How Can AI and Blockchain Change the Music Industry?

The music industry is ripe for disruption. And our next guest is using A I and Blockchain to create an alternative path forward for musicians and creators. Joining us now is Create Safe founder and Ceo Dowda, Leonard Dowda. Welcome. Hey Jen, how's it going? Thanks for having me. It's just going fabulous this morning. Thanks for joining me. Uh and I'm super excited to talk about this because like I said, uh the music industry is an industry that has been suffering for disruption. Uh Talk to me about create safe and what you're building to help innovate in this industry. Yeah. So uh create Safe is a software development company and we're building a new music production studio that automates the creation, distribution and marketing of music using artificial intelligence. Um And we also use uh smart contracts to manage a lot of the backend royalty payments and fan data and information about, you know, an artist, you know, top fans and, and things of that nature. Um We started create safe with the, with, with the idea that a new music industry is developing. Um now, you know, 2030 years ago, you probably had only like thousands of people who worked in the music industry and now you have millions multimillions, you know, um it's estimated there's about 60 million plus music creators in the world today. And that means that there is a large growing middle class of artists, you know, artists who can make, who are making anywhere from $50,000 a year to a million dollars a year. And you've never heard of these people and most people, you know, would, wouldn't have heard of these people because, you know, with, with social media networks and streaming platforms, the ability to earn a living and not necessarily be a star um is possible today. Um And there's also superstars, you know, growing because of these new immer, you know, technologies. Um But that means you need the tools to manage these new types of careers, these digital first, digital native careers for artists. And we see artificial intelligence and Blockchain networks as one of those solutions to being able to grow your career in a sustainable and equitable way. Now, I know you work with a lot of top tier artists, you are grimes' manager. When we talk about A I and Blockchain, there is often a stigma that comes along with both of these two technologies because they are being developed at such a rapid pace. How are musicians looking at both A I and Blockchain? And how are they thinking about it? Is it something that they're still kind of um, iffy about, quite frankly, they're definitely afraid. I think, um, you know, uh, the, the way technology works, we've always seen it works is most of the time you have the early adopters, um, who, who aren't afraid and then everyone else who was just sort of on the sidelines waiting to see what's gonna happen. Um, you saw this when the synthesizer, um, came, came onto the scene, um, where it replaced, you know, you know, live musicians quote unquote, but that didn't really happen. Um People just felt that that was gonna happen, same thing with software like pro tools and Ableton and where people thought it was gonna replace the studios and the studio engineers and that didn't happen either. Um And now you have things like A I and Blockchain where people are, you know, afraid that it's going to like replace different jobs and the reality is, is it's going to create new skill sets, new talents. Um It's gonna open the door for more people to earn a, an equitable um and sustainable living, you know, being creators, um you know, artists like grimes, she always has believed that there's this dance between the engineers and the artists and that's how her career exists today. You know, for her, if my, if, if my space and garage band didn't exist at the time that she decided to start making music, there would be no grimes today. And so she equally sees how technology plays a role in the development in the, the, the development of her career. And I think that there are other artists who are, you know, very curious, especially when it came to Web three. I think you saw a lot of different artists who felt that there was a path forward with Web Three for them and they still do. And I think that there still is. And I think with artificial intelligence, it's so new, you know, like, uh like, although like, people have been working in the, the field of A I for, you know, 50 years now, it wasn't until last year where you saw this sort of like magic moment where, you know, uh chat GP T or mid journey made it possible to make, you know, take ideas and turn them into reality with the speed of thought. Um And that's frightening to some and that's, you know, that's really exciting for others. Like, you know, one thing that we're seeing is like, there's new styles of and genres of art being made now because of a I it's almost like a I is like the new paint brush or the new or the new, you know, um, piano. I mean, I think that's how you have to think about it. You can't think about it as like, oh, this is gonna replace me. You have to think about it. This is a new tool. I get to learn to enhance my ability to make my ideas and my dreams and my creativity come to life. You know, when I think about music and A I, I think about all the videos I see on tiktok of A I voices recreating the voices of some of the most popular uh musicians on the radio. Uh Talk to me about how A I can