True Ownership Beyond Streaming with Joshua Stone

This week, we're exploring the future of direct-to-fan commerce with Joshua Stone, the CEO and Co-Founder of Stuff.io and book.io. Josh has some serious backing, including names like Mark Cuban, Snoop Dogg, and Charles Hoskinson, the co-founder of Ethereum just to name a few, and has been working on building Web3 infrastructure that lets artists sell media directly to fans that fans can own and not just rent. We talk about why streaming doesn't pay most artists, how direct-to-fan can actually create real revenue and why we finally have the technology to let fans own digital music again. Whether you're an artist looking for new revenue streams or just curious about where music commerce is heading, we cover a lot of ground

The News!

• General public ‘more concerned than excited’ about increased use of AI

• In the AI Age, the Music Industry Needs New Metadata Standards. But Time Is Running Out

• Spotify to Develop AI Music Products in Partnership With Major Record Labels

•  ‘Death to Spotify’: the DIY movement to get artists and fans to quit the music app

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Episode Transcript

Machine transcribed

10:21- Joshua Stone

[00:00:00] Dmitri: Joshua Stone is the CEO and co-founder of stuff.io and book.io two pioneering Web3 platforms, reshaping how digital media is owned and distributed. Backed by high profile investors, including Mark Cuban, Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Ethereum and Carano Bertlesman Digital Media Investments, which is the parent company of PMG Records and Penguin Random House and Ingram Content Group, the world's largest distributor Mission is to replace outdated digital licensing with true blockchain based ownership of music, video, eBooks, audiobooks, and games. Josh's background includes building large scale consumer applications at cinemark, AT&T and Expedia. He's a leading voice on the future of digital media. What accolades. So much stuff you've done.

Welcome to the podcast, Josh.

[00:00:49] Joshua: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you having me on. I'm looking forward to, to chatting.

[00:00:54] Dmitri: Yeah. Did I see that you just added Snoop Dogg to your advisory board and cap table as well?

[00:00:58] Joshua: We did, we did. Um, that was a, I'd say, a not short process. I think we talked to him for, gosh, probably almost, over a year for sure.

 before we finally, figured it all out. And, yeah, he's really an interesting, entrepreneur, really. Like he's, he is very technology forward. yeah, it's great to have him on, captive, obviously, like, you know, one of the biggest. Microphones on the planet and, just a huge, background in, in music and entertainment in general.

And, has his hands on a bunch of other things too. So it's, it's really cool. It's gonna be a cool, uh, a great collaboration with him.

[00:01:28] Dmitri: That's cool. I just love just how many, Entities of significance you have involved with this and yet I think for a lot of the music industry stuff.io might be just emerging for them.

They're starting to connect and you guys are coming to music Tectonics, which is why I wanted to talk to you because I think there's a lot we can learn from you, about the, direct to fan, experience solutions, especially as it is emerging now in late 2025 into the new year 2026. so let's dive in.

stuff.io is not solely a music company, but you work with all sorts of creators, including people who produce books, audio, video, and music. You can tell by some of the folks that I mentioned in your bio that are involved as investors or advisors. Let's start off by asking what shifted that made direct to fan relationships and entertainment and media more relevant, doable, scalable in recent years?.

[00:02:16] Joshua: No, I mean, it's, a good question. Um, you know what's, really funny is like streaming in general just kind of broke that historic ownership model. Like before, streaming happened, we owned all of our physical media, like our vinyl and our books and our DVDs, and now we live in this world where we basically just have these temporary licenses.

And so. That was sort of the technology solution that got put in place to stop, Napster and all that. when things kinda shifted to go digital back, around, 99, 2000, all that sort of stuff. and so really it's taken until now for technology to, has kind of finally caught up to where we have the capability To create individual digital objects and track them in a scarce and, DRM protected way. and so this really, you know, is gonna enable this huge growth because we're gonna go from this, you know, right now, the creator economy, right? That a lot of people talk about. It's like full-time creators.

There's about 300, 330 million of them. That's projected to, in the next five years, grow to over a, billion full-time creators. And so, creators want to have these connections to their fans because right now they don't, when they're going through any sort of centralized system, fans want to connect with the creators, which is obviously apparent when you look at like Twitch and TikTok and even Patreon and even OnlyFans, right?

Like, but all of those, solutions. The consumer really doesn't own anything, and the creator doesn't really have a connection to them. So we're finally to this point where we can, utilize, a Web3 tool set as infrastructure in a way that isn't nerdy or, crypto, cryptocurrency or all of those, sort of difficult things and use it as pure infrastructure to enable this, new way to sell and distribute digital media.

