Redefining Music Discovery: The Beam and the Future of the Industry | No Standing Zone Ep.15

Steven Blackwell, how are you? You're a world traveler. First of all, let me just say thank you for doing this. I know you just landed, I think yesterday.

A couple of days ago. Yes, I was running around EU for a little bit, but definitely happy to be— definitely happy to be home in ice cold New York just in time for the holidays. It's certainly seasonal, right? Seasonal. Yeah.

Here too. I'm in Atlanta and it's freezing and we're not built for that. And I don't know why I'm complaining. I lived in Montreal for 3 years, so I've seen cold.

Montreal's cold.

I've seen brutal cold.

Yeah, yeah, beautiful city, incredibly beautiful city, especially in the wintertime. But I know how cold it can get there.

Yeah, yeah, amazing.

How long were you in Montreal?

I was in Montreal for 3 years, and I was there during Desert Storm, which was really interesting because our news, which I would watch at 10 o'clock at night because, you know, Montreal is right by the border of Vermont, I would watch American news saying no casualties, no bodies, and then I would watch the CBC news where it would say 2,200 Americans were were killed today in Desert Storm. So it taught me, it taught me a lot.

Wow.

Yeah, it taught me a lot.

And, and did you— do you speak French?

I do, yes, I do. Yeah, Quebecois French, which is like—

okay, cool, a little variation, right?

Yeah, it's kind of like Brooklyn French, right? It's—

yeah, yeah, no, that's cool. No, that's great. And did you learn French while you were there, or you knew it beforehand, and that was part of it?

I studied it in school. I, I studied it in school. Um, I learned it there because if you don't at least try to speak to French Canadians in French, they get a little bit of attitude, and I didn't really want to offend anybody. I didn't want to like push back on that. And I also realized that, you know, kids that grow up in Montreal are trilingual. They, they speak fluent French and fluent English because that's their world, and then they study another language in school. So I was meeting people that speak German, French, and English, or Spanish, French, and English, and Chinese, French, and English. And I'm like, uh-huh, I can barely speak English. So it took me— peer pressure took me up a notch.

Yeah, no, that's awesome. I mean, like, unfortunately, I'm not anywhere near as fluent in other languages as I would like to be. When I'm in other countries, I can get through it while I'm there. So you make a point. Yeah, but the second I come back to the United States, I just, I lose it.

You lose it.

Yeah, I lose it. I lose it immediately. So it seems like there's been a bunch of applications out there that seem like they've got some quality, but some of the AI stuff that's come out recently, I think one's called, I'm going to test out in the new year called JumpSpeak, which is the entirety is conversation. And I think that that's really truly the only way to learn. You don't have to tell me, but the place cards and the filling in words, that doesn't really stay with you. It's really, you have to speak it and— You have to use it. Yeah, with some of this Agentic AI, you can basically create a teacher that you can converse with through the use of these applications so that anyone can learn a language as if they're immersed. Yeah, as if they're immersed kind of. So it's a really interesting component definitely test in 2025.

Dude, I am so for that. I, I, I speak French, and when I go to Paris, which is probably my favorite place to go, when I go to Paris, I notice that it takes me about 3 days to get back into being able to speak it. And I can— I realize when I'm, when I'm comfortable because I don't have to translate in my head anymore. It just becomes muscle memory, and I can just answer. And when I dream in French, it's like, oh, you dream I'm there.

I was just about to ask, do you dream in French only when you're in France, or do you dream when you're home?

I know, never at home. Only when I'm really using it. And I have to be really— like, I have to be in a situation where I'm really like back and forth conversing with people for multiple days. I can't be there being a tourist and, you know, I, I speak to somebody in French and they answer me in English because my French is pathetic sometimes. But I have to really be in a spot where I'm, you know, like, like in a small town or in the south of France where I have to use it. I cannot, I cannot fall back on English when I feel overwhelmed or lazy. And then when I'm really using it, then it'll, it'll kick in.

