Oscar Hoglund:
So, that was the second problem which needed solving. People aren't going to want to full-heartedly commit to use the music unless they know without a shadow of a doubt that, "I'm good." This music, again, it's taste. It's going to augment the feeling. It's going to make sure that it's memorable, it's great. But at the same time, it's going to make sure that the underlying musician and creator, that he or she is compensated. That's what we've ultimately tried to solve for.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's slowly getting better. 
If you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself, so they can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker. 

Michael Walker:
All right. So, I'm super excited to be here today with Oscar Hoglund. He's the co-founder and CEO of Epidemic Sound. They're a music company that produces music for online creators. They get between 40 to 50 billion with a B plays per month. And literally, I'm talking to him right now after they just raised $450 million at a $1.4 billion valuation. So, it's like when you go from M to B for billions, I feel like that's just the amount of impact that involves is incredible. And I love the way that you described it to me. I was like, when we first off on this call, I'm like, "Yeah, that's a lot of moolah. It's a lot of impact that you're making." And he's like, "Yeah. So a lot of music." Yeah. That's incredible. 

Michael Walker:
And I know we talked about like your vision and the mission behind what drives you guys, and soundtracking the internet. So, I'm really, really excited to be able to dig in today and talk through Epidemic Sound, what you guys offer and why it's an opportunity for musicians, who might be listening to this right now. 
So Oscar, I know you've had your hands full and you've had a very, very busy weeks and months, and years leading up to this moment. So, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. 

Oscar Hoglund:
Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. I've been looking forward to this. So, let's kick things off. 

Michael Walker:
Heck yeah. So, I'd love to start off just by hearing a little bit about more about your story and how you got to this point, starting the Epidemic Sound, and a friend who is listening to this right now, as an introduction. 

Oscar Hoglund:
Cool. So, let's take a step back in time, because we kicked things off almost 12 years ago. And people are typically a bit surprised by that because we've been around for a long time, but we haven't really made such a huge fuss about ourselves. Although, you may be, it's only recently that we're starting to pop up on people's radar. And you alluded to it in the opposite. But maybe the announcement last week also, it's going to help change that a little bit.
But we came from very humble beginnings, but I would argue that we always were driven by big ideas. So, there was this big audacious goal that we set ourselves many, many years ago. But I think before diving into that, I think it's right to say that we stumbled upon what we then eventually decided to do by coming across two problems that needed solving. 

So, 12 years ago, I found myself together with one of my co-founders that we were in TV production. And so, we were making TV shows, and sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much. But we did shows that traveled across the world. And adding music was obviously supposed to be one of the high points because content without music is a bit like food without taste, doesn't pack a punch. 
And so, adding music was critical, but it was fundamentally broken, right? It was so difficult to clear music, find it, understood who owned what rights, put the publishers, record labels, PROs, naming rights organizations, just fundamentally broken. And something that ought to be so much joy, so much fun, adding beautiful, impactful music into content, into visuals, into stills, was something you were afraid of, because you were terrified that you would might make a mistake, and you definitely didn't want to success. So, you didn't want your content to travel well, do well, because you knew that you may get into legal troubles, because there was probably some platform, some part of the world that you hadn't thought about or hadn't cleared, or somebody on purpose had made it difficult for you to understand.

So, that part of adding music content, fundamentally broken. And then the flip side, other co-founders who came from music production, music creation, two co-founders called David and Pat, they had more than 200 hits on the Billboard Top 100. They had written for Madonna, for Celine Dion, for Kacie Grenon, and very accomplished. 
But they were frustrated from the other side of the equation. They came from a world where musicians had a really tough time making ends meet because there was this disconnect between hard work and revenue generation. And it was supposed to work out, because there was supposed to be royalty. But what people neglected to tell music writers, was that 99.5%, typically don't generate enough royalty to make ends meet. It was all because the bills kept on piling up every single month, but you couldn't really bank on the royalty because you were so much at the whim of, was it reported correctly? Did they get the transcripts right? Would ask if, would BMI do their part with the record label, with the publisher, with all the intermediaries, do their part?

So, people weren't getting paid upfront, and that was an issue. So, the second problem that we stumbled upon was, what about if we try and re-engineer the music industry, one where it's not always the middleman who win, not always the publishers, the PROs and the labels who wins, but maybe a world where music creators can make shitloads of money. How about if we try and optimize for that? So, fixing the soundtracking part and fixing the part of compensating musicians properly and fairly. So, those were the two problems, right? 

And it all came together beautifully because we saw what the internet was. And I think more importantly, we were fortunate enough to have an idea of what it might become. Because early days, internet was very tech-centric. And we knew that over time it was going to transform and turn into a picture-centric medium. This was before Instagram, right? 
But then over time we knew without a shadow of a doubt that the internet is going to be a video centric medium. Now, we knew that because we felt compelled that video is such a strong medium. It carries so much more information. It carries emotion. So, over time as the bandwidth increases, we know that it's going to land in that region. And we felt so passionately about this, that I think we all just joined around the mission that we think that probably the internet is going to be our generation's defining achievement. If we're fortunate, your grandkids, Michael Migrant, can look up to us at some point in time. I think we will believe this was a passionate Epidemic.

