But this video is really awesome. It is with Kevin Flaherty, who runs this thing called The Van, which you can find at thevan.wtf. Why are we talking about this thing? He's got a really interesting idea about streaming music and he's trying to address some of the ways that it's broken. So we talk a whole lot about why streaming music is broken and how his service is gonna fix it, get artists paid way better than what Spotify does. Their tagline here is no algorithms, no genres, no fees, no commitments, no corporate backing, no regrets, and listeners supporting artists, pure chaos. I'm kind of into that. So I wanted to sit down and talk to him, so I hope you enjoy this conversation. He'll tell you where to find him, but you should definitely check out thevan.wtf as their web address once this is done. In fact, maybe you should open it while we talk and check it out while you listen to this, because it's really cool. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Thanks. So Kevin, tell me about The Van and what's the idea behind this? The Van is something that I think has been percolating for a lot of years for me. I'm a huge indie music fan and I always have been. And yet it galls me in a specific sense how indie artists are treated in the business market and specifically when it comes to financial compensation. It's worse than it's ever been. I don't really see it getting better anytime soon. I have all sorts of theories as to why that is. And I think on a broader level, the way we treat artists and artists craft is kind of deplorable. There's not a widespread concern for paying artists fairly for their work and treating them with the same consideration that we treat a lot of other people who are just trying to make a living from their craft. So I felt like I wanted to do something and I wanted to do something very different. So I decided to launch it and keep control of it myself and see if we could do something that divide a lot of the longstanding business principles and do something substantive for artists where we can actually get them paid. So how does the service do that? So the first thing we do is remove commitments from everybody. So as a listener, you don't have to subscribe or purchase something and I'll do respect to other platforms that do that. That's fine. And then there are other alternatives in the market depending on what you want as a consumer, which is a word that I hate, but whatever the case, if you wanna buy, you wanna subscribe, fine. Subscription however, given the fact that it drives the business, we're never gonna be able to pay people fairly if we allow them to pay next to nothing or nothing and then try to spread that money around. So the van removes any kind of hurdle like that and lets you simply compensate the artists directly. So we offer a platform with very streamlined curation. We're gonna try to get people to focus more, spend more time listening and browsing, discover artists and then right when they're top of mind, when they're really getting that dopamine rush, allow them to a click of a button, compensate them directly where the money's going and hopefully make it habit forming. So if they do it again and again and get used to the idea that as they are getting a rush from the music they're listening to, they have an opportunity to actually make the artist whole. This is really interesting. I'm so glad you clued into that because obviously Spotify during the pandemic finally was gracious enough to give you 30 days to put up a PayPal leg that it would take to get approval and all these things. But I think one of the things people have always neglected is like when we talk about like we've all bought merch at a show and been like, what in the hell was I thinking? And it's exactly that dopamine rush is that you're like, oh my God, that was so great and you do it and that's part of how we have to get people to compensate musicians is while they're feeling that high because there's a million things arguing for their money every day. We've all felt it and I felt it at the foot of a stage more commonly than anywhere else. And you want to give, there is a big myth out there that people don't want to pay simply because we've given them so many means to not pay. There are a lot of music listeners who are as rapid as you and I are who want to support artists. They are predisposed to it. We're just not really giving them a lot of means to do it. So you have that rush and I've gone over to the merch table and said, can I just give you money? