Blockchain and music are a match made in heaven, yet utilization of the technology in the music industry is still lagging behind. Today we are joined by Chris Erhardt, the co-founder of Tunedly who will explain how he will utilize the $1 Trillion crypto market to improve the $50 Billion music industry.
Q: Welcome Chris! Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background.
A: Hi, thanks for having me. I am Chris Erhardt and I co-founded Tunedly back in 2016. My background prior to Tunedly was in the music industry, mostly as a songwriter and producer. In 2014 I co-founded a small music business which I managed to sell within a year. After the sale of my first music startup, I co-founded Tunedly. Nowadays, besides overseeing Tunedly, I also consult a number of startups and businesses all over the world, helping them scale and grow their businesses more efficiently.
Q: Very interesting. So, what is Tunedly? Can you give me the one-minute elevator pitch?
A: Absolutely. Tunedly has two main components. First, we are an online recording studio, which means, we connect songwriters and singers to music production professionals and give them a virtual studio space where they can record their music at the best quality possible. Think Muscle Shoals Sound Studio or Abbey Road Studios recording quality but without having to leave your living room. The second part of Tunedly, and definitely the more complex one, is our masked music discovery platform that rewards music fans for scouting new, promising hits, with cryptocurrency. In a nutshell, musicians can upload their songs on our platform. We stream their songs alongside other up-and-coming artists as well as some of today’s biggest stars, but the twist is, we remove all identifying information from a song. Listeners only hear the music. They don’t see the artist’s name, images, videos, or anything that could identify the creator, because only music matters. Listeners can then give stars to the songs they believe could blow up to become hits. We sign the best songs to exclusive publishing deals, in cooperation with our publishing partner Spirit Music Group and as a reward, we pay those listeners who helped us discover the songs with our own crypto token called TunedCoin. Oh boy, I think I went way over my allotted one minute.
Q: That’s perfectly fine. This sounds very interesting. Why do you want music listeners to scout music for you? Why not simply do what other music publishers do and use traditional A&R?
A: That’s a very good question. I believe that the traditional model of finding new songs is broken. Look at it from this perspective, essentially the way music publishers find songs for their catalog hasn’t changed much in the past 50 years, but time obviously has evolved. There aren’t many industries where we still do things the same way as we did 50 years ago. Keeping the traditional model has one major issue, among many minor issues: The people who are supposed to buy the music have no say in what they will buy. Think about this, the traditional A&R process is literally a person, a so-called “music industry professional”, deciding which songs millions of people will listen to in the future. Obviously, this is overly simplified and exaggerated, but pretty close to what it is. Why do labels pick one artist over another? Why do publishers sign one song over another? Oftentimes, it’s not necessarily for the musical value or the talent of the artist. Other factors play a huge role in their decision-making, depriving the listening population of potentially great songs that get buried in a pile of unreleased music that have no marketing budget or the help of the big labels. Long story short, I think that’s wrong. I think people should have a say about which songs should get signed and only then, the song or artist should receive the support to make it to the top of the charts. If people, not just a handful of “music industry professionals” are willing to support a song, chances are much higher that the song is actually a quality piece of art instead of a quickly cranked-out commercial product for quick consumption.
Q: That makes a lot of sense. Why don’t you allow artists to brand their songs on Tunedly? Why do you insist on making it a, what you call, “masked music discovery platform”?
A: Because at Tunedly, only music matters. Do you remember, in a previous response, I mentioned that other things, besides the musical value, play a huge role in what an A&R agent would sign? Music fans are no different. If presented with more than just the music, we tend to become biased due to the looks of an artist, brand value, how much they’re talked about and so on. The problem with that is, all those things can be bought. Obviously, an Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift can “buy” all of the above. People would automatically be biased if they hear a song, knowing it’s a famous artist.
Q: Okay, what is the problem with that? Why is it important to review music without any bias in your opinion?
A: It’s simple, if you allow the branding and all the artificial stuff around an artist’s song to take place, it no longer is a game of who is the best musician or the most talented artist, it’s a game of who has the most money, who is the best marketer, who is the best looking – all the things that simply shouldn’t matter when it comes to music. It’s the music that matters, not all that stuff around it. When I give speeches, I always joke that we didn’t dance like idiots to Gangnam Style for the musical value of the song.
Q: That’s funny. Let’s talk about the rewards system. You know I am into cryptocurrencies myself so this part is particularly interesting to me.
A: Sure. So, anyone can sign up as a listener on Tunedly for free. Your free Tunedly account will give you one star every single day. These stars, however, don’t roll overuse it or lose it. If you hear a song on the Tunedly music discovery platform that you believe could become a hit, you can give that song your star. If we end up signing a song that you gave a star to, to a music publishing contract, you will receive an NFT of that song and if you were among the first 1,000 listeners who gave that particular song a star, you also receive a TunedCoin, our very own cryptocurrency. Once the song starts generating royalties, we share the publishing portion of the royalties 50/50, with the listeners who own that song’s NFT. Your personal allocation of the royalty payout will depend on how many TunedCoins you hold at that time. The more TunedCoins you own, the larger your share of the royalty payment.
Q: That is very innovative and such a great way to involve music fans. Is this already live? Can people buy TunedCoin already? What is the goal of TunedCoin?
A: The token is currently not available for sale on the open market. Right now, the only way one can receive TunedCoins at the moment is by listening to music on the Tunedly Music Discovery platform and deploying stars to their favorite songs. We have started signing songs and will continue to do so. In regards to the long-term plans of TunedCoin, obviously, the main utility of TunedCoin is the royalty payments earned through songs we sign to publishing deals. Having said that, our goal is to establish TunedCoin as the de facto cryptocurrency of the music industry. We are already in talks with several music retailers and service providers who are considering accepting TunedCoin as a form of payment. Cryptocurrency is the future of money and I believe that, in the distant future, we will move away from the centralized way of having country-based FIAT currencies like the USD, EUR or CAD. Instead, we will have global currencies for specific industries and TunedCoin will be the Cryptocurrency of the Music Industry when we get to this point.
To learn more about Chris Erhardt, visit https://www.chriserhardt.com/
Thanks for reading!
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