Grandkids are going to go to us and they're going to go, "Huh, I guess you could say that your generation created the internet. Is that right, grandad?" And you and me are going to look at them and hopefully we're going to get to say, "Hell yes, we did that." And then I'm sure that they're going to go, "That's cool to know because that wasn't just your generation's biggest collective achievement amongst yourselves, but it's also, it's the frigging internet. It's what our entire lives is based on. It's what we do to shop, to express yourself, healthcare, interact. We educate ourselves. Everything relies on the internet. And grandad, please tell me that you played a small part in putting the internet together. You need to remind me, what was your role in the genesis of your generation's defining moment?"
And at Epidemic, I think early on, we felt that we lean into that discussion. It's decades out there, but we'd love to be able to have the discussion and say, "You know what? We did play a small part, but it was a crucial one because we helped to soundtrack the internet." We were the ones who were able to re-engineer the entire music industry and help create the new ecosystem, which put music and creativity, front and center. We brought feelings through our generation's biggest collective achievement. And in that process, we unleashed music and creativity to everyone. We solved for the single biggest problem for online content creators, which is how can you soundtrack anything, anywhere? How can you make [inaudible 00:08:01] for the content with excellent music can travel to all platforms which exist today, but also platforms that exist tomorrow? That's a big problem to solve, but that's what we've committed to. So, the Epidemic journey is the ambition to help soundtrack into that. That's what we're about.

Michael Walker:
I love that dude. That's awesome. And I think that any time... All of my mentors have shared exercises or similar stories where they've fast forwarded 30 years or they've fast forwarded to the moment that they're on their death bed. And they're looking back, and really puts things into perspective. It's like, "Oh man, yeah, there's so many little things I was worried about." But I love that you guys were able to have that insight upfront and have this huge vision to be able to literally impact the state of the world and the music industry.
Specifically, I think there's a lot of people who are going to be listening to this from the perspective of a musician and an artist, and a creator who... One of the biggest problems that you talked about addressing was this broken lottery, where very, very, very few artists are able to be successful and sustain themselves. But there are a few who they happen to break big and they're just huge, massive. And being able to kind of fix that issue and make it easier, and empower musicians, to be able to sustain themselves, to do the thing that they are most passionate about and able to share that and make an impact with that. 
So, I'm curious to hear specifically, with what you guys offer, what exactly, what is the model for artists and how does that compare to what's available nowadays? 

Oscar Hoglund:
Yeah. So, let's just do a really quick rundown. So, we offer a subscription. So, the vast majority of our paying customers, we call them storytellers. And we count them in the millions. And there are anything from my 12 year old nephew, who uses access to the catalog that we provide. And they soundtrack their Instagram posts, random ad hoc, one viewer, two viewers, five viewers, small creators. And then they carry on all the way up to Netflix, who has a subscription with us. And they use our music to soundtrack their shows like Narcos or something like that. And then basically everything in between, small, medium-sized businesses, media companies, industrial companies, nail salons, YouTubers influence. 
Basically anyone who's commercially looking to add music to their stories and bring them to life, and allow them to travel, they're our customers. So, we call them content creators. And so they pay a subscription. So, that's on the one hand. 

And on the other side, over the years, we've accumulated this library of tens of thousands of tracks, tens of thousands of sound effects. And the contributors here are music directors from basically all around the world. Typically, we over-index in North America and in Northern Europe. I can get back to why. But that's where the vast majority of content creators or music creators that we work with currently are from. We commission tracks from music creators. So, it's not an open marketplace. If I were to compare it to anything, I'd loosely compare it maybe to a Netflix, whereas they would commission shows, right? So, you would commission House of Cards, something where you're very particular. 
Typically, we have tons of data in terms of we know what the internet sounds like because we're at such big massive scale now. So, we get access to all this information. And we use that information to put out briefs, briefs that we send to the musicians who we work with, "This is what our data is telling us. We're looking for tracks that sound like this. Or these are keywords where we're coming up short. We think that this is a trend that's going to take off. We're seeing that music in Southeast Asia is moving in this direction. Let's stay ahead of the curve. We're seeing the traction on YouTube is moving in this direction. We're seeing that unboxing videos and Twitch are heading in this direction." And that informs how create our briefs. 

So, that's the model. So, we work directly with music creators, creating this catalog of music, which today spans tens of thousands of tracks. And then we offer that catalog to content creators who have a fixed subscription, and they use the music there.

But I think that simplifying it even more, what we've done is we've tried to solve for three problems. So, there's this one vision, right? Let's try and see if we can soundtrack the internet. We've leaned into two superpowers. And so, on the one hand we rely heavily on engineering. So, we're a product driven company. We build products that help connect all the platforms, all the demand of the entire world. And we lean into that. We embrace that a lot. 
Second superpower we lean into is creativity. So, we work with music creators. And we [inaudible 00:12:40] the music creators with engineers because we think beautiful things happen there. There's structure. There's foresight. But then there's this spark of genius. There's creativity that just brings everything to life. Those are the two superpowers. 
And the three problems that we solve for is, first one was how can we help music creators? So, there's the element of getting paid. And then you need to help them to get played. 

And in terms of getting paid, we've come up with a model, which we think is fairly unique. We're careful not to contrast it too much with the traditional music industry because we have no interest in bad mouthing labels or publishers, or PRO, naming rights organization, per se. We think that what we share in common is this huge respect for music, huge respect for intellectual property and for copyright. But we maybe have somewhat different ways going about serving and helping the key constituents of that market, how we go about and help music creators optimize for the best possible outcome. 
So, when it comes to paying and making sure that musicians can make a living, we actually have three different components to how we pay music creators. So, first up is the upfront model, because we're fed up with not paying musicians. We don't believe in only talking about royalty. So, we commission tracks. We put our money where our mouth is. And we pay anywhere between a thousand dollars and up to $5,000 per track. 

