UFO.fm, Radio Over Algorithms, Music on the Blockchain, & Building Independent Media

Kris welcome to the show, my friend. after this, I'm announcing the episode by the way. so you're you're the third guest, the lucky number three.

Nick Yeah, cool. Yep, nice.

Kris well man, can t tell me about yourself. Like we've been talking like a few times now. we talked on a few calls and I know you I know what you do. But how would you describe yourself? I recently heard someone ask a question. How would you describe yours describe yourself if you couldn't use like your titles from the like you know, someone that someone gave, like I'm the CEO of this, I'm the founder, like you know what mean? So

Nick Yeah.

Kris who are you?

Nick Yeah, for real. I would say I don't really identify myself that much via titles anyway, so that's that's all good. who am I? Well I'm from Sydney, Australia. So I'm Australian, there's that part. I'm based in in Europe now, in Barcelona. and my background and what I'm interested in, like I'm a music person, media person, journalist by trade. radio broadcaster of of many years. and I had a friend identify me the other day as like a builder, pretty much. So, you know, I make stuff, try

Kris Hey, everyone is a builder these days, yeah?

Nick to make stuff, always be making stuff. yeah, that's sort of like the outline of what I'm into. I would say independent media kind of builder.

Kris I'm bullish on independent media, I'm bullish on indep on just reputation behind a person instead of the big corporate brands because big beer corporate brand can change you know, executives and like they can change the narrative and they do things like based on the politics or narrative. But a person when when you follow a person, that person has the reputation and identity and who he is or who she is. And it's really difficult to change. So like when you're subscribing to a person it's really cool, but when you're subscribing to like Fucking whatever I whatever big newsletter is or big, I don't know, corporation, media corporation, like the establishment can change and that therefore their opinions can change, which I don't like. So I'm bullish on that. I'm also bullish on like investigative journal investigative journalism. But yeah. I want to talk about music, man. Music is the coolest thing. what's your favorite what's your favorite apps when it comes to music? Sorry for putting you on the spot.

Nick I thought were gonna say decade or records, but yeah, favorite

Kris We'll get into that.

Nick favorite app's a good question. to be honest, it's like I probably listen the most on like YouTube, counterintuitively. and like, you know, files. And like I like, you know, physical media, dare I say even vinyl records, but mine are in Australia, so that's kind of a a sore point. but yeah, typically like And even the kind of stuff that I'm interested in in building or seeing more of in the internet music scene is stuff like SoundCloud and Band Camp and independent kind of platforms for releasing music and stuff like that. but a lot of listening is is YouTube, to be honest. And it's funny

Kris Yeah.

Nick how much the algorithm kind of will play me the same fifteen tracks that it knows that I've listened to before.

Kris It's so fucking annoying. It's annoying, man. Like do you remember the days like in the early internet when YouTube was like literally the section on the right was like recommended videos based on what you like. So every every video on the right was something you've never seen before. Right now it's just all the same.

Nick Yeah, it wants to play me a lot of like all things must pass, like George Harrison and related stuff and and you know, like it's funny, tracks that you've stumbled into once and then it keeps bringing back. I also like listening to I do sort of digging to find like DJs and people playing vinyl with like twenty subscribers and stuff like that. Do you know what I mean? Like again,

Kris Yeah.

Nick coming from the radio background, like I like listening to stuff that can kind of Take you by surprise. But there's channels out of Japan, for example. There was this guy, I don't know if he's still producing, he might be, but and he plays ambient sets or there's a great channel from London called Shea Space, where they do it's this listening session type stuff. And so they set up, they're in like I think they're in South London. I don't want to get that wrong. but Yeah, they have a a physical space there and so they have DJs come in, they have four cameras around above and beside and whatever and they just do these you know, sit down, it's like a meditative thing and these sort of listening sessions, like that kind of stuff is cool.

Kris That's so cool.

Nick yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kris That's so cool. I c I wanted to ask you like, there's something that just occurred to me. you know we live in a builder's era, so like you can like prompt into existence anything that you want, software wise. And I'm getting married by the way, neck next year. So I was looking for like betting bands and I'm in Serbia. And it's really difficult to find them. because there's like a traditional Serbian music that everyone goes by. So like if I asked all of my friends who got married, they would pretty much Suggest the that specific type of traditional Serbian type of wedding band. I was like, Man, I don't want that, like I want something else. But it was really difficult to find them. And I was like, What if I created just a website? Like that could be two days of work now. Well before it used to take so much time. you know, today can take like literally two days. Are there any cool websites like that that you know of that for music? Are there any cool websites for like like just tune in people listening to music, like even streaming maybe or just listening to music, discover music? Can you give me something? Because I struggle to find music.

Nick Yeah, absolutely, man. I'm currently focusing on building that with with UFO, the

Kris Mm.

Nick magazine and broadcast network site. and again, like coming from my kind of background in in radio, like ten years or so with like independent community stations. that's always you know, that's always a great way to discover music just from other people's selections and what they're playing and as far as just tuning in. But, you know, I'm really stoked with what we're building with With UFO, but also shout out to the greats like NTS Radio, if you don't know, from the UK, which is a phenomenal station and endlessly deep archive, you know, the lot radio from New York if you're into that kind of thing. But if it's not about like radio shows and DJ sets and stuff like that, you can always like dig on SoundCloud or on Bandcamp. There's a site called Buy Music Club, which some people built for So basically people can curate and select Bandcamp releases and maybe they do a post every Friday or something like that. So you can have these like music nodes who are out there like picking music for you and follow the people that you kinda like like their vibe.

Kris You're just throwing some some really cool stuff in here. I I have I'm I'm gonna have to rewatch this and pick all of this up.

Nick If you're trying to find music fix for replacement of a wedding band that's fairly specific as well, that could be a YouTube playlist.

Kris Yeah. There's a do you know like you just reminded me of something. Let me see if it's still working. so yeah, I was kind of struggling to find new music and I fucking hate Spotify because it's just giving me the same stuff. Even your their like weekly discovery thing is for some reason so fucked up. that

Nick Mm-hmm.

Kris I you just reminded me and it's actually working. Actually I'm actually gonna share this in the chat with you. I may see where is the chat here? Studio chat. Yeah.

Nick Just Napster.

Kris no, I created something called Radioscope.fun. And it's basically like it uses public API

Nick Yeah, yeah.

Kris endpoints for all for all available radio stations. And I have

Nick Yes.

Kris in I I've been enjoying it so much. I haven't listened to it like lately for the past few months

Nick Mm-hmm.

Kris or so, but it's still working, surprisingly. And

Nick Yeah. I I saw this on your on your website as like a project that you've built recently. Recently, but

Kris Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah.

Nick yeah.

Kris It's I and like I remember like dude you just reminded me I need to start listening to it again because I remember enjoying it so much. It's so refreshing. There's something about like tuning in into the live feed of like a person or a group of people who have spent their life like to learn about music and now they are curating the listening experience for you. And you should fucking just sit back, relax and enjoy that. Because when you rely on algorithms for discovery and blah blah, that's that's that's not it, You need the human touch to tell you okay, this is good music, listen to the next for the next hour we have created this, then it's just so good. I think radio is underappreciated, man.

Nick Yeah, no, absolutely. I just shared a link as well. shout out to Community Radio Index, which was a project that was released maybe a few months ago, maybe more, 'cause there's years going by. But

Kris Nice.

Nick it's another one of these projects where essentially you can tune into radio stations from all over the world, like internet radios, and you can like, you know, scroll around and I want to listen to radio from this country or this city and so on, and you can do that, which is quite super cool.

Kris No, I I was just gonna say I've never done this. sorry.

Nick Let's go inception inception mode.

Kris Yeah, yeah. I've never done this, but yeah. I wanted to share my screen and just open this up. yeah, this looks really

Nick Yeah, this is it. Shout out to Opium Hum from Berlin, one of the co creators of of this. But super cool. Like they launched it and there was I don't know, a bunch of

Kris Whoa.

Nick radios on it on day one and then it was open applications, people could submit. so a bunch more popped up really quickly. So yeah, it's really, really cool.

Kris isn't there something similar to this? I feel like there's something similar to this that I huh?

Nick Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was something from years ago which probably still exists. but now there's a new one. I don't know. It was I think their focus on like they're finding because it's coming from like music and culture networks and so they're but the and the interface is super nice. But I mean all this stuff is again like what I'm currently building with UFO, the same kind of idea of like let's

Kris Yeah, we'll we'll

Nick People channels,

Kris we'll

Nick let's connect, let's have artists and DJs and and whatever and it's that mutual discovery and so on and it's cool to discover music from human beings rather than our Radio Garden,

Kris It's this one. Yeah. It's it's called the Radio Garden.

