Gigi Johnson:
00:00:00
Are
Gigi Johnson:
00:00:08
You presently running Revelator. Can you give us a 30 second -- before we deep dive into your background -- what in the world Revelator is?
Bruno Guez:
00:00:18
Sounds good. Yes. So I started a company, close to about a decade ago, coming from running a record label, and understanding the shift and digital transformation of the music business, from a B2B perspective, from a label's perspective. And, you know, back then, you know, 10 years ago, we didn't have hardly any software or tools for running a label managing digital IP, managing reporting and royalty obligations to rights holders. So I built a platform initially to help my business transform into digital business, and soon realized that there was everybody's pain point and problem around, you know, data and royalties and payments and analytics and understanding more transparency around, you know, streaming data, those kinds of things. So Revelator became a B2B platform that serves, you know, distributors, record labels, publishers, artists, management companies, who serve artists who serve rights owners.
Gigi Johnson:
00:01:20
And over the last, probably, if you're an artist listening to this, you probably want to nudge your small label to say, are you using Revelator? But that's, I wouldn't get to the 10 years, but I'm gonna drag it backwards in time because again, you're a fabulous ethnomusicology person from UCLA. But you were born in France, right? How did you when you were kid person? Were you a musician? Were you an entrepreneur who was selling lemonade to your friends? What was that person? Who was maybe you were not? So what were you doing when you were in high school? What was kind of the heartbeat of this that got started?
Bruno Guez:
00:01:58
Even before high school, right, I grew up playing drums at the age of nine, listening to a lot of music from around the world. You know, my parents are from Tunisia, I was born in France. And we grew up in Los Angeles. So listening to you know, Brazilian music or reggae, or, you know, Arabic music or no soul was, you know, what we would normally listen to at home, it wasn't very, you know, top 40 radio, it was, you know, Brazilian bossa nova and things like that. So, growing up, I was exposed to a lot of music from around the world. So I think culturally, you know, I was already you know, very much interested in discovering music from around the world, not just in my, my country, right. And that gave me already a perspective on life, a perspective on culture, a perspective on music, because I was seeking, you know, interesting rhythms from African music and Cuban music and Latin music, and I just loved flamenco music. I love culture. And I love music, ethnomusicology is exactly that is the anthropology of music culture, in a way, so
Gigi Johnson:
00:03:11
Were your parents musicians, because I must admit, . . my family I we had, you know, over-the-air radio and a few albums, and definitely wouldn't have had this exposure as a young person. Were your parents highly musical?
Gigi Johnson:
00:03:27
Not highly musical, but they love music. You know, even listening to Bob Marley when you're nine years old, that's already great exposure, you know. But I think once I moved to LA, with my parents, and initially we came for a summer vacation, and my, my mom just did not want to go back to Paris, you after going to Yosemite and, you know, seeing Los Angeles in this is in the late 70s. So not a lot of traffic, you know, a lot of great space. And it was a fantastic life to live, you know, the Sunshine State, in many ways, compared to LA, you know, Paris where, you know, it's cold, and it's gray. And it's, you know, not a great place to grow up in some ways. As a young person. The, the opportunity, you know, I saw no, I started playing keyboards and synthesizers, I was into electronic music. This is the early 80s. So I was very much interested in in the clash of culture and technology. And when I turned 18, I kind of stopped being in bands and playing. And I just didn't know that I wanted to be recording or performing artists that was not my calling. But I knew that I loved music and I loved culture, and I had to figure out the path forward.
Bruno Guez:
00:04:49
So, you know, I lived in Ohio for a while and I came across an album by Ali Jihad Racy, who was a professor at the UCLA ethnomusicology program and I said to my self
Bruno Guez:
00:05:00
This is what I want to do. I want to listen to ood. I want to listen to Arabic music, I want to play the song tour and learn about Iranian Persian classical music and things like that. So I applied I got in. And that was the beginning of my education in ethnomusicology. But it was so academic. And I was, you know, there was a disconnect for me between the world of academia and what was actually going on in world music in the 80s. So I wanted to be doing applied ethnomusicology, so I started DJing. And I started bringing, you know, African music and Arabic music and dance music and French hip hop, in the late 80s, you know, to clubs in LA, and I became a DJ, and from there, I became a radio host, on KCRW. And, you know, I loved the whole 90s You know, there was a lot of great music coming from, from around the world, from the UK, from Germany from Austria. So I was really good at spotting talent and, and developing, you know, an ear for music and saying, Oh, these two tracks go really well together. Let me put it on my show. And, you know, now I started discovering artists and broadcasting and promoting them. And that kind of became the incubation of my record label, in a way, because a lot of this music just did not have distribution in the early 90s. So I would, you know, call the artists and licensed the rights to use the music, and I learned about the music industry that way. Because out of my passion for putting music together and compilations. Today, we call them playlists, but back then we'd call them compilations of records rights, and we would put them put different songs on a CD and that became a compilation. So [that's how I got into the music industry.]
