Brian: The 375,000 pre-licensed tracks we have on our platform are all made by the best human artists bands. Composers that you could ever want. They just, we pre-license it in the beginning, so you don't have to do what Traditionally music license has been six months and a lawyer going back and forth trying to make a deal where they squeeze every last penny outta you.

No, it's the same price for everything, and we price music depending on where you're at in your development and creative process. So game developers come in, they can search our vast catalog of awesome music. Pick the songs they want for their game, put it into our software, click a button, and within an minutes, probably around an hour, that any song will be rearranged and made adaptable to that game experience.

So you're kind of getting this more personalized, immersive way to even experience and interact with the music that you love.

Michael:  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 only getting better. If you have high-quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you 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.

All right, so I am excited to be here today with Brian Karscig. So Brian is a career musician for over 20 years. He is lived in a tour bus performing all over the world with award-winning music, signing record deals with Sony as well as Atlantic Records. He is most well known for songwriting, guitar, and, and he actually toured with The Killers, the band. He's the co-founder and Head of Music at PlusMusic which is a next generation soundtrack platform for games, UGC and the Metaverse. I took a look at it and my mind was blown pretty much instantly. As soon as, you know, AI started taking over the world my, my mind went to the world of, you know, music licensing and sync generation and how big of an opportunity it is.

And so I'm really looking forward to, to connecting with. Brian hearing a little bit more about PlusMusic, they have a fully licensed catalog of over 300,000 songs from labels, artists, composers, and and leverages ai. So, Brian, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. 

Brian: Yeah, no, thanks for having me.

And wanted to mention the band that I was assigned to Atlantic and Sony with. It was called Louis The XIV. That one went for I don't know, close to 20 years. I retired and only played with The Killers for like a year. So, but they're my best buddies. We toured with them around the world for about 12 years but I was in their band for no more than a year, which is which was fun.

And but you know, that's my life. That was my life up until PlusMusic. But thanks for having me, a fan of modern musician here, and look forward to telling you guys more. Heck yeah. 

Michael: Thanks, thanks for the clarification. And, and still like, like going on tour with The Killers in playing guitar for them for years.

Amazing. And, you know, and obviously you've had a, a very long and fulfilling career before then too. Yeah. Awesome. So, Brian May, maybe you could just start out with, for anyone who this is their first time meeting you or connecting with you, could you share a little bit about your, your journey and your story of how you ended up, you know, both, you know, starting PlusMusic and also finding your way to becoming a, a touring guitar player?

Brian: Absolutely. Gosh, I'll try to give you the Cliff Notes version of that. But yes you know, grew up always being a fan of music. I'm a little bit older, so it was like eighties pop music and new wave was just all around and my older sister would just pump those records all day and it just got me super interested in just like the craft and how music made me feel.

It made me feel good. It also gave me a place to kind of escape to. You'd hear about, you know, lyrics and words and other worlds. It just was really inspiring to find something at such a young age that could transfer me out of like teenaged angst and have this world that I could relate to. So I was just a fan of music for a long time.

You know, went to school, went to college, but about a week after graduating college, I got my first record deal with a band called Convoy. I was in. That was in the late nineties with a division of Sony called metropolitan Music and Hybrid Records is what it was called. That was short-lived, but a great education in the music world.

There was a company outta New York. We got what was termed shelved. So when all, like in that late nineties, early two thousands when all the record labels were kind of merging, we got merged to like division of Sire. But everybody who signed my band was no longer at the company. So it gave kind of a good introduction of the volatility of the industry that I was about to dedicate my life to. Hmm. But not to say, you know, we were the types that just, it was our passion, it was our life. We kind of burned the ship, so to speak, on going into normal jobs and just continued the path. We started the band Louis the XIV.

That was about 2003, signed to Atlantic, had a few top 20 singles outta there. Toured the world for, like you mentioned, over a decade. That brought me to about 2015. After spending 15 years in a tour bus with the same 14 guys, you need a break or, or you blow up, or, you know, or, so that was about the time we took a hiatus.

I started focusing on PlusMusic. I was taken outta retirement for a moment. The guys and the Killers are some of my closest friends. Spent a lot of time over the years with them. First I started just playing guitar and piano for the Brandon Flowers Solo Records tour, The Desired Effect Tour around 2016 or 15 After that, I went on and just played guitar with the killers for very short amount of time, but a great, great experience as well.