Nick that's right.

Kris It's basically like it has a stations from all over the world. And you can kind of like play, you can fuck, there's music in my ears. yeah, so you can like play the music from anywhere in the world and it's really kinda cool. I I I remember kind of being blown away by it. Yeah, and this is my little project that I vibe coded. but yeah,

Nick Yeah. Yeah, that was around like a long time ago. Nice, nice.

Kris let me let me turn this on. Yeah, talk to me about UFO. Let's let's dive right in. I'm excited I'm excited to talk to you about that. UFO.fm, by the way, for everyone.

Nick That's the one. yeah, we're actually like preparing to launch the new like rebuilt the the website and platform this year. And like the project launched in like September twenty two as a podcast that I was hosting. And it was very, you know, we kind of come from the Ethereum scene as well. So it was a bit of like the podcast was like music and artists and also tech. Developers and founders and stuff like that. So it was a kind of combination of those things. and always sort of experimenting and playing around with, you know, publishing on mirror or doing this or whatever was, you know, is the sort of on-chain media wave and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, flash forward a bunch of years to now, rebuilt the platform, preparing to launch it, basically independent magazine and broadcast network and It's been a lot of interesting discovery because again, 'cause I come from this background in broadcasting on independent radio in in Sydney. And it's the experience of, you know, you have a show once a week. In my case it was FBI radio. and there's like, I don't know, two hundred two hundred other people that do shows and DJ and stuff. And so like together this thing is far greater than any one show on it, you know? And it's that experience of like, I don't know. Yeah. Meet meeting cool people, hearing what other people are playing, like all these different styles. There's the people that host a show from like eleven PM to one in the morning where they just play like weird electronic stuff and like freak folk ambient kind of and they've been doing this show for twelve years and whatever, you know? And then there's like the people that

Kris Fuck yeah.

Nick play kind of like hype up party music from like six to eight PM before you going out that night or for people like driving in their cars around the city and going home and w and whatever, right? there's all these different there's so much diversity in what happens on radio. So having had that whole experience and then when I moved away from Sydney and was no longer plugged into the radio, and so those like ideas of like, well, it'd be cool to do something that would look a bit like internet radio and what would that be? And it's sort of a long journey of like discovery, thinking things through, a lot of things that have only kind of been answered this year. And so yeah, the platform that

Kris What made you

Nick now.

Kris what made you move from Sydney?

Nick well initially moved from there to a town called Byron Bay in Australia, which is like Paradise Beach Town. it's like if you look at a picture of Australia, it's the most eastern point, right there is is where Byron Bay is. So we lived there for like five, six years, which is like paradise, and then yeah, moved to moved to Europe after that. Was in Amsterdam for a couple of years and and now in Barcelona.

Kris Yeah, the only thing I know in in Australia is Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane.

Nick Yeah.

Kris Those are things. but I assume it's quite close to

Nick I mean that's most of it. The rest of it is mostly mostly empty giant spaces. But yeah.

Kris Yeah. Yeah. And where are you right now? If you don't mind me asking. I remember you told

Nick yeah.

Kris me but I forgot. burst in Spain. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Yeah, Barcelona these days. but yeah, coming from the music scene and community in Australia, it's kind of a great experience. Like Australian music goes extremely hard. There's so many great bands, producers, artists from there, labels, like it's it's ridiculous. it it runs extremely deep. and also like the sort of existential struggle for music to sort of exist and succeed there. It's practically impossible. So artists like a lot of them end up moving to Europe or the UK or LA or what it like whatever direction wherever their music makes sense. It's a lot of that stuff that happens. And so there's a lot of like 'cause it it's almost like the economics don't work in in a way. You know what I mean? there aren't enough cities to to tour in Australia.

Kris Yeah. How are you thinking how are you how are you combining the how are you making economics work? I'm do you have this figured out? Like how do you make the economics work for UFO and all these things? like how how are you connecting the blockchain with the with the music industry and and all that stuff? are artists getting paid? Or actually like let me share the screen. I I just opened opened this. There's so much to like that we can talk about when it comes to this. yeah, so there's am I correct in assuming that there's like different like radio stations here and broadcasts and and and different like artists that you can subscribe to and listen to their radio and listen to their shows, or how does that work?

Nick Yeah, basically that's where it's headed. Like you can click on artists there, and there's, you know, again, like we're we're launching in November properly. and that's when the real call out for artist submissions and channel proposals will be happening and it can kind of open open up. I guess it's live in beta right now, so you you can check it out and listen and so on. but yeah, it's pretty much like organized by there's artists on the network and there's also channels. So a channel could be like a collective or a label. or a radio show or whatever and there can be multiple artists who are contributing and a part of that thing. Like an example is COTONE Copenhagen, who currently have like say 16 people that have contributed mixes and broadcasts through that channel, but they also have artist profiles. So like what we're kind of building for is like, look, this is gonna be it's a magazine that has broadcast capabilities basically that you'll be able to go and like discover and scroll through, find artists. what we're shipping in November is that you can have a user profile. Like it's free to become a member and sign up to UFO. Then that gives you the capabilities to like follow artists, channels, genres, cities. So when you open your profile page, all the all the sort of relevant broadcasts for your interest will just drop in few to

Kris Yeah.

Nick listen to.

Kris I know Simona. Simona she's a UNS delegate and I've known her for a while. I know she hosts human podcasts, right? So

Nick Yeah, so her podcast is on is on UFO.

Kris All right, all right, all right. So technically like I can be here as well. Huh.

Nick Yeah, you can be here. If you wanna like submit a channel proposal we can talk.

Kris Nice. I didn't know like I thought for some reason that this is only about music, at least.

Nick I would say it's yeah, it's primarily about music, but with you know, various intentions to kind of expand into other realms because, you know, it's magazine y. So, you know, we could have skateboarding on here, we can have like art and and different things, certainly podcasts, livestream radio type things, all those kind of things. But you

Kris Yeah.

Nick know, as far as it kind of makes sense, there's like there's a lot that's gonna be announced in November as far as but The idea is like following, you know, like NTS is a great example, but they're kind of the model of look, we're gonna have the ability for people to become it's free to become a member and have a profile on on the site. To have an artist profile is like a submission process. But then when you're approved to be an artist, then you gain broadcast and publishing capabilities and you can

Kris Nice.

Nick broadcast on the thing and then you can have a public page that can like link to your releases and your socials and all that kind of thing. but then people can also become a supporter of the magazine for, five bucks a month or whatever it is. And then what we've been I just shipped some stuff in the Coliseum hackathon last weekend. but it's pointed in this direction for November is like supporter funds will come in into a kind of into a pool and then be split into the artist pool and then qualifying artists will just would get that share of the like supporter funds that come through. And like NCS radio that have been around for a long time and many others, around the world, as we saw in the community radio index, however many of those, but it can be that model of like supporter revenue that comes in, we distribute it to artists contributing channels on the platform. And that can

Kris Nice.

Nick that's that is one aspect that can happen on chain, but also in fiat at the same time. Shout out to splits dot org. but yeah, thing things like this. So it's a bit of

Kris Splits splits dot org. Ooh.

Nick Bit of on-chain magic. Yeah. but I

Kris I'll look into this. This looks cool.

Nick I'm aware that this is, cap dot eth's podcast here that we're we're talking on. It's gonna be crypto people likely who are listening to this. But what we're building with with UFO is very much like it's music and art and creative industries type people or you know, just like music listeners and readers and all that kind of stuff who disproportionately don't like. crypto or tech or any of these things. So the way that UFO is coming through, those things are not going to be in your face. It's just going to feel like a normal platform, but those things can be sort of happening on under the surface.

Kris Yeah. By the way, no worries about like yes, predominantly probably it's gonna be crypto audience on my end. but like everyone loves music, man.

Nick No, of course.

Kris we can talk about anything and like I don't make it I I'm not doing this show for anyone else. I'm doing this show for me. And if you are like me and like stuff that I like, you're probably gonna subscribe and you know that that that's it and you're probably gonna follow me. I don't expect people to follow me or love me or I don't I don't expect to become the next Joe Rogan or anything. I genuinely just wanna

Nick And

Kris talk to people that I find interesting. And I'm fascinated by music and we can talk about music for fucking three hours, dude. And I don't care what anyone thinks.

Nick No, I'm I'm I'm fully with that, but I'm I mean to say that like while Yeah, totally.

Kris Yeah. Just wanted to throw it in there.

Nick But while we talk about like some of the crypto mechanics that are being built into some of how UFO works.

