NAMM 2026, pt 2: The Creator Shift (ft. Modern Biology)
- Evan Nickels
- 1 day ago
- 16 min read
For Part 2 of our NAMM 2026 recap, we explore how music creators are building sustainable careers outside of the traditional music industry model. As streaming revenue continues to fail musicians and CD sales decline, artists are pioneering new paths through direct-to-fan experiences and developing products instead of traditional merchandise.
One great example of this shift is Tarun Nayar from Modern Biology. After going viral on TikTok making music with plants and mushrooms, Tarun reinvented his music career by skipping traditional album releases, creating immersive live performances like Mushroom Church, and co-developing the Pocket SCÍON, an affordable biodata sonification device that lets anyone make music with plants. His journey from viral content creator to instrument developer reveals emerging opportunities for artists beyond streaming platforms and merchandise sales, showing what creative sustainability looks like in the modern music industry.
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Episode Transcript
Machine transcribed
[00:00:00] Dmitri: Hey, I'm here with Modern Biology, my old friend Tarun here. We found each other at NAMM after many, many years.
[00:00:06] Tarun: It's been 10 years. It's
[00:00:09] Dmitri: probably been 10 years.
[00:00:10] Tarun: Bloomington, Indiana, Lotus Festival, 10 years ago, maybe.
[00:00:12] Dmitri: Is that what it was,
[00:00:13] Tarun: yeah.
[00:00:13] Dmitri: Amazing. Yeah. Cool. So found you at NAMM.
You've got these crazy mushrooms at your booth. But they're connected to electronics. There's a musical instrument there.
[00:00:24] Tarun: Yeah.
[00:00:24] Dmitri: And you're making music with plants and mixtures? Yes.
[00:00:27] Tarun: Yeah, yeah. During the pandemic. So I was in a band called Deli to Dublin for 15 years touring. I met maybe more traditional arrangement of music and, uh, but I'm a biologist originally, and during the pandemic I had a lot of time and I was getting really deeply into modular synthesis.
And I discovered this whole world of plant music, which originated back in the seventies, and, uh, started experimenting. And found a few devices and then incorporated, uh, into a modular setup and started posting videos on TikTok, just for fun. because what else do you do during the pandemic?
[00:00:58] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:00:59] Tarun: And I was trying to figure out what to do at my time and, um, of those videos started going, you know, pretty viral.
very, very viral.
[00:01:07] Dmitri: Wow.
[00:01:07] Tarun: To the point where like, I remember, I posted my first video with mushrooms. I was up in the Northern Gulf Islands of, British Columbia. In the middle of nowhere, you know, and I posted a video, I plugged into an end cap mushroom, and the next day I had gained 160,000 followers.
And I had been like, retweeted, not retweeted, but like reposted by big boy. And like Pharrell followed me and Miguel followed me. And I was like, what? I'm in the, like a tiny little island in the middle of nowhere and all this stuff is happening, like, what is even going on? And it went on to do like, you know, 25 million views or something.
So yeah, there's this. Sort of fascinating intersection of biology, music technology, but also the power of social media, that I was, you know, up until then, I think I had like 2000 followers or something. So it sort of
was a bit of a shift for me to start thinking about this as a
viable music project.
If it's really just a, bedroom. Pandemic.
[00:02:03] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:02:04] Tarun: Obsession.
[00:02:04] Dmitri: Wow. Yeah.
So it just kind of happened. It wasn't the plan?
[00:02:07] Tarun: No, no. I mean, I was literally just messing around.
[00:02:10] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:02:10] Tarun: Uh, and posting my experiments.
[00:02:12] Dmitri: Wow. That's great. Yeah. So how did you turn that into your thing? Like you went from viral? Because people sometimes get, we get this viral moment, and then it just sort of like, damn, I can't recre recreate that.
Or I'm, I'm working on it. I'm always getting a little bit better, but it's not ever getting to that moment again, or,
[00:02:27] Tarun: yeah. Yeah, I mean, I had been, so I ran a festival for, you know, you and I know each other in many different ways, and I, after the band, I had started a South Asian youth culture festival in Vancouver, and so I was running a 10,000 person festival.
[00:02:41] Dmitri: Right.
[00:02:41] Tarun: The staff of 20
[00:02:42] Dmitri: started out was like, whoa.
[00:02:43] Tarun: Yeah.
[00:02:44] Dmitri: Amazing.