Really, where my head was at that point though, was the music industry as a whole. Like I knew it. In a completely different time. You know, one thing I can give Atlantic records a lot of credit for, and I don't have anything bad to say about major labels, I had a great experience. But what they were really genius at was bringing our music to where consumption and attention and discovery was.

And for about the last a hundred years, in the early two thousands, that was a simple structure. It was radio, m t v. Print media and record store retail chain end caps. By the time my fourth record was coming out on Atlantic around 2009, you saw like a big shift happening. Like, you know, you had MySpace and Facebook now becoming household names, and I got news for you.

The Rolling Stones, the enemies, the spins, print media wasn't even leaving the shelves once social media popped up. So that was kind of the first big change. Two M T V, all five top 20 singles. I had had a great video to accompany it that was pumped on this channel that played music videos all day. That turned into like a reality TV show network for teenagers.

I. No more music videos that was gone. Radio, we're about two years in now to the introduction of Spotify and Apple Music, kind of subscription services. So we're programming our own radio and bluetoothing it to our radio station. So you just started to see things. And then finally, record store retail endcap.

Record store retail was an endangered species in 2009. Today they're all together, wiped out. Sure there's some mom and pops, but the Sam goodies. Virgin mega stores, H M V Tower, et cetera, just gone. So it was an experience to be part of a, you know, success in the old model and then be part of the, what do we do, scratch our head solution phase of now we've entered more into a digital world instead of this analog world where discovery and consumption is, it's all here online, you know, so how do we adapt?

And it really became, A passion of mine and my good buddy, c e o partner, Nick venti, one of my best friends here. We started the company together with both the same mission in mind. How do you even get your music heard today? You know, and Nick's band, at the time I was producing their record, they were just kind of like, do we even go after a record deal?

The Spotifys, we release it ourselves. It was like this whole moments of like confusion, but also excitement and That's what we really sat down one day and on a napkin we're just like, let's figure out ways in this new digital world, how to make music kind of more adaptable, discoverable, easy, frictionless to use in a digital space.

That's where it's, PlusMusic was birthed. I know I've been talking a minute, I'm gonna take a break here to send it back to you, but the impetus and just kind of the short cliff note version of PlusMusic is we make soundtracking video games simple. So we've made our music catalog, yes, we use the word ai, but I wanna be crystal clear outta the beginning, but do not make AI music.

All of the music. The 375,000 pre-licensed tracks we have on our platform are all made by the best human artists bands. Composers that you could ever want. They just, we pre-license it in the beginning, so you don't have to do what Traditionally music license has been six months and a lawyer going back and forth trying to make a deal where they squeeze every last penny outta you.

No, it's the same price for everything, and we price music depending on where you're at in your development and creative process. So game developers come in, they can search our vast catalog of awesome music. Pick the songs they want for their game, put it into our software, click a button, and within an minutes, probably around an hour, that any song will be rearranged and made adaptable to that game experience.

So you're kind of getting this more personalized, immersive way to even experience and interact with the music that you love. That's what PlusMusic does. Hmm. 

Michael: Super cool. So, so if I'm understanding it right, you know, when when you say like, you know, ai AI music service specifically, the AI component is around like the matching of the, the recorded tracks Yeah.

With the placements and kind of, arranging how, how they arrange the music. Interesting. 

Brian: It's the arrangement. So we know some of the pain points of game developers and early creators is, Budgets. I can't imagine, you know, I mean, I know, I know the process of kind of putting music in a game and it's, find the music you like, or if you have the budget, you hire a bespoke composer to make you something custom to your game.

But generally, either way, you need to take that body of music, put it into your game, and then you need to like, Load it into your daw, like your pro tools or your logic, and cut up those pieces of the music those lable sections that go with the context of the game Mellow intro. Let's put that on the trail run.

Here comes the battle scene. Let's play the chorus. You know, so the dynamics of the song match the game is what we mean by adaptive audio, how we do that. There's two ways. Get an audio director at 150 bucks an hour and give 'em a week, if not a month of hours. Gonna cost you a lot just to do the musical editing or PlusMusic.

Does that exact editing, spits out these adaptive soundtracks for you in less than an hour. So that's where our AI uses our ai. You could consider more of a editor or an audio director, if you will. A copilot in your development process rather than a creator, you know? 'cause the last person we wanna put outta work is the place where we came from.