Kris I wanna talk I wanna I wanna talk about that. Yeah, I wanna talk about that because okay, I'll a quick the the background, like backstory of of this whole thing. Like the first e even if you go in some of my like I used to have paragraph as well or mirror or whatever, and one of the very first articles that I wrote like three, four, five years ago, was about what can the blockchain as a technology do for music industry. And everyone at the time when the sound.xyz was coming out and all of these new things were very hype, they're saying all the royalties can be on the chain, all of this can be solved, the copyrights and issues and blah blah blah. And five years later, I don't know if anyone is even working on this. You know, so there's like you that's how it usually happens, like when the new technology pops up that is as big as blockchain, like all of these verticals get touched, like music and entertainment and finances and everything else. And years after that, it just kinda converges obviously around finance, DeFi, whatever, and all the industries like art and whatever else be left behind. And eventually they're gonna get picked up again. This is what's happened with Farcaster lately. I don't know if you've seen this the latest announcement. Far Farcaster was acquired by Network State, which is really cool and kind of makes sense because network stakes essentially digital communities, Farcaster like a decentralized social network, make a Farcaster client, set your rules, set your governance, whatever, right? So I think something's gonna happen for the music industry and I I just wanna know like the secret sauce. And if anyone knows that it's probably you.

Nick Yeah. I definitely have a lot of thoughts about it and spoken to many, many people about it and thought about it for a really long time. and like crucially amongst all of this, like somewhere along the way, it's kind like guess what? Like it's it's on it's incredibly hard. These are incredibly hard problems. it's

Kris Yeah. I've heard it I've heard that the music industry is like a very cutthroat business. I don't know what makes it like a very such a such a difficult industry to like, you know be in in general, generally speaking. But it feels like there's a lot of these I don't even know how to characterize it, but you probably know this better than me. it's really difficult to to be to become an artist of any kind. so yeah, what you're doing is

Nick Yeah. Yeah.

Kris really, really cool.

Nick I think I think we live in really surreal times to say the least, which we all know. but like

Kris Yeah.

Nick music has always been difficult, you know what I mean? And there's very cartoonish stories of artists being taking advantage of as long as recorded commercial music has existed, way, way back to the beginnings and It's like the cartoon of the crooked manager or someone who you rips an artist off or takes a song and records it and doesn't pay royalties properly and and all those kinds of things, right? and along the way, there's really interesting stuff to delve into around the medium that music was being released at the time actually directly influencing or shaping the kind of music that was being created, you know. So Back at a certain time it was like radio songs needed to be two or three minutes. the early Beatles tracks are two minutes. Like that's that's the

Kris Yeah. Yeah.

Nick time you had. And then it was actually, yeah.

Kris Queen.

Nick Queen's one example. The Beatles, when they did Hey Jude, which is like seven something minutes, and like guess what? It went number one. and

Kris Yeah.

Nick their producer was just like, Yeah, it's good song, but like it's it's too long. They're not gonna play this.

Kris Yeah.

Nick And John Lennon was like, It's us, they'll play it. Like, and they did. Sure enough, people like that song. but that kind of stuff, right? And then you get deeper into the 70s and it's like triple LPs, triple vinyl, and you get like you know, psych or prog rock or all this kind of like, you know, kind of you could say wanky music. It kind of went too far, but it was because the mechanics of like the way the industry worked was like you could just sell truckloads of vinyl, and that was kind of there's you know, there's economic graphs of it of

Kris Yeah.

Nick like the the music industry was printing money at the time because they were selling all this goddamn vinyl, right? And then you move along, you get into whatever it's called, like beta, and then cassette tapes. And then like a really peak time for the music industry was when they were selling CDs. It's like

Kris Cities.

Nick we can sell this for the same amount as an expensive to make vinyl record, but now it's literally like plastic, whatever. And so they were making peak money, but then along comes with CDs, you now have MP3s and you get Napster and the death of the music industry in that form or whatever. And suddenly

Kris Yeah.

Nick people are ripping files and all that. And then what followed ripping files was streaming. Here, we'll fix it. Here's streaming. Now you can pay

Kris Yeah.

Nick eleven dollars a month and access all recorded music ever. And we're not really going to pay the artists much of that. And all these deals were done. This is all on the public record. I'm not breaking any news. But it's like the labels did deals with Spotify and so on to say, yeah, it's great. Take all that. They got brought on board. They became they had got equity interests in Spotify itself. And this whole thing happened. And so now cut to now. And if you're I I missed the part where like following prog rock was like punk came out of that because music got so ridiculous that then punk in independent and short form, you get the Ramones and whatever. But With yeah, with the streaming thing now, it's like be an artist now. Be a band now. This is why you see this cut towards individual artists rather than a group. It's hard to pay four or five people and tour a band with five people. Much easier to have an individual artist or whatever, or a

Kris Yeah.

Nick DJ, even better. This is why like electronic music more and more, it's just like no gear, just show up with a US with USBs. This is why like Along with music taste, it kind of pointed in that direction. But it's it's like it's economics as well, you know. so now as well, it's like, how on earth are you supposed to like it? Used to be that ARs would be like, I heard a demo from this band or I saw this band play in my city, and you know, that band was prince or something. Like they discover something. And it'll be like, right, we need to cultivate this artist, give them the support, get them in the studio, let's get them working with a producer that can help shape this out and do this. And we need to get some band photography, let's make a video for them, let's style them, let's do all this. But famously now,

Kris Yeah.

Nick the way that A and R's work are we need an artist to come who've already broke, they've already got twenty thousand followers on Instagram. It's like artists need to break themselves before a label will even look at them. And this was the work that the label was supposed to do. So that's also shifting, and then let's say you jump through all of these hoops and you sign to a dope label or something or whatever. You sign to a major, so they're gonna promote promote you and do all these things. you're now competing with this like crazy zero sum thing and it's, you know, there can only be one Taylor Swift, which like swallows a lot

Kris Yeah.

Nick of the of the overall kind of share or whatever it is. Yeah. So things are just changing and changing. The industry doesn't work as it used to. and there's also an interesting trend where, for instance, all of these equity groups and and whatever have been buying up the catalogs of like classic music from the 60s and 70s and whatever. And so when you go on the streaming things, that's what's being pushed all the time. It's like, hey, hear this like

Kris Yeah.

Nick classic thing da-da-da. let alone that Spotify. Is literally generating their own AI music on the platform to claw back royalty shares for themselves by pushing AI music into playlists and and all that kind of thing. So I mean, it's to an extent, it's like gatekeepers have lost the amount of impact that they used to have. Radio used to be incredibly impactful in in terms of selling units, you know, like hey, we got the the

Kris Yeah.

Nick newest track from this band, Nirvana, whatever. hear this, we're gonna play it five times today, sort of thing, and then people would go and buy the record. whereas now it's like it's the algorithms and it's the same stuff if like if you have a I don't know, like a a startup or a product and you're trying to compete for distribution and attention. It's like that's what artists are having to do rather than just making music.

Kris We'll call this episode a success if I unsubscribe from Spotify by the end of the episode. No, no, no, I'm joking.

Nick mate, it's up to you, it's fine. I don't know.

Kris I'm joking. I'm joking. yeah, I I have Spotify just for the convenience sake of it. And I it's so easy to just like stuff that I hear on the radio. I just shazam it, I put it on Spotify and then I listen to it. what I was gonna say, I mean you've said so many things that I wanted to comment on, but you kinda brought it back to the old music industry and and how they're buying from the records from the 70s and 80s and they're pushing them. something when you started talking about this something that popped into my mind was the documentary that I watched some time ago from Frank Zappa where he said there's like a few minutes of that documentary that is just like pure gold where he said that the the music industry today is a lot like it's really worse than old guys like with the cigars Have ever been because they didn't know what was new. So like when you recorded something to them, they s they would say, like, fuck it, like I don't know what it what happens. Like, let's just put it out there and see what happens. Like if people vibe at it, it's great. Like we can sell like a few million units, like whatever, right? But these days people feel like this is what sells, this is like they analyze stuff, they like do sentiment analysis and this and that. Like it's not only music, it's movies, it's like fucking like everything. people think about stuff, I need to say this, I need to do this, I need to this, people resonate with this. look at all the Marvel movies. Every Mar Marvel movie movie these days is essentially like a like a like rooted it co in comedy, right? Just because people saw that, you know, they react like the audience positively r positively reacts to Iron Man being like, you know, like a cool guy, right? And like throwing jokes. So it's it's kinda weird, man. I I don't know. But yeah, anyway.

Nick Yeah, it's the it I guess what you c yeah, the kind of focus grouping or dare I say running it through a an algorithm to test it or you know now Google it. You know, can look on YouTube and it's like how to compose your song so that you gotta put the hook in the first fifteen seconds. The hook used to become in the chorus, but no time for an instant

Kris Yeah. Yeah.