Gigi Johnson:
00:06:48
But you didn't have a business background? So was this kind of a trial-and-error, learning how to manage a label? Or did you find people that were then some of that wisdom for you?
Bruno Guez:
00:07:00
It was purely my passion to understand that I want to promote this music. So I need no I had to learn how to license music, and license the rights to music and do contracts. And, you know, back in 1993, I had purchased a you know, a Mac computer with a stereo digital sound card. And I taught myself, you know, digital audio editing and mastering. And I was making records. So back in 1993, after I released my first record, I had a chance meeting with a guy named Chris Blackwell, who's the founder of Island Records, producer of Bob Marley, and many, many others over 60 years. And he came to my studio in Westwood. And he saw that I was a mad scientist, I had a record, you know, I had basically a record company in my living room, you know, there was a computer in the middle of the living room and records on the floor, all around me. And that was my passion. That was what I did, you know, just make records. So he said, you know, let's sign you as a label, you can probably make records a lot cheaper than I can, you know, a U2 record cost a lot more money than what you can do in your living room. And that was kind of the beginning of digital music in a way.
Gigi Johnson:
00:08:13
So, before that, were you making a full living doing this, or was this part of a portfolio of things that put food on the table?
Bruno Guez:
00:08:21
So, you know, after university, I would DJ. And I was earning $60 a night DJing for a whole night, right? By the end of my career DJing, which was around 2000, I could make $5,000 a night. So that was a big difference in a decade. But when you start you don't really think about the money, you're not doing it for the money. But you could DJ three, four nights a week and make, you know, $1,000 a month doing that. So by itself, there was not enough but that plus the record label, you know, was enough to live on. And you know, when you're in your early 20s, you don't have a lot of needs in the same way as you do when you get older. So it was a great time in my life. I really enjoyed traveling, going record shopping, you know if you remember Rhino Records and Aaron's Records, you know, sometimes you would go and find, you know, the one vinyl that was available in Los Angeles, you know, and I was one of the few DJs that had that record. And I would play that on my radio show and at clubs and, you know, there was a special relationship to music as culture, especially in physical format like vinyl. And, you know, I missed that a lot today in digital music.
Gigi Johnson:
00:09:42
So it's gonna say those of you who are listening to this on YouTube, we're gonna see your face light up. But those are listening for the audio only, you're missing Bruno's face totally light up when he is talking about this time period. You have this joy on your face talking about this.
Gigi Johnson:
00:09:57
So then you went and were part of someone else's label, but with your own sub-label brand continuing, correct?
Bruno Guez:
00:10:05
So Island Records was our distributor, but it was our, you know, our label, distributed by Island Records, and then Universal purchase Polygram, you know, and then I continued my work with Chris Blackwell directly through his new label called Palm Pictures. And then, you know, started becoming an independent label in the early 2000s. And I've been independent ever since. I don't release as much music today, or as I did last decade, but I think, ultimately, my interest started shifting to figuring out how to use technology to streamline the complexities of running a record label. And the challenge I saw . . . You know, in 2003, I already had a deal with Apple. So I was already, you know, selling on iTunes, and dealing with digital, learning about the complexities and challenges of digital around metadata and reporting and data processing, really. And the challenge I started seeing in the. . . in the market was when Spotify came out in 2007-2008. And until then, downloads were a great business. And, you know, we were able to, you know, have eight people in the company. So when you're running a small label with eight people, it's, you know, it's pretty meaningful. You're able to release music, promote music, market music. And you know, there was a good business. We were doing a lot of sync licensing, on film, and television and advertising. And we had kind of found a market for this lifestyle, niche, boutique label. But when I saw the rise of streaming, I said to myself, Oh, we're going to be in trouble. It's gonna cannibalize downloads and the unit economics on streaming are just not the same.
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:54
That's a polite way to put it.
Bruno Guez:
00:11:56
I'm trying not to, to use bad words.
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:00
For the, for those of you who this may not be your jam, the revenue per unit was low. And the detail and hassle per unit didn't necessarily change, right? So that you are having data coming in, for penny fractions, that you used to be dealing with much larger units and having lower volume, but still data per item. So that kind of adds to the complexity of the thing.
Bruno Guez:
00:12:28
You go from, you know, getting 70 cents per download, or $7 per download to getting 0.0035 cents per stream. And your file now has, you know, a million lines in a CSV file. . .