[00:03:50] Dmitri: I wanna play devil's advocate a little bit for the music side get your response to it. Because music streaming has become this primary means of listening to music and helping artists and labels monetize recordings and songs. And it's working in a sense, right? So why should artists, managers, labels be focused on direct to fan commerce in addition, or instead.

[00:04:10] Joshua: No, that's a good question.

 and kind of funny, like even relating back to the Snoop Dogg thing, right? Like he famously had a video going around, I don't know, like a year, a year and a half ago around, you know, he, he'd bought death row and, was frustrated 'cause he got a check for $40,000 for a billion streams.

[00:04:24] Dmitri: Wow.

[00:04:24] Joshua: So it's, you know, it's no secret that streaming doesn't really pay out well. Like if you're in that top echelon, right? If you're the Taylor Swift's and stuff of the world, like of course you're making, the lion's share and that's kind of how those contracts are set up. But. On the lower, tier, you're making fractions of a cent for a play.

It just doesn't really, it's not economical. And so, we kind of take an approach of, instead of sort of an either or, but more of kind of a both. And to say, the way we should reframe and think about streaming is purely for discovery, right? It's basically our modern day version of FM radio,

[00:04:57] Dmitri: right

[00:04:58] Joshua: so. everything's free. I can listen to ads or maybe, I could pay for a subscription, like satellite radio was back in the day or something. and I can, listen to all kinds of new stuff. The original purpose of that was to drive fans to then go buy the album, which was the same purpose of like a music video as well, right?

It was like, Hey, here's a music video. the whole point of it was to go and then actually buy the thing from the artist and support them that way. So, and even in that model, right, it's like historically what drives, 80% of that revenue. And this was actually from some stats that, Spotify put out recently, like.

 about 5% of the total audience accounts for 80% of the streams. Right. Which is pretty insane when you think about that. And it, I think it trickles down to, concerts and merch and, all the other things that are out there to buy. And so when we can really, kind of take a step back and say,

 I think, from an industry perspective, if you're an artist right now, it's very difficult. You're not gonna make a whole lot from streaming. You're using that to try to get people to show up to a concert. You're trying to sell them merch, and those are kind of your two primary paths to, make money.

And so what we're able to augment there is to say, Hey, there's actually like, a digital version of the album, right? So closest thing to a, what a digital CD would be, we can bring that in. It brings in ownership. and so it's to sell to that super fan audience, right? So instead of thinking it in terms of, one big bubble of, Hey, this is everybody that listens to music, it's much more of a funnel, right?

And at the very top, you kind of have streaming where anybody can listen to it, and then you drill down to, hey, somebody's followed you, they added you to a playlist. they listen to you on the regular. they become a fan, they'll go to your concert. Like we're driving down into that funnel to say like, we're targeting the super fans, right?

The people that are, really interested in connecting with that artist and will pay for the VIP experience and unlocking a new mechanism to, produce a new revenue stream. So it's not a revenue stream to replace streaming its revenue, stream to augment it, right.

[00:06:39] Dmitri: Yeah, that makes sense.

Well, let's get even more tactical. What are some of the things artists and labels can accomplish with direct to fan strategies that they can't with a Spotify and Apple Music, a YouTube.

[00:06:49] Joshua: Yeah, for sure. you know, what's, wild, what we've seen, and just a little, bit of history. we launched the platform in 2022 publicly and then, we were primarily focused on books and then we rolled out audio books.

I have a background publishing, so my background's not in music. but when we came up with the idea and all the technology, we realized it would work for all sort of digital assets. then it took us a while to get to where we were able to launch, music and albums and video. And so we then launched the stuff.io platform, I guess maybe a year and a half or so ago, and have been slowly ramping that up.

So what we've really seen happen in that time is the ability for artists. Who, maybe only have, 10,000 followers or less, right? But they can sell an album to their fan base and maybe they only sell 500 or a thousand, units of that album, but, they could sell that for five or $10 or, whatever price they want.

And they make an infinite amount more money than they do from, streaming money. and so it really allows them to, you know, start to utilize this model where they can use, a Spotify and an Apple to, capture people that are interested, but then monetize them in, in a new and different way.

Right? So, and then we do a lot of interesting stuff too, where they can, bundle different things. one thing that, it allows you to do is once you've sold an album, right, say an artist sells an album, they can know who that person is and then that person can get access using that as verification to other things, right?