And that's the ecosystem of the indie artist musician. And who do we love? We love games. Just want developers to have access to music that has fan base. We want those indie artists to go, Hey everyone, on all my social media platforms, go check out my game over here in Dragon Wars four. But they also want that built in following of that game to discover their music.

So putting these two indie creators together, we just think we can win all. You can win. 

Michael: Awesome. Yeah, that's, that's really cool. And yeah, I think it's probably it is nice that. You know, you are retaining like the human elements of, of musicians. Yeah. I think it's probably one of the biggest fears right now for musicians is am I going to be replaced?

Is, you know, are these AI tools going to take away the thing that I enjoy most and being creative. So maybe at some point, you know, during this conversation we can address that, kind of go deeper into that. Absolutely. But. But yeah, I think in the world of ai, as you know, the technology is, is incre improving faster and faster.

The elements of like humanness and the things that do separate us from AI are really important to, to lean into. 

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. There's, it's, it's both frightening and exciting to how fast it's developing and I'm sure there's gonna be use cases that are for the better. And for the worst. But ethical AI is a big thing to our company.

I read a lot of articles on it. I hope it resonates with everybody who's in the AI creation world. But we'll see. 

Michael: Hmm, super interesting. There was a video I saw yesterday that kind of blew my mind around AI and video game development. And basically someone had programmed like a character model using like a G P T interface where, you know, rather than there being prescripted dialogue in the, in the video game, it was like, it would respond to what you said.

So the implication was that, you know, maybe in like a role playing game, for example, you'd have all these characters who are programmed to like, have backstories and have like, you know, interesting mindsets, but you're actually interacting with them and they adapt to you as the character going through it.

So when you describe like your adaptive music, it, it almost, it kind of rings a similar bell where it's like, it's kind of creating this personalized, immersive, you know, adaptive experience but kind of centers around you, this interaction with the, the player. For sure. 

Brian: And you know, I think that's just what people want is, is a more personalized experience and.

You know, our company, you know, full transparency. We just think the next Spotify can be born inside of games. Like I really do think that, I mean, we see the evidence now. We know that 42% of people who play games turn the soundtrack off after a bit. And what do they do? They pump in like a Spotify station into their earphones or into their discord so they can chat with their buddies and pick like a playlist to play.

Cool. You're listening to music that you like, but you lose like that adaptability, that dynamic and kind of the power that music does add to a game, adds to a movie, adds to a TV show. It even adds to a car commercial for crying out loud, and it's the way that they edit that music. The crescendo on the first kiss.

The tense music when the boss walks in before battle and you know, and in a commercial 3.9% a p r financing the music in this is just adds so much to the actual art and we focus on games that, that art, I've played enough games to know that it's largely affected when you just put static radio. I mean, except for like a game, maybe like Grand Theft Auto or something where there's actual radio stations, you know, where you're meant to listen to it like a radio station.

But in my gameplay, it's that dynamic and push and pull of the music. 'cause ultimately music to me is human emotion in sound. And when you have these emotions and actions in gameplay, the music should match the emotion. Otherwise you're losing like a really critical part of that storytelling and that experience.

So yeah, it makes it more personal, number one. And number two, we see tons of people just like buying pink helmets for 30 bucks on Fortnite. They do nothing to the game boy, do nothing to the power curve of your, you know, weapons or whatever you got going on in there. It's just a way to personalize and express yourself and make it more personal to you as a player.

I can't think of a way to make it more personal than, than music. The music you like, you know? 

Michael: Hmm. Super interesting. So, so it sounds like what you're suggesting is I. Creating a personalized soundtrack for, for not just to the games and adapting to the games, but also one that takes the, the players who they are into account and, you know, maybe it actually creates a playlist for each player.

That's so cool. So is that something that that's a part of PlusMusic right now, or is that sort of like the future that you would like build into or? 

Brian: Exactly. It's that feature set I just mentioned was a little teasing as the podcast goes on. So, Or two products. Number one, what we're launched in live with now is don't have a soundtrack.

Come to us, search our library, click a button, you have a game. Soundtrack number two is gonna be the end game, d l c. So we know a lot of our indie developers, they're making free games, but their commerce and their livelihood isn't in-game upselling. I can imagine a world where, hey, I'm playing a game.

I'm getting sick of this kind of electronic music on here. I'd like to play the game with a hip hop or a heavy metal version or orchestral version of a song. Let me go into the settings, pick out a song that I love, hit enter, pay my 99 cents, or whatever the D l C charges from the developer, and now that song that I picked follow our AI makes it match the same map of the.