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:43
We'll swing back in the conversation. But let me let me sort of take a slightly different direction. You also -- before you go too deep into the current great work you're doing -- you also became more of a lifestyle curator too, right? So whether that was working with Cirque du Soleil, or working with a hotel chain, you were taking an avenue of bringing music to place.
Bruno Guez:
00:13:10
Sure.
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:10
How did that? How did that? I shouldn't say it's a left turn because it to me, it aligns wonderfully with your label. But how did you get into place-based music? And then why are you not still in place-based music?
Bruno Guez:
00:13:24
When I was running the label, you know, in the in, let's say it's 2004, maybe even before, right? In the mid 90s, I started, you know, creating compilation records. And those records were a lot of great World Music. And Chris Blackwell had a chain of hotels across Miami, Bahamas, and Jamaica, called Island Outpost. And he asked me, "Hey, can you create, you know, the soundtrack of the hotel experience with your records?" So I would start traveling to, you know, these locations, and start to learn about the vibe and what the feel of those places are, and then kind of put together soundtracks and, and playlists and collections of music that would really capture the space.
Bruno Guez:
00:14:12
And that was an amazing time in my life, because I got to travel a lot and really try to create this sonic architecture to the brand and really understand what does you know Goldeneye in Jamaica sound like? What does, you know, Eleuthera in in the Bahamas? You know, there's a place called Pink Sound, which is a beautiful beach and property. It's like what does that sound like? Because they're different. You know, every property has its own vibe. You know, it's collecting a lot of music. I was, you know, curating a lot of music for these properties and making records as part of that then selling records, you know, in the minibars. Right, this is going 20, 20-30 years back. And that's how, you know people discovered music and listen to music during their holiday, and that became the sound soundtrack to their vacation. So I really loved connecting this lifestyle experience around music, and then helping people explore and discover new music. Through that, through that distribution, which is more lifestyle distribution, when it got to LA, you know, places like Oliver Peoples, which is a great, you know, eyewear company, they were the first ones to start selling our records in their shops, you know, this is going back to 1995. And then, you know, we started doing compilation records for American Rag on on La Brea. And, and doing records for yoga studios and things like that. So we were always looking for new ways to distribute music and share music, that would just never make it on on commercial radio. And I think lifestyle distribution was really interesting.
Gigi Johnson:
00:15:56
And I think for a lot of people, I wanted to make sure that you talked about that, because a lot of people don't realize that entire space occurs. And I keep running into people who currently do this. And I'm always fabulously baffled that this is a an area of expertise, but it's a unique branded elements, that is the sonic architecture of a place, which I do find a really interesting business model that is much more lucrative at times than some of these other things that we're currently dealing with. So let me sort of bring you back to both what you're doing now, but maybe how in the world. So you traveled a lot. And then you've decided to move your family to Israel. And so you now are running this business that you've been incubating for 10 years, but from Israel, which is why we're talking it in the evening, your time. So how is it to be running this? How is it to be growing this? And how do you deal with this as an international company?
Bruno Guez:
00:16:57
Sure. So initially, in the early days, you know, up until about 2015, it was really me building the core software infrastructure layer and application layer, so that I could run my business and I could start distributing other people and, and understanding how to bring more efficiency around the business of music than when we went to market in 2015. And we found interest and demand for our products, specifically around analytics, because everyone did not have good visibility into streaming data. But while analytics are an important part, and data is an important part of today's, you know, way of doing business, you know, I think the most interesting part for me was following the money. How do we you know, understand how to do royalty payments faster? How do we get people paid faster? How do we accelerate payments for rights owners? And I think that's kind of been the thesis that I've been going under for the last 5, 6, 7 years of trying to really understand how to accelerate the flow of funds to all the rights owners that are involved in a song and an intellectual property into a recording or composition,.which kind of brought us more into understanding.
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:32
So you've already talked about that you started as a drummer and enjoying music, and weren't the tech guy. So, but you taught yourself how to be using the early Apple Computer. Are you now the tech guy? How did you become the tech guy? Do you have a battalion of tech people that make you the tech guy? 'Cause a lot of people there's a, there's a tech underbelly underneath what they did, or they were, you know, taking apart appliances in their parents' home or, or something. How have you become the tech guy?