Nick now. Give us the hook at the start, then a bit of stuff, and then the hook again bigger. And then this and then a second hook and whatever. And

Kris Yeah.

Nick the idea is that the hook can ideally become like a viral track that people are using on TikTok and all this stuff. And it's like you're aiming for that kind of thing. for one thing, it's like if you achieve virality great, it's difficult to achieve virality twice, basically. Like

Kris Well.

Nick it can happen, but very often it's like. Yeah, we don't know how that one hit and we can't catch the same fire. it just happened to be a congruence of a few creators used this track and so it went out, but no one cares about our our next thing or

Kris Yeah.

Nick whatever. So that's a difficult thing. But it reminds me of a story, I think it was about five years ago. There was a music festival in the US where they booked the lineup based purely on these artists have the X amount of streams, monthly streams on Spotify. And then they had to cancel the festival because they didn't sell any tickets. Because streams did not represent, in this case,

Kris Wow

Nick real dedicated fan bases of these artists. It's like these are artists who are getting loads of streams in like chill out mix for studying or whatever. and that kind of thing. And it's like

Kris Yeah, yeah, yeah fucking hell.

Nick I'm not I'm not spending a hundred bucks on a ticket to go and see the Chill Out festival or you know. So it comes it comes back,

Kris That's genius.

Nick it's like it's still gotta be still gotta be real. There's gotta be an old but then I don't know. Like I'm increasingly an old person and I love that. Because I come from a time when music was better and even you know, or like different. I don't mean music being made, I mean the experience of music then I feel was better because we'd be like, boom, like this

Kris Hundred percent.

Nick record would come out, we all bought that CD. Then the band would tour, everyone was on board. I'm sure that's still happening to an extent, but I like how how it used to be, you know.

Kris But to an extent. But to an extent, man. I recently heard someone say that we probably have hundred times better, you know, drum players, guitar players, you know, all these people. We probably have a hundred times better like solo is everything is like in terms of like quality, difficulty, speed, anything is just like better, far like everything. And yet no one cares anymore. So why how what do you make of this? I feel like we've removed the art part from the art and everything is entertainment now. You know?

Nick dude, I have so many thoughts about this. one thing

Kris Ha ha ha.

Nick it's like look at skateboarding on the internet is a really good example. So like there's 11 year old kids now that can do harder tricks like objectively than pros were doing in the late 90s or early 2000s.

Kris Yeah. Yeah.

Nick And I've seen like skateboarders talking about this of like it's because kids have access to see other people do it and see what's possible. there's a pro called Jerry Sue, one of my favorite skaters of all time, complete legend. but he was talking about

Kris Jerry S.

Nick HSU. When he was like,

Kris Mm-hmm.

Nick I don't know, when he was learning to skate or coming up in the 90s, it was like they could watch VHS tapes, and again, you would be seeing pros. This is what the pros were doing two or three years ago. Like it took a couple years for them to film this whole video and then release it. So you're already seeing what people were doing two years ago. And also these are and so their c conception of what was possible to do on a handrail, for example, was

Kris Mm.

Nick on this. Drag. Whereas kids now, they can see everything instantly. Every pro, every pro's on Instagram. You can see everything. The kids

Kris Yeah.

Nick can share their own videos. So it's kind of by we can

Kris I don't like that.

Nick see what's possible. So when you say like we have mechanically the best, like just we're brute forcing it. We have like millions

Kris Yeah.

Nick of people everywhere. It's like, who cares? Like the guitarists who were great in the sixties, it's like there were twenty of them and they all lived in the same city and they were all putting out records and they were inspiring each other. And you kind of get this like CBGBs in in New York and that punk scene at the time and people inspiring each other. It's like it's a different thing. who cares that you can play music like Guitar Hero and do it? But at the same time, while we're talking about all this, I also feel that and I don't have like objective evidence for it necessarily, but I also feel that like more quality, interesting, compelling records are probably being made now than any time ever. You know what I mean? Because pe more and more people than ever have access to you can have a really good home production setup that it

Kris Yeah, yeah.

Nick used to be only very few people got to get in a professional studio to make release level stuff. So like, you know, I'm into you know electronic stuff and hip hop and and all this kind of in like I love all so much stuff that comes out of the UK of sort of producers like like burial is a good example. rival console, all this kind of stuff, Max Cooper, like

Kris I need to look into all of these

Nick there's so so many over mono, all these things from the UK as well. Just one example. And like all across Europe and the US and and whatever. Like like Boards of Canada are one of my favorite, they have a new record out recently. But like if you like that kind of like music, there's probably more it than ever before. So like we can sit here and be like, there aren't as many like good bands as there were before. But it's also because the industry is just like this band looks and sounds a bit like Led Zeppelin. And we can tell people that they're the new Led

Kris Ha ha.

Nick Zeppelin. There's a specific reference. and for that stuff, it's like, who cares? Like it's always there will there's a never ending supply of teenagers or 20 year olds making new genres on their laptop every day. Do you know what I mean? Like it's only ever

Kris Yeah.

Nick gonna increase, and that's what I'm here for. And that's part of like what I'm I've been trying to do with UFO, for example, and like let's build this network and let's make it a place where we can discover each other's stuff. And it can kind of scale and grow and be interesting and we can actually find it. Because a big problem amongst all this is like Instagram's become one of the primary networks for artists and whatever. It's not the most efficient way to find stuff. It's like you need a video to kind of hit or go viral to find

Kris Yeah.

Nick somebody. Yeah. I I just want I just want a steady way to be able to find records that I would be interested in listening to. And and crucially,

Kris Yeah.

Nick there is I don't know, there there's a number out there. It's like there's eight hundred thousand hours of music made every day. So you're never gonna hear hardly any of it. You know.

Kris Yeah.

Nick So do the best you can, find what you're into. That's it's fine.

Kris sorry for munching by the way on the I'm I'm eating some chips because I haven't had lunch yet.

Nick What we do.

Kris I need to I need to sorry if you're hearing the crackling sound in your ears. Man.

Nick A SMR from someone.

Kris so many things I wanted to mention. Like dude when you're talking there's so many things I wanna say. I'm sure it's the same when I'm saying there's so many things to talk about this industry in general. Yeah, I think it's the same with yeah, you mentioned skateboarding. It's I think it's the same. I heard that with the with gymnasts. Like my grandma gr grandfather was like he won like the first place in the like the gymnast competition in the former Yugoslavia, right? And back then I remember he told me that like one of the craziest things that you can do on like that like a pull up bar, like a regular bar. I'm not sure what's the English word for that, like officially. But if you manage to hop on and and and just grab it and do a spin, just one spin, that was considered crazy. Go to YouTube, just type any gymnast doing crazy shit on like a bar, you'll see some insane stuff. So yeah, it it is what it is. a lot of skateboarding video videos have been popping out lately for me because I just watched the latest Jack S and Ben Madero was not in it, so there was like a like a kind of kind of Carfuffle between them and I started

Nick okay.

Kris like I I went down the rabbit hole of Ben Mojera and now I'm all I'm fucking seeing on my YouTube is Ben Mojera doing fucking skateboarding tricks being 50 year

Nick Yeah, man.

Kris old and and 120 kilos

Nick Yeah, he's on the comeback. Shout out to them.

Kris Shout out to Ben. Bam's like fucking insane.

Nick Yeah.

Kris I love the whole JKS crew, but like yeah. But anyway, back to music. okay, so knowing all of this. What do you think it will take to fix this? Or how long do you see this going? Like do you see this as like a changing, you know, trend? I I know that like, you know, everything is kinda works in kind of circular. What what goes around comes around as they say. So like are we at the peak of like fucking, you know, weird, like non discovering, like just shitty music listening experience? and will that change, or do you think the trend will kind of continue? I'm s sorry, I'm not shitting on the whole music industry, there's a lot of great stuff out there that is famous.

Nick yeah. Yeah.

Kris But I'm I'm talking about like there's like zero point zero one percent at the top that are actually making like, you know, decent living and like bowling and having fun. And there's like

Nick Right.

Kris fucking ninety nine point nine percent of the people who are like they're not all good, let's face it. But there's so many people that are as good, probably even better, and cannot

Nick Yeah.

Kris make an ends meet. But also I wanna ask you about the Other side of this, sorry, maybe I'm throwing a lot at you. But there's other side of this. So I told you that I'm getting married next year, right? So I've gone through a lot of bands. Some of these bands are making shitload of money. Like shitload of money.

Nick Right. Wedding vents. Yeah.