be implemented into workflows. Like what's the best use case for A I in a musician's career? I think right now it's about, you know, having almost like a creative companion. Uh you know, there are, you know, a lot of times we get stuck in our mind on an idea or we might feel like something that we've created is not good enough. And then when you have this sort of companion with you at all times that can sort of like push you along, it could add a new spark to your creativity. I think that's one simple way. And, you know, an example of that is if you are a songwriter and maybe you don't think that your voice sounds amazing, maybe you don't, you know, you're not as confident, but with a voice model and access to someone else's voice who maybe doesn't feel, um they may not feel confident about their voice either or being the front person, right? That's always existed. There's people who have these talents, but they don't necessarily feel comfortable being out there in the world. And now you can bring these two people who maybe didn't feel super comfortable in their abilities and one can access this person's voice and now take their song and bring that song to life that would have never really, you know, gotten put into the world. And, and, and, and on the other hand, this person can bring this, you know, the songwriter can bring this voice into the world that maybe wouldn't have gotten heard. And I think that that's a beautiful, that like, like moment of like, not only like workflow, productivity and efficiency where you're able to bring people together and collaborate in that way, but also creative output like this, I, you know, this possibility for an idea to come to life in a way that wasn't possible before. Now, I have to ask you, this comes up every time we talk about A I, it comes down to copyright and intellectual property rights. If, if we are acting on the scenario that you've just explained to me where, um you know, maybe I'm writing a song and I want to bring it to life in the voice of someone else. Is there some kind of understanding? Is there like a reed education that needs to happen of the music industry when it comes to sharing voices and, and almost like participating in the music making process as an open source process. Because to be honest, I think about artists and I think, you know, they, they hold a lot of ownership and pride over things like their voice and their, and their creation. So, um how are you thinking about the, the legal ins and outs when it comes to using A I? Well, I think that the reality that we're facing is humanity is that the, the laws of the, the universe are gonna get rewritten because of A I. Um not only just copyright. Um And so we're just at the forefront of that sort of happening, we've got to see how people use this technology in order to create precedent that, you know, that's how law works, whether it's like good precedent or bad precedent where we have to see, you know, what's possible and how people want to use these tools. And I also just think that that's where Blockchain networks really thrive. Uh when you, when you, when you think about the way copyright is enforced today, it really involves like someone having to go do a lawsuit, you know, at the end of the day, it's like there's a copyright law that exists, but the only way that that's enforced is through an actual lawsuit, right? So someone could be infringing on your copyright, you wouldn't even know, right? It could, and it could be for like 20 years that could be happening. And then all of a sudden you find out, oh snap, like someone was in infringing on my copyright. And so that's why I think that like the law in a lot of ways is outdated in the sense of how it functions, maybe not in theory in the theory of it is, but how it actually functions. So when you think about the way Blockchain networks work is that if you can now sort of if you can do something like register this voice on this voice model on chain, and then you have these, you have smart con smart contracts that allow the use the end user to interact with that voice model. When that, when there's an output that is created, there is a smart contract that is now associated with that. And now anytime someone purchases or streams that piece of IP you can share royalties back to that, the owner of that voice model and that all happens on that all happens on chain. Um And you don't now have you, you, you now don't have to worry about going in and forcing your copyright. And now uh someone would say, well, what if somebody doesn't use that, that whole methodology? Well, then how would you be able to verify as the end user, what's real and what's not? And I think people are concerned and interested in authenticity. And so if they can see that, hey, this content is verified and authenticated by the artist, the rights holder, they're gonna be more interested most likely in uh consuming and engaging with that content. And it's the reason why Spotify and streaming services are popular today. You had all of this rampant copyright in the early two thousands. But now because of streaming services, people are not like, worried about like downloading a bunch of MP3 files and wave files and GE getting an MP3 player and loading it up and that's all, that's too much of a hassle. Most people just want to spend $10 and just listen to the music that's available. And I think you're gonna see that happen with the convergence of like Blockchain networks and, and A I, I'm so curious to hear your thoughts on this. How does this change, how labels interact with musicians? And is there a role for the traditional label in a world that now introduces Blockchain and A I to the music creation process? 