Bruno Guez:
00:19:04
So I mean, I remember going back, you know, to the mid '90s. There were no databases back then for us to easily manage metadata. So I had to keep track of credits on all the records I was licensing and producing using FileMaker Pro. And I was, you know, building FileMaker Pro databases so I could keep track of who we, you know, who, the credits for those songs and who we needed to pay. You know, fast forward to 2003- 2004, you know, the beginning of cloud. I started looking at, you know, can I use Salesforce as a CRM for managing all the metadata for my label? And started kind of learning about how to use, you know, cloud-based software for, you know, creating relational objects, relational databases, so we could have a database called Tracks, a database called Releases, a database called Artists. And just kind of creating a way of mapping all this information that our label needs to keep track of, and be able to create this, you know, CRM automation around marketing. And, you know, going back to 2004, we were already doing, you know, SEO optimization for landing pages, when somebody would come to look for Google and say, what was that song in, you know, Grey's Anatomy, you know. We were one of the top ranking pages, because we were creating landing pages for every time we had a license, on film or TV, with all the keywords that were relevant to the Google search engine. And then we were able to capture a lot of emails and help our artists grow their audiences, and then automate the process of say, you know, discover this artists on these iTunes Store links and things like that. But when I got to Israel, obviously, I wasn't going to sell a product based around Salesforce. But I had kind of built the prototype early in, you know, the decade before just to basically understand how to manage a record label's metadata, and the data structure and the schema of the data, you know, and all the metadata fields and all the things you needed to know, to just keep track of all the data. And I think that just kind of became the foundation for me saying, Okay, I need to build better tooling, better software, if I'm going to continue to run my label, because I don't want to have 10 more people, you know. It's too expensive to employ. And I just didn't believe that the amount of subscribers in the streaming era would be growing fast enough to offset the loss of revenue from downloads. So there was this middle period where, after 2009, till about 2014, I just didn't see a big business in running a label, and it was still too much risk considering that streaming was an exciting new opportunity. But the size and the volume of streaming was just not yet warranting the risk in running the label.
Bruno Guez:
00:21:56
And from the moment I started developing the tooling, I obviously had already the experience and understanding metadata structure and rights information and contracts, you know, data models and those kind of things. So it was actually pretty easy for me. You know, it was actually me applying myself in V2 kind of way. I did it before, it was my own pet project. But now I need it to be a prod . . . you know, a product that other people could use, that to kind of create some type of standards around metadata for how do you describe rights. How do you describe release information, track level information, artists level information, those kinds of things.
Bruno Guez:
00:22:36
So it kind of came naturally. And you know, I hired a development team and engineering team. And, you know, I would tell them, Okay, this is what the data model is for a track, for a release, for an artist, for a DSP report, those kinds of things. And I was interested because I wanted to build this product. And I think just through my interest, I became a product guy. Maybe not so much the tech guy, but I understood tech enough to know what I needed to do to get the product to look and feel and be user friendly. And what I realized along the way is, you know, you learn about back-end development, you learn about front-end development. But I loved good product. And I cared a lot about user experience and usability. And I was always frustrated with products that did not meet my expectations, or were just not intuitive. I really put a lot of effort into developing intuitive product that deals with a lot of complexity in music, data, and metadata. I think, you know, the first iteration of that product, you know, we designed three different times before I was comfortable releasing it, and that was 2014, 2015. And that product lasted, you know, seven years. And now we've completely rebuilt the front end application, as we have to learn how to scale, you know, our operations around the world. So today, I'm proud to say the team's done incredible job at, you know, creating a web application that's responsive, that can scale down all the way to a mobile phone, you know, for artists and labels in Africa who don't have desktops necessarily, who are using, you know, uploading music from a mobile device, to you know, distributors in Indonesia and Hong Kong who use it in Chinese or who care about the Taiwanese market and the platform localizes to 25 languages. It's you know, Arabic and Hebrew right to left. These are not easy things to do.
Bruno Guez:
00:24:46
Yeah, once you've done it, and you've learned the mistakes that you should have done differently. The next time you get the opportunity, you want to do things correctly, and I think we've done a really good job now, at doing that.
Gigi Johnson:
00:25:00
Let me point to current and forward. So looking on your website, I was kind of tickled when you look at your products, you've got a category for Web 2 products, which implies then that there's Web 3 products in the pipeline, and also that you've got the ability to be offering business intelligence tools to go with all of this, can you talk a little bit about the without giving away company secrets, the sort of forward direction and where you're inspired to take this group of B2B clients and tool sets and people all over the world? What's the web three side of this? And then what do you what are you thinking and doing an offering with the business intelligence side of this?