Dynamics of the original soundtrack, even though they're picking a different genre song, it still follows the original map that the developer created with their original soundtrack. 

Michael: Wow. That's so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine like, you know, a lot of us, when we have a connection or an emotional connection to a certain song, you know, being able to play a game where it's that it's that song and at those specific, you know, heartbeat moments is able to adapt that audio to be in sync.

Whew. Oh man, what a cool idea. 

Brian: Yeah. It could be cool. And, and that's the point where we think it could be, you know, yeah, I'm playing this game. I bought a song for that game eventually. Why don't you just log into your PlusMusic account, you've got all the other songs that you love, and they can go from game to game and adapt.

That is our big world vision. But right now, you know, you gotta start somewhere. So we're doing it one by one now. Mm. 

Michael: So interesting. In the Yeah, I, I don't know, like the intricacies of, of how how this act, how this works in practice. But you know, I'm imagining, you know, certain songs have a, you know, a different kind of vibe to them, right?

You might have like soft ballad songs. You might have like some, like, you know, hard rock songs. So imagining like, you know, if songs had kind of placeholders, they're like, you know, we need like this vibe or this energy, or this, this mood for the songs. And you could decide what song do I want to hear when I'm in the.

When it's the mood of like, you know, like aggressive, like, yeah. To like show up or it's like fight or flight. What song do I wanna hear when it's like a heartfelt, like romantic type of song or when it's, you know, super interesting. 

Brian: It's gonna be cool. And you know, we're super new. We launched kind of our live beta in February, so about five months ago our full fledged product comes out.

Labor Day Gamescom is kind of our You know, in Germany, the big festival out there, August 20th is kind of our date to have the 1.0 version done Labor Day. You'll be reading about it as we're gonna do the public launch of it. We're super excited and we're gonna see, I'm excited to see how people use the technology to, or share it even.

Oh, here's a player that had, you know, a high score with a rock ballad. Here's the verse with the game acting dynamically to the hip hop version. You know, we have about 12 games that have been released with PlusMusic right now. And it's just interesting to see because a lot of these games have music that, you know, I, I had our music department, aside from being a co-founder, I'm close to a lot of these songs.

So I've gotten really used to how the song goes and it's long form how you hear it on Spotify, how you hear it on the radio But to hear it kind of adapt and it kind of experience this music in a new way has been a really fun part for me and that it's what's honestly got me so excited that, you know, I'm throwing all my chips into this idea because I can see how excited it makes me feel as even just a spectator of I know that song and it's so awesome how it's reacting to this first person shooter game.

Or, oh God, I know that song. It's completely even more impactful to me now that I'm watching it in a driving game, you know, or things like that. So I'm excited to see where the fans take it as well. As, you know, the indie developers that have been releasing with just our soundtrack service are so creative and just the way the music plays back and you know, cross fades or interacts and does the changes is just so.

Inspiring and you know, it's like the game developers of today that are indie developers. I have no doubt that they're going to be the game developers of 2025, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Michael: A hundred percent, you know, and the it seems like the service, you know, can apply to really like any sort of sync, you know, placement.

Like it could be like TV and film, you know, sort of take into account your personalized soundtracking as well. Absolutely. You know, you mentioned you sort of like a virtual reality space where your life, you know, could be like soundtrack to a certain extent. It's kind of like what music is already.

It's like we're trying to soundtrack our, our lives. So being able to integrate this deeply with, if we were walking around our daily life with with a soundtrack. Really, really cool. I can imagine people creating playlists as well for like, for friends, you know, it's like you, it's almost like a, a portal into their, their life.

Like, you know, it. 

Brian: I'm glad you said that 'cause Yes, we do talk and think about that and are totally aware of kind of the, you know, the horizontals if you will, that where this technology could apply. We're hyper-focused on games right now, but absolutely this is a, you know, it's a technology for so many different use cases of where this world of physical metaverse, virtual augmented reality and yes, of course movie, TV, and film.

I can't tell you how many film scores I've been commissioned to write, where they'll give me the scene of the movie and have like a Trent Reznor or a Nine Inch Nails song in it and be like, this is what we cut the scene to. 'cause we like this, but we can't afford the license of this song. So can you make something?