So, we'll send you a specific brief and saying, "If you're up for it, this is what we're looking for. We think you have the skillset. Listen, this is how it should play out." If that inspires you, you'd say yes. We typically have two to three iterations with feedback, "Can you talk to our A&R team?" And we help you and we land. And the result where we'll both of us feel, this is amazing. You get paid upfront. It's not recoupable. It's not an upfront. It's yours, regardless of whether or not the track ever gets played. So, we pay you for that. So, we buy the commercial right. We then put that in our catalog. 

And we have millions of our generations, most prolific storytellers who find that track and they go, "Wow, this is exactly what I've been looking for the last month." And I go, "Yeah, I know because we have access to that data. Why do you think we commissioned it?" So, we put that out there, and that's get spread all across the world, across all platforms. 
And if you're lucky, you meet hundreds of millions of viewers. And if you're really lucky, you're going to meet billions of viewers because our content is at such massive scale. You may have alluded to it. But I think our music has played 1.5 billion times every single day, just on YouTube. Right? And so, that creates a lot of demand. And it builds relationship with viewers who hear this music and they fall in love with the music, and they Shazam the music, or the SoundHound, or they start writing comments on Instagram or YouTube and Twitch and say, "Who is this artist? Who is this track?"
And we're obviously eager to serve. So, we make sure we push all that music out Shazam, to SoundHound, to all these different third-party functions. And people find the music. And then they transition over to the streaming platforms. So, they head over to Apple Music, or Spotify, or to Deezer, or to Tidal, or to any one of the 45 different DSPs that we serve as well. And we've uploaded all of our tracks there as well. Why? Well, we're looking to soundtrack the internet. But more important, we're looking to serve the music creators that we partner with. 

So, we paid for the track upfront. Our business model then is the marketing, is the distribution that they want to get their music spread, which is the second problem we served for music creators, distribution. And then people stop playing the tracks. After having heard it a couple of times on YouTube and places like that, they head over to Spotify. That generates royalty. And so, we collect that royalty because we're restriction free music. We're not royalty free music. We believe in royalty, but we don't use the third party collectors to do that for us. So, we get the royalty directly from the DSPs. 

And then we took a long hard think about, how do we want to distribute this amongst music creators? We paid upfront for the track. We commissioned it. But we fundamentally want to help music creators. What would be the fair thing to do? Well, we guessed that we pay upfront in full, but that's split all the revenue we generate from royalty 50/50, like a true partnership. We commission it, we market it, but we want to do this together with music creators. Remember, we have this picture of talking with future generations and how we help musicians. And so, that's an uncapped upside. So, we collect all this world and we start paying it out to musicians. 

When word spread that that was happening, I think the amount of people who apply to work for us went out by a 100X. People just went crazy because there was suddenly this engine that started to work and really distribute well. So, we started to generate millions of dollars from the different DSPs. And we paid out millions of dollars to music writers. And that was basically how that model was launched. So, we had the two part payments, the upfront payment, and then we split royalty. 

And what we just released now recently is we have something we call the soundtrack bonus. Because in parallel, we're seeing our music is created, it's built and it's optimized to help soundtrack the internet. So, obviously we're keen to make sure that we're feedbacking to music creators, what's landing well with our content creators.
And so, we put together this smart system, which we launched this year, where we just pushed in a million dollars. And we said that depending on how much your tracks get downloaded, because we think that's a good proxy of how interesting they are to the content creators, we're going to pay you an additional fee, like a third one. So, upfront, royalty, but then depending on how large percentage of downloads your music accounts for, we're going to pay you additional money from the million dollar pool. And this is the first year we launched the million dollar pool. And we're anticipating it's going to go down well, and then we can increase that as well. 

So, we created... I think I'm going to stop there because that's an important first question we solved for, how could you make sure that we can market artists and pay them fairly? This is our version of what we think that believes in. This is how we think that as that scales, we're seeing that artists, music creators in the US on average, they make about $20,000 per year. And I think we're currently paying out on average about $35,000 per year. So, we'll almost like a hundred percent up from the average, and this is our average. Top earners, obviously, make way, way more. But I'm just going to pause there for a while, and see if you have any questions.

Michael Walker:
That's fascinating, dude. It's really, really cool. I mean, it's like a pretty big revolution in terms of just like the model for creators. And really, really interesting. 

Michael Walker:
And I mean, a couple of questions came up. One was around the production of the music, and are the creators, are they producing their own music or is there a team that helps them to create the songs? And then I would also, I think, well, one thing I'd like to dig into is the pros and cons. Or I think that you had mentioned that there's some controversy and there's probably some objections that certain people have. So, I'd love to hear from you your take on some of the pros and cons of this model and what some of the objections are that people might bring up.

Oscar Hoglund:
You bet. So, should we start with the folks first question, maybe. So, in terms of music creation, what's the process?

Michael Walker:
Yeah, exactly. Yep. 

Oscar Hoglund:
Cool. So, I'd say that I don't have the latest numbers. But I think that we get, the fact is to say that we get thousands and thousands of applications every year. And like I said, we're not an open marketplace. It's not a free for all, whatever you want uploads. And we'll see what sticks. It's a much more curated platform that we bring to the table. So, people apply, everyone gets an individual response. And we listen to everyone and we feedback. And if we feel that the content creator has a unique sound, a unique voice, a unique skillset, something that we are excited about, we'd double click and we'd lean in. 

What we're not looking for is the traditional hits. We're not in the business of trying to levitate everyone towards a sound to find the next Drake. Because I want to be super clear, we think the record labels and publishers fill a very important role in the ecosystem. And I'm sure that for some artists, especially the ones who've already made it and who are more accomplished, who want to go from semi famous to humongously famous, that's a great route. But for people who are either earlier in their career, or maybe more niche, they don't have a sound which is as commonly asked for as everyone else, I think we're the perfect alternative. Because if you think about it, we're trying to soundtrack the internet. And if the internet is a place where everything sounds the same, we're doing our future grandkids a disservice. So, we're not really helping out. 