Oh, that's super interesting. I think I've also, I think I've also learned just, just culturally, you know, over, over there, whether you're, you know, north or south, um, they, they really appreciate you saying Bonjour, just right out of the gate to set the tone when you're interacting with anybody, whether it's somebody on the street or somebody working at a coffee shop or a restaurant, and then letting them know, my French is really bad. Is it okay if we speak in English? And then instead of just popping right into English and not addressing the the elephant in the room, which is that you're in a French-speaking country and you're not speaking French. So I've learned that, you know, over the years that it's just really great to set the table and alleviate that pressure of being a really, really, really poor French speaker, you know. So yeah, no, that's certainly an amazing skill to have. How long did it take you to learn how to speak it? I fought it.

So I am 6 months because I fought it. I probably could have done it in 3 months because I was immersed, right? And I had taken like high school French. So I had some basis of it, but I fought it because I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed about my accent. I was embarrassed about what people might think of me because it wasn't perfect.

Yeah.

I'm a little bit of a perfectionist. And that slowed me down. So it took me about 6 months.

Got it. Got it. Got it. That makes total sense because I think— is French— is it a neutral language where do you use him and her pronouns?

Yes.

Lui et elle.

Yep.

Yeah, yeah. Lui et elle. And then so— and then there are— the way that you would conjugate certain sentences is that they would be in the— they would be in— they would be gender-specific, right? Like, like in Spanish.

Yes. Yeah.

It's a Romance language.

So it's just like Spanish.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's right. And the fact that I speak French really helps with my Spanish.

Yeah. Because it's all Latinate, sort of the end of the day where it's not— it's not that Anglo-Saxon sort of Germanic, like, quick, guttural sort of— it's all very melodious and multisyllabic. Yeah. No, that's cool.

It's beautiful. It's a beautiful language. I studied when I was in Montreal, I studied Russian and that was hard as hell because it's a whole other alphabet. And I studied with a woman who only spoke French and that forced me to get better at French so that I could ask her questions to understand Russian, which was kind of a clusterfuck, but it was amazing.

So, but you were, so you were being taught Russian by a, by a French speaker.

She was from Moscow. But she didn't speak any English at all. She spoke— she was just learning to speak French, and I was just learning to speak French. So she got it, and she was pushing me. Like, there was one day I didn't come to class and she showed up at my house. She was not playing. She wanted me to learn Russian.

Yeah, for sure. No, that's awesome. Did you learn how to— that's like, is Cyrillic legible to you, or do you—

It is. I still remember the alphabet because I put so much work into understanding it. And it's funny because the only thing that I remember how to say— well, I remember hello and goodbye, But I remember, um, no, you panama, which is I don't understand. I remember how to say I don't understand because I use that so much.

Yeah, no, no, I do remember the alphabet.

Like, I can, I can pronounce a Russian word even today when I see it because it was the hardest part for me. So I just went ham. I went really at it and said, I'm gonna learn this fucking alphabet.

Now, was that just, was that just for fun, or did you spend time in Moscow?

It was for fun. Yeah, it was for fun. Yeah, I have a weird sense of fun. I was studying Russian history I was at McGill, I was getting my MBA, and I took a class in Russian history. And he was a Russian instructor who had taught at Harvard and then moved to Montreal. He was amazing, actually. And he had convinced me that I should study, I should read Russian history in Russian, because sometimes the translations are not accurate. So I'm like, that's a good idea. I have some free time. I'll do that.

So yeah, yeah, look, I, I can, I can understand why that would be a motivator, especially because we've got this, you know, abundance of incredible literature, uh, that's, that's Russian, uh, originated. Um, and, and look, I know that a lot of people first encounter Russian literature in these, these sort of massive novels, but actually some of the best— yeah, yeah, War and Peace, for example, right? But actually some of the— yeah, but so door— I mean, that's exactly right. They're doorstoppers, right? So, but some of the best stuff is actually the short stories. Yes. And some of the short stories are absolutely incredible. And I'm a big George Saunders fan, and he wrote a book called A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, which is about the Russian literature class he teaches at— you'd have to fact-check me on this— I think he teaches in the University of Ithaca.