Kris So wedding bands, and they don't only do wedding band like wedding stuff, they that. Like in Serbia, there's like a big there's a lot of celebrations for everything. Like your first kid gets bored, like he's bored, your first like a kid gets like first birthday, birthday parties, like bachelor parties, 18th birthday, there was the I don't know what in English it's it's called that event. right so there's like all this so they like they'll do like three or four gigs per week and they'll charge like anywhere between like two K up to like twenty K per gig. So

Nick Yeah. Yeah.

Kris like that's even a good fucking like insane salary in in in the US and in fucking London or Dubai or anywhere, let alone in Serbia. So like there's this opposite side of of the like there's the opposite side of this argument. But I'm just curious about your takes. and then like let's dive into the blockchain a little bit and how does blockchain fix this. Or does it even fix it at all? Or what will it take to fix it?

Nick Yeah. I think for one thing the the solving like people being able to make or more people being able to make a living and sustain themselves from music is is kind of difficult, right? It's like saying how many people can sustain themselves as a photographer or a visual artist or a designer or whatever. Do you know what mean? so and with music we've gotten into this weird place of People are cool with paying ten dollars a month for all the music ever and and therefore devaluing music itself. there's a quote from an interview with the founder of Spotify, I think it was from a couple of years ago now or something, where he basically said like, artists just need to release more stuff, more content, more often, you know. And which is hilarious. It's like you

Kris Yeah.

Nick think of a you think of a a great artist, who may have been around for thirty years and has like makes an impact in people's lives. These are the some of the most important pieces of music that people connect with on a profound level. That's one of their favorite artists, right? And then every I don't know, for this artist, they might put out an album every six years or longer. Who knows? Because it's a it's all they c they don't it's not just a a content factory for them, it takes time.

Kris Yeah.

Nick Like famously, Hallelujah was a a song that took like twelve years to be written or whatever. Like sometimes it can take a long time. And so like what's his name? Ellsberg or Spotify CEO. But it was it's basically like, yeah, they just

Kris I'm not sure.

Nick need to put out songs more often. It should be like content.

Kris That's like the stupidest thing to say. That's like saying, can you imagine going back in time and saying hey Dostoevsky k r you should have written more books? It's

Nick Right.

Kris like it takes a fucking life, it takes sitting down, it takes

Nick well that one was pretty good. Yeah.

Kris experience, it tak like the way I look at the the music or a song or an album, I look at it as like, okay, me as an artist, I have lived through all of this shit that I can just now like sit down and write and compose and like I can put it out there. But I had to re But I had to relive it and now I put it in this form that is easily consumable by you and you get to reveal it relive it, sorry, in this nicely packed form. Does that make sense? And it's the same for a music, for a film, for a book, for anything. But a an artist has to fucking struggle and fucking dig deep into whatever fucking life, heartbreaks, hardships, ups and downs or whatever, and then you get a a portion of their life. In a song or in an album. So asking someone to be like just like fucking I need more is the stupidest thing that I've ever heard.

Nick Yeah, and also that's not how music works or is consumed anyway. Because there's music that I want

Kris Yeah.

Nick to listen to a couple hundred times. And I do that as well. Like I'll listen

Kris Yeah. Yeah.

Nick to the Beach Boys endlessly or you know, songs like that, or like the you know, the songs that you want to listen to when you're I don't know, while you're working or trying to relax, or there's that kind of like different stuff that we're into. But then there's an artist that I really value and care about, and they put out this record that is like punishingly difficult to to to listen to, you know. It's a great piece

Kris Is it all?

Nick of work, but I might only listen to it three times in my entire life. I don't know, just this is not a specific example, but just that kind of thing. And so on Spotify that records as three streams.

Kris yeah, that's that's tool for me. Have you listened to tool?

Nick Right, tool, yeah.

Kris I can't do that. I d like I can only in a very, very unique circumstances listen to Tool. People can hate on me hate on me as much as they want.

Nick Right. Cool quote. but yeah, so that's kind of like when they're yeah, when they're saying like just do it like content, that's that's not how music works. but w what were we talking about before as well? I I've I read a book recently, Hitmakers, that talks about gosh, what's the author's name? Maybe my mic. Derek Thompson, I have a stack of books from my microphone currently. and yeah, he talks about how they again like focus grouping music, they kind of have these sort of algorithms and stuff, and they can say this is a.8 on the catchable catchy earworm level, you know? And like at least in the book, as he writes about it, he was like, There was the Adele album that from the sort of 10 songs that are on that, like eight of them were like, this could be number one in the This is the catchiest shit. People can't, people have no resistance to this. This is so catchy,

Kris Yeah.

Nick they're gonna love it. It's like happy by Pharrell, or Hey Yah, Outcast, whatever. just those banger, catchy bangers that

Kris Yeah.

Nick people are into. And so the music industry has these kind of because they also have like writing teams, like people who just like produce this stuff, and then they'll be like, great, let's give that to this artist, and then they can do a thing together, or let's get Kendrick Lamar on a thing with that. pop artist that has the really catchy thing and Kendrick can bring his thing or whatever it is, right? Stuff like that. but for all of those, a whole bunch of catchy songs just get left on the cutting room floor. Either are never made or they're released but do nothing. Even though sort of mathematically it's as catchy as or catchier on the on the number scale than the stuff that you hear and becomes these huge global hits like Coldplay have these songs that sort of, you

Kris Yeah.

Nick know what's that? the white stripes have the song that the football fans will chant, like Seven H Nation Army or that kind of stuff, right? They become these

Kris Yeah. Yeah.

Nick huge play things. There's just as many, far more songs that are kind of there in terms of we have the sheet music for it, but the right confluence of forces don't come together. And like, do you need to have a hit on that level to necessarily make a living from music? And I think there's many paths, right? It's like you can be a producer and mean a lot to a very specific niche and scene of people in a particular city or a few cities, and you DJ and you can kind of you can work your way up in a scene and you end up DJing festivals and and whatever. And it's like those sorts of things can be like pretty sustainable. That can be a lifestyle, you

Kris Yeah.

Nick know what I mean? But it it's sort of it isn't necessarily like a it's not necessarily a conventional career path. there's luck

Kris Yeah.

Nick involved, but it's also just being great is a pretty good formula for like getting along. Do you know what I mean? It's like

Kris Yeah. Being undeniable.

Nick be in a scene, make great stuff, make music that's undeniable and have it heard and played by the right people and sort of anything can happen, you know?

Kris Yeah, but I'm curious how can how can blockchain change this for more artists? How can blockchain work in favor for more artists so they can have something on the side? Because it makes sense if you as an artist cannot have thousand a very dedicated followers that can give you a dollar per month, a thousand bucks per per month, when you if you do something you know tightly c neat community that you have, you put out stuff for them or wh whatever. Like if you can get a thousand, like I feel like that should be the first goal for everyone. you know? But how does blockchain specifically help them? Or how does UFO help them? Because you guys utilize blockchain obviously.

Nick Yeah, for one thing, it's you know, the most common thing is like musicians are like just making music and putting it out is not their you know, they have a they have a job. They they have some

Kris Yeah.

Nick other maybe they work in creative industries, maybe and I have friends who who work as they'll they'll produce music and and themes and stuff for, you know, commercial campaigns or creative clients or what do you know what I mean? Like they have a certain set of skills and they can apply them

Kris Yeah. Yeah.

Nick and So on. It's also very common for yeah, people have a job and they they DJ on the weekend or they, you know, they make their records or they play in a band and who knows? Their band might start to catch heat and now you're on tour and and whatever. Like, but as far as the person who are like, this is what I do, this is all I do, again, we're getting down to less and less people. And so there's there's different questions there, like how can blockchain be helpful? There's people who are trying to solve some of the macro industry, this is how they measure you know, how royalties should be distributed. Are we making sure that this is happening and blah, blah, blah, and the kind of the level of transparency or making sure the payments go through on time or at all, or blah, blah, blah, like getting more stuff integrated across jurisdictions between the UK and Europe and the US and whatever, and are the royalties being sent back and forth and blah, blah, blah. Like there's all that kind of stuff, right? but on the other side, If we're just talking about artists as a broad genre, like people who want to post tracks on SoundCloud or put out a bandcamp record or whatever, and how can blockchain help them? It's sort of if we're trying to do universal basic income for artists, it's like where is the capital coming from? Do you know what I mean? And again, like we have the problem that people have been socialized culturally, particularly over the last ten to twenty years, to not value music. As they did before. It used to be I would spend twenty

Kris Yeah.

Nick or thirty dollars on a twelve track album on C D that I would listen to a hundred times. You know? And like now it's people pay ten dollars a month for all of recorded music ever. It's different. And so getting people to

Kris Will that change? Ever.