And that could just be the artist, giving them maybe an unreleased track that is nowhere else. It could be access to buy concert tickets before anybody else. It could be to buy exclusive, merch, or the next album or music video or whatever. So it gives them a whole lot of different ways.

And I think on the music video side too, right? It's like music videos historically, right from the outset were basically marketing commercials to get people to buy that album. And now what's happened is, we've, gone away from that a lot of labels have cut music.

 video budgets like tremendously. if they'll even give an artist a budget, which is why most of them are just visualizers or looks like something shot on an iPhone because there's no way to monetize it when they put it up on YouTube. Yeah, they're gonna get, some amount of. revenue from it.

But by far right, it's, you know, YouTube, or vivo monetizing that and capturing all the revenue from it. So this would allow them to sell music videos directly, right? So if you think about an artist that you really like, if they put out some nice video and you had, exclusive chance to buy one, maybe there's only a couple thousand of 'em or something, fans, you know, the super fans are gonna pile in and want to buy and own that and see that content, so.

You know, really it, shifts the way that, and just at a broad level too, right? Like, if you think about social media companies at the highest level, right? Like Cardi B just put out a new album, right? And she's been very big on, social media in the last, several years. and has got a lot more.

This is why it took her so long to put an album out too. She's making so much more from that influence and the social media side of it, than she does from making music directly. so what this also allows us to do is, the sort of inverse of that is true, which is basically Cardi B has given away all of her content to social media networks for free.

Right? And social media networks definitely monetized it. And, you know, Cardi sees some portion of that, but this allows her to take some parts of that media too, right? If she's backstage or she's in the studio with somebody or. You know, writing stuff or hanging out with fans or going on a tour, any sort of social content that an artist would also wanna monetize or have some reason to, create a collectible of and give away, it gives 'em a path to do that to their audience and just increases and strengthens that fan to create a connection.

[00:09:58] Dmitri: Josh for a book publishing guy. You seem to know a lot about the music industry.

[00:10:02] Joshua: There's a lot of similarities. There's a lot of similarities.

[00:10:04] Dmitri: Right. Good point. So what about for like an emerging musician with, no label? What's the first step they can take toward direct to fan success?

[00:10:13] Joshua: I mean, we definitely don't shy away from telling people all the time.

 I mean, I, I'm actually, talked to an artist the other day and, he was just starting out and I told him, I was like, yeah, put it on Spotify. Like, don't, We definitely don't think of it in terms of you should have to start here first, right? because it, you know, put it on SoundCloud. Like, try to capture some amount of audience and then you can begin to then monetize that stuff directly when you've created that following.

Right? and even when you start out, right, it could be, maybe it's only a couple hundred albums, right? maybe you're only releasing a hundred. mix tapes basically. And you're, charging, 10, $20 a piece or, you know, even less than that, you can charge, a dollar or two a piece or something.

Right. So, and as you, begin to do that, then you can start to layer in experiences as well, right? Like, a lot of what we've seen, which, you know, book side, you know, my background on the, publishing side, like we. I was connected to a lot of the publishers and you know, some of the investors and stuff.

 and, obviously a book text file is an easier thing to, manipulate. That was sort of our prototype for this, but always with this vision to go, into full media. And so as we went through that process, we tested with lot of different creators. And what's interesting is when you really get into those, different, kind of what I was mentioning, where you're,

 for instance, like we had an author, he is a New York Times bestseller, and he released a book, then he had, it was a series. And so then the next one came out and then he offered a discount for everybody who bought the first one. And then when you bought the second one, you got a discount.

And then I think he, just automatically gave away like the fourth installment if you had those first three, right? So you can start to layer in these interesting, like merchandising things that don't work. that are impossible in, the streaming world. but really, like, my first step to them is like, hey, try to create a channel, try to create a fan base.

Like once you've created a, fan base, then you're, able to then begin to monetize that, right? So, like, the Cardi B example, right? Like, if, you had one of her early, you know, imagine if, she had done this and she had put out a mix tape back when she was in Atlanta still stripping, and you had one of like a hundred.

 her first mixed mixtapes ever or something. Right. It would be incredible, right? from a fan perspective, like the value of that would be just massive and super cool. At that time, it would've been really cool for her to say like, Hey, I sold a hundred albums. Right? And when somebody's starting out, that's, you know, you've got these lower goals to try to, build your audience.