Oh, wow.

Whatever, whatever. But he teaches this course, and they have some of the best, you know, kind of short stories. But the reason I just bring that up is because what I've always heard is, you know, whether it's War and Peace or Crime and Punishment or Notes from the Underground or anything else there, the English translation just does not do it justice. Yeah, you can, you can, you can get close to it, but you will never actually get a real feeling that those books were intended to elicit in an English translation. You could really only read them, you could really only read them, um, in, in, in Russian. Yeah, uh, which is, which is, which is, which is pretty incredible. So I understand wanting to read— someone's telling you we should read Russian history Russian or read Russian literature, um, you know, this was also in the '80s and the Cold War was like right at the end.

Like when I lived in Montreal, that's when the Berlin Wall fell. Yeah, yeah, it was also the, the era, it was the time itself, right, where we weren't encouraged to speak Russian. If, if we spoke Russian, then we were obviously a spy or something.

Yeah.

And because I was in Montreal, that wasn't really the thought. You know, Canada did not have a war with Russia. They were not foes.

Yeah, yeah, of course. And then to bring everything, you know, full circle, I think one of their great writers— I don't know if you've ever read anything by— I'm gonna embarrass myself by pronouncing his name, but Turgenev, Ivan Turgenev. He wrote Fathers and Sons, but he was basically like a Russian expat in Paris.

Oh, wow.

He was a super influential Parisian, but he wrote a bunch of incredible stuff. And I think Fathers and Sons is probably one of his most—

Did he write a book called Vladimir?

I think so. I'd have to check really quickly.

I think I know who you mean.

Pretty sure. I'm pretty sure he did. Um, yeah, so no, no, no, the book is called First Love, but it's the main character is Vladimir. So, um, interesting, interesting you that came to mind for you because it's like there's so many of these shorts. Like my favorite, uh, writing by Tolstoy is, um, so it's— I recommend to anybody, it's a short story called Alyosha the Pot, which is very, very sad, but it's so funny. You have these conversations with people who are, you know, into art and into music and into literature. And these weird Russian short stories always kind of pop up in some of these conversations. So I always obviously really enjoy that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Cool, cool.

I think you might be the most interesting person I've ever interviewed. Yeah. Yeah. We haven't even started talking about music yet.

I'll do my best to take that as a compliment. But thank you for saying that. Happy to be here.

I'm so happy to have you here. I love what you're doing. Um, will you talk about how you got started in music, and then will you talk about the platform that you've built? Because it's really kind of amazing. Like, your whole story is amazing.

Yeah, 100%. I'll go, um, I'll go all the way back to, um, I think my— I think going all the way back to my teenage years is, is obviously helpful. I've had the good fortune of, um, being in the music category in one way or another on a lot of different sides of it for basically the past, I guess what amounts to 30 years now. So I started, I grew up in New York City in the '90s and I was really like 12, 13 years old in this 1994 period of time in New York City where there was just so much going on with music.

Were you a club kid?

I wasn't a club kid in the way that it might be understood in popular culture through movies like Monster and things of that nature. I was not the type of— excuse me, I was not the type of kid going to like, you know, like the Limelight or—

Right, that's what I'm asking. Or the Tunnel.