So, every story is more or less unique. And they're looking for a unique sound. So, our job is to try and throw content creators into the deepest, darkest corners of our catalog, connecting them with tracks that nobody has ever played, because this is a unique frigging documentary about the planet Saturn. And so, that needs a specific soundtrack, as opposed to, "We had a great night out, what was the name of that track we heard in that Cabin Ohio or whatever it might've been?" Right?

And so, we're looking to make something different. So people apply, we screen and we interact with them. And then we have a team about 50 ANRs headquartered in Stockholm, but sit all around the world. We have people in Nashville, in New York, in LA. And we're constantly on the lookout for talent, all different shapes and sizes all over the world. But it, A, tends to over-index and North America and in Northern Europe. 

And B, we're looking for a specific context. Because some of the historical agreements that have been crafted over decades, especially when you look towards performance rights organization, unfortunately, they've been constructed in a way so that if you have a previous agreement or an understanding with the performance rights organization, the fine print in those agreements typically tends to say that, "Yeah, if you sign this agreement, you can't work with anyone else in parallel. You are either with us or against us. So every single track you do, we have a right to manage all of those rights on your behalf, whether you've explicitly told us to or not." 

And so, we feel it's our obligation to inform people that if you're already signed with a PRO, they've made it impossible for you to work with us. Consequence is that a lot of people need PROs. So, we don't endorse it per se, because again, we think PROs are great, but we can't work with people, typically, if they're tied to PROs. Somewhat different than North America, somewhat different in Scandinavia. Hence, why it's easier for us to work with super talented music writers, because, A, people don't sign to PROs in the same extent as they used to, because it's not necessarily in everyone's best interest, especially since you can self-publish on many different platforms. And B, because it's clear, your restrictions, so it's easier for us to acquire. So, North America and Europe. 

And then if you have an interesting voice, tonality, tone, something that you produce, we connect you. So, you get a personal reviewer who works at Epidemic. She or he has been in the industry for probably 20 years plus. They've produced thousands of albums for hundreds of artists, who've sold to hundreds of millions of people. So, they're really good at the craft. And how this would typically go down, let's give you a hypothetical example. So, let's say it's you in the sake of argument, and let's say, I'm your reviewer. God be my witness, that's not the case because I'm not that skilled and talented. My skills are in other areas. 

But how this would work is you'd send us something and it would strike call. We'd say, "This is amazing." And so, here's what our data's telling us. We're seeing that kind of music you will make, which is, I always use metal in my examples. I'm going to say it's metal inspired country. That's actually exactly what our data is telling us. There's a huge search. So, people are searching for this. They're not coming up with the results. We're not serving them the results we'd like to. Hence, we would like to commission a track. And so, this is what we have in mind. 

And you'd go, "Huh, that's weird. But I exactly hear in my head what that would sound like. I'm definitely down for doing that. What's the commission?" And we say, "This is a $3,000 tracks because of X, Y, and Z." "I'm totally up for it." You go out for job because that's how your signups to start connecting, put out your phone and you start singing something like, "This is the base. This is the melody. This is what I'm thinking." That sparks off. You're in my interaction. And typically, we have something like three interactions. You get some feedback, "It should be more in this direction. This is great. Go without feeling. How about you add some of this? You'd do some of this. We're also feeling that this is something that's happening."

So, we try and be your counterpart. And so, we help you, not so much as to steer you, but we give you feedback. And then when we're in a position, where we feel like this is it, we acquire the track, send you the money. That's yours forever. Even though the track might tank, totally on us, not on you. So, you have the money. We then put that into the catalog, get millions of content creators, who push it out in our newsletters. We have some personal recommendation. So, anyone that we know has been searching for that, we make sure that lands on their page. Same with Amazon, if you put lots of Pezes, next time you're on Amazon, you see a Pez dispenser. It's magic, right? So, we have the same setup.

And then music starts soundtracking content for small, and then at scale. And then because it's music, it leaves a footprint. And so, we collect that data in real time. So, we have this music graph, where we see what the internet sounds like. And we're seeing that, "Huh, go figure, that track really picked off in these areas or in these content passes. It's a hit on Instagram, but it's not on TikTok. It's doing very well on Twitch, but not at all on YouTube. It's doing well in [inaudible 00:26:26] language. It's doing really well in Korea, for example." 

So, we might come back to you and say, "You know those two tracks we commissioned, one didn't fight at all. But the second one, country metal, it was great. It was actually huge in South Korea. So, we're thinking about maybe pairing you up this vocalist who could do some Korean growling or some vocals on top of this, because we think that would be super cool. Would you be up for doing something like that?" 

Also, you might go, "Yeah, no, not really." Or you say, "That's so cool. I'd love to experiment and see what that would sound like." And the way we go. So, it's this ongoing iterative process, where we release stuff, and immediately, because we're a one stop shop, we have access to all these content creators, and all these billions of viewers, we get immediate feedback, "It's added to this playlist. It's been liked here."

So, we can follow the algorithms and they can inform us. And so, it's almost as though we're trying to supercharge musicians with access to data. So, instead of being intimidating, instead of being this black box, we're trying to turn data into this creative help, which hopefully inspires, narrows creativity down, but obviously supercharges you to, "This is what we're looking for now." And this is a hypothetical brief, right? So, we have on any given week in any given month, we have hundreds, if not thousands of different freaks, because people are looking for different things all the time. And all odds are that the different things we're looking for is something that you might be really good at. So, that's why I think we're probably so well-suited to help the long tail. 