100%. The, the, the role of a record label is a couple of things. It is to provide artist development which comes in the form of like investment, um human capital resources, you know, in terms of relationships, um you know, and, and a variety of things that comprise artist development, then you have um marketing, which is once again, capital resources, people on the ground in multiple areas around the world who can, you know, essentially uh put your content, your uh your music in front of different people, the masses is what they call it. Um And then the third thing is like the whole Financial Operations administration, which is like, you know, right now, like A I Blockchain. All these different new technologies doesn't solve getting, you know, when your music is played in a cafe um in Istanbul, you're getting paid for that. Um So there's still a role for the traditional rights holder. What the, the challenge for them is gonna have to be adopting and not only adopting but building these new technologies to become platforms for their users right now, record labels and record label groups, they're like platforms that an artist can't really sign into and use the same way they use tiktok, Snapchat, youtube, et cetera. And they're gonna have to upgrade to those type of systems to be more competitive to, to essentially go after the middle class artists. Um And I think that we're gonna see that, tell me a little bit more about that because my next question was gonna be, are they incentivized to build these platforms and go after that middle class artist? It sounds like you think they are. No, I don't think that they are co completely incentivized. I just more so see that they, what, what their, what their, what their value proposition actually is. I don't think that most rights holders are, you know, and traditional record labels are providing things like traditional artist development anymore. Um And they are struggling to provide marketing solutions for artists in this new digital age. Um I think that what is uh what I see happening is that the, the sort of like the new entrepreneur who wants to work in music and is gonna have access to a lot of these great new tools and they're gonna build the new record companies and record label groups of the future. Um So that's what I'm actually excited about. And this is where, you know, platforms like ours thrive because we're, we, we, we, we are the platform for the new music entrepreneur, the new artist that wants to build their ground, their, their business from the ground up as a digital native. All right. And just before we go, uh I know you briefly told us about how the platform works. But take me on a journey, say I'm that middle class artist. How do I use the platform? How does it enable to do, how does it enable me to do some of the things that we spoke about on this show? So our product is called Trinity and we like to think of it as artistic intelligence. Um And so, you know, the, the, the first thing that happens when a when when an artist comes to our product is they get to train their model, they get to put their voice into this A I model, they can train their sounds, they can upload data and information about themselves to train like a chat ll you know, like an LLM and now you get dropped into a user interface that allows you to play with your A I, you can um take a, a song uh that You love, let's say Marvin Gaye. I have it on my, my, my Instagram, you know, Marvin Gaye track and I can like, put my voice on that Marvin Gaye track and hear what I sound sounding singing like Marvin Gaye. It's almost like a new way to sample. Um or I can remix that track. I can just pop that in and I could uh typed, you know, I wanna hear this as a salsa samba techno record and it's gonna, you know, give me AAA 32nd instrumental um that is synced directly to that a cappella. I could start from scratch. I could have an idea in my mind and just text out, you know what I wanna hear and then sing into the microphone and transform my voice into a different artists, voice. Um I could uh upload a song that I was working on and ask it to um analyze um this song and tell me how I should market it. Um So it's really cool new ways of thinking about how to play with A I and collaborate with A I and I could add members of my team to my account and they could now um you know, prompt it to, to, to give new marketing ideas about, you know, what we should do for a tour. Um So it's a comprehensive solution around the creation, marketing and distribution. Oh The last part, the, the last point I missed is once you're finished making something you could distribute it to all the streaming services that exist in the world, social media platforms, et cetera. Do you have me wishing that I knew how to sing? That sounds really cool. Well, with, with, with Trinity, you won't know how to, you won't know how to have to sing. It'll, it'll help you sing and make you sound perfectly in tune. My music career can finally happen. I'm very excited about this. Da da. Thank you so much for joining the show today. Uh And congratulations on the launch of the new features. Thank you. Have a great day. Those create safe founder and Ceo Dowda Leonard.