Or whatever. That was not—

I was—

yeah, I was way more into going to music venues. So the sort of the venues that I grew up in, um, CBGB was, was a big one. Um, Coney Island High, which was on St. Mark's Place, which I actually— I was, I was an in— I was an intern, uh, at Coney Island High in my senior year of high school. I was 17 years old. Uh, it was, it was still, it was still run by Jesse Mallon, um, at that point. Um, And the Wetlands was another venue that we grew up going to. The Continental, which— yeah, SOBs, yeah. SOBs was on the West Side. Continental was on, you know, Second Avenue. And no, it was on Third Avenue in St. Mark's. I used to live right near there. You used to live right there, yeah. And then another big one for us was a punk rock squat called ABC No Rio. And that was down on Ludlow Street, around Ludlow and Stanton. And so when we were really young, when we were coming down, because we were in the Bronx, so when we were really young, like when we were 12, we started figuring out how to take the train. Like we weren't telling our parents that we were going all the way downtown or whatever. Yeah, yeah. So that was how we grew up and we, We would get off at Christopher Street and we would walk down from the 1 stop on Christopher Street basically to 6th Avenue. And then there was a skateboard shop called PSNY, Pro Sports New York. And that was really where I started getting introduced to that intersection of punk music, hip-hop music, and skateboarding. And there was a lot of brands at that time. New York City, like Zoo York, Five Borough. Those are the brands that we were into. And so that was like the first part of like our journey into this bohemian frontier of '90s New York, which was really thrilling and exciting, but also dangerous. It was, you know, it was still dangerous, really dangerous actually. A ride on the train could still be pretty dangerous. And then we would go we would continue onwards to like Thompson Street and go to Generation Records. And then we would go to like, do you remember when Tower Records was on 4th Street and Broadway, like right by NYU and all that?

Yeah.

And so, and that was, and that was as far east as we would go when we were like 12, because going further east than Broadway, it was kind of like a barrier. It was like, okay, yeah, yeah. If we go, if we go, it's just scary.

Yes.

Yeah, it was. I agree. Yeah, so that was us. And then we, as we got a little older, that was— we got a little older, then we started going, uh, you know, east of Broadway, um, and that's when you got into St. Mark's and Lower East Side and sort of all that fun stuff. Um, and so in Thompson Square, yeah, you know, all, all of it, the whole entire thing. Um, and at, at that point, you know, in time, um, both the I'd say both the hardcore music scene and the punk rock music scene and the hip-hop music scene were really just flourishing in New York. There was a million great shows to go to. There was so many incredible artists at that time that many of them went on to do, you know, really incredible, you know, sort of extraordinary things. And also there was any artist was coming through New York City at that time. So it wasn't just that you had access to these incredible artists that were inside the New York scenes, but then anybody who was touring from, whether from San Francisco or Los Angeles or Chicago or Minneapolis. Or Miami. Or Miami, yeah. I mean, they were, obviously, every artist was trying to come to New York to play at some of these legendary venues. So it was a really extraordinary time. Time. And that's how I really got, you know, into music in the first place. And I played in a couple of bands and, you know, put out a record and did a bunch of touring and all of that fun stuff. And that was a great— it was a great way to— it was a great way to experience adolescence. It was a great way to experience other people by meeting on the road. And we were doing all of that stuff that you've— that you hear about the stories where, you know, we were playing these punk rock shows and these hardcore shows and saying, okay, we're in the middle of Ohio and does anybody have a couch we can sleep on? I did all of that and it was really incredible. And it was a forming experience for me that's really fresh in my memory even to this day going back so many years. And just through that, music had always just been an important part of my life. And I've had a lot of friends who I've worked with through the years kind of come into the music category and then maybe go and start working in tech or start working in something else. But I've always stuck with it just because of how much it meant to me from when I was a really young kid to how much it means to me today. So it just really kind of can't be replaced. So that's really where it all kind of came from. I'm assuming you sort of have a similar story where you got into music. At a really young age. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

So that's how it came together. And I started— I was always a writer by education and I guess by trade. So I started out as a writer and I was writing for a couple of zines in New York at the time, early 2000s. I became an editor, and then I became an entrepreneur out of being an editor because I was working with a bunch of people who were writers and who were artists. I was looking around one day and said, "Oh, somebody has to run the business and sell ads and talk to brands and get them integrated and believe in what we're doing. So that's really how I sort of transitioned over into kind of, yeah, business and sort of being the type of person that would run companies and work with multiple divisions to create positive outcomes and create abundance for programs and for people's lives. And so that was how I transitioned into it away from away from basically being somebody who thought they would be potentially a writer or an artist of some form and sort of moving over into the entrepreneurial side of it, which I've also learned is in many ways an artistic function as well, because it's about realizing a vision. You have to pursue something that you have a vision for, and then you have to will it into existence. And what I have found in my life is— and I'm sure you'd probably agree, and I'd love to see your answer. But when you have a romantic urge for something, it's so much easier to pursue.