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need another shirt, another tote. I just want to give you gas money, lunch money, whatever it is. And my theory we'll find out is that people are going to be generous. They're going to give more than a dollar. They're going to give something substantial because they just don't want anything in return. And one of the things that we're telling artists we're talking to is think of it like you have people who pay nothing and never will pay anything. You have people who fall in love with an artist and will pay 25 or 30 bucks for vinyl or a shirt. There's a lot of middle ground. Yes. And those are the bands that you just sort of are interested in. You want to encourage, you're not in love yet maybe but you want to float them something to keep them going. We're helping artists live to fight another day is what we're doing. Yeah, and viewers or listeners of mine will clue in like I cite this MTV study from a bunch of years ago all the time where they studied the fan relationships where they say it's like when you feel a bond with an artist that's when you choose to support them. And that bond is often the emotional response of a song. So talk to me about the curation side of this since that's really important and obviously the most buzzy word in music of the past few years. So in a former job I was overseeing a team who part of our responsibility every day was trying to figure out what to show users and basically what to put where. And there was a lot of consideration into how to prioritize things, what sort of things might get the most clicks. And it was interesting to see that despite all of our efforts and all of our haranguing over it people click on very few things. And so I'm kind of taking that learning to its extent and saying what if we show them less? What if we actually try to be the one platform that doesn't overwhelm them with our massive inventory and get them to focus more not through algorithms and not through filters because I don't really believe in those for a lot of other reasons. Well, why don't you give us a TLDR of why you don't believe in them? Cause I think that, listen, there's, I think there's two people who are having two experiences with algorithms these days. One, oh my God, this gives me better recommendations than ever. And two, oh my God, these are fucking terrible. Why, who likes this? And funny enough, I'm actually the first one. I get great recommendations from the algorithm. Yeah. Well, first thing, Jesse, I don't want to piss off the AI because they're watching. Yes, yes, yes, they sure are. Now, look, they have their use and depending on the kind of listener that you are, sure you should have that option elsewhere, in my opinion. Yes, yes. Can very easily filter out as many great things as they corral for you. And I feel like to some extent, it's antithetical to real music discovery. I came of age at a time when there were not filters, really, like there are now, you just walked up to an end cap at a record store or opened a page in a zine and you just went off of the band's name or the cover art or what your buddy told you about them. And I feel like there's a lot of stuff I wouldn't have discovered if I had to answer questions or rely on a genome to tell me what I like. I honestly don't think anything is ever going to tell me what I might like because there's a lot of murkiness to it. And these days, there's so much breakdown and erosion in genre that how do you even define what you like anymore? We actually removed all genre tags because I don't think it has any meaning anymore. And if you look at what's going on out there, people are using 50 tags to try to explain who they are. What does it matter? Just listen. The evidence of this is Spotify announced last week that you're going to be able to tag multiple genres. Yeah. And if you really pay attention to what's going on, people are often screwing with it. And they're purposely picking a wrong genre and it's a bait and switch and it's fun and it's funny, but you know what, let's just abandon it. So I'm far afield of your question, but we're curating tightly so that we actually encourage people to just trust and listen and treating it more like a blog or a record store display where just take a chance, listen without prejudice and be as open as you think you are. And maybe you'll discover something great. So genres though are a shorthand for people to communicate in my opinion still. Talk to me about how you do this. So the curation is just purely based on human instinct of what you think this person may like. Like talk to me more about how you're presenting people music, et cetera, et cetera. Right now we're actively inviting every artist, first of all, and actively approving every registration because we don't wanna be a dump in. And that is to be very clear, that's not about snobbery of any kind. It's not to do with my music tastes, it's to do with the fact that we want working artists who are serious about their music who are trying to make a living from it, right? And there's a cost consideration of course too. So we're trying to keep it tight in terms of who we invite on board. And then when we curate, we have this page called 4x4. It is 16 albums at a time. And this is the perfect manifestation of what I just talked about where that's it. That's all you're gonna get, we'll refresh it, but it allows you to actually focus and just click to play on a few things rather than try to figure out what to look for. And we're gonna situate all different types of music next to each other. There's gonna be metal next to hip hop, next to singer-songwriter, next to shoegaze. And I think that people are gonna be inspired by the relative chaos of it, for lack of a better word. And I love that. I want there to be an element of challenge. I think anything to do with art is fun and meaningful when it's challenging in a way, when there's a little