So,

[00:12:19] Dmitri: yeah. Super. Cool. Alright, we have to take a quick break, but I want to get into more of this fan experience and how fans benefit from this. When we come back, we'll be right back.

Okay, we're back. Josh, this is super fun to hear. Kind of this updated take on what Direct to Fan can look like in 2025, 2026.

I like some of the examples you started to give in the last couple of questions. Let's talk more. How do fans benefit when artists sell directly? What are some other like creative kinds of experiences or access that become possible when you set up this direct to fan channel?

[00:12:53] Joshua: Yeah, for sure. I'll contrast that too with, that streaming side where it's like, you know, at the streaming side, if rights change, with a label or, you know, one label consumes another one,

[00:13:02] Dmitri: right?

[00:13:03] Joshua: anything, you know, stuff gets pulled down right, as you know all the time, right? And you go search for, something from your artist, and it's no longer available. And it'll give you some message that's like, Hey, if you have the MP3's, then you can go ahead and play this. And it's like, we don't live in a world anymore of, 2005 where I have a bunch of MP3's of all this stuff.

 and so the primary benefit to the fan is it gives the fan permanent. provable piece of media and, I'd say like the difference in what, 'cause there's been some stuff that has happened in the Web3 world, in music, right? And a lot of that early on was, NFT type stuff where, an artist would maybe like.

 put a single up there, or some of it was like fractionalizing streaming royalties, which is like, you know, definitely gets in the, SEC,

[00:13:40] Dmitri: right.

[00:13:40] Joshua: Gray zone of securities. and even with the NFT thing, it was a public thing, right? Like the issue there was that. You know, you put a song up and then you hope basically, a thousand people buy a receipt, but everybody on the whole internet can listen to it.

Right. Or, you know, the, a further extrapolation was that, what's called token gating, where it was like you buy that and then it kind of gives you access, but it still sets under a streaming. Model. And so if the rights change or whatever, happens, that company goes away or you maybe still own this thing, but it doesn't do anything.

So what we did was we said, the core of our technology, what it really allows us to do is to take. That, media and actually break it apart, thousands of pieces. All those are encrypted. They're all stored in decentralized storage. So then when you buy it, you actually, you own that actual piece of media and it streams back and plays for you.

So once you own it, , can't go away. you have it, it's tradable. and a lot of times too, right, we have people that, you know, they sell a limited number of those, a lot of those will resell, although we're not really, we're different than all the things that NFT side, which was based on speculation, right?

And everybody's buying something hoping like, Hey, I hope this thing. You know, the price of it goes a hundred x or a thousand x, or, ends up being like a bored ape and it's worth, $500,000 or something. Right. with us it's much more focused on like, how do we provide the media in a, a secure way?

And then from the fam perspective, then allowing you access to these perks, right? Like programmable perks of like. like for, for instance of that, like we're doing a thing with, William Shatner. We're about to release a film with him. And if you own, if

[00:15:08] Dmitri: wow,

[00:15:08] Joshua: if you own a piece of that media, then you're gonna get access to a live stream thing with him.

 so the way that you can, use that to unlock things. And also I think what we saw really in this kind of early, Web3 stuff, what I took away from it. 'cause I didn't really participate in a lot of it. And I'd be the first one to say like, 90%, 98% of all of those NFT projects were just total garbage and cash grabs.

I think what came out of it though is the realization that we can build true digital communities around fandom. Right? And that's really what the, the biggest takeaway of some of those communities that still exist, like the real, the solid ones. It's gathering together a group of like-minded people that exists all around the world in different parts of the world, and kind of for the first time ever could really gather around a centralized idea.

And there's no idea, That's more ripe for that than, people following artists that they love. Right. So, you know, Taylor Swift fans are all over the planet. They don't really have a place where they can all gather and talk and interact and exchange ideas and, have Taylor Swift pop in from, you know, now and then and, and say stuff or drop some exclusive thing, like it doesn't exist.

So I think taking that model of. interactivity and community and applying that to, fan bases and music properties is gonna absolutely lead to a whole different way that we interact with music and artists that we love and follow.

[00:16:22] Dmitri: Wow, there's a lot there.

 and I'm interested in how you, you kind of critiqued some of the things that happened with the NFTs and the, first round of Web3 music, stuff, and I think it, touches on an issue that there was a lot of conversation about. Of interoperability. and I think it's even related to some of our earlier conversation about streaming versus direct to fan.