Yes.

Yeah. Then when you don't, and, and, you know, so ultimately, is if you're, if you're entrepreneurial, and you see a problem with, I don't know, HR software, or something like that, if you're not passionate about it, you're probably going to run into some roadblocks. And so for me, it's incredibly easy for me to work in music and do things in music because that's where my passion lies. And I'm the type of person who, if I'm working from home and there's 5 minutes between my 12 PM meeting and my 12:30 PM meeting or whatever, the first thing I'm gonna do to wind down those 5 minutes is pick up a guitar and noodle around with it until the next meeting starts, right? And so I know that just having that— Yeah, having that muscle and keeping it a part of your life and keeping it fresh is— That's one of the other incredible things about music is that is it is lifelong learning. Um, you can never learn everything about it, and all it can do is teach you. Um, so you can always learn another instrument, learn more about an instrument, learn about the theory behind instruments, learn about— you can always learn more about music. And I think that that's why it's the one, uh, category in the world that every person basically enters into willingly. You know, I mean, obviously, you know, people have to enter into the medical markets, right? Because you'll get sick, you break a bone or something. So you don't really do that willingly. But music, everybody enters into it, you know, totally willingly. And so it's been great to just have a career where I can watch people be artistic and be creative and have these incredible careers and have these incredible moments in their lives. And anything that I can do to facilitate that is what really motivates me as a person. Does all that make sense?

It does. It does. I love that you're driven by passion. I never looked at it as music being a lifetime of learning, and you're right. And education and knowledge is like the number one value for me. And you just summed up why I'm in music. I never realized it before, but there's always something new to learn, and I never get tired of it.

Yeah, I think, and I think the other side of it too is there's the things that you can learn in music, which is anything from operating a musical instrument or musical equipment. But there's also what you learn from, you know, other, other artists. And that's one of the really incredible things about music is that talent is, is not an outcome of age whatsoever. And in fact, some of the most talented people that you'll meet, the most talented times of their lives are when they're really young. And by really young, to me, I'm 43 years old. So when I say really young, I can mean anything from, you know, 16 to 25 or even 30, right? Right. But you get to learn about people's perspectives on music forever because there's always going to be a new generation coming up to it. And I know in one of our last conversations, you know, we've talked about this definition of pop music where, you know, I— and I think that's one of the things about music that's frustrating to people is that everyone's got a different definition for everything. So we don't always agree on what things mean, or— and if we don't agree on things, what things mean, we don't really know how they should be statisticized, right? But I think when it comes to pop music, I look at it as people, young people in particular, telling us about the world that they live in and how they feel about it. And so in many ways, it's an oral tradition in that respect too. And so you're always going to have this new generation understanding what a verse-chorus-verse is, of course, and figuring all that out and noodling their way to that to make everything balanced in terms of a melody or a beat. But it's really about what that new generation is always going to do with that format. That's so exciting. I don't know if you look at it the same way from what you've done with your career, but that's certainly how I look at it.

Yes, I definitely do. I think that terminology does make it more challenging to communicate with people about music because we all have different— when I say content, for example, it means something different to everybody that I talk to about that. When I talk to people about a chorus, it means something different. When I talk about a genre, whatever genre, Afropop, whatever genre I pick, it means something different to people. You know, so yes, it makes it challenging because we could be having the same conversation but talking about different things because the terminology is different.

Yeah. And look, I think that's part of it. That's, you know, when you're thinking about how to organize music categorically, that's what becomes challenging. But what also makes it exciting is that everyone's got these different interpretations of things, right? So that's always been—

that's—

yeah, that's always been one of my favorites. Sorry, I'm going to try to get out of the sun a little bit here. But that's always been one of my, you know, my favorite parts about working in the— working in the category and dedicating so much time to it.

I love that. So what made you start the platform? So, so anxious to talk about this. Yeah.