That sounds like it. So even an iteration tool of here's a great library of music, here's how it adapts out of the box adaptively to our movie scene. Let's go get Han Zimmer Now to write something to that, I don't know. But you know, it's an iteration tool. It's an audio editor, it's your co-pilot in the music creation and audio space in, you know, any digital experience is the way we, we see it.

Hmm. 

Michael: So interesting. You know, the, I like what we talked about earlier with the the video game that has dialogue or has character models that sort of respond. To the, the first person, you know, that's, that's playing the game first person point of view. And it certainly seems like, you know, things have trended towards personalization, you know, over the course of the internet.

And you know, the reason that. Social media, you know, obviously there's, there's some issues that we've, there's been a learning process with like social media and like creating algorithms that are designed to like capture attention. If our brains are programmed to like give attention to negative things, like, you know, it's like, of course, you know, there have been learning lessons.

But but certainly like the personalization of like the newsfeed and the personalization of, of all things tends to be where we're headed. So I, I can only imagine that that's gotta be the direction that we're headed with Soundtracking as well. And just like interactive experiences in, in general pretty absolutely.

Pretty dang. Wow, that's awesome. That, that you guys are really, like, have the, the vision and are working on this right now. And it seems like the great, great place to start too is like, you know, starting with creating the adaptive audio specifically for the way, the way you guys are doing it with, with games and then potentially like building that into more of like a user generated content 

Brian: Yeah.

I mean, you know, roadmaps, you know, we, we have a roadmap of following. It starts with games. But yeah, like you said, I mean, we are living, we're moving towards a world where everything wants to cater to you. Yeah, I have a terrible example, but it's, it's interesting where the tech's going, but also slightly annoying, especially around, so the smart tv, maybe you have one, maybe you know someone that does.

We have one here in our house. I'm pretty convinced that if everybody doesn't have one already now, within a year, everyone's gonna have a smart tv. I use that service YouTube tv, which is basically essentially cable but without wires, that you get all your live TV and all that just like you do on cable, but it's connected to you through your Google account.

And when you do things like shop for yoga, pants for your wife for Christmas, or Van's, shoes for your kids during the holidays, it sees that and I've started to notice the things that I'm shopping for online are starting to show up as the commercials on my smart tv. Which, okay, cool. I'm not getting like old people prescription drug medicine anymore.

That just doesn't, it's not targeted to me. Almost everything's targeted to me now, but around Christmas it's really annoying, you know? And your wife's like, wow, I've been actually looking for those shoes. I'd love a pair of those. And you're like, yeah, that's really kind of weird. So the world is moving towards monitoring what you like.

And bringing it to make it more easy for you to consume with music, you know, our take is, the first thing we wanted to start with was just licensing. You know, it's just access. You know, it's like there's not enough music in the digital space, and if there is, it's not the music that you want. I mean, if you think about it, there's music in every single part of your analog life in your car.

It's on. Go into a grocery store, department store, you're hearing music. You go to an amusement park, a restaurant, basically anywhere you go. Music is just on your life. I think we take it for granted until you step into this new world. I've played tons of games without even any music. Those are my least favorite games.

It's just kind of almost feels like being in a vacuum. You know, and it's different if it's like an audio novel or some sort of narrative game, but any type of game, maize building, puzzle building should have something to kinda soothe the in the background. But, you know, making it simple to license, frictionless we do consumption based pricing too.

So if you are a game developer out there and you're looking for the greatest music for your game, We do it kind of like Jeff Bezos did Amazon Cloud. You know, he doesn't say, oh, you've got 10 gigabytes of pictures of your kids that you wanna upload to my cloud. Sorry, we only sell terabytes of storage and it's a thousand dollars a month.

No, the guy says, oh, you only got 10 gigs. Cool. Upload pay this much. But if you grow to 50, you pay a little more a hundred. Until it makes sense for you to have so much data you need to store. It makes sense to buy an unlimited license. Right now is subject to those 40 AAA games that come outta a year.

Halo and all that. They can afford the big name. They know how to go deal with publishers and all of that. But Will little guy over here what I've gotta go get production music or AI generated music? No. Now the same music that Giant Games will get through us that can afford a buyout price. Now could be us for as little as 25 bucks a track.

You only have a couple thousand people playing your game, you're only gonna pay that much for the music. However, if your game starts to grow, you're gonna start paying a little bit more. You know, kind of like the Jeff Bezos cloud storage. So you're never put out out of the gate shoot, I want that song, but it's so expensive, you don't have to deal with that anymore.