Nick What's hard to say, the the stuff that pops up there's I think like vinyl sales are sort of at all time highs right now. And

Kris Yeah.

Nick so it's a different vibe. again, my records are in Australia. But like people having more of a s yeah.

Kris Minor back home. I kinda wish we were shooting this from my like I have in the bedroom like a bunch of vinyls. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Nick It's that kind of stuff. It's more like the audiophile thing. It's like buying records books. And like that's again like the kind of stuff that I'm into playing. And I I hope that UFO can do a good amount of this as well and collaborating with those sorts of creators and channels and DJs and so on. Is like, let's be listening to it. And you see it more even with like live events that are happening with these listening sessions. Come sit down. We're just gonna play a record. Like I went to one in Barcelona. couple months ago there was just Aphex Twin and a guy was just playing all this Aphex twin on vinyl, talking about it while he's playing it or whatever. It's like these different kinds of experiences around music. Yeah, bring the focus

Kris I really like that. I really like that.

Nick back rather than it just being like either background noise in a club. Or you know what I mean?

Kris Yeah, yeah. You know what I love? You know what I love the most about radio? you know when like there's this distinct radio type of voice, they'll hire someone with that voice and this is gonna probably gonna be like some random person you've never heard of, but they know everything about fucking music. And they'll come on on the mic in between every single song and they'll tell you like a background, they'll tell you like the piece of history, when this song song was made and how it was made, like and all that. Dude, when I ran into that, like for example, when I'm in my car. dude, I swear to God, like sometimes I'll fucking circle around the block just so I listen to the song or listen to the guy talking on the radio. It's just so

Nick Mm-hmm.

Kris cool. It's so fucking cool. But it's really difficult to it's really difficult to find those. And even if you find them, like for example, there's a lot of Serbian radio stations that are really good. And sometimes I'll write them, you know. I remember writing them like ten years ago before Shazam was even out. I remember writing them like what the fuck was this song at this time? Like I need this song. And then I'd ask them do you guys have a website, do you have some agenda where I can look at stuff? do you have and they just ignore me. So yeah. I d I don't know I don't know what to say. I d I don't know what my point was.

Nick Well, I I used to be on Yeah, I used to be on the other side of the of the mic doing that, being on radio

Kris Mm.

Nick for years. And I can tell you that some of those DJs might have had notes on the side that you kinda use. So you you know, you play two or three tracks in a row and then you're like, that was so and so. They put out this record on this lane,

Kris Yeah.

Nick and before that there were this, and actually a member from that band was in the next artist that I played and da da da whatever, whatever it is. but I also was the same, like driving around in Sydney and I would to tune the radio down to low on the on the like eighties, like around the eighty seven, eighty-eight on the frequency thing. Cause like at that FM radio, when it's up around 104, 106 or whatever, it's like they have more, it's a wider frequency band. So it's better quality, right? They have more data. So that's why the commercial stations have those sorts of numbers. Where the ones that are in the in the eighties or the low nineties, they have

Kris Yeah.

Nick less So the quality is worse. So they're cheaper. So they're like weirder community independent y stations. And so I'd love to tune down to there because you would hear the most random stuff. I would love that. And just it's some sixty something year old guy who just plays weird records on a Sunday afternoon, doing it for 20 years. that kind

Kris Yeah.

Nick of stuff I really like. But also from what you're talking about, I think you would like a podcast called History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs. Have you heard of that podcast?

Kris No.

Nick It's super good. You like it a lot. I'll talk to you in a year when you've listened to that. 'cause it's it's this guy

Kris In five in five hundred songs?

Nick Yeah. So it's this guy from the UK who I think he's been doing it for

Kris Yes.

Nick like maybe four or so years at least, and he's only about a hundred and fifty or a hundred and seventy episodes in or something. So he's going to five hundred.

Kris sold. I'm sold. I no, say no more. I'm sold.

Nick It's a crazy show. It's like the episode is like might be two and a half hours long. And it starts out with Frank Zappa, this and he's like, but he does the whole context, everything else that was made, the entire history of that band, everyone they were friends with, everyone who was ever in the band for a second and then left and then made this other way. Like he plays all of it. It's insane. It's the it it is it the workings

Kris You

Nick of a madman and it's incredible.

Kris You mentioned Frank Zappa. Have Frank Zappa's So there's a picture of Frank Zappa's fucking basement or whatever their go to at the time, in the fucking fifties, sixties, I don't even know when he was playing. The the

Nick Uh-huh.

Kris their go-to like the venue that they were playing at where like all the you know the misfits hang out at the time. And on that wall there's a writing that says it could happen here, and there's like a big red dot.

Nick Mm.

Kris And I have that picture and I have it framed and I had it on my wall. Because it's just so cool. It speaks the world to me and it speaks the world to everyone else. it could happen here. So fucking give it your role, even though we're at these early shitty starts that like no one is listening to us, no one cares. It's like you

Nick Yeah.

Kris know, some some weird fucking basement or whatever. it's it's so cool. I'm a big fan. but yeah. yeah.

Nick Can i can I shout out something else that that's making me think of? There's a a documentary about Devo that went out on Netflix maybe six months ago or so, maybe longer. but I love Devo and their story is insane. And you know, 'cause they were they were students at Kent State when like the National Guard came through and fatally shot like four students. who were protesting against the Vietnam War. And so they experienced that and they're just like, everything's completely messed up, you know, and it like broke their picture of the world. There were artists and stuff. And they started making out like all these weird art films and whatever and ultimately turned into Devo, De Evolution music and all this kind of thing. And so they were out in Ohio and whatever, and like I'm just gonna tell the story badly, but they're, you know, making this weird, weird music, you know, like Devo is like whip it, that song. a girl you want, all these sorts of songs, you know? they ended up being like hugely influential, for loads of bands that came after. But they kind of started out and then they managed to start touring and then I think the story was like David Bowie saw them play in New York or something, or got onto them and knew and then or he'd heard about them somehow and then when they played New York, Bowie came out and introduced them to the crowd and people were like, shit, like These guys are saying like Bowie's binging them up. And then when they made their first record, they did it in is it Cologne? Basically it was in the studios where Kraft Work made their first record, with the same producer that CraftWork worked with. And so it was like in that studio with Bowie there a little bit and with Brian Eno, and when that was the first Devo and whatever. You know what I mean? And so again it's

Kris Yeah.

Nick like you can be the weirdest bunch of freak art kids from the middle of nowhere. And just plug away at it and build your own world and make something weird and then and then Bowie will will take you where you need to go.

Kris Yeah. can I s just like quick shift direction a little bit? I wanna talk about UFO. I wanna talk about the the business model that you have behind it because it's really important that because you're not like it's not a business model for the for the you only, but it's business model for everyone that co that comes there. which is a huge responsibility, right? to do it right. So I wanna talk about that. Like what's your the what's the business model there? What's the like go to market strategy? Like I don't know what to ask. imagine I'm fucking like Joe Rogan and you're talking to millions of people. What would you want them to know? About artists? let's say t you're talking to artists.

Nick yeah. Yeah, I think I guess because I come from a artist and music background and independent media and radio background. So a lot of what has informed the the way that we're putting it together is like it's like what what would you want or how you know what I mean? Like trying to figure that out. Like what would be cool for it? While, you know, not not necessarily assuming to be able to solve the economics of the music industry alone and whatever. Do you know what I mean? Like for a while

Kris Yeah.

Nick that was kind of the conversation that was supposed to be had of like, well, how are you gonna figure it? It's just like surely it's not on us. Like we're just trying to create a magazine.

Kris Mm-hmm.

Nick You know what I mean? Like let's relax a little bit. so

Kris Yeah.

Nick that's kind of more it's more like shaped like that. It's like I think we've designed something pretty cool where artists and channels can join from cities around the world. We're kind of focused with we have a a initial cohort of artists who are based between the UK and Europe, US, Australia and a few places. And ideally, when we launch in November and put the call out for a lot of people that we're aiming for that kind of friends inviting friends and artists recommending other artists and it can kind of grow organically like that, you know? as as far as the sort of the business model or whatever of like what we're aiming for initially is like sustainability, like Let's make sure that this thing can stay on the air, that it can perpetuate, it can pay all its hosting costs, we can pay the radio licensing and stuff. you know, it's incorporated in in the Netherlands and and so on. So it's like it's from that basis first. But let's also make sure sorry?

Kris Why Netherlands? Sorry. W weird question, but why Netherlands?

Nick well, I mean, that's where I was living at the time when it was incorporated,

Kris okay.