bit of friction. So we actually had genre tags built in and for months and months, we were even letting artists put them in. And then it was actually a conversation we had only a few weeks ago where a light bulb went off and I was like, let's take them out. I don't know, just let's try it. Let's try it just because everybody else seems to think that you need them. And it's an experiment, but I think people are gonna respond to it. It's very, and I always think of obviously, and I'm sure you're familiar with the paradox of choice thing of that you got this aisle with 60 mustards, it doesn't sell as well as if you just put eight mustards next to each other. Everything has the capacity to influence your opinion. And I feel like that also is something that if you wanna seek it out, great. And I usually do it after I listen. I wanna know more and I go and search out more. But if I read a review before I listen, if I read user comments before I listen, if I know the background of the band, or if I just see genre tags, I'm forming preconceived ideas that I'm not even aware of. And that also is antithetical to great music discovery. Just listen and then the rest you can do later. It's funny, I've gotten in a policy that has made me enjoy movies more, which is I hit play on the trailer and the second I go, I like this, I hit stop. And then I put it on a list and then I don't wanna know anymore. Like I've gotten enough of an impression to say, this looks like I might enjoy it. That's all I want. That's the same thing. Yeah, we hit 30 seconds max. And I think my policy increasingly is, I don't wanna see the trailer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like if I know the director is good, it's like, I'm not even gonna hit play on the trailer. I don't wanna know more. I often joke that the only reason I enjoyed Forrest Gump as a teenager. So I thought I was going to see a movie about Camping and it was a real good shock. But back to music, back to music. Okay, so does everybody see the same 16? Is it, do you learn what people like? Like tell me more about what the user experience is here. And that's one of the upsides of it for artists is we tell them, look, when you're featured, everybody sees you. Not just the people whose taste matches up. Yes, everybody will see the same array. When it comes to curation, there's actually very little curation overall. We've got three pages total. The four by four is the main, is the only page really where we're featuring Alomart. The other two are just simple textual feeds and they'll link out to album pages. One's based on new releases, which is new albums and EPs and singles. And the other is new tracks, which is designed to be for pre-release singles. And the idea there is- So it's by the pre-release singles. What do you mean by that? Yeah, so when we get up to speed and we have enough music in the inventory, it'll be purely for new singles from forthcoming records. I love giving fans the opportunity to hear single drops as they come out. A lot of artists release up to three or four singles before the record. Oh, I'm seeing way more now. Three, four is the conservative at this point, I think. Yeah, and I think a lot of the blogs, as great a job as they do, they cover the first one, maybe the second one, but at some point they just stop letting you know. You don't even realize there's more out. So we're gonna try to keep you up to speed as things are dropping. So those are manually programmed as well. But the idea is those feeds are gonna uniquely cover new music, whereas the four by four, it could be anything. And I've told the artists we're talking to, we may feature stuff from years ago just because we feel like it's relevant again. We're definitely at launch gonna feature stuff from the last 14 months because a lot of things got lost. And I feel like if it's new to you, it's new. So we don't need to be so concerned that it came out since last Friday. It is true. I often joke when I make my year-end playlist, I'm like, well, half of this isn't accurate because mostly I found records from the year before that do not qualify for my best of this year because we're still finding the great stuff from the year before all the time. So, okay, you got three pages and everybody sees somewhat of a curation that you guys are performing. Talk to me. You got a lot into artist compensation. What do artists get from this that's different from Spotify or Apple Royalties? Yeah, so one of the things we're doing is we're trying to reduce their fees in general. We don't charge them any platform fees and we have no plan to. We get our cut from support transactions. So when somebody issues them support, our platform takes 20%, which is really just to cover the costs that I absorb personally. And so my pledge to them is as we can recover those costs, we will see if we can revisit their share and give them more. So we're not gonna charge them any fees. We're encouraging them to really cut out as many as they have where they're walled out from some platforms where they're not even able to upload directly. We're not gonna require them if they're unsigned and they don't have distro. They don't need to take on a third party to manage their music. We've