The superstars already have their ecosystem. They have their echo chambers. That's not what we're about. We're about the 99%, helping them hone in on their skill, their voice, their craft, and then supercharging that through data distribution and monetization.

Michael Walker:
That's so awesome. I love that. It sounds like a key part of your business model. Is really like the data collection that you have from the point of figuring out where's the biggest need in the market right now. What are people looking music for? And being able to work with artists, to be able to create that.

To clarify, so it sounds like a lot of the creative process is they really get this guidance and they get to collaborate with really experienced music creators to be able to go back and forth. And that in on itself is so, so valuable. But it also sounds like you guys are very curated and very selective with who you work with. And so, right now, I'm thinking on behalf of someone who might be like listening to this right now and what you guys are looking for, someone who'd just be the perfect fit as an artist to join your catalog. It sounds like probably it would be someone who does have a lot of experience either like producing themselves or at least having a contact or someone within the band that produces their own music as well. Or do you guys work to connect people with producers and the mixing engineers, or how does that process work?

Oscar Hoglund:
So, I would split that into two different subsets of questions. So, the first one, which I think is the more obvious one is, do we connect people? And so, that you don't have to be this Renaissance individual who masters everything. And the answer is yes. 

Historically, we didn't because we were more bootstrapped and tight for cash. And so, we had to work with people who could be more of a one-stop shop. Fortunately, for us and for future generations, we're past that point. So, we're more than happy to connect people with one another, so they can collaborate, so you can add your skillset to a specific track or a genre, or something that we might would like you to work on a project. So, that's the first part of the question.
The second part, so I realized, I mean, I over-indexed because it's true. But let's say maybe 80/20, so 80% of what we commission is very much driven by our need, our desire, our understanding, how we see the world moving and what kind of music we would like to to help play a part in creating.

But then there's always the 20%, which is we're constantly blown away by people saying, "Look, I have this idea. It's not driven by data. This is me. Have a listen." And we can go, "Holy shit. Let's not mess around with perfection. This is amazing. We would love to push it out." There isn't a specific need for it, but we think this is amazing. So it's going to create demand in its own right. And it happens on a daily basis. We are constantly releasing stuff that is just, I can't explain it, it's goosebumps. You hear something, you just immediately know that, wow, this packs a punch. It hits me in a place where I can't even explain where it is. And that's magical. 

So, we definitely do both. But I want to be clear about setting people's and your listeners expectations. Initially we over-indexed. And if it's somebody who's willing to take on feedback, to work with people who are like really experienced, who can get energy and be encouraged by co-producing with someone else, that's I think where we typically start, then the other stuff happens. And some cases you can dive directly into that, but that's more of an exception. We're more looking with people who are very keen in their mindsets of, "I want to learn. I know my craft. But there's always more, I want to work with other people. I want challenges. I want to push my limits creatively and see where that takes me." That's the balance we're trying to strike.

Jared:
Hey, it's Jared here. I'm the co-producer of the Modern Musician Podcast. And I wanted to jump in real quick and say, thank you so much for being a listener of the show. We hope you really love the content and all the wisdom from our guests every week. We're still a new podcast, but we've so far had on 25 of the world's top music industry experts. And we just hit over 20,000 downloads. None of this could be possible without you. And we can't wait to show you what we have next. 

And speaking of amazing things we have in store for you, the Modern Musician team has geared up to announce the launch of something so valuable and honestly really needed for all of us artists. We're calling it Music Mentor, and it's basically this podcast on steroids. It's going to be so valuable, if you're trying to grow as an artist and make an income, but you don't have a thriving network or know the exact steps on how to make the biggest amount of progress in the shortest amount of time.
If you want to learn more about Music Mentor, what it is and how it can help you build a sustainable music business, go to the link in the description of this episode and sign up, because Michael Walker is going to be doing a live free training about how to take away the overwhelm that we all feel from wearing a ton of different hats and sifting through all the information out there, and how you can get real results and make a difference, and an income much quicker. From the Modern Musician team, my co-producer Ari, and our founder, Michael Walker, thank you so much for listening. Now, back to the podcast. 

Michael Walker:
Awesome. I love that you guys have that, that openness to allow people to be creative and have... The musicians are very creative, and so being able to just express themselves and to share that, I can see why that'd be really valuable, because yeah, sometimes those golden ideas, they just happen and they come up, goosebumps. Awesome. 

Oscar Hoglund:
Should we go to the second question?

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Yeah. This will be a good one. So, I'm sure that you've had a lot of conversations around certain objections or questions, or fears or concerns. Because, I mean, I think anytime that you do something that's really disruptive or something that's revolutionary, it can be really scary and it's something new. And there probably are pros and downsides. And you don't try to claim that you're everything to everybody. But I'm curious to hear what are some of the biggest objections or fears that you do hear come up and how would you respond to this?

Oscar Hoglund:
Yeah. Let me break it down by going back in history, so in order for your listeners to understand what the hell are we talking about. There was this point in time a couple of years ago, where we realized that, huh, we seem to be doing a pretty good job of soundtracking the internet. Our numbers are up into the right. But we're seeing that the number one question on YouTube, because it started on YouTube, was that viewers were reacting to content creators, and they will be saying stuff like, "Hey, PewDiePie, I love your last video. It was a hilarious. But you're playing this track in the background, is just stuck to my mind. It's amazing. I want to use that when I play this game. I want to use that on Friday when I cook, when I hang out. I'm going to go for a run. We're going to go driving to Carmel this weekend. I want to play the track in the car. I can't find it on any music streaming platform. What's the track?" And that happened a couple of thousand times. 

