Disrupt Backstage Pass: So What, Exactly, Is Social Music? (TCTV)

One of the most interesting panels at last week's Disrupt featured a discussion about social music between Steve Jang the co-founder and CEO of Schematic Labs and Alexander Ljung the founder and CEO of SoundCloud.

Jang and Ljung are both developing apps and services that enable us to share music, sounds and our musical taste. Jang's product is Soundtracking, an iPhone app that allows us to geo-tag music as we experience it. While Ljung's Berlin based SoundCloud � which already has four and a half million users – is a platform for not only sharing music but also audio and sounds.

So what, exactly, is social music? I asked Jang and Ljung when I interviewed them backstage at Disrupt. And how are services like Jang's Soundtracking and Ljung's SoundCloud disrupting what was once formerly known as the "music industry"?

Here’s Jason Kincaid’s interview with them on-stage at Disrupt.

First, why don't we talk a
little bit about the products that each
of you guys have built for those who are unfamiliar with it.
So let's start with the SoundCloud.
I know, I wrote about you guys back in 2008.


Yeah.


When you were... It was
going be a tool for industry
professionals to share their
music with, it sounded like
other people in the industry and
maybe close friends, but it
wasn't something that sounded like
it was directed towards consumers,
and you guys have sort of evolved from there, right?


So I think I
mean the easiest way to think
of Sound Card today is we're
really trying to build
the sound sharing platform of the web.
So in many ways, the way
that Flickr works for photos or the way that YouTube works for videos.
So we're trying to do that same thing but for sound.
We came from starting off building
specific tools for pro, semi pro music creators.


It's expanded quite a bit since then.
We're still really focused on the
creator side and I think
that sets us apart from
a lot of other companies out there.
We are really interested in people that create in sound.
But what's happened now is
that we've seen that it's not
just pro / semi pro people that create sound anymore.


Like a lot of people
are creating music, but also
other kinds of sound content as well.
So you know, sound Tweets,
audio books, any kind of sound imaginable.
So it's really becoming that sharing platform for any kind of sound.

I know one of
the defining features of your
site is that you can look
at a wave form of the
audio file and actually comment
on particular sections saying, "I
really like this guitar solo," or whatever.


Yeah.


Okay.
Steve, do you want to give
us a brief outline of what sound tracking is?


Sure.
So sound tracking is an
IOS app today and in
the future will be available on the Android as well.
But sound tracking is
an IOS app that lets you
share the music you
are experiencing or listening to
with a photo and a
location as well as
your own commentary and lets you
post that simply to Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.


So at its core, it's sort
of a self-expression geotagging
app for music and allows
you to check in
music if that is
sort of where you are coming
from, from a foursquare perspective
but I think a lot of
our users use it across Facebook and Twitter as well.


So given that this
panel, it's not super
long, so, we are going
to actually skip most of the
issues of the music industry
and all the barriers they put up toward innovation.
Because everyone always talks about
that and I want to focus primarily
on the social stuff because
I feel like social is a
word that is tossed around as something
that kind of fixes everything and
when it comes to music, i'm
sort of curious as to how useful it actually is.


And, I think part of
the issue is that social, since
the rise of Facebook, people tend
to think that means doing
things with your friends, and, maybe
I'm a jerk, but I really don't
really care about my friends' music
tastes, I mean I know there
are a handful of friends who I
might trust in terms
of their taste, but
if my buddy listened to some
screamo album or something?


Don't care, Right?
So is the thing
that is going to make social important
to music is it going to be
sharing with friends or sharing
with people who have similar taste to
you, whether or not you
actually know them?


I think, like, for us it's
actually a different part that's really interesting.
So, I mean, we look
at creation of music
and sound becoming so simple that
it's almost at the point
where it's as simple as taking a
photo, anybody can be creating stuff.


And if you think of
that and then apply social to
it, it becomes really powerful because
being able to create something an
instant is great, take a
photo, put it on your phone - that's great.
But unless you share that with
the world and unless you get
some feedback, some reaction from
the world, that moment is
not going to be that valuable for you or that meaningful.


So, for us, we see
all these great companies building tools for making it simple to create.


And we, through our API we plug in the sharing component for that.
And that's key for the
user to feel that it was a meaningful experience.
I made something today, I shared
it, I got some people
that listened to it, that commented
on it So that sort
of creates this loop somehow.
Creating, getting feedback, being excited, wanting to create again.


So for us, that's the really, really interesting part, the social.
Not so much on the consumption side of it.


Because I think the issue is that, and I totally see the value in that, social.
You see this on Facebook everyday.
If people are responding to content
you've created and status update
a photo, it's a good feedback loop.


Yeah.


It feels good when people like that or comment
on it and obviously if you
were a music creator, you know, I
can see why you'd want to
do that, but if you're sharing
an album that you had
nothing to do with in the creation of, right?
Just a new album.
I'm kind of wondering how much value there is to that.


And see, maybe you can talk a little about this.


Yeah so I think, I think
there's... I think
when people talk about social music
they think about, "How does this improve music discovery?"
And that's definitely a validee's case.
A lot of people look to,
whether it's Pandora or it's last.fm
or listen to MySpace or even Facebook and YouTube.
They 're looking for a
lot of social validation and recommendation.