Bruno Guez:
00:25:41
Sure. So, you know, streaming business models provides two data sets, financial data, which comes monthly and consumption data, which comes daily. So for the majority of of, you know, artists, and labels, and, and distributors, the need to understand the daily consumption, the usage pattern of you know, where your songs are streaming across which markets and platforms is important to helping inform marketing decisions, and be able to understand is my, you know, single really taken off in a certain market or things like that. And it really becomes a data infrastructure problem, because there's so much data, when you're processing 3 billion streams per month or more, or 6 billion streams, or, you know, the some of our companies are doing about 80 to 200 million streams a month, individually. And it becomes a challenge to deal with that amount of data coming from many different sources, different platforms, Spotify, Apple, Deezer, YouTube, etc, TikTok. And the volume of data is just unmanageable for most companies. So streamlining, all those, automating the whole process of collecting, aggregating, normalizing, ingesting, de-duplicating, matching, all the things you have to do, so that you could just look at a dashboard and understand what's going on. And your artists can understand where they're performing or not. Yeah, I think what's interesting with that is if you can, you know, accelerate the pace at which people get information about the performance of their assets, it becomes really interesting, not just for marketing purposes, or financial management, and understanding how to run a business, and how to make investment decisions into your artists, how to provide advances to those artists. But also, part of what excites me now is around automating the whole valuation of catalogs, so that any of our customers can understand the value of their work in real time. Because what I found is that it's really hard to gather all the data, share all the data with potential buyers, or lenders or people who want to finance no buying assets or catalog. So a lot of what drives me is can I accelerate payments? And can I automate the understanding for the rights owner? Even if it's free, or 33% share of the song, do you know the value of that song? You know, is there a way that you can understand how much the your third of that song is worth? And can you access, you know, a market where you can offer fractional ownership of that? Or can you sell or list those royalty streams, to potential buyers? And I think that's where the markets really think of . . .
Gigi Johnson:
00:28:25
You could also subdivide your portfolio too, right? So, so someone can see before they are buying some kind of a representation of the financial elements, and that you could also take that sub database and be able to move it to a new owner or a new investor, I wou ld think that were options here.
Bruno Guez:
00:28:45
Absolutely, and the whole idea of creating baskets of songs, that comes with their cash flows, and their valuation metrics, you know, and making that more of a seamless user experience, so that you can accelerate underwriting and then you can share that information with potential interested party will allow independents to easily, you know, more easily sell or, or fractionalize their catalogue and get financed or get funded or access working capital. And I think the, the majors, you know, have whole teams, you know, analyzing catalog purchasing, Neil Young and Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, for $500 million. But the independents just don't have those tools, nor do they have those opportunities. And I believe that what we'll see over the next five years is the growth of the independents will continue. And as a result, the growth of financial services for funding independence will continue. And the better the tools the independents have, then the more likely they'll be able to understand that they also have opportunity for liquidity and for exits.
Gigi Johnson:
00:29:55
So my last question is then a future direction which is kind of the Web 3 side of the house as to sort of rethinking the connective tissue. I'm assuming that's some of your heartbeat going forward. And how are you looking at Web 3 opportunities? And is there anything you can share with us that you were tinkering with this in the, in this regard?
Bruno Guez:
00:30:17
Sure. So we've been developing, you know, Web 3 infrastructure for four years, initially around a digital wallet for creators, where they could manage their rights and their royalty flows and payments. We've connected you know, streaming, royalty data from the Revelator platform to those wallets so that any rights holder would receive their share of the money flow, and could even request advances against their future cash flows, based on the consumption data. So we've done that. The interesting part that I'm seeing now that obviously, the music industry is interested in NFTs, they're interested in digital collectibles. And when I look at the Web 3 space, I look at three different types of marketplace opportunities. I look at digital collectibles. I look at licensing into Web 3 and Metaverse are gaming applications. And the third part is around the securitization, or the digital securities, you know, selling IP [Intellectual Property] or fractional IP to marketplaces that are compliant and regulated, and that can offer tokenized securities for music IP. And I think, you know, when we look at the next five years, you know, the streaming landscape will look a little different, because I think there'll be new marketplaces, new types of marketplaces that open up, you know, more direct to fan, and tokenized economies around communities and fan powered communities that will go beyond just what artists are able to do today, which is earn money from streaming, I think this streaming income will just be an input into the value of IP that can be monetized through a digital asset across different types of marketplaces, whether it's a collectible, or licensing your song into no Decentraland, or The Sandbox or, you know, other types of Web 3 properties . . .
Gigi Johnson:
00:32:08
I was gonna say, are maybe places where people are actually going, but that's a whole nother we're recording this in October of 2022. When people are kind of going, how many people actually are showing up in these spaces, you actually good to have music data side of this that could help validate that as well.
Bruno Guez:
00:32:24
Completely. So I do, you know, love the infrastructure of Web 3, I think we're moving from a, you know, a web to internet, which was based around the flow of information. You know, it was an information based internet. And I think now we're moving into a value based internet, where value gets exchanged between parties. And I think we'll provide a lot more interesting opportunities around engagement around direct fans and direct to fan and direct to collector and community building. I think that's really exciting.
Gigi Johnson:
00:32:56
Well, Bruno, we've been talking for a while, it's been great talking. Is there anything we have not talked about that you'd like to cover before we wrap up?