And then it happened a couple of million times, before we eventually said that, "Let's take all of our tracks, put them on Spotify and the Apples, and the Amazon Music of the world, and see if we can help move viewers and turn them into listeners." And in the process, convert non-paying views into streaming listens, so we can generate more money for musicians. Because we weren't that originally, we were originally, we were soundtracking the internet, but because of what we saw happening, that's how it played out. 

And so we did, we took all of our tracks, we put them on the streaming platforms. We put them on all streaming platforms, but we started out putting them on the largest one in the world at the time, which still is the largest one, which is Spotify. And so, basically how that came across for the rest of the music industry, was that suddenly out of nowhere, there was this company out of Sweden called Epidemic Sound, and they got millions and millions of streams across Spotify where it started. And people would Google them and said, "Who is this artist? Who is [Oi 00:35:59]? Who is [Cosby 00:36:00]? Who is a Neighborhood Nick?" Any of our artists. And typically they would come up blank because these artists had been working 10 years straight, making music together with us. And hadn't really over-indexed in creating their online followings because they were making music, which was used to soundtracking the internet.
So, the music industry leaped to a conclusion where they said, "This is fake. This is AI music. These artists don't exist. There's something phony. There's something that's a hoax going on." And we were labeled with, "This is fake. These are fake artists." And it escalated very, very fast. And we felt compelled immediately to go out and take this on the chin. We said, "Okay, hang on. Here's what's going on. We've been sidetracking the internet for almost 10 years. We're doing a very good job of it. We're not seeing anyone else in this space. And if you ask anyone who is an avid content consumer across Twitch, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or anything, and such, everyone knows who Oi is. Everyone knows who Cosby. Everyone knows who's Sarah, The Illnstrumentalist is, because it's soundtracking all of the content that you know. So, rather than claim that they're fake artists, maybe you should do some homework because we're soundtracking the internet. And the internet is now moving into the streaming world."

So, eventually when that trickled down, so people pipe down because they realized that, "Ah, all this music does exist. It's just that I haven't been privy to it because I haven't been paying attention to online culture. I've been more focused on the traditional music side of things." So, that first died down.

Then you could maybe argue there was a second wave, because what was typically happening, given the nature of how we commission stuff, we would work with, let's say like yourself, a skilled music writer. And let's say that there were four or five different genres, where you are incredibly talented, Michael. And so, one would be EDM, another one would be more rock. You love your country staff, which is what you're passionate. That's your artistic expression. The other one is just catered to your skillset. And you're very good at writing for those different genres. 

So, typically what would happen over time would be that, I want to put my own name on my country stuff because that's where I want to over-index. I'm a country person at heart. I can do EDM, but I do that under a separate project, a separate name, a bit like, I don't know, Pharrell, who'd do something under nerd, something under Pharrell, something under something else, depending on who he or she is working with.

There are different project names that you want to use because it's a wildly different genre or wildly different tastes, or it's something where you're experimenting, where we're asking you to push your limits. So, our music creators would work with a couple of different projects at any given time. Then that needs explaining because there could be different names tied to different projects. It was always the case, that so we would listen to what the music creator wanted to do because sometimes he or she wanted to have their name on everything. And other times they felt that, "No, no, I now have millions of listeners across Apple Music every single month. If I release something out, which is not country, I've been persuaded to try this metal country, which I'm not convinced as to where I want to go. I'm not going to release that and just say, I've had a stroke. This is me playing my normal tracks. I want to do that in a different context, because I want to experiment. I want to see where this takes me." 

So, I'd say that that was maybe the second way that we had to educate people, "This is what's going on." I would argue it's similar to an actor. I mean, I think Daniel Craig is a great actor. Sometimes he plays Bond, but sometimes he plays someone else. I'm adult enough to understand that he's an actor, that's his craft. And he can do comedies. He can do action. He can do whatever he wants to. One person plays different roles, and that doesn't make him less believable as a James Bond. It makes him more versatile as an actor, probably gives him a richer sense of accomplishment that he gets to try more stuff. 

But we don't see why music creators should be any different. You shouldn't be tied into a specific genre. If you want to have multiple different projects, that's your prerogative. But that was again, wildly disruptive and a bit some unheard of. So, that was the second big argument that we had to take and educate people, "Well, this is how we view the world. You don't have to agree with it, but this is how our content and our music creators are communicating, saying that this is how we want to express ourselves."

And then I'd say the third one was maybe more fundamental. And the third one dates back further in time. But I think it goes to when we launched, I would argue that there was an understanding or there was a belief that in order to optimize for the best possible outcome as a music creator, you had to own your rights. There was something sacred about owning your rights. And we took a long hard think about this, 12 years ago. 

And we came to the following conclusion where we said that, we think the underlying reason why artists want to own the rights is because they want to optimize for two things. They want to optimize for as much distribution as possible. And there's an assumption that owning rights will give you that. And the second one is monetization. They want to make sure that, "I don't get cheated, that I get my fair share and I make as much money as possible."
Now, the huge contrarian bet that we took almost a decade ago was, in order to optimize for these two, we think we need to run in the opposite direction of everyone else. We think we have to acquire the financial rights. We think we have to own the copyright. Because if we do, we can build a platform. We can build distribution. We can build technology. We can cater to our version of commercially, how we think the split ought to be. But in order to make those decisions, we can't be held to anyone else's principles. We can't go and work together with the traditional stakeholders in the music industry because they are geared around other unit economics. 