There's a sense on streaming, like you have to subscribe to keep listening, but then there's also, you know, these other platforms that emerged that was sort of like, well. What do you do with it once it's gone and all this listening is happening on streaming platforms. Most people, like you said, treat the Spotify as FM radio or satellite radio or something where they're like, well, I turn it on and then I can listen to everything.

But here you are buying something else. I'm curious, have there been improvements? With the idea of buying something through an artist or a label website, but then being able to listen on platforms or buying music on a platform, but then being able to listen to it outside of that platform. I'm just curious about that whole concept about where we stand with interoperability, in the directive fan music space.

[00:17:22] Joshua: No, that's, that's great. it's kind of one of the main reasons that we really got into this. so, you know, prior, career when I was in the book industry, this was a big issue that we encountered because it was during that time when a lot of the digital licensing stuff started to, take over, the book side, right?

And so, you know, in that instance it was like, okay, well I buy an ebook from Amazon, why can't I read it on iBooks? Right? I bought it so I should be able to read it wherever I want. Or if I bought it from Audible, why can't I listen to it on Spotify? And so that was kind of our core thesis really was like, how do we use these tools to create,

Media that is transportable and, interoperable, right? So, down that kind of path and our, it's our sort of roadmap, which is why we have, Charles Hoskinson, the guy that, co-founded Ethereum and, and Card and Mark Cuban and like all these guys involved as investors is they're, helping to architect the path of, you know, how do we go from.

Locked into a system, right? So for our system, if you buy the music, like you own it, we can't take it away from you. The music can't be changed. you can sell it, you can resell it, trade it, lend it out, all kinds of stuff. we have a slew of media apps. We actually even have smart TV apps, web apps, mobile apps, all those sorts of things.

And then what we're building is basically like an open source protocol, along with, you know, this is getting a little more technical, but like a, a layer two to like process those transactions as well. But in the open source protocol, there'll be like a software development kit. So anybody who wants to create a media player, right?

So that could be, labels could do that. Individual artists could do that. From a, book side. it could be a university wants to have their own kind of, book reader. And so creating an architecture and protocol to allow those to be still DRM, you know, digital rights management protected.

So the media file is only viewable and accessible by the, purchaser or the owner of that. so then that way, you can basically, purchase it and then you can stream it, stream it in the sense that you're streaming it through the media player anywhere.

And we don't have any centralized control of that. Right. So it gives it like, you know, it's permanent and it's provable that you own it. and then making it accessible, forever. Right. Which I think was kind of the promise of the internet. Right. Hey, we're putting it on here and it should be here forever.

But it's not like we don't live in the world that exists right now. And sadly you can't. You know, there's even films, right? Like you can't watch the original Star Wars in its original 1977, format. Like unless you own like the actual, like last set of the VHS tapes. It's all been digitally remastered and CGI and like, which is just kind of a small example, but it's like,

[00:19:47] Dmitri: oh yeah, it's relevant.

[00:19:48] Joshua: we're subject to a lot of censorship and control, especially in the music side, right. Where it's like, and even Cardi B as an example, right? Like she's, put out some music videos, which obviously they're racy videos, but like, you can't watch them uncensored like anywhere.

[00:19:59] Dmitri: Mm.

[00:19:59] Joshua: Which is kind of wild that it's like, and you, it's.

[00:20:01] Dmitri: Also in the music side, you have the, remastered stuff where people get the rights back to their songs by rerecording them and you're like, this is not how it sounded when I was a kid. What happened here? Yeah. Wow. Josh, well,

[00:20:15] Joshua: stream streaming's really done a lot on that too, of, Spotify just announced they're gonna start to do higher quality stuff, but with us, like there is no upper limit to the quality.

Right. So, the audiophiles out there. Would very much like our platform, because at the core, right, there's no limitation on how large those, files, can be. Versus on the streaming side where they're trying to cram, you know, low quality, low bit rate, through so that, when you hear it, it's, noticeable.

[00:20:38] Dmitri: Wow. Josh, I'm impressed with how you're really playing the long game here. Like the way you described your media players across verticals, across medium formats. the fact that there are these kind of open source layers that. That people can build their own media players, but then ownership kind of stays with you as you jump from media player to player.

Media player is brilliant. It's like an iTunes that can be tweaked except you know, you know who owns everything. You can lend it, you can sell it. And here we are post, uh, Web3, crypto explosion, and now here you are. Still building the infrastructure that people were dreaming of the entire time.