I want that song, and it's priced to where I'm at as a creator. And as I grow and start becoming more profitable, then I can pay more for the music. Mm-hmm. 

Michael: Awesome. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. To be able to, if you can create it in a way that's usage based so that it actually is, you know, adaptive as well.

Adaptive to the, to the use of, of how you're using it. 

Brian: It's adaptive in long ways. Yes. That's why we like to kinda. You know, AI is gonna be a hot topic. It's only gonna get better, and it's gonna get crazier. And I don't think that, you know, I don't think you can teach a computer a broken heart. I think that there's certain parts of music, and at least the music I love and the creative process that made even my own music the most authentic was the raw human emotion in the song.

Mm-hmm. I think, you know, muac, instrumental music kind of. You know, here's a chicken recipe in 30 seconds. Those kind of videos that float around on social media, I think that's gonna be a dangerous world for recorded music because am I gonna go deal with licensing and pay for an artist created music and deal with performance rights society?

Or am I gonna go into AI 1000 or whatever is out there in the next year or two and type in I want a mu music that sounds like Beethoven. Pretty much guaranteeing a year from now, you'll have great AI stuff that could sound like great music, but I don't think real creation, real artist emotion is ever gonna be replaced.

You know, copilot systems, Hey, AI, make me a drumbeat like David Bowie life on Mars. Okay, maybe you could get something and kind of write around it and replace it with your own drums later, but I think there'll be tools AI can do. But the AI creation of music a, I think it's the biggest lawsuit waiting to happen since Napster, because to make an AI music track, you need to train that ai.

But what are you training it on Beatles music? Rolling Stones, lead Zeppelin. You are so bummed. You know, it's like as you had those people, those rights holders can all come back and come after you for making a song that was. Trained by their own copyrighted music. So I don't know how it's gonna work, but I try not to think about it.

But it's important for me here in our company to really set the record straight on the difference between adaptive AI and generative AI. Generative AI is creating music from nothing and hitting a button, and that's your music. Adaptive AI is taking all the artists and musicians who have great music that's out there now that we know and that we love just taking that music and making it adaptive to these gaming and digital experiences that are not slowing down.

This time next year, there'll be another Unity, another Unreal. There'll be a new Instagram, a new TikTok. Things are just gonna constantly evolve, and who knows if this. Notion of a meth metaverse pops up and finally becomes a a real reality. I could see those popping up on a numerous basis. So the next 10 years, five, 10 years is gonna teach us a lot.

But the integrity of our software is really keeping in the hearts and minds the actual musician creating and the actual creators in the digital space who hit so many walls of friction and just trying to. You know, get access to great music for their digital experience. Hmm. 

Michael: Awesome. Yeah, really well put.

Yeah, you know, I, I hope, I mean, it's a lot of this is still like conjecture, so we'll see where we are a year, three or five years from now. But I like to think that, you know, a human being using a calculator is always gonna be better than a calculator just using itself. You know, as obviously AI is like, Much, much more intelligent than than a calculator.

Mm-hmm. But I hope that it's through like the combination of, of human, you know, musicians and creators with the AI that, you know, that are able to create music in, in the future. And it's not just fully, like, replacing all, all humans. Absolutely. But the, but the fact is for now, Absolutely. Like, you know, people, like there are generative music models and they aren't, like, they aren't as good, they aren't as good as, as humans, so.

Mm-hmm. I think the adaptive music is definitely a, a great angle to, to lean into. One point that you brought up that I thought was really smart was around the fact that like, so much of our lives right now is already sound tracked. You know, like when you go into a restaurant or you go to a grocery store or when you're driving in your car and you're doing different things when you're at a party.

And it definitely seems like, you know, if, if something isn't soundtrack. Then it would almost always be, there would always be a benefit, like if there was the proper soundtrack for it, like whatever's meant to convey like the emotional tone of the situation. It could almost always be like, amplified, you know?

Mm-hmm. The emotional tone could always be amplified through music. So yeah, there's definitely something, something there about having an adaptive, you know, soundtrack for all of us as we're, as we're going through our 

Brian: our lives. Yeah, I mean, I wonder what it would like sitting in the restaurant on a date with your significant other, and instead of that background music playing, you've got some sort of device that makes it the music, that makes you feel confident, makes you feel sexy, makes you feel attractive.