Bruno Guez:
00:33:06
Um, I don't know, I think I'm just, you know, the only thing I could add to what I said earlier, is, there's . . .I've never been more excited about the music industry. And I've experienced, you know, different phases of it, I've experienced the analog world of, you know, the, the 80s, and the 90s, I've experienced this digital, you know, 2000 . . . 2010s. And now I'm experiencing it again, for the third time in a way, which is a shift in the business model into distribution channels. And it's the most exciting time I've seen in my whole career. So, you know, while it may seem cryptic and complex, and people associate, you know, Blockchain with cryptocurrencies, you know, is the underlying, or the underpinning technology, but it's so much more than that. I think that I'm really looking forward to seeing how this technology becomes adopted and becomes used for the next five to 10 years and how it creates more democratization of access to music, IP, and allows, you know, more creators to make a living from their art.
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:19
So if people are also excited about this, and would like to reach out to you to connect with you and your company, how would you like them to reach out and who would you like to reach out?
Bruno Guez:
00:34:30
So I think Revelator.com is a good place to start, you can contact us from the website. And if you're interested in music, IP, whether it's from the seller side, or the buyer side, or if you're a record label, that's looking for better tools to help you understand the value of your work and monetize your IP or a distributor looking to launch a service and create the DIY self distribution model. I think we're a great company to work with.
Gigi Johnson:
00:35:00
Thank you so much for joining us, Bruno. Have a good evening as you're already deep into your evening and appreciate this great conversation.
00:00:00
Are
Gigi Johnson:
00:00:08
You presently running Revelator. Can you give us a 30 second -- before we deep dive into your background -- what in the world Revelator is?
Bruno Guez:
00:00:18
Sounds good. Yes. So I started a company, close to about a decade ago, coming from running a record label, and understanding the shift and digital transformation of the music business, from a B2B perspective, from a label's perspective. And, you know, back then, you know, 10 years ago, we didn't have hardly any software or tools for running a label managing digital IP, managing reporting and royalty obligations to rights holders. So I built a platform initially to help my business transform into digital business, and soon realized that there was everybody's pain point and problem around, you know, data and royalties and payments and analytics and understanding more transparency around, you know, streaming data, those kinds of things. So Revelator became a B2B platform that serves, you know, distributors, record labels, publishers, artists, management companies, who serve artists who serve rights owners.
Gigi Johnson:
00:01:20
And over the last, probably, if you're an artist listening to this, you probably want to nudge your small label to say, are you using Revelator? But that's, I wouldn't get to the 10 years, but I'm gonna drag it backwards in time because again, you're a fabulous ethnomusicology person from UCLA. But you were born in France, right? How did you when you were kid person? Were you a musician? Were you an entrepreneur who was selling lemonade to your friends? What was that person? Who was maybe you were not? So what were you doing when you were in high school? What was kind of the heartbeat of this that got started?
Bruno Guez:
00:01:58
Even before high school, right, I grew up playing drums at the age of nine, listening to a lot of music from around the world. You know, my parents are from Tunisia, I was born in France. And we grew up in Los Angeles. So listening to you know, Brazilian music or reggae, or, you know, Arabic music or no soul was, you know, what we would normally listen to at home, it wasn't very, you know, top 40 radio, it was, you know, Brazilian bossa nova and things like that. So, growing up, I was exposed to a lot of music from around the world. So I think culturally, you know, I was already you know, very much interested in discovering music from around the world, not just in my, my country, right. And that gave me already a perspective on life, a perspective on culture, a perspective on music, because I was seeking, you know, interesting rhythms from African music and Cuban music and Latin music, and I just loved flamenco music. I love culture. And I love music, ethnomusicology is exactly that is the anthropology of music culture, in a way, so
Gigi Johnson:
00:03:11
Were your parents musicians, because I must admit, . . my family I we had, you know, over-the-air radio and a few albums, and definitely wouldn't have had this exposure as a young person. Were your parents highly musical?
Gigi Johnson:
00:03:27
Not highly musical, but they love music. You know, even listening to Bob Marley when you're nine years old, that's already great exposure, you know. But I think once I moved to LA, with my parents, and initially we came for a summer vacation, and my, my mom just did not want to go back to Paris, you after going to Yosemite and, you know, seeing Los Angeles in this is in the late 70s. So not a lot of traffic, you know, a lot of great space. And it was a fantastic life to live, you know, the Sunshine State, in many ways, compared to LA, you know, Paris where, you know, it's cold, and it's gray. And it's, you know, not a great place to grow up in some ways. As a young person. The, the opportunity, you know, I saw no, I started playing keyboards and synthesizers, I was into electronic music. This is the early 80s. So I was very much interested in in the clash of culture and technology. And when I turned 18, I kind of stopped being in bands and playing. And I just didn't know that I wanted to be recording or performing artists that was not my calling. But I knew that I loved music and I loved culture, and I had to figure out the path forward.