So, you know, I think, you know, a little bit about, you know, some of the things I've done before, but to summarize it really quickly to anyone that might be, you know, listening to this, you know, I've had the good fortune of working with, with across all different stages and, and scopes of music in my career, which has been helpful. Anything from mostly emerging artists in my early career to the peak veteran and established artists of today. I've learned a heck of a lot in that journey, also on the media side and the technology side and also the data and analytics side. There's a couple of things I realized about potentially founding something in the year 2024 that was going to be unlike founding than anything in any other period. And that did have a lot to do with the automated intelligence portion of AI. And I knew that starting a new platform or starting a new company, being able to harness that technology was just going to be really interesting and really exciting. And I also knew that I was going to learn about it from the people that I would be hiring and managing as opposed to being a teacher about it, right? So that was one of the motivating factors.

Which is certainly more fun. Like, I love the whole thing. Way more fun.

Yeah, way more fun. I mean, fun, fun, fun comes— I think fun tries to be first, especially in the music world. You definitely want to see what the most fun and exciting outcome is going to be when you're deciding what to do with your time and how to do it. So that was number one. Number two is that, look, I think we are at a fairly critical juncture in the music category itself. Whether it's fair to describe it as a crucible moment, that might be a little too much, but we're definitely at a critical juncture in terms of music because Whilst the internet was supposed to democratize everything, that was the original promise, one of the things that we've all seen happen is that some of the financials came out of the equation for artists as time has gone on, and in a lot of ways, having access to everything at your fingertips should have opened up a pathway to a massive amount of discovery. But I think what we've all realized, and feel free to push back on this, but in some ways, all of that access and all that abundance of what you called content actually has had a paralyzing effect on discovery. Agreed.

Like anything in life, too much is never a good thing.

Yeah, and I think, I, I think, I think that that's, I think that that's prudent and wise to say. Um, and so, and so ultimately there, what I recognize, especially working on the data side of the businesses, is, well, how much music is there and how much of it actually gets, you know, consumed, right? Uh, and because there is so much tooling out there that allows people to create music almost effortlessly and cheaply, right? And then, you know, you remember going back to, you know, the— in the '90s and even the early 2000s and certainly the '80s, putting out music was— what's the term I'm looking for— is balkanized. It was like even trying to get a CD and put music on it, or printing vinyl. This was not open. No, most people— yeah, and then on top of that, there's—

aside from the, the high barrier to entry, the gatekeepers wouldn't let you into the inner circle. So you couldn't— yeah, even if you wanted to press up your own vinyl or press up your own CDs, it was not easy.

Yeah, I think that that's right. Even when everyone had their own CD burner, still even trying to burn 4,000 CDs or something like that, just that wasn't practical.

It wasn't.

It wasn't pragmatic, right? It wasn't. Yeah. So music, the creation of music and the distribution of music was actually an industrial undertaking. Then it turned into an information undertaking. Yes. So now that we're at the peak of that information undertaking, taking. Uh, I, you know, the access to music, there's an abundance of content, and whenever there is an abundance of something, scarcity is going to take place on the other side.

Um, absolutely.

And, and it's, it's my belief that what has become scarce is the— how are you supposed to infer what is quality and what isn't because all of the, all the places that you discover music, there's no differentiation in their user interfaces on what is good and what is bad. And that's not the point of those platforms to begin with. Exactly. Right. So, so there's manageable filters, there's icons, there's search, all the things that the internet gives us so we can navigate our way around it. Um, but ultimately, um, I think I saw a layer for, as you put it, for there to be a barrier of entry.

Yes.