It's kind of in your background in the same moment, in the same way we wanna make it. So you could swap out whatever music you want, but it still follows the roadmap of what's going on in your environment or what the developer created. I, I hope for that in life. I hope for it. Even in TV and ads, like I don't want to hear a Bob Seger song the next time a Chevy truck commercial comes on.

I don't swing a hammer. I'm not from Michigan, no offense to Bob Seger, but the music doesn't speak to me. I probably won't even look it up. And not only that, it kind of target demographics who that truck's for, and it says it's not for me. You know, but those Cadillac commercials that had the Phoenix music and you know, or the Tesla commercial with the David Bowie song, and I mean, I hate to say it, but it does speak to me a little bit more.

It's the music that I like. So if, if Chevy could take a little note out of what we're doing. Hey, instead of going out and spending millions to license like a rock for Chevy, go team up with the people that are putting Vans commercials on my, on my TV when I'm shopping for Van Shoes and say, this household should get the Chevy truck commercial with the Rolling Stones.

Or with hairy styles or with cold play or whatever. But it should adapt to the taste and personality of that consumer. 'cause it's gonna make 'em look up and they're gonna feel like you're speaking to them instead of, probably not for me, but it's probably for my buddy that loves Bob Seger. And does, you know, Eight to five working you know, construction.

I don't know, you know, and not to be generalizing on that or anything, but it's just, that's what their commercials are driving around. Hard terrain, tough guy stuff, you know? So. Mm-hmm. I hope it's you know, I, I hope that I can live in a world where that happens, you know, and played stuff that is similar to what I like, that can make me discover something new, you know?

Hmm. 

Michael: Yeah, that's, that's a great point. You know, one thing you brought up earlier was around like the personalization of, of advertising and, you know, like buying things for your wife and for your kids. And then like all of a sudden you start seeing stuff that's, you know, that's designed for that. And it definitely seems like I.

When done correctly, you know, it's, it's a great thing when ads can be personalized for you. Mm-hmm. And if there's, yeah, if there's like a, an issue, then generally it's because it wasn't personalized enough or it got confused and I thought that it was for someone else. But when it actually is something that's personalized, like for you, it only makes it better.

Like, you know, if something you're interested in that you actually want that's useful to you, then it's like, The ad doesn't feel like a nuisance anymore. It's like, oh, cool, this is showing me something that is actually valuable to me. And I, and I'm sure like the adaptive audio is kind, be kind of the same, the same thing.

It's going to, you know, it's gonna make sure that it's actually personalized and that it's relevant and valuable mm-hmm. To you. Yeah. Wow. And, and I also wonder, yeah. Yeah. There's a few 

Brian: steps that need to be done. Before we can reach this musical freedom or you know, taste driven audio freedom and you know, the music business.

And again, this isn't a shot and I don't think it's a bad place to be and it's only done great things for me. I'm just such a huge fan and there's so many complexities around it. I just feel like the business models of the music industry are just a little archaic. I think people like the performance rights societies, your BMI cap, so cans, b r s, whatever I.

The publishers and the master I holders like I'll need to get in a room and like kind of work out some sort of strategy to make things a little less friction filled and opaque for people licensing music, but also even the artists of what they're actually even signing up for. You know, the fact that, you know, I can't even license my own music for my own, my own company.

My masters are owned by Warner Music, Atlantic Records, and my publishing's owned by Sony atv. Those are two giant conglomerates. Unless you have six figures, you ain't getting access to any of that music, you know, and it's like kind of a musical prison. It's like there should be certain use cases.

Everything shouldn't be just so set in stone. That's what creates all this back and forth and such a long, drawn out, expensive process. I mean, one of our slogans is, What generally takes you six months in a lawyer to get music now could take you six minutes in a credit card, you know? So it's one of the things that we're trying to just modernize.

 It's like you used to have to go down to the mall to go get a pair of pants. And a bookstore to go get a book and the grocery store to get your groceries. Right now I can log in, get a bag of groceries, the pair of pants I need, and the book I wanna read delivered within two days and it's free. Why hasn't anything else in music adapted to that?

Spotify's the closest thing. I paid 10 bucks a month and I get all the music I want, but. It's the same kind of music I'm listening to over and over again. Why can't I want a better suggestion model? You know, whatever. I can always be nitpicky when it comes to music, but as far as you're a creator, you want to use my song, I'd love to just let you use it.