Bruno Guez:
00:04:49
So, you know, I lived in Ohio for a while and I came across an album by Ali Jihad Racy, who was a professor at the UCLA ethnomusicology program and I said to my self
Bruno Guez:
00:05:00
This is what I want to do. I want to listen to ood. I want to listen to Arabic music, I want to play the song tour and learn about Iranian Persian classical music and things like that. So I applied I got in. And that was the beginning of my education in ethnomusicology. But it was so academic. And I was, you know, there was a disconnect for me between the world of academia and what was actually going on in world music in the 80s. So I wanted to be doing applied ethnomusicology, so I started DJing. And I started bringing, you know, African music and Arabic music and dance music and French hip hop, in the late 80s, you know, to clubs in LA, and I became a DJ, and from there, I became a radio host, on KCRW. And, you know, I loved the whole 90s You know, there was a lot of great music coming from, from around the world, from the UK, from Germany from Austria. So I was really good at spotting talent and, and developing, you know, an ear for music and saying, Oh, these two tracks go really well together. Let me put it on my show. And, you know, now I started discovering artists and broadcasting and promoting them. And that kind of became the incubation of my record label, in a way, because a lot of this music just did not have distribution in the early 90s. So I would, you know, call the artists and licensed the rights to use the music, and I learned about the music industry that way. Because out of my passion for putting music together and compilations. Today, we call them playlists, but back then we'd call them compilations of records rights, and we would put them put different songs on a CD and that became a compilation. So [that's how I got into the music industry.]
Gigi Johnson:
00:06:48
But you didn't have a business background? So was this kind of a trial-and-error, learning how to manage a label? Or did you find people that were then some of that wisdom for you?
Bruno Guez:
00:07:00
It was purely my passion to understand that I want to promote this music. So I need no I had to learn how to license music, and license the rights to music and do contracts. And, you know, back in 1993, I had purchased a you know, a Mac computer with a stereo digital sound card. And I taught myself, you know, digital audio editing and mastering. And I was making records. So back in 1993, after I released my first record, I had a chance meeting with a guy named Chris Blackwell, who's the founder of Island Records, producer of Bob Marley, and many, many others over 60 years. And he came to my studio in Westwood. And he saw that I was a mad scientist, I had a record, you know, I had basically a record company in my living room, you know, there was a computer in the middle of the living room and records on the floor, all around me. And that was my passion. That was what I did, you know, just make records. So he said, you know, let's sign you as a label, you can probably make records a lot cheaper than I can, you know, a U2 record cost a lot more money than what you can do in your living room. And that was kind of the beginning of digital music in a way.
Gigi Johnson:
00:08:13
So, before that, were you making a full living doing this, or was this part of a portfolio of things that put food on the table?
Bruno Guez:
00:08:21
So, you know, after university, I would DJ. And I was earning $60 a night DJing for a whole night, right? By the end of my career DJing, which was around 2000, I could make $5,000 a night. So that was a big difference in a decade. But when you start you don't really think about the money, you're not doing it for the money. But you could DJ three, four nights a week and make, you know, $1,000 a month doing that. So by itself, there was not enough but that plus the record label, you know, was enough to live on. And you know, when you're in your early 20s, you don't have a lot of needs in the same way as you do when you get older. So it was a great time in my life. I really enjoyed traveling, going record shopping, you know if you remember Rhino Records and Aaron's Records, you know, sometimes you would go and find, you know, the one vinyl that was available in Los Angeles, you know, and I was one of the few DJs that had that record. And I would play that on my radio show and at clubs and, you know, there was a special relationship to music as culture, especially in physical format like vinyl. And, you know, I missed that a lot today in digital music.
Gigi Johnson:
00:09:42
So it's gonna say those of you who are listening to this on YouTube, we're gonna see your face light up. But those are listening for the audio only, you're missing Bruno's face totally light up when he is talking about this time period. You have this joy on your face talking about this.
Gigi Johnson:
00:09:57
So then you went and were part of someone else's label, but with your own sub-label brand continuing, correct?