Right. And so, and so that was number one. So with The Beam, we've got a really simple mission, which is to ignite competition in the world of music and reward the best. I think that to think about that, not just in music, this is the way that sports essentially, you know, functions. There are layers of understanding how talented a person is, that he or she would have to— they'd have to navigate their way through those layers to get to, you know, an elite place in terms of performance and everything else. And that is where something like the NCAA comes in really handily for the sports world, because it's really a truth-telling mechanism for talent that even to get there You've got to be incredible in what you do. You've got to be elite. And then you've got to compete against all the other people who are incredible and are exceptional talents and have astounding ability to then graduate into a professional class of performance, which is extremely, extremely elite. But I think the last time I checked, almost when you think about the NFL or the NBA or major league, 80-85% of the new generation of talent come basically from the NCAA. So I think I thought a lot about what that layer could look like in the music category. That was number one. But then when I think about it in terms of what artists want, what they desire, what they could potentially need, A paid, known audience is something that I think can be really helpful to artists. And, you know, what they have right now through the current distribution systems and tools that they have access to They deal with a lot of anonymization, and then they also deal with putting their time towards some things where they're not going to get paid. And it's almost really impossible for them to figure out what any ROI is going to be on creating, just to put it simply, X amount of posts per week on Y platform, is going to get you so-and-so results, right? And so, and so ultimately, um, I feel like a lot of artists, between the anonymization of their audience, the amount of work that they have to do that doesn't have any return on it, I feel like a lot of artists with great songs are starting to get stuck.

Yeah.

Um, and we just want to try to create a mechanism to unstuck it. And, and we believe that the pathway to doing that is through paid known audience, and that's really what the, what the Beam is, is all about. And creating the ability for fans and artists to interact not just on a consumer goods parallel, but also to be able to interact through data. And form data bonds with one another. That is something that we believe in fundamentally as well as a part of the platform. So I think that's our mission. But our long-term vision is that if we can build this NCAA for music, then great artists with great songs will have a place to go. Yeah, that's separate from the rest of the ecosystem where abundance and anonymization are the trends. Yes. So that is really, you know, what we're doing and why we're doing it. And there's a bunch of fun things that are part of the platform, like, you know, the fact that there are, you know, music charts that happen in seasons and, you know, things of that nature that we're really excited about. But ultimately, at the end of the day, is that we want to have a network where creatives take out of the network. Take revenue out of the network. That is what we're endeavoring to build. And we think that fans will be excited about that. We think artists will be excited about it. We think brands will be excited about it.

Exactly. And one of the great things is it gives a place for the music hardcore fans, like the early adopters, a place to come to discover music where everything, everything is good. It— there's no sifting through, um, stuff that, that isn't quality. And on top of that, it's one of my complaints about curation in music. And of course, when it got oversaturated, curators stepped up and said, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be the beacon for this, I'm the arbiter of taste, right? So now I have a playlist, or now I write articles reviewing records or whatever, whatever, you know, whatever form that takes. I noticed that it became about money, like around 2011, 2012.

2012. Yes.

It became, okay, I'll write about you for $500 or I'll put you on my playlist for $500. And it became more about greed than it became about love and passion. And I noticed that all of a sudden all of these artists that had budgets started to rise, and the folks that didn't have deep pockets were still struggling. And this democratizes that. Not only do the artists make money and the fans get excited again, but it brings back that, that balance of passion and talent into the equation. It's no longer about, oh, I can pay to get on this site, therefore I win.

Yeah, I, I just want to underline that too, is that it's not that buggy commercial framework that you're talking about that we saw come up in the blogosphere in particular in 2012. And I remember watching all of that happen. Um, that is not about giving what you call hardcore fans, diehard fans, the ability to collaborate and carry the best talent forward. That is what we're endeavoring to do is create an ecosystem where they are the heroes and they're the ones who are carrying, you know, the best talent forward in an environment that is built for the music category. Exactly. And, you know, this is something that we talk a lot about on the technical sides of these businesses is music is so specific. In the way that it exists in the world and the metrics and KPIs are important to people who make artists artists, not just the artists themselves, that you have to almost build category-specific tooling for the music industry, regardless of what your technical endeavor is going to be, if that's what the category that you want to be involved in the most, right? Yeah. And so look, it is limiting in that way in terms of if you want to build an incredible music category-specific application, are you going to have this venture-scale outcome where everybody on the planet is on your platform? This really only happened once. So ultimately, I think what we are focused on is— we use the word artists a lot, but it's really music workers. It's people who want to have careers in music and create abundance in music and make a living from their music. That's right. Because there's certainly a level of dignity that comes from producing art and then also getting paid for it, even if it's a little bit. There's a level of dignity. And we also don't believe that people are terribly inspired by handouts either.