And you know, one of my questions in the back of my mind is, how did this guy get Mark Cuban and the, co-founder of Ethereum at Snoop? And I'm like, oh, I think that's how, it's like they see it as of the future of where media can go.

[00:21:27] Joshua: Yeah. You're exactly right. Yeah, I mean, I've had really good discussions with all of 'em and they are all very, I'd say, percent convinced.

This technology is just, it's gonna change. I think that's where the primer was, right? It's like when you sort of start to understand Web3 and what it means, and then you kind of look at the landscape of just across all kinds of different industries. it's going to, have a radical impact on a lot of things just like it is right now with, you know, obviously bitcoin's like, you know, taking off and it's hitting like all time highs and stuff.

And we have all this, stable coin legislation and, and very shortly, all of us. Who have a bank account in the us our bank account will have stable coins and, and we won't even know. It'll just be, that's how they're gonna account for it. And so all this technology is going to change, it's gonna change the music industry and the film industry and the book industry.

It's gonna change all these things. and it's, primarily like, it's one of the biggest ways that regular consumers interact with the internet, right. It's entertainment. it's informationally, it's news, it's social media. All of those things that exist in a centralized system that are subject to censorship and,

Deletion should exist in a immutable way, that you have ownership of your own media and you have autonomy to do what you want with it.

[00:22:33] Dmitri: Man, there's a, coming up in just a couple of weeks at the Music Tectonics Conference, I'm doing a fireside chat with Tatiana Sirano from Midia Research and it's, part two of a conversation.

We had Mark Mulligan also at midia research talking about this, critical juncture for the streaming economy and music where generation Gen Z is not really acting the same way as previous generations. How they're gonna interact with streaming. And so there's sort of a decision that has to be made.

Are we just. Optimizing for revenue on the existing strategy or streaming platform, or is there something different that needs to happen? Do we have to revolutionize what that experience looks like? So I can see in this conversation, we're at this moment where you stuck through the, first Web3 bubble, and you're still here building and you're building an infrastructure level.

It feels like it's minus hype. it's really about like getting the best experience for all the parties involved, the creators, the rights holders. The fans and listeners, et cetera, at a moment when there may be a generation of people who kind of are not into the streaming. You see the kind of the protests around Spotify's founder investing in drones and, things like that.

 and maybe this is a moment where all the promise of, the Web3 things in music actually come to life because there's a generation that kind of has a different expectation. They might actually wanna buy from the artist specifically, rather than having the convenience of playlisting or something.

[00:23:52] Joshua: Absolutely. Yeah. it's a novel thing for them, right? Because. What's funny is if you look at just, sort of the history of how media changed and music in particular, right? When you rewind all the way back to, you know, the, first, when we started to have a phonograph, it sort of has these jumps and these cycles

 and also along with that, the formats of those sort of then dictated what those albums were and how long they were and all those things up until, you get to the, late nineties when it goes digital. And then we move to digital licensing and it's been. stuck in that format for 25 years longer than all of these other formats that went through like radical change cycles and, upended and changed the industries multiple times over.

We've been kind of stuck here in this same cycle of, and basically what's happened right, is like. These centralized, streaming services have drained all the money out of labels, which have, obviously drained all the money from artists that they're not making anything from it.

So you really end up with music being a complete loss leader, where music itself makes no money. And, there's a, a funny saying that, I saw a video recently where they were like. You know, the only thing that music can't sell is itself, right? It's used for everything,

[00:24:55] Dmitri: right?

[00:24:56] Joshua: You know, you pay sync license for, put it in a commercial or put it in a movie or so, and, but it makes some money there and it's used to make those things make money, but it in and of itself.

Doesn't make any, direct money, which I think is from a, cultural standpoint, what it does is it homogenizes artists, you know, it gets everybody looking at, play stats from Spotify where they then say like, okay, well then, I'm not gonna do a full album anymore.

I'm just gonna do singles, and every single has to be two and a half minutes, and there has to be a vocal in the first 10 seconds, and it has to be this many BPMs and that's gonna give us the best chance. at, having it go somewhat viral on Spotify and, produce more streaming, it's like, that is not pro artists.

That is like the machine trying to crank out, which I think is why we're in this. You know, a lot of that stuff gets homogenized, especially on the, film side. Like that's why it's part seven of, a movie and, we're remaking this thing again and there's no budgets for these lower.

 artistically created things, and I think, it's sad. So I think this really will enable and breathe back a lot of life into that and allow artists to say, Hey, I wanna create an experience. And going back to the format instead of saying, Hey, it's, you know, your regular format's, 10 or 12 tracks and they're, three or four minutes long.