Nick but it also allows for it to to have like licensing as an internet radio and and and pay licensing fees to the appropriate bodies and and all that kind of thing, right? but yeah, as we've kind of been building it out, it's also making sure that we can have people that have a profile or a member profile on UFO and it's free to join. You can sign up with your email, you can do do whatever. Then you can also have the option to be a supporter of the radio. That's very classic. you see that across a lot of stations all over the place in in key cities. And then let's design this thing so we can transparently distribute a percentage of those funds to the artists who are contributing on the station. A lot of other things going forward are kind of like watch this space. You know what I mean? Like things that can make

Kris Mm.

Nick sense on the magazine level are like they might be like brand collaborations or other commercial collaborations and and ways that we can but yeah crucially it's we're not gonna be doing like advertisements on the air and things like it's like the ways that we can kind of commercialize as a magazine is shaped by what's appropriate for the artists and the listeners and stuff.

Kris Can I throw one idea out there?

Nick Sure.

Kris We we we we just talked about this. What if there was a section on the website where you basically just invite people like yourself? you know, we were referring them to the as you know, people on the radio behind the mic who know everything

Nick Uh-huh.

Kris about music. So they just like essentially play music for different artists and give a little bit of background, a little bit of history, a little bit of context about how the song was made, when it was made, why it was made, anything. Just in between. I would tune in to that.

Nick Yeah, so mean, the way that the platform has been designed is that if there's a show like that, which is like a radio show, then they can submit like a channel proposal to bring their show

Kris Mm.

Nick to to the station. so yeah, the doors are open for stuff like that. And the other side is artists themselves. And an artist can be, you know, it's them like DJing or whatever, or you know, a performance, weird art video, like who knows what it might be. Do you know what mean? it's gonna be an experiment as it as it rolls along, but I think there will be elements like for instance, I'm doing a radio show on the station called Stereo, where it's pretty much that. I program and and play music and and stuff. I'm doing classic radio like I used to do back in the day. But yeah.

Kris Yeah, you need to send me all of these links, man. So just so I I can include them in the in the link of the episode, but I also want to check them out

Nick sure.

Kris as well. Right.

Nick Yeah, I we're pre we're pre-launch right now, So from November, it's very much we loop into and connected and talking with a lot of friends and artists and and so on and labels or you know, collectives or all that kind of stuff. Let's see what happens. It's an experiment.

Kris Yeah, I I was gonna ask you a bunch of questions, but that that just answers everything on my end, bec questions about the business. That that I think that's a great approach to run it as an experiment. Especially if you are at the cutting edge, like new technology stuff. especially when you're like the trend currently is against you, but at the same time I feel like there's a tipping point to every kind of like the what's the word? No everything is kind of when it like everything goes parabolic in terms of like all the royalties and all the fees and everything is just like concentrated at a very few individuals, both in like music, in art, in like AI and finance and everything else, right? So I think there's gonna be some kind of a tipping point of where everything just like reverts and hopefully crashes. And we rebuild things again with the new kind of values, with the new OS in general. so yeah, I'm excited

Nick Yeah.

Kris for music.

Nick Yeah, everything moves in cycles. And you know, the intention with this is just you know that basically that we as listeners can discover stuff from from different cities around the world. There's that sort of like mutual discovery that's happening. and that if we're giving people in a given city like the tools to kind of potentially come as a group, create a channel or individually as an artist. share their stuff and ideally the way UFO is built as well is like that we embed the SoundCloud or MixCloud or YouTube video or whatever from your channel as the artist. So ideally that it's not on our channels per se. So ideally that can also help people to kind of be discovered by by listeners and and whatever. And I a crucial part of all this as well is like that by building it like this that music or art or you know podcasts or whatever is like being seen in a context that lends itself towards what it is. Rather than being squashed and flattened into an Instagram style feed or YouTube itself

Kris Yeah.

Nick and being subject to those algorithms and whatever. It's like I can maybe I discover a UFO via my friend has a did a mix on the station or some artist that I follow put something up. And so when I get there and then I go, there's like 200 artists on here or there's a there's this other artist that I also know. And like maybe you start going down the rabbit hole a little bit and discovering different things that you're into and and whatever. And then you're like, like I can create a profile and then maybe I'll put it as a submission to become an artist too. Or I can put in a channel proposal. I've got an idea for a show. Like these are not we're not inventing any of these things. This is like that's

Kris Yeah.

Nick how a radio station works. It's like FBI is on the air, they have intakes three times a year, people put in their thing. there's also there's a curation element here where people put in proposal or sorry, submissions and so on, but it's not an open platform. It's not just anyone who writes in get it's like there is a an element of curation involved. Like it's a magazine.

Kris Yeah. I don't know much about the magazine aspect of it all. I'm just thinking only from the context from the from the context of you know the music and of throwing out like art there and like radio and whatever else. For some reason I'm not sure why it popped into my head, but I wanted to suggest or just ask you, have you considered as part of the go to market strategy, reaching out to like universities and kids in universities like specific for school or I guess like pretty much everywhere actually. Like I studied computer science, but like I would have loved to have something on the side where I just like host something, you know?

Nick Mm-hmm.

Kris And like because this is like my passion as a side hobby and I do it. And if it can earn me some income where I just play some cool music and run the show and have my own magazine and all that stuff. Like that's really cool. And it's there's usually students who have the most amount of time and kind

Nick Mm-hmm.

Kris of energy to start something. if you approach someone who's thirty-five, they're gonna be probably one or two kids and like has to have a stay a stable job or whatever else. So like for them is a lot like the stakes are much higher for them to do something like let's classify it as risky venture, versus a student. Just just sharing my thinking here. Not sure if it makes sense.

Nick Yeah, some ideas we've been having as far as the launch and go to market is also doing things in certain cities, sort of whether that's like, you know, flyers

Kris yeah.

Nick or making things physical or, you know, along the way. It can be you know, live streaming from a live event or like different different things that we can kind of do to show up. Again, like it's there's ideas there. distributing to put stickers up around the place or any way that we can but we're doing it at a global network scale.

Kris Yeah.

Nick but it's sort of it's been designed so it kind of comes from the local scenes out. And just keeping it simple. So like can we create something that's cool for a couple dozen people in a certain city that want to start doing stuff and then if it starts to kind of catch on a little bit, then cool. let's we're not trying to speed run to a a a million

Kris Yeah.

Nick listeners as fast as we can. It's like can we just make sure that we're putting something together? It seems cool, we're enjoying it, you know, the artists coming on or enjoying it and so on and like we can start we can start figuring it out basically. But there's a bunch of different ideas for like how we can kind of start get getting things going and for sure, like sharing it into universities, colleges, community radio stations everywhere. different networks and so on. Even but it can also be internet native, YouTube channels doing cool stuff and maybe they'd like to collaborate. a lot of this stuff where people are sort of just isolated and playing a single player game on the internet could be cool to to link up with something else. You know? And like and other other internet radios have been doing this for a long time.

Kris Dude, we could we should definitely yeah, go ahead and launch it. I'm sure you guys had million million ideas. But anytime you wanna come back and kind of give me the s you know, the status report, like updates, what you guys have been doing and maybe do a brainstorming session. Let's have the whole theme and let's do the brainstorming session, let's have some fun. Maybe like let's figure it out if I can play some music while recording this on Riverside. I'm sure there is a way, but I've never done that before. But yeah, that's that's a cool thing. So you said something that is really interesting, that maybe supports my thesis that everything is gonna come come around. Because there's a there's a difference when I play something on Spotify and there's a difference when I play something on radio. Meaning there's difference when I play something live. When you play something live, you tune into something. I don't know if you've had this experience. This could probably potentially sound like kinda weird, but I don't know I don't know if you've had this experience, you sit in your apartment or a house or whatever, and when everything you just sit inside, everything is closed. You kind of feel, you know, like if you close down your laptop, you turn off the TV and everything, it's just like weird kind of silence. But then you crack open a window and you just somehow feel connected to the world. So that's w I like one of the reasons I think that these streaming platforms have become big, obviously like their novelty and their super cool innovation and open up a lot of, you know, you know, careers and paths and monetization opportunities for everyone. But also there's this like a growing trend of like fucking loneliness and people like just being, you

Nick Right.

Kris know, lonely and not having too many friends and like so this sense of like connecting with someone or tuning in into something, it's vastly different than just like sitting in your fucking own like little, you know, place, like your Spotify playlist and it's the same fucking songs all over again. YouTube, it's all the same videos, blah blah blah. And even if there's something new that like is offered to you, y it's you alone who has to discover it and like take the step and like, you know, play it, watch it, listen to it, whatever. But when you tune in into the radio, it's it feels like you're getting connected to something, with someone, you know?

Nick Yeah.