Right.

So when we think about the distinction between direct patronage versus data bonding and paying to share in things and being part of an artist's inner circle to carry them forward, Um, we, we just think that that's— well, one, we think it's more modern, it's more innovative approach. We also just think it's cooler. Um, and I know a lot about how fans do really want to, to carry artists forward. The, the biggest— if you're an artist, the biggest part of your funnel at the tippity top is just your monthly listeners, right? Whatever platform that's— that's the biggest part of the funnel. But then there's everything else that happens down And then at the, at the, at the bottom of your funnel, these are the people who pretty much consider themselves to be on your team, practically your workforce in terms of, in terms of carrying you forward. Those are the fans. That's the audience that we wanted to be, right? So that's, so that's what we're endeavoring to build. Um, and we're really, we're really excited about what we've got so far. Um, and the artists that we're, that are, that we're working with already are, are helping us build out our platform. And so, but that's basically it in terms of, you know, how the platform functions in terms of the users. You know, we're trying to aggregate everyone that we can that's interested, that is a music worker, into this public format of the music worker profile. And so that is a big piece of what we're doing at The Beam too.

I love that. I love that. You're focusing on the evangelists, the music evangelists. I love that. And I also love that you didn't use the word superfan because it is is so overused right now. I really love your choice of wording.

Yeah, I think, look, overall, there's a period in people's lives where just music is incredibly important to them.

Yes.

And when you are talking about these evangelists, there are people like me who stay evangelists basically forever. But there are people who— Yeah, no, you're the same way. And then there are people who are evangelists in this period of time, which is their adolescence, which we kind of say is 18 to 34. But some people enter their adolescence earlier than that. Some people exit much earlier. But during that period of people's lives, music is everything.

Everything.

And it's everything to them.

It's an anchor. It's their meaning, it's their savior, it's everything.

Yeah, I think that that's right. And then there's the people who are in that fear of evangelism who really just want to contribute to an artist's growth any way that they can. And so, and look, I've been guilty of the opposite. You know, when I was a kid, there were bands that I loved that were hidden to me and my peers that knew about them. And we would, you know, we would take their CDs and hide them in Tower Records so like the wrong people didn't— I mean, think how stupid that is. But the wrong people didn't find them. You know, it's like, that's your point of view is like, yes, they're mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. You want to keep this thing a secret.

Yes.

And that's not— the right way of looking at it, obviously. And then there's people who've intuited to a totally different way of looking at it, which is like, I love this artist and I want to do everything that I can for other people to find— tell all your friends, right? And so I'm much more supportive. I'm trying to build out a platform that's much more supportive of that type of thinking. I love it. You know, than me being like, ah, I'm gonna hide this record because like, You know, it's just they're too cool. They're too— they're so cool. They have to stand. They have to stay underground forever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They have to stay exclusive. Right. So which is a funny mentality. And it's some— you might think that way when you're 15 or 14 years old. Right. But, but yeah, so that's, that's a big part of it. And just as a, as a reminder, I have a thing at 1 p.m. I just cannot get out of. So as much as I'm really enjoying this conversation, I'd also pick this up whenever you wanted to, too, if this wasn't enough content.

No, this has been amazing. This has been really great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And so ultimately, I just, again, thank you so much for having me on.

And thank you.

You know, there's—

you have been my favorite person to interview, and I have interviewed hundreds of people, probably thousands over the years.

Thank you.

Really, really rewarding.

I really appreciate that, Wendy Day. And like, look, I think I think overall, like, we're really excited about the future, and I think you're excited about the future too.

I am.

So if there's any ways for us to continue our partnership, you know, that would be great. But we'll keep you posted every single step of the way. And by the way, just really appreciate you