[00:02:44] Tarun: Yeah. And I, I was getting frustrated because none of them knew how to use TikTok. I was like, you guys are 20, like, you should know how to use this platform. And then during the pandemic I was like, yeah, I'm just gonna figure it out. So I was doing a lot of experimentation with different styles of TikTok At AT in burner account.
[00:02:59] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:03:00] Tarun: And my burner account name was Modern Biology.
[00:03:02] Dmitri: Mm.
[00:03:02] Tarun: Which turned into my name afterwards.
[00:03:03] Dmitri: Wow.
[00:03:04] Tarun: But I was just like experimenting with like POV style, like how long they should be, you know, what's the narrative arc? And then I sort of found a format that seemed to work and I started posting in that form.
So it was a bit of a, you know, it was an overnight zero to, you know, I'd gone from zero to like couple thousand to like 10,000 to 50,000. To a hundred thousand and then things started going nuts, you know? so it was, it's not like I didn't have any content. It wasn't like a random cat video
[00:03:32] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:03:32] Tarun: That went viral.
It was like, you know, sort of progression. And then I am, you know, still, I would say, like exploring and expanding based on those original ideas that came up with it. And then Instagram came much later. Instagram came like a year after TikTok that I saw hosting stuff to Instagram.
[00:03:47] Dmitri: Gotcha. Yeah.
[00:03:48] Tarun: When I was like, okay, I'm ready to come out of the closet.
[00:03:50] Dmitri: Oh,
[00:03:51] Tarun: you know, but you're right, you
[00:03:52] Dmitri: the people who know me are gonna see me. Yeah, exactly. Not the kids on Tiktok.
[00:03:54] Tarun: Exactly. It's not, it's like random people that dunno. But I think, for me as an artist, and I've been an artist for my whole life, I realized that when the pandemic sort of stopped, that there was an opportunity for this to be more than a 15 second video.
It could, you know, really what it's pointing at and what it's always pointed out for me is this experience of being connected with nature.
[00:04:15] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:04:15] Tarun: And so I started asking myself, if I took this into the real world, what would it look like? You know, how do you turn a 15 second video into a full hour and a half experience?
And then I just started messing around, like doing pop-up shows in parks for friends with headphones on and
[00:04:31] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:04:32] Tarun: You know, like, and then we started, that worked well. And so then we toured that all over the world. I would like show up to Berlin, put up. Tickets and and it's almost like an old fashioned rave.
[00:04:42] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:04:42] Tarun: Like have some headphones with me and then post tickets, and then post the location the day of the show. And people would have to find this like pinpoint in a park. Oh, that's, we did it without permits, with nothing.
[00:04:54] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:04:54] Tarun: And we would sell, like, you know, we'd do multiple shows a day. We'd do like three shows in Berlin, in the same park in the same day.
And people had to like find us at Truck Tower Park or, you know, some park in Amsterdam. And, uh, and so I toured. Yeah, globally like that for a couple years, like super bare bones touring. No agent, no manager. Just like literally selling tickets on Eventbrite.
[00:05:13] Dmitri: Amazing.
[00:05:13] Tarun: And doing popup shows and parks.
And then started doing these events called Mushroom Church, where we took that experience into much bigger venues. 'cause then I had built up enough of an audience to sell like four or 500 tickets. 600 tickets, so forth.
[00:05:25] Dmitri: Wow, that's awesome.
[00:05:26] Tarun: Yeah, so it was like, very, like as somebody who's been in the more traditional music industry for a lot of my life.
I just became so frustrated with the way that it doesn't work for musicians anymore.
[00:05:35] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:05:35] Tarun: At all.
[00:05:35] Dmitri: Well, that's, that's what's interesting to me. Yeah. Because I walked up to your booth first. Great to see you. What, what the hell are you doing with all these mushrooms?
[00:05:41] Tarun: Yeah.
[00:05:42] Dmitri: We're gonna have to put some sound of mushrooms in here, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And plants and stuff.
[00:05:45] Tarun: Yeah.
[00:05:45] Dmitri: but then also, like I found out you've got this device,
[00:05:48] Tarun: right?
[00:05:48] Dmitri: It's about this big.
[00:05:49] Tarun: Yeah.
[00:05:49] Dmitri: We'll show it here. Yeah. And it's, It's super affordable. Yeah. And anybody can go into the woods and connect it to plants, mushrooms, whatever.
[00:05:57] Tarun: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:57] Dmitri: I mean, we haven't even talked about how that works.
Yeah. What, you said plant music camera in the seventies, but what is the instrument called and what is it doing?