Maybe that's several hours long. Maybe it has a bunch of video mixed in. Maybe it has like a ton of photography. Maybe it's bundled with some other physical stuff like, coffee table book, or, there's all kinds of different things that this enables, that the current system doesn't allow at all and has no, room for it.

So this will open the door for artists to say, you can dream and be creative again. And out of that is Where these breakthroughs happen and we end up with, the legends that we have that, that have happened that 'cause they were doing something different.

Right. And that's what we really need to get back to.

[00:26:32] Dmitri: Hmm. Yeah. Well, you know, I was thinking about this title of direct to fan kind of implies there's nothing in between, the artist and the fan. we've gotta take a quick break, but when we come back, I'm curious to get your take on the role of labels in all of this.

We'll be right back. All right, Josh, we're back. And I wanted to ask you, what's the role specifically of record labels in a direct to fan strategy?

[00:26:57] Joshua: Yeah, I think that labels actually, are extremely important. I think there's, you know, historically been some, and I would say, you know, obviously all labels aren't created equally.

 and there's definitely been some nefarious things in the past. I think ultimately what has to happen though is, is they shift, right? And they shift from, a gatekeeper to really enabling a direct to fan world, right? So they become a strategic partner more than just, a toll collector.

Because I, think they really do work well to help amplify, the reach and help craft that, brand for that artist and that property. I think they obviously support a tremendous amount of, legal infrastructure. and for sure I'm on the side of the ones that are, you know, in favor of the artists, but they do a lot of work.

Right. And then I think a big part of that too is then also. And what we've seen, right? It's like a lot of times what we say is, I think the historic thought was, you do a lot of promotional work to get an album released. And then that was the marketing effort to launch that album.

And for us, that's really when the marketing actually begins, right? So now you begin to look at the data side of that and the fan insights and what's going on in the community and how that thing is. It's changing and growing and, taking on sort of a life of its own. And that helps inform how to create new lines of revenue, right?

To say, Hey, what if we released, this thing, a single or a music thing, or a physical thing or a product tie in, or how does the interoperability of all those things sort of, become a bigger community? And I think labels are gonna be instrumental in helping those artists sort of manage and create that.

'cause I think at the end of the day, right? The artists should be at maximum freed up to be creative and to create more art because they are the creator, they're the ones producing the thing that the fans want. So as much as a label can come alongside them and be a partner to help enable that, so that, you know, right now it's like, hey, create a, you know, an album and then we're gonna put you on, tour for the next three years.

 and we're not, you know, even when you do your album, we're gonna bleed it out one track a month for the next 12 months. and it's just, it's sort of backwards, right? So I think there's a lot labels Will, do. I think they'll, they're gonna help tremendously, across many different ways and help, manage this as a new line of revenue, along with, you know, all the other ways that it can be monetized, even, with streaming.

[00:28:58] Dmitri: Interesting. I'm curious, could the industry get to a point where direct fans not just an add-on, but is like a core revenue pillar alongside streaming touring sync? And what would it take to get there, Josh?

[00:29:10] Joshua: I think it, absolutely it could. and where, you know, it's, I think that direct to fan sales could be a, very large revenue line, not just, a side hustle.

I think that, you know, part of that's gonna be like, fans and, sort of economies will, demand that, I think as artists see that, hey, I could sell, I'll, I'll take, you know, the Taylor Swift example again, or do Cardi B, right? She just launched this new album, right? So, you know, she puts it up on Spotify.

She's gonna make some amount of money from it. however, she, if she had said, Hey, I'm gonna sell this album digitally for, $10 an album, well, she's gonna sell millions and millions and millions of them, like to all of her fan base, especially if it includes, other things, added into that, right?

Maybe you get VIP access to something, or you get, additional. Outtakes from the studio, or you get music videos, airdrop to you, you get, you know, all kinds of benefits, right? So it's like, I think what will end up happening over time is it will become a large, revenue stream for artists because, you know, ultimately then the way that we're approaching and building it right is like, is very frictionless, right?

So we want, you know, I'd say. It's kinda like when you rewind to the beginning of the internet, right? It was, you know, you've got the dial up modem and it's complicated and you've got, you know, a service you're trying to dial into. And like, and it wasn't, it was difficult, right? And people would look at it and, you know, companies were like, well, why would, why would our business ever need an email address?