made a really simple user interface where with a couple minutes, they can set up a profile and a couple more minutes, they can upload a record and hopefully they'll do it themselves. And I think there's some agency to that. We also have a cause where we're asking them to waive their obligations to performance rights societies, which has been done elsewhere. And the reason for that is to audit and pay on this existing licensing system is so arduous that it's breaking even Spotify's back. Okay, you know what, instead of going down this, let's explain, we should actually explain this to people who aren't as nerdy as you and I. What you're saying is what an artist normally gets from BMI, CSAC, ASCAP, you're asking them to waive that so that they don't have to go through all the administration. You don't have to go through the administration to pay in exchange for allowing a greater dividend. Yeah, to be clear, I'm not hostile to these agencies. I understand why they exist. And their main purpose is to support, like many elements of it, is to support the major music industry where you've got 100 contributors to a pop record and it's a nightmare trying to get everybody paid a percentage of their own. The reality with a lot of indie music is if an album is comprised of all original material, if all those songwriters are in the band or it's one artist, if there's not an outside publishing agreement to have to pay on this system of mechanical licenses and everything else is, first of all, it's very difficult even to understand how it works even harder to calculate it, audit it and pay on it. So I have seen elsewhere a policy to simply circumvent it and say to artists, look, if you can work with us on not operating in this world because you really don't need it, we in turn can pay you a larger percentage of money and pay you in one lump sum. And all that means is you're gonna get your 80% of the gross transaction total, less PayPal fees, which can be very minimal. We're even gonna educate them on how to reduce those. You end up with a really healthy share that's among the best in the market. And your only obligation is to cut in anybody that you owe as a contributor. It could be your drummer, your co-writer, your mom. At the end of the day, that shouldn't even be my concern. Everybody's got different agreements. And so you as the representative for the band, as the one whose PayPal is connected, you are asserting that you have the right to rep that artist and you are gonna cut everybody in and you're gonna not hold us liable. That's, in my opinion, a scalable solution to this at least for indie artists, but on a greater level without getting on a tangent, I think this licensing system has to get worked out because it's really not, it's not serving anybody adequately and it's just incredibly complex. So again, we're far afield of your question, but that's one thing you're asking. Let's say this, what my channel's about is trying to explain the music business to people. And this is an important distinction that I think a lot of artists since they're not making money, don't get to see that this. So, but this makes it much more that this is a tip jar as opposed to a mechanical royalty. One way to make the answer more succinct is we are trying to help reduce their fees, but what we're really doing, and you can understand this, I'm sure, is we're trying to educate them. I don't expect that every artist looks after their business, but they should know what they're earning, they should know what they're paying, and they should have the opportunity to reconsider it. So if we can help them be their own agents, I think we're doing them a solid. And we're also telling them, by the way, that part of the process of getting some change out there is also educating fans. As we said earlier, a lot of fans are empathetic to artists, they wanna support artists, they don't even know where their money's going. When they pay a subscription fee, we all know which platform I'm talking about primarily, but they don't know that that fee is not going to who they listen to, not at all. And so they're wide eyed when they find out that that's not the case. You and I probably don't know why it can't be. I mean, many moons ago, I made tried to make a Spotify competitor to compensate artists better. And what I learned about Spotify's compensation is like the type of thing that would, would you explain it to people? If more people knew, I do believe there'd be pitchforks and you'd square outside their office. Yeah, that's basically it. We're trying to help them be their own advocates. I think that some artists will come along and do that. Some simply just don't have the bandwidth, and that's fine. But if you're trying to make a living from your music, you owe it to yourself to try to understand as much about the business as possible. And look, I'm offering some free consultation. My number is available to all of them. And if they need help, we're happy to intervene and or at least give them some of the information that we've gleaned out there to help them make the right decisions about things. Understood. Yeah, and I think part of enabling this is making a cultural change for people. And I think that that is really