So, our big bet was, we want to acquire an own copyright, which is it's something that takes some getting used to. But we want to do it because that's how we think we can best serve music writers. That's how we can pay them more money upfront. That's how we can pay them more royalty over time. That's how we can distribute their content, not to millions, but hundreds of millions of content creators across billions of viewers. And that's how we can market them at scale.

So, that's the original controversy, is that we acquire copyrights. We don't acquire moral rights because you can, and we have no interest. So, we always put the artists name front and center. You can Shazam any track. You can SoundHound any track. You can look up any track. And we're always going to put the artist name or whatever the artist tells us to put there. So, it's always about building them. But we've made sure that we have this sacred arrangement from a commercial perspective that we're doing all of this because we believe it's in the interest of the music creator, because that's how we get to the point, when we talk to future generations, how were we able to solve for musicians needs? This is what we did. 

Second problem we wanted to solve for, and we haven't even touched upon that, is for content creators. And they have two headaches. One is, "I need to be able to distribute well." So, I put together this documentary. I want to reach as big of an audience as I can. Thing is though that audiences are becoming more and more fragmented. It used to be, I put it on YouTube, everyone will find it. 

Nowadays, typically, if you're a content creator and you have a video that you want to reach many viewers, you would arguably go, "I'm going to market it on Facebook. Even so, I might be more micro targeted. I'm going to market it on Instagram. I'm then going to live stream it on Twitch, because their monetization is way better than everyone else. My catalog and my back catalog, I'm going to keep that on YouTube because their search algorithm is second to none. I'm going to push it through Hulu. I'm going to push it onto these websites. I might syndicate it and put it on Vimeo a year down the line because that's where my more arty friends are. And that's where I get the top viewers who like opinion I really care about." Point being, you're going to put it on five, six, seven, eight different platforms.

And if you created a piece of content, which is music that may or may not be cleared for North America, may or may not be cleared for say, YouTube as a platform, as that content over time travels, let's be honest, so TikTok didn't exist two years ago, Twitter didn't really exist 10 years ago. Many of these platforms are popping up. Clubhouse, I had my first proper interview yesterday. So, many of these platforms are happening as we speak.

So, the bigger question we need to solve for is, how can make sure that anyone can publish anything anywhere? And the answer is, you need restriction, free music, completely different vessel to carry that copyright, carry that commercial potential, so that anyone can publish this anywhere because distribution is one part. And the other part, you need a good night's sleep. Previously, if I was a content creator and I alluded to it, if I use a track, I found someone on SoundCloud, you go, "Yay." Email him or her. We have an agreement. That's perfect. Put that in there. Put out hours and hours labors of love into this documentary about my grandma or about lampshades, or about some electricity let's say. Use this track, which I think magically conversate. Put it online.

Two months later, you send me an email. I can say, "Guess what? I have great news Oscar, I've just been signed. I've signed to this record label." That spells trouble for me, because immediately they have a different copyright setting on YouTube, different one on iTunes. There's a different one, it's not a compatible with a Vimeo. You definitely can't use it on your own website, if you have any commercial interests. And then suddenly all of my content is rendered worthless. And the entire Labor of Love, my documentary, I have to pull it down from everywhere. I might get sued. Can't use it anywhere. I definitely can't sell it. 

So, that was the second problem which needed solving. People aren't going to want to full-heartedly commit to use the music unless they know without a shadow of a doubt that, "I'm good." This music, again, it's taste. It's going to augment the feeling. It's going to make sure that it's memorable. It's great. But at the same time, it's going to make sure that the underlying musician and creator, that he or she is compensated. That's what we've ultimately tried to solve for. And so, hopefully that ties into all the different controversies, the questions, our reasoning. But as I'm sure you've picked up, I can talk about this forever. So, if there are any more questions around this, just hit me up.

Michael Walker:
Thank you so much for sharing that. And I mean, probably my biggest takeaway from all of it is that someone really needs to start a country metal band.

Oscar Hoglund:
Yeah, that's the biggest takeaway. Your heart is in the right place. I love that.

Michael Walker:
Oscar, you mean, your data tomorrow is going to be showing it's like, there's huge need for country metal. All of a sudden it just spiked up. Cool. I mean, it's certainly, it's a disruption in a lot of ways because it's a different model, but also in a lot of ways, it just seems like a much fairer model to compensate the majority of artists. And so, it's definitely something worth considering. And I can understand how people might feel a bit squeamish or a little bit weird about giving up copyrights for their music. But from my perspective, it seems like it's coming from the right place, and that ultimately it is serving the artists.

Oscar Hoglund:
One thing is that every time we commission a track, when the track is done, it's always the artist prerogative, if he or she would like for us to purchase it. So, if they come to the realization that, "Holy shit, I poured my soul into this track. This doesn't feel right." Then you can retract it. You don't have to sell. We have no minimum requirements. There's no, "You've signed this, so it's ours. It's always the artist prerogative, if he or she wants to sell it. That's one thing. 

Number two, we don't believe in lock-in. So, we don't have exclusivity. You're free to leave whenever you want. So, we've had people who've worked for us for a long time. They've gone from exceptional to frigging outstanding. And then they want to join a label. They want to sign with a publisher or do something else. We throw them a big ass party. We celebrate. And our genuine feeling is, "Thank you for allowing us to work with you. You're amazing. So, please, go be successful. Do other stuff. If you want to return, you're welcome at any point in time. But if you don't, we're going to be your biggest fans." So, I think that's the second important takeaway.