If I believe in the movie or making, if I believe in the game you're creating, if I believe in the ad you're promoting or the product you're promoting through an ad, I wanna be able to have the say as the artist on it, but right now I can't, with somebody owning my master rights, somebody owning my publishing rights, somebody being my PRO of society that they're affiliated with too many things involved, it usually just gets shut down before it starts.

And it was the main reason behind our you know, consumption based pricing model is because you just never know what things are gonna grow up to be. Fortnite was created by a couple of college dudes. It's the biggest game on the planet, bigger than any giant Activision game or anything. It's huge. Lil Nass X put his own music out on his own accord on TikTok became the biggest artist.

Like what would happen if it was just that easy to access music where you need it, art, where you need it, et cetera. So, That's my long and about way. So one instance I had, and I'll close it on this note, I know we're gonna getting close to time here, Michael, but when I first signed to Atlantic, we were like the new darlings, Louis the IVX

we were called, we were on, you know, Rolling Stone. Our video is pumping. We were doing all the late night tv and this indie director calls us up. He say, I'm a movie maker, but I'm an indie filmmaker from Southern California. I know Louis the XIV is from there. I'm making this movie about a couple of guys that drive up the coast of California drinking wine for one last hurrah before a guy goes and gets married.

I'm an indie film. I don't have a lot of money. I got 5,000 bucks, but I'd love to use that song I keep hearing on the radio band. We were into it. Management, totally into it. Sony ATV, and Warner, who owned the Masters in publishing rights, had to be at least another zero on that number for them to even talk.

Long story short, opportunity went away. But that movie was sideways with Paul Giamatti about the two guys that go drive up the goes to California won three Academy awards. And not only did that movie go on to be a huge movie, but it's still today playing on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, apple Plus. It's on all of these networks.

So not only could I imagine what I would've made in a performance royalty over the last 18 years. It would've, my music would've still been relevant 'cause it would've been in a movie that's pumping on all these networks today. So that's why we tried to get away or solve the issue of, if you don't have this much money, you don't even get to use the music to begin with, regardless of what you're using it for.

We should be open to anything 'cause we don't know what the future holds for this creation. And it only benefits both creators. If one wins, I can give you my music for super cheap when you're starting out and you blow up to be Sideways, I'll tell you what, none of us are gonna be that bummed at each other.

If you use my song to do some fancy TikTok dance thing that going on, I think the result of Lil NAS X and that trend on social media, everyone's happy. So that's what we're trying to do here, Michael. Hmm. 

Michael: Super cool. Well, hey Brian this has been awesome. I'm a big fan of what you're building at PlusMusic.

Thank you for taking time to come on here and, and share a little bit about the, the vision, sort of the purpose behind it, where you're at now. For anyone that's listening or, or watching this right now who is interested in learning more and or, you know, having their music submitted to PlusMusic what does that process look like and where should they go to get started?

Absolutely. 

Brian: So PlusMusic.ai. It's our website. Two ways to sign up. If you're a game creator, sign up as a developer right now through the next two months. We do have a promo going on where sign up for a free account, cost you enough, intakes you a second, we'll upgrade you to our pro service, which is generally a hundred dollars a month for free.

So we're gonna give that to you for the year for nothing. Get your, get on there as a game developer. It's gonna change your life and save you a ton of time and money. If you're an artist and you want your music to be in video games, or at least be available for developers and studios to consider for their game, soundtrack PlusMusic.ai, there's a form submission to submit your music.

Now, the reason we take this process is because it's not our goal. To be the biggest music catalog on the planet with just whatever. I think there's enough companies out there that do that. We're very particular and curated based on feedback we get from our developers of the style of music, the quality of music.

People want high quality audio that has dynamics in it of all genres that meet their game criteria. So there's a submission process. Sign up on the form, send us a link. We'll check out your music. We'll get on a Zoom with you to meet you and we'll onboard your music that way. 

Michael: Awesome. Cool. So like always though, we'll put all the links in the show notes for easy access.

And Brian, thanks again for taking time to be here today. 

Brian: Absolutely. And if anybody wants to chat with me personally, find me on LinkedIn. Brian Karscig. I'm on Instagram, but I don't really look at that. Brian X I v all, I'm not really a big social media guy, but I'm doing my best on LinkedIn there and always hit me at email at Briank@plusmusic.ai.

Look forward to talk, talking with you guys. 

Michael: Yeah!