what we need to push is that when everybody's complaining about Spotify, is that we have to now get people to be in a habit of that, all right, you don't like the Spotify royalties, let's do it. I've actually, I changed the big habit of my life is that I, instead of watching movies from creators I like and know I'm gonna like it, I rent their movies no matter what. Even if it's free on the thing, if I'm able to pay them, I'm going to do it because I make enough money that I should be recombinating artists. And we do have to change that culture. And it seems like that's a lot of what you're doing. And you make a good point. And I think that for a lot of people when their finger is hovering over that mouse, trying to figure out whether they're gonna pay or not, a lot of time when you realize it or not, you're wondering where your money's going. And that might be the thing that stops you. Yeah, that's a great point. You don't know who you're paying. You also mentioned a word before that is, always gives me like a little bit of a visceral response, which is tipping. This is not that. Okay, explain how, yeah. Yeah, it's a word that's come up in a lot of our conversations. And I understand why it's out there in the culture. It gets thrown around in a lot of different contexts. Tipping in my opinion is something you do after you have paid already, right? It's an add-on. However, if you are a platform that introduces a tipping or tipping-like feature where your core model isn't really paying anybody, it's not a tip. Yeah, okay. And so what we're doing, I wouldn't define as tipping. I think support, which is what we're calling these artist contributions, that is the model. That is the payment. And if you really want to take it to the extent of its definition, support is really nothing more than getting away from this long-standing idea that to drive the industry, we have to assign a value to the music itself. We have to pay for the music, pay for access to the music. That's how we got where we are, which is the bottom. We can't go any lower. Yes. So I think we have to say and understand- We can't go any lower unless you're Pandora arguing, arguing with Congressman where they think you can. And I'm speaking of course about digital exclusively. I don't want to scare anybody when I say that, I don't want to suggest that it's over because clearly if you are a fanatic and you want the merch, you are still willing to pay 25, 30 bucks for a record and great and all power to labels and distributors for being able to do that. There will always I think be fans will do that. But this race to the bottom in digital music suggests that we have to think about it a new way. And our way is to say instead of paying for the music, why don't we simply ask people to support the artists? And so doing, I think that we're introducing a new pool of money that simply doesn't exist out there because no one is, I would say no one. There are people that are doing this, they're simply observing a different model. I love what Patreon's doing. In Artist Run, I believe in it. I think they're seeing their platform become different things as it attracts different types of people. However, it's a different kind of commitment and more power, but that's something that we're treating in a very different way. That them in some stack I think are actually going to make the world a better place for careers, especially as they proliferate more. Absolutely. So what are we missing? What should we inform people about? Anything we're missing from this conversation? I don't know, we covered a lot. Yes. That's why I've gotten to that question. I think the core thing at the risk of overstating it is there's an immense amount of complaining and it's all justifiable. It seems to reach a fever pitch at the end of every year. Everybody sees their wrap ups and starts socializing about what they did all year, how many hours of music they listened to, and then inevitably the next breath, it's like, man, things are so fucked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, yeah, we all know this, but let's be a part of this change and let's actually do something and it's incumbent on everybody to be a part of that. I see the union doing it and it's tremendous, not just marching, but educating and advocating. I see a stable of artists doing it who are being very vocal and helping try to educate people, but we all have to kind of try to embrace that change and see if we can create some new solutions. I would be the first to say, we're not the end-all, be-all solution. We're an alternative to what's going on, but I just don't see a future for this tier of artists based on the present system. So I just would encourage everybody to think about how they can be a part of that change, that's all. That's very well put. Okay, so tell me two things. Artists, can they submit? What can musicians do right now? What is their call to action here? They can get in touch. We've reached out to many, and I think I have various theories as to why the response rate is what it is. I think it's been a very difficult year for people for so many reasons, but it's also that they're getting beset with a lot of startups, a lot of convoluted ideas about