Like, we have a physical mailbox writer, or, you know, and you fast forward and it's like, well, would we ever need a Facebook page? Like that's social media and we're a business, you know, I think the same thing will happen where we'll say like. why would we need to sell, you know, try to sell directive fans?

And it's like, well, because it's technically possible now. And while it's somewhat difficult, now we're working through that process, right? So, like, even where we are, we've, made huge advances in the last couple years where it's like, fans can buy with a credit card. they can sign up with a social media account.

They don't have to do, you know, wallets, they don't have to know anything about, technology or, cryptocurrency or seed phrases or any of that stuff, right. So as that continues adoption and, you know, we have a better education around how that functions, like, I think it begins to, scale up and, increase in trust and, prevalence and you know, and ultimately too, I think in the world of ai, right, which we haven't really even touched on, it's like this also gives a, a provenance, right? And an authenticity. Because I know that this album or this, video or whatever, came directly from this artist and it wasn't just an AI fake, right?

Because anybody can go. Create anything obviously in ai and that's only gonna get better and better and better, which is already like, shocking how good it is. but when you have, you know, I'll take an example too on, on Amazon, right? Like you could go create an asset right now, you could put it on Amazon until there's A-D-M-C-A that comes through and says, Hey, this, didn't come from us.

It could sit there and potentially sell. And That, that's damaging, I think long term to the artist. So with ours, like we have a, built-in provenance that we verify like where the digital origin of that came from. And I think it's gonna, you know, I think of it in terms of all the scariness around AI and artists being afraid of like, Hey, what's AI gonna do?

 when you really zoom out and say, AI is really just like one component of like a bigger umbrella of Web3 technology, right? And when you consider, you know, smart contracts and blockchain. And decentralized storage and, digital identity and all these things they work in tandem with, AI to all of a sudden make sense, right?

So it's not scary and we can verify those things. And I think that protects the artists and their ability to, make money and verify to their fan base that what they created is what fans actually getting.

[00:32:22] Dmitri: Wow. It sounds like a really fun world to, to live in, to have all these possibilities, to really feel like you're supporting artists in a way that is more direct and also getting new kinds of experiences with this just switches in, in this kind of less fragmented infrastructure.

So this has been super fun. Josh, you and the stuff io team will be at Music Tectonics. You guys are throwing our party on November 5th. It's at the, Poolside space we use on the Santa Monica Beach. It's really gonna be a blast. You're, you're gonna speaking about some of the stuff we talked about today on a panel, which is gonna be awesome.

I'm curious just to wrap up, what are stuff dot iOS goals in music this coming year and how can the music tectonics community help you get there?

[00:33:06] Joshua: Yeah, I mean, for us it's, we're full bore trying to onboard as many music catalogs and, and artists as possible. we actually, we have a, process going on right now that, is a, like a customer facing portal, so it'll be really easy for artists and labels to come and roll out their own media.

 trying to make that as just as simple as possible. And rolling out some more, you know, kind of that, infrastructure layer and kind of the background of, supporting all that with layer two. And, you know, really just trying to deepen those fan experiences. and, create an economy that's, procreator.

And I think, you know, obviously the, tectonics community can, help tremendously like bringing forward thinking artists and managers and labels in that are interested in trying and experimenting with something new. and really just sharing that feedback and experience and, you know, collaborating with, um.

You know, in all kinds of different ways, right? Like, I think it's gonna be very exciting and, just the next couple years is gonna be really cool. Like, there's gonna be a lot of new stuff. I often say, you know, the technology we're building, will definitely change the industry. I hope that we continue to be the ones to be blessed, to lead that.

 even if it's not us, somebody else will do it because it's, inevitable that this will radically change the industry. So. The sooner that people dive in and try to understand it and, and figure out what it means for them and how it works, to help them generate revenue and connect with their audience, the better.

[00:34:18] Dmitri: Josh. I think you're gonna have a blast at Music tectonics.

I think the committee will definitely come and do all the things that you just. Mentioned, and I'm hoping that all of us see music tectonics 2025 as an inflection point for stuff.io and the industry as a whole. This has been an absolute blast. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. I can't wait to see you in just a couple weeks.

[00:34:38] Joshua: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I, I'm looking forward to it and hanging out with everybody. It's gonna be a great time.

Let us know what you think! Tweet @MusicTectonics, find us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or connect with podcast host Dmitri Vietze on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

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.