Kris I'm not I'm not sure if the best comparison is opening a window so you basically feel connected to something you hear the mu you hear cars, you hear fucking birds, whatever. So you you kinda okay, I'm I'm part of something. Whereas like

Nick Yeah.

Kris when you're closed up, it's just sound it's just kinda weird. know? Does that make sense?

Nick It's it's a good of course. It's a good way of framing it. and it was like a key inspiration for UFO earlier and how it's kind of come together. Of course, because I'm a radio person as well, but it's that synchronous experience. We're listening to this together at the same time.

Kris Yeah. Yeah.

Nick We can jump in the group chat while it's happening. There's other people, and for sure, like being connected to other people. We also have that you know, parasocial. relationships that we have with, podcast hosts that we listen to regularly or yeah, radio hosts that are playing music and it's like I like tuning into sure. No, it's fine.

Kris Give me a second. Sorry, give me a second. now pause you some. My sister with her little kid.

Nick yeah,

Kris I should probably get going soon if they're if they're arrived. but yeah anyway,

Nick Yeah, totally.

Kris sorry. go on, go on, please.

Nick Yeah, no, that was a key part of it. And it's sort of it's built into the architecture of UFO as well. Like on the site, there is two live always-on feeds. and it's built in a way so that music from or media from the archives can be what do we call it? Like playlisted. Curated playlist is in the in the background that's happening. So when you jump onto UFO, if you see something cool, you could message your friend and hey, tune in, come check this out or whatever, right?

Kris Mm.

Nick We can listen to it together, that kind of thing. the same experience of someone who an artist or a radio host who's like, hey, I'm on now. They can share that and people can can tune in. So like we've we've designed it like that on purpose. So it's not just go to this magazine site and click around

Kris Yeah.

Nick and it's an isolated experience. It's yeah, how do we build something so that we can experience it together?

Kris Yeah, you just reminded me of something that I used to do earlier. I think the I started doing this around the COVID time when we were just like all locked up. In Tweet in Twitch, like I I was for some reason I associated to associate Twit Twitch with gaming, but they have a music section in there. So many cool musicians just playing their instruments, like playing

Nick Yeah.

Kris songs, doing cool stuff. And I was like, This is so cool and it's It's very soothing then someone plays a song for you and then starts talking a little bit, maybe laughing, maybe. So you don't necessarily feel kind of pressured to like, okay, like I'm I need to like watch this, I need to listen to them, right? But it's sort of like as a background and but it's c it's kinda cool. It's i it's is easy if I paid someone for like a private show and I just put them here in my room. I enjoyed it so much. I never I I didn't do this for a while. I need to type Twitch and and do this more often.

Nick Yeah, I mean I've

Kris Just so I don't forget.

Nick yeah, I've noted this trend and category happening on YouTube as well. And it's you can find people's channels that have done this a lot, but they've set up a space in their house. Sometimes it's just in their living room and they just

Kris Yeah.

Nick like play vinyl and live stream it or or just film it to to publish later. yeah. It's it's a vibe. Or, you know, record stores are doing it, cafes, all all kinds of stuff.

Kris Nice. I'm I'm gonna share a bunch of like cool songs with you. Like as you're talking, I'm just like songs are popping into my head that I wanna share with you. We need to do like a live stream, maybe l let's do a live stream sometime with like a listening ex kind of experience. Let's y you play a song, tell something about a song, I'll play a song, tell tell something about a song. Maybe we do that sometime. Not right now.

Nick Yeah. But there's there's a lot to share for sure. But yeah, I've just been I've been noting a lot like what what people were doing and from talking with friends and artists and like when you asked me sort of like, you know, where UFO is headed and what it's gonna be, I think it's a lot of like people have their own ideas, creative things that they might like to do, stuff that we're not gonna expect or predict. hey, I've had this idea I wanna do XYZ. I think it's gonna be a lot of that. Do you know what mean? So let's let's see what happens pretty

Kris Yeah.

Nick much. Yeah.

Kris Yeah. I love that you're running it as an experiment, honestly. I think it's cool. If you if there's any if there's a group of people that you need to allow them their creative freedom, it's artists. So maybe just

Nick Yeah.

Kris like a throw a you know, throw like a not not a contact button, but you know that pop up button that says like what's missing from this platform so they can like submit some quick feedback

Nick Uh-huh.

Kris and say like, what's missing? Tell us, we'll build it. Fuck yeah, let's go.

Nick Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty wild, man. even how UFO exists now in in beta and the stuff that's getting built out and finished before we launch the new site in in November and kinda go on from there. It's things that I'd spoken with developers about at various times. They're like, That's doesn't work like that. You know, like

Kris Mm.

Nick you you can't do that. which it's like it turns out that you can. It just took a bunch of extra time and really getting into it to fix it and solve it. But it was a lot of like the way that UFO is being built was quite counterintuitive. Why would you do that? And even if you could, do you know what I mean? So that's

Kris Yeah.

Nick that's this year has kind of been amazing for that reason. Of like the the the concept almost being like borderline non-technical, but then figuring out how to build through the year and just being like, you know, 'Cause it'd always be the conversation with a developer of like, we want to be able to do this. And they're like, Yeah, that's great. It doesn't work like that. but we've been able to build a lot a lot of this stuff and make it real. So yeah, it's good. Productive year, I would say.

Kris Yeah. Yeah, don't take feedback from developers, take feedback from your users.

Nick Of course, yeah. This is developers I was talking with to try and get it built in the first place.

Kris Yeah, yeah. all right, man. Shall we call it? this has been so

Nick Yeah, sure. Of course.

Kris fun. This has been really fun. we didn't talk about tech at all and I love it. well let's do this. Let's let's do this. We can we can have this like as a recurring kind of music segment. But yeah, man.

Nick Yeah, dig it, but.

Kris I I looking forward to next time. I honestly do. When was the lunch you said?

Nick November eleventh.

Kris November eleventh.

Nick Yes.

Kris very close to my birthday. But yeah, I'll be looking forward to that, man. and anything else before we wrap it up?

Nick no good, yeah. Thanks for inviting me on early in your congrats on the new podcast vehicle that you have here. Happy Travels.

Kris We didn't talk about that. Sorry, do you remember like this is what I mean when I when I say like I I do this podcast just I wanna hop on with people and just talk. Do you remember what we were talking about? We said like let's make a podcast about you giving me ad advice how to run a podcast and we'll just call it like hey Nick tells Cap how to run a podcast and there's like top ten advice or something like that. And we ended up not talking about that, which is absolutely fine. There's a there's a you have a reason to come back now, and I have a reason to spam you again.

Nick Yeah, I did yeah, I started I I I did radio for a long time and then I did a couple of shows and then I did the UFO podcast and I've also produced a few other shows for different people at different times. but I'm currently starting to work on a new show that I'm gonna do on on UFO as well. which will kind of be sort of yeah, interview style format with like artists and and different people and and so on. but yeah, I think you're kind of

Kris Just freestyling it.

Nick The the tech yeah, the tech is good now to just just do it and put it out and and just be moving on it. podcasts are another thing that's changed a lot even in the last few years. So but yeah.

Kris I'm freestyling it, man. I have no idea what I'm doing and I kinda like it. I don't wanna know to an extent. I'm not on a mission to like get the most subscribers, get the most views, get the most everything anything. I just wanna like record stuff and throw it out there. If it works, it works. Someone might like it, someone might not. Yeah, go ahead.

Nick Yeah, are you gonna throw it on like what channels are you gonna post it on out of interest?

Kris it's so it's Riverside and it's connected to YouTube, Spotify and ha Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, yeah. Those are the ones that are supported by Riverside. I think some other as well, but I didn't connect the rest. and also this is the third episode by the way, I did two with friends of mine. So I'm gonna officially announce it probably today once this all gets uploaded and I touch it up a bit. Edited and going out live today. But

Nick nice, nice. that's crazy.

Kris but thank you for coming, man. I hope we stay in touch. Obviously, we will stay in touch about ENS stuff. and I hope we stay in touch past that. anytime you have anything music related, interesting to share, please do share it. I'm a I'm a fan,

Nick Yeah, I can do that.

Kris I'm a big fan of music in general. Music

Nick Yeah.

Kris is a beautiful thing, as Mac would say.

Nick Yeah, I'll

Kris But anyway.

Nick I'll I'll for sure sh share a few tracks with you. See what you're into.

Kris Thanks for coming, man. I really appreciate it. And I cannot wait for the next time you hop on here and you have some some some cool stories to share with us, man. Honestly.

Nick Yeah, we'll we'll see what's happening in the near future. But otherwise, yeah, let's let's keep in touch. We'll keep chatting.

Kris Till next time, my friend. Okay. Bye.

Nick That works. Jerry Day. See ya man.

Kris What