change, which, and again, I don't wanna be misunderstood here because many people have very wonderful ideas, but some of these things are also incredibly complicated. They're predicated on how much money you can make, and we have an interactive calculator and yada yada. It's very noisy out there. And so I would just say, if you know who we are and you're aware of us, get in touch or email us back if we've already outreached out to you, and let's talk and help you better understand what we're doing. It's funny to me how once we get artists on a Zoom, usually in a matter of minutes, we can help them understand what we're doing and let them see that we're real people. Yes. And not bots. I'd say services like you, the worst thing you have is all the bad ideas make the good ideas seem bad to people when it's in their inbox. Yeah, or they just don't know what it is. We can all empathize. And then spread the word and then talk about it with the artists that are in your city or in your scene or whatever, and talk to them about getting on board. I would rather take referrals from other artists than simply go out there cold to anyone making music because I think that's where we need to start. But yeah, that's what I would say is, let's hear from you. If you're interested, get in touch. Happen to make my contact info available. Awesome. And how about listeners? How about listeners? Yeah, what do they do? They just go to the van.wtf? Yes, exactly. First of all, I think artists are also listeners. Of course. Yes, of course. And if they want to help build the dreaded word community, I think it's actually very appropriate here. If they want to build a community with us, they have to be on both sides of the equation and they have to also support their fellow artists. The same way you stick around and watch the other band on the bill when you're playing. I would like to see them join up and use their user accounts and issue support to artists that they're familiar with and discovering. But listeners, yeah. We just want them to come and play around and get to know what we're doing. And then obviously spread the word as well. We're not going to charge them any fees either. And my hope is that we introduce them to some new artists. And by the way, among all the other business principles that we're thumbing the nose of, I'm happy if they go elsewhere after that. I'm not spending hours a day trying to figure out how to keep them on our site. You fall in love with the band and you want to spend money to get some merch? Great. We don't have it yet. But go elsewhere and buy it on Bandcamp. Support their campaign on Patreon. All this stuff is co-existent and it's most of it is great. And it is right-minded. And I would be happy to see you support all these other platforms, but add us to your life. I love that. And that's also, I think the right way of looking at it because all these services that try to keep you on the mold day end up doing the devil's work. So. Probably one of the greatest evils of our society if I'm thinking about one with a particularly blue logo. Well, Kevin, why don't you tell everybody where they can find you, if they can follow you somewhere, tell them how they hear more from you in the future. Sure. They can email me at kevinatthevan.wtf. And yes, that is a domain. Yeah. I honestly, when I first saw it, I was like, that might be in my future at some point. There are a lot of domains you can get. Yeah, there are some weird ones. .fail, ooh. We actually got the band .fail for customer service. So. That's very funny. But yeah, they can email me and we're happy to talk to them. Yeah, I mean, look, we have had an incredible experience. Alex and my team is a talent buyer at Babies in Brooklyn. He's based. Oh, nice. Yeah, I live right there. Yeah. And he's based in Melbourne at the moment, which is where he's been for the entirety of the pandemic with his family. And he's been an invaluable asset. And I think really special because I love Australian music and Australian culture. And so we actually have an enormous amount of Australian artists in the inventory right now and tend to get more. But it's been amazing talking to these artists from all over the world and also hearing their stories about what the last year has been like for them. It's only made me more inspired every time that we're doing the right thing because I think they all they all deserve a little bit better than they're getting. Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed this podcast, there's tons more like this that are about to come up on the end screen or you can click a link in the description below to see more like it. As well, if you want to hear more like this in your favorite podcast app, just search noise creators and all of my podcasts are in that feed there. As well, if you're a musician who's trying to go from zero to 10,000 fans, I have a playlist linked below or on the screen in a second that's all about how you do just that where I have tons and tons of videos on how you grow your fan base as a musician who hasn't yet established themselves. So please click that subscribe button and get notified to all my videos and stay tuned for even more content just like this. Thanks so much for watching.