[00:06:03] Tarun: Sure. Yeah. So the instrument's called, pocket Scion. It's based on, um, I made these instruments with my friends at, in Intro and Glasgow. So they're a boutique synthesizer maker and they, built the predecessor of the pocket scion called the Scion.
And that's the unit that I had in my modular case and was touring the world with. And it's probably, you know, racked up a couple hundred million views with their device. So they were obviously aware of who I was. 'cause I was, I think single handedly selling, you know, selling the like hundred
[00:06:32] Dmitri: You were their ambassador
[00:06:33] Tarun: Exactly.
Without, you know, any formal agreement. Uh, and then I came down to NAMM. Three years ago to look for someone. 'cause every show people would be like, how can I do this? This is so cool. It's crazy. And I was like, you can't, because you have to buy a fricking eurorack system, which is, wait, you know, Eurorack is like a modular synthesizer system.
It's complicated and expensive. So I didn't feel good. And there's some other commercial products, but none of them I was happy recommending to other people.
[00:07:00] Dmitri: Right.
[00:07:00] Tarun: so then, you know, three years ago I came down to NAMM, didn't find a partner, talked to Stylophone, talked to teenage engineering. and then, I was, was randomly in Berlin for Super Booth playing a show and I stopped by the in instro tent and said hi to Jason Ian from in intro.
I was like, guys, any chance that you wanna like do a device with me? Like I get hundreds of people asking me to do this thing and I need someone who can like actually build it. And they were like, yeah, let's do it. And four or five months later we had a prototype. And then, you know, four or five months after that we were like, had a working device that we were all happy with.
And so that came out in August and. You know, things have been really,
[00:07:36] Dmitri: yeah.
[00:07:36] Tarun: Really solid since then.
[00:07:37] Dmitri: Yeah,
[00:07:38] Tarun: it's been great.
Yeah.
[00:07:38] Dmitri: I love the idea of selling $150 synth. Is that what it costs? Something like that. Yeah.
[00:07:42] Tarun: Yeah.
150 bucks
[00:07:43] Dmitri: as merch at a show.
[00:07:44] Tarun: Yeah.
[00:07:44] Dmitri: As opposed to
[00:07:45] Tarun: Yeah.
[00:07:46] Dmitri: Follow me on Spotify.
[00:07:47] Tarun: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:07:48] Dmitri: Or get a t-shirt
[00:07:49] Tarun: and where I will never make any money.
[00:07:50] Dmitri: Right.
[00:07:51] Tarun: Follow me on Spotify and support Daniel X, you know,
[00:07:54] Dmitri: drones
[00:07:54] Tarun: yacht. Yeah, drones.
[00:07:56] Dmitri: Sorry.
[00:07:56] Tarun: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for real though. Like, it, it feels terrible and I think, uh, what I was saying to you at the booth the other day is, as a musician. You know, we used to be able, I'm from the era of selling CDs where we used to be able to go to a festival, get paid our fee, and then at a good festival by the end of the weekend
[00:08:13] Dmitri: double it
[00:08:13] Tarun: Yeah. You've sold 3000 to 5,000 bucks worth of stuff.
[00:08:16] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:08:17] Tarun: And that just does not happen.
[00:08:19] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:08:19] Tarun: You know, even if you have the most innovative bandcamp, cool. Weird thing, you're still gonna sell 3000 bucks worth of anything. so having a product, which is not a. Listen to me some more thing. Yeah. It's actually like a usable thing that people can, can mess with is really, I mean.
It feels amazing. I honestly feel like this is the highlight of my musical career.
[00:08:39] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:08:39] Tarun: Having a product.
[00:08:40] Dmitri: I mean, you are killing it too. I mean, you have a big audience, like your social platform is crazy.
[00:08:46] Tarun: Yeah,
[00:08:46] Dmitri: yeah, yeah. And you're posting beautiful videos that Right. And that's the other thing that's kind of interesting about your career, and this is why I want to talk to you.
Yes. You have this cool instrument
[00:08:53] Tarun: Yeah.
[00:08:53] Dmitri: Of people should check out.
[00:08:54] Tarun: Right.
[00:08:54] Dmitri: So ethereal and awesome and like anybody can start messing with it.
[00:08:58] Tarun: Yeah. Kids
[00:08:58] Dmitri: it's, yeah.
[00:08:59] Tarun: Grandmas
[00:09:00] Dmitri: or non musicians or. Music freaks who are just like, I don't want to learn something new. I just wanna plug in into nature, like you say.