And the third one is that our remuneration model is it's for life. So, if you produce 10 tracks for us and they do really, really well, we don't use that as a means to lock you in and say, "If you ever live, we're going to stop paying royalty, or we're going to change the splits." You leave, you do other stuff, you're still going to see checks from us every single month, because that's the story we want to tell our grandkids. That's what I'm proud about saying that we empowered music creators. We helped them. 

Especially now in times of COVID, if you're a musician, you're probably hurting like hell, because you can't tour, you can't meet your friends. You can't do the live thing. We're more than happy to be here to help people. So, in the interim, you can do one track, two tracks, three tracks. Give it a go. If you like it, I'm sure you will, you'll stick around because you have context, you have colleagues, you have feedback, you have structure. There's so much more. 

We thought that maybe the distribution and the money part would be the main kicker. And I'm not going to lie, it's a huge kicker. But the fact that you have colleagues, people to talk to, to your previous point, somebody can help usher challenge incurred to. Being a creator is difficult stuff, right? You're alone with your demons and you want to commit and produce. But if you don't have somebody to hold your hand or intellectually help you or challenge you, or push you, it's hard because it can be very dark and lonely place. 

So, I'd say all of those things combined, we want to offer something that gives. It doesn't take, it gives. And you can choose to do it and you can choose not to do it. I think that's how we see it. And I think it very much comes down to how you think about the creative process. We don't believe in locking people in. If we're allowed to participate in people's creative journey for just a short period of time, we're super humbled. We're really excited about that. But it always comes down to the respect for the creative process and for creating music. That's what's at the core of what we do. 
Doesn't matter how much data, how much insight, how much distribution, if we don't Revere that process, if we don't fully understand it and build around it and work around that, then we wouldn't be where we are today. We wouldn't be the company soundtracking the internet. We wouldn't be in a position where you and I can have this discussion.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. I really appreciate you clarifying that. And that's amazing. That's certainly, that feels really good, that you guys operate in that way, and that it sounds like it is a very open and people are free to come and to leave. And it's not like they're locked in for life or anything like that. 
So, last question. So, I guess, to wrap up here, first of all, thanks again so much. This has been awesome having this conversation. And congratulations on your success. So, it was recent and what you've been building up over the time and over the next 10, 20, 50, a hundred years, and talking to your grandkids, I'm looking forward to hearing about that conversation you have about being able to make that kind of impact.
But for anyone who's listening to this right now, who is, is like, "Wow, this sounds like a great opportunity. I'm wondering if I might be a right fit." Or what that process looks like. And obviously, this is probably something that changes over time based on the needs or based on just where things are at. But what would you say right now for a listener listening to this, what would you say makes someone the prime candidate, who's the perfect fit for what you guys are looking for as a partner? And if someone thinks that they are that right fit, then how can they reach out?

Oscar Hoglund:
Okay. So, super easy, right? So, number one is I would encourage and invite anyone to go to epidemicsound.com. At the bottom you'll find for artists. That's step number one. Step number two, don't take my word for it. Instead, dive down on our website. But more important, Google, Google the shit out of us and see what other people have to say about us. That's probably the best way to understand who are these people, what do they stand for? How do they act? This sounds all rosy and good, hopefully. But to make sure that you do your homework because we're very convinced where that's going to land. 

Then number three, I would say that please apply. I think that there are only two traits. If you're curious and ambitious, you've got what it takes. We're looking for people who are interested in developing, who are ambitious, because they have a voice. It's almost like a feeling you can't... It's a need, it's a hunger, it's a desire to express yourself. If you have that and you also have a willingness to learn, you're not of the opinion that, "I know everything. Nobody can teach me anything." If the traits you have are hunger and curiosity, you're the person we're looking for. And then let the interaction speak for itself. So, you're going to get a feeling what we're like, how we conduct ourselves, how we interact with you, with your music, with the creative process. It all starts from there. And then I'd say, that's how we get going. That's how we wanted to work. So, start with the curiosity and the hunger, and then the rest will reveal itself.

Michael Walker:
All right, fantastic. So, what we'll do then is we'll make sure to put the link in the show notes for anyone that is interested to check out the website and potentially applying. From what you just described, I think that most of our listeners, hopefully fit that criteria, in terms of, they are artists who have a passion and have an art curious, and are open-minded and are willing to learn. And I mean, it's the things that you just described, it's like, those are the fundamentals to life success, I feel like. But especially, as a creative, as an artist, if anyone is listening to us right now like, "That isn't me." Then it's probably time to do some inward work and learning what's blocking that flow of life and love inside of you.
But Oscar, man, it's been awesome talking with you. I really appreciate what you're doing. And I'm excited to explore more. The community and the audience that we've built, I think a lot of them are the perfect fit for exactly what you're doing and being able to get their music distributed and heard by more people, to be able to create more and to be compensated fairly for it. I think it's a really cool opportunity. So, I'm looking forward to connecting more over time.

Oscar Hoglund:
Cool. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm super keen to see how this resonates with your audience. And I'd be more than happy to come back and see if there are any followups and more stuff for maybe potentially collabs and partnerships we can do. I'd be thrilled if we can have a call sometime soon, share with you that, "These artists reached out. This is the product. This is what we're doing." And we can start, and we can listen to some music. Who knows? There may be some metal country in there.

Michael Walker:
Some metal country. If anyone is listening to this right now, you know your one ticket to lifelong success is on the backs of metal country. Awesome.

Oscar Hoglund:
Cool. 

Michael Walker:
All right.

Oscar Hoglund:
Have a good one, man. Take care. 

Michael Walker:
Take care. Hey, it's Michael, here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes, to learn more about our guest today. 
And if you want to support the podcast, then there's few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends on your social media, tag us, that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now. And I look forward to seeing you on the next episode.