But I think there's another
part of social music that hasn't been tapped into as well.
I think there were... My old company
I and companies like Mugstape,
and there were several different more social
expression apps out there.
I think a lot of those are
less about music discovery for
music's sake, but music discovery for, people's sake.


So that, the idea
is that I can get
a better picture or a
better idea of what
someone is experiencing at that
moment emotionally or are
going through in their life or
where they are, where they're
traveling or where they're
hanging out, through the
lens of music and I think
that's what a lot of
mobile apps are trying to do today.


If you look at a lot of the
mobile sharing apps such as
Ourapps, Soundtracking, and other
apps that are bubbling up right
now, it's about self
expression, using music as the way to tell that story.
I think that is what is exciting right now with social.
So, I think there are some
people who really do not care for other people's music taste.


Me And there are people that do.
So for people, like
in your case, you can
explain, "Hey, I'm sitting here
on the high line and I'm
walking during the sun
set and the setting and here's
a song that kind of represents
what my emotional state is right now.


"Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina ; The Waves or something.


But, alright, it sounds
like what you describe
though isn't going to be the solution to the record industry problems.
As far as selling more context-
it's suppose to be able to,
might give you another way
to connect with your friends, to experience what they're experiencing.
But is that really gonna drive more sales?


I don't know if I agree
with your assumption there.
Because music is
always, you know, music sales are declining.
But whats been great about
music in general, outside of
just business economics, has been
that music definitely markets
and sells other things very well.
It sells beverages, it sells
cars, it sells all these other things, movies even, and TV shows.


So I feel like there's an
opportunity to really explore that area.
For us, its geo-tagging
music, and being able to
have people have the power to do that right from their phone.
And so, if they're able to
do that and you're able to think
about where music tastes
is happening in real-time, across the
map, across location, that opens
up a a whole new set of data that hasn't been out there.


So, we're at the very beginning of this, and there's several companies working on this.
But if you think about that music interest
graph, and you lay it out
over a territorial math
and you are looking at lat-long
coordinates.
It between Williamsburg and
the Mission District, in San
Fransisco, versus the Marina
and Upper West Side, right?


Mm-hm.


And so, I think, we're
just at the beginning of really capturing
a lot of data that has not existed out there.
So, that is important for all of
us but it is also important
for the music industry as well.


So Alexander, going back
to SoundPod, have there been
any interesting trends that you guys have seen on the net?
You guys are sort of a
social network all around original
music, I guess you can say
as opposed to previously recorded music.
Are there any interesting trends
that maybe you guys have seen that maybe
could be applying to these more
popular tracks that we see?out
there?



Yeah, I think like, one
of the really big things that
are happening around larger artists
is that they're noticing how
widespread it is for other people to be creating stuff as well and
they can build massive engagement with
people by having other
people to collaborate on their
tracks in applications for
remixing and getting parts
of tracks, making their own version
with it, and things like that.


And that seems to be
like a really great way
for driving strong engagement with fans.
We had this track
that Imogen Heap did, which was super cool.
She asked people to
go out and record sounds from
their day and send her
that would be inspiring, so
it would just capture stuff on
their phone and share it for a few hours.


She got about 800 sounds, I
think, you know - ice cubes
in a glass, water pouring, all this stuff.
And then she makes a track out of it, and puts that track up online.
You have links to every single
piece of sound that's actually
been involved with that, and getting
into that kind of interaction;
That sort bidirectional thing with an artist is a massive thing for a fan. 


Is this something really cool example, but are you seeing a trend where
major artists are comfortable sharing
music before it is done,
before it is gone through the production and everything I know.


Yeah.


Cause I know, many artists are self conscious about that Right.
Yeah, no, I think like, I
think its always; artists are different, right?
So it, it depends but we're seeing it really as a trend across many artist.
The other day I
woke up, I check my dashboard
on SoundCloud and I have
a track from 50 Cent where
he's just rapping and he's like
asking everybody to produce a track around it.


So, I pull out my iPad,
I make a track around the 50
Cent track on my iPad, share
that back to the world, and
it's just a completely different way
of interacting around sound and music than it has been before.
I think that going back
a little bit just to
how that connects with the music industry in general.


I think the music industry is
at a better place now than it's ever been before.
Artists are more excited about
music and how they can engage with the than ever before.
Like the people that say that
it's this stuff that they're
only looking at the decline of recorded music.
When actually it isn't just about recorded music.


It's about, you know, Deadmouths
just released a new iPhone application
that allows anybody with a couple
of clicks to make a track
based some stuff that he's
done and then share it through SoundCloud.
That's like gaming, right.
They are almost looking at instrument markets and all that.
Well, all of that is
part of the music industry today
and if you look at that
whole thing, its a great place to be.


Alright, so I think unfortunately that we're out of time again.
Thank you guys for joining us, it's been really insightful.


Hey terrific.
Thanks a lot, guys.
Alright, next up we have
Michael Reinery the CEO of
Zecco and Michiel De
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