[00:09:06] Tarun: Yeah. Yeah. And also it's, like quite deep because like on the surface it's plug and play, but you can, there's a lot of raw information that you can stream out of it and do your own projects
[00:09:16] Dmitri: or add stuff onto it
[00:09:17] Tarun: or, or like, it's very transparent. Like you don't have to stick with the algorithms that we've built in.
[00:09:22] Dmitri: Huh.
[00:09:22] Tarun: You can just stream either the pulse wave audio or the OSC data out and then make your own conclusions with the data.
[00:09:28] Dmitri: Wow.
[00:09:29] Tarun: Rather than sticking with. The stuff that we've built.
[00:09:31] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:09:31] Tarun: So it's, it's really like, I'm originally a biologist and so it's, it's really like meant to be a citizen. Science project, science, science, yeah.
Yeah. Art tool. Yeah.
[00:09:38] Dmitri: That's so cool.
[00:09:39] Tarun: Yeah.
[00:09:39] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:09:39] Tarun: Or you could use it to like modulate your filter cutoff on your guitar pedal. You know, so I have a plant
[00:09:45] Dmitri: I'm playing the music with my plant is putting on the filters.
[00:09:48] Tarun: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The plant is modulating this music.
[00:09:50] Dmitri: Yeah,
[00:09:50] Tarun: yeah, totally. It's
[00:09:51] Dmitri: my audio engineer over there.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Uh, yeah, and, and I guess what's interesting to me about the career side of this is like you skip making a record, you're jamming with plants.
[00:10:00] Tarun: Yeah.
[00:10:00] Dmitri: Posting on socials and then doing a live tour.
[00:10:03] Tarun: Yeah.
[00:10:03] Dmitri: And now selling merch. That's not a record. It's an instrument.
[00:10:05] Tarun: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's true. Right? Is
[00:10:07] Dmitri: that, is that accurate,
[00:10:07] Tarun: very? unconcerned with streaming. I think I have 4,000 followers on Spotify. Or monthly listeners on, on Spotify, because I just can't get my head around why I would spend time doing it.
[00:10:20] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:10:20] Tarun: Like just, I love recorded music, but in terms of use of my time, I do wanna have a return.
[00:10:28] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:10:28] Tarun: Like I don't wanna spend six months making a record and then it's just like a full on like work of love that.
[00:10:35] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:10:35] Tarun: You know what I mean? Like
[00:10:36] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:10:36] Tarun: It did just, it stopped making sense after I put out a few records. Some of them did. Well. And then other ones, you know, they'll do like, what, a hundred thousand streams or something and what is that worth?
Like 40 bucks.
[00:10:47] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:10:48] Tarun: You know what I mean? Like what the hell am I spending thousands of dollars mixing and mastering and doing ambisonic? Like what is it for? I'd rather do experiences.
[00:10:57] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:10:57] Tarun: Where there's some kind of idea.
[00:10:58] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:10:58] Tarun: So
I still do put stuff out, but it's not the focus. This is about like the whole, and it's funny because I'm still, you know, because I've been in music for so long, I still have a lot of friends and.
My manager is a very traditional music industry guy, and he'll always sort of be, I love you, Eli, but he'll always be like, let's put out the record and tour it. I'm like, that doesn't work. None of this shit works anymore. It's fully broken unless you're Bieber Swift or something like, it doesn't work.
We have to think totally differently.
[00:11:27] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:11:28] Tarun: And anytime someone tries to convince me otherwise, I'm like, what's in it for you? You know, like it's just like You know, there's a big rift happening and everyone but musicians are making money.
[00:11:38] Dmitri: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting that you've carved this path.
It's actually inspiring that you've carved this back,
[00:11:43] Tarun: right?
[00:11:44] Dmitri: You've always been entrepreneurial,
[00:11:45] Tarun: right?
[00:11:45] Dmitri: I remember you're booking your own tours,
[00:11:47] Tarun: right?
[00:11:47] Dmitri: And uh, and then you made your own festival.
[00:11:49] Tarun: Right?
[00:11:49] Dmitri: And now you just reinvented yourself completely.
[00:11:52] Tarun: Right.
[00:11:52] Dmitri: With such a spiritual, kind of like universal music form now.
[00:11:57] Tarun: Right. I'm
50 now. Like I need to like. Yeah, that's
[00:12:00] Dmitri: take it down a notch.
[00:12:01] Tarun: 7:00 PM shows and the plant music is more my vibe.
[00:12:04] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:12:05] Tarun: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:12:05] Dmitri: Amazing. anything coming next for you? How are you seeing the future for you, for this industry? Um, what are you looking at next?
[00:12:13] Tarun: I mean, so at the moment I am, because we just put out the product in August, I am really, neck deep in coding and stats analysis of the data that we're generating.
So the plots and stuff that you saw are things that I'm working on, to try to best capture the biology that we're looking at, and then best translate that into sound.
[00:12:35] Dmitri: Hmm.
[00:12:35] Tarun: So that there's an immediate connection, like when you touch the plant and the resistance of the circuit changes, you should be able to hear that as an expression in music too, so that the kind of feel of the device is as musical as possible.
And I think we're still, you know, we'll keep on putting out firmware updates over the next year or so. We have one planned for next month and another one planned for Earth Day. And so I think that that will, you know, continue. and the device will just get sort of cooler and cooler. And then once we're up and running there, then it's really about like audio visual expression of the data so that you're watching the actual statistical data.
So you're, you're tuning into the, like, electrical fields of plants visually. 'cause for me, what I've noticed is when people are watching the thing at the same time as they're playing with the plants, and then that's when the penny drops, that this is real. If they just hear music, they're like, what is this?
But what is this coming from? Like, what is, but if they touch the plant and they see the spikes in electricity and they're hearing a change, then it's like, oh my God, the world is a magical place.
[00:13:34] Dmitri: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:13:34] Tarun: And I love everyone.
[00:13:35] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:13:35] Tarun: And you know, like we can't, you know, as musicians, I don't have the power to do much, but I think, the power to reconnect.
To nature and to ourselves Yeah. Is something that we can do.
[00:13:44] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:13:44] Tarun: So that's my own little from
[00:13:45] Dmitri: Yeah. Amazing. Tarun. So great to see you.
[00:13:48] Tarun: Yeah, man.
[00:13:48] Dmitri: Modern biology.
[00:13:49] Tarun: Modern biology.
[00:13:50] Dmitri: Where should people look for you first? TikTok Instagram. It's
[00:13:52] Tarun: Insta TikTok is a fricking chaos. So Instagram.
[00:13:55] Dmitri: Awesome. Cool, man.
Good luck. Good. See you.
[00:13:57] Tarun: Thanks,
Dimitri.
[00:13:57] Dmitri: I appreciate it.
[00:13:58] Tarun: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:00] Dmitri: Um, can I keep video running and just get a weird side shot with you talking to me even? Yeah, sure. You, you'll still be looking forward, but um, yeah. Yeah. It'll just tell the little edit. Yeah. Don't be crooked, not you.
I don't know what we're talking about, but move your hand a lot. I'm gonna stand and nod.
[00:14:24] Tarun: Right, right, right. Well, you know, uh, I mean. So you've totally changed to tech stuff.
[00:14:28] Dmitri: Yeah. We're doing PR and marketing for tech companies.
[00:14:31] Tarun: Yeah. And it's because musicians don't make money, I'm guessing.
[00:14:33] Dmitri: Uh, that's part of it.
There's just don
[00:14:34] Tarun: money in that racket.
[00:14:35] Dmitri: Yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's definitely part of
[00:14:38] Tarun: it. I thought it was like very interesting and sort of enterprising to just see where the opportunity actually lies.
[00:14:43] Dmitri: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's been super good. I'm trying to get you talking with me nodding for a little bit, so I should probably ask you another question.
Yeah. Ask question. Ask. Um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. Lemme think. Well, could you describe like, uh, a little bit more about like what happens when you're Yeah. When you plug in the plant?
[00:14:59] Tarun: Yeah, sure. So when you plug in the plant, you're completing a circuit and, uh, we're using a little 5 5 5 chip a timer, which is like a classic chip that you can buy for many electronic store.
And, uh, what that does is create a pulse wave whose frequency. Is related to the resistance of the circuit. And so as the resistance goes down, the frequency goes up. As the resistance goes up, the frequency goes down. And so that allows you to kinda listen to the resistance of a circuit, and then we turn that pulse wave into a bunch of different synthesizers.
So we're sort of like listening in on electricity.
[00:15:35] Dmitri: Yeah. Cool.
[00:15:35] Tarun: It's a nice translation.
[00:15:36] Dmitri: Yeah, that's great. I love the science of it.
[00:15:38] Tarun: Yeah.
[00:15:38] Dmitri: Yeah.
[00:15:39] Tarun: Yeah.
[00:15:39] Dmitri: Okay. I think that's good. Cool. Um, let me hit stop on this and I can answer your question without.
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The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Weekly episodes include interviews with music tech movers & shakers, deep dives into seismic shifts, and more.