Bruno Guez:
00:10:05
So Island Records was our distributor, but it was our, you know, our label, distributed by Island Records, and then Universal purchase Polygram, you know, and then I continued my work with Chris Blackwell directly through his new label called Palm Pictures. And then, you know, started becoming an independent label in the early 2000s. And I've been independent ever since. I don't release as much music today, or as I did last decade, but I think, ultimately, my interest started shifting to figuring out how to use technology to streamline the complexities of running a record label. And the challenge I saw . . . You know, in 2003, I already had a deal with Apple. So I was already, you know, selling on iTunes, and dealing with digital, learning about the complexities and challenges of digital around metadata and reporting and data processing, really. And the challenge I started seeing in the. . . in the market was when Spotify came out in 2007-2008. And until then, downloads were a great business. And, you know, we were able to, you know, have eight people in the company. So when you're running a small label with eight people, it's, you know, it's pretty meaningful. You're able to release music, promote music, market music. And you know, there was a good business. We were doing a lot of sync licensing, on film, and television and advertising. And we had kind of found a market for this lifestyle, niche, boutique label. But when I saw the rise of streaming, I said to myself, Oh, we're going to be in trouble. It's gonna cannibalize downloads and the unit economics on streaming are just not the same.
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:54
That's a polite way to put it.
Bruno Guez:
00:11:56
I'm trying not to, to use bad words.
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:00
For the, for those of you who this may not be your jam, the revenue per unit was low. And the detail and hassle per unit didn't necessarily change, right? So that you are having data coming in, for penny fractions, that you used to be dealing with much larger units and having lower volume, but still data per item. So that kind of adds to the complexity of the thing.
Bruno Guez:
00:12:28
You go from, you know, getting 70 cents per download, or $7 per download to getting 0.0035 cents per stream. And your file now has, you know, a million lines in a CSV file. . .
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:43
We'll swing back in the conversation. But let me let me sort of take a slightly different direction. You also -- before you go too deep into the current great work you're doing -- you also became more of a lifestyle curator too, right? So whether that was working with Cirque du Soleil, or working with a hotel chain, you were taking an avenue of bringing music to place.
Bruno Guez:
00:13:10
Sure.
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:10
How did that? How did that? I shouldn't say it's a left turn because it to me, it aligns wonderfully with your label. But how did you get into place-based music? And then why are you not still in place-based music?
Bruno Guez:
00:13:24
When I was running the label, you know, in the in, let's say it's 2004, maybe even before, right? In the mid 90s, I started, you know, creating compilation records. And those records were a lot of great World Music. And Chris Blackwell had a chain of hotels across Miami, Bahamas, and Jamaica, called Island Outpost. And he asked me, "Hey, can you create, you know, the soundtrack of the hotel experience with your records?" So I would start traveling to, you know, these locations, and start to learn about the vibe and what the feel of those places are, and then kind of put together soundtracks and, and playlists and collections of music that would really capture the space.
Bruno Guez:
00:14:12
And that was an amazing time in my life, because I got to travel a lot and really try to create this sonic architecture to the brand and really understand what does you know Goldeneye in Jamaica sound like? What does, you know, Eleuthera in in the Bahamas? You know, there's a place called Pink Sound, which is a beautiful beach and property. It's like what does that sound like? Because they're different. You know, every property has its own vibe. You know, it's collecting a lot of music. I was, you know, curating a lot of music for these properties and making records as part of that then selling records, you know, in the minibars. Right, this is going 20, 20-30 years back. And that's how, you know people discovered music and listen to music during their holiday, and that became the sound soundtrack to their vacation. So I really loved connecting this lifestyle experience around music, and then helping people explore and discover new music. Through that, through that distribution, which is more lifestyle distribution, when it got to LA, you know, places like Oliver Peoples, which is a great, you know, eyewear company, they were the first ones to start selling our records in their shops, you know, this is going back to 1995. And then, you know, we started doing compilation records for American Rag on on La Brea. And, and doing records for yoga studios and things like that. So we were always looking for new ways to distribute music and share music, that would just never make it on on commercial radio. And I think lifestyle distribution was really interesting.
Gigi Johnson:
00:15:56
And I think for a lot of people, I wanted to make sure that you talked about that, because a lot of people don't realize that entire space occurs. And I keep running into people who currently do this. And I'm always fabulously baffled that this is a an area of expertise, but it's a unique branded elements, that is the sonic architecture of a place, which I do find a really interesting business model that is much more lucrative at times than some of these other things that we're currently dealing with. So let me sort of bring you back to both what you're doing now, but maybe how in the world. So you traveled a lot. And then you've decided to move your family to Israel. And so you now are running this business that you've been incubating for 10 years, but from Israel, which is why we're talking it in the evening, your time. So how is it to be running this? How is it to be growing this? And how do you deal with this as an international company?
Bruno Guez:
00:16:57
Sure. So initially, in the early days, you know, up until about 2015, it was really me building the core software infrastructure layer and application layer, so that I could run my business and I could start distributing other people and, and understanding how to bring more efficiency around the business of music than when we went to market in 2015. And we found interest and demand for our products, specifically around analytics, because everyone did not have good visibility into streaming data. But while analytics are an important part, and data is an important part of today's, you know, way of doing business, you know, I think the most interesting part for me was following the money. How do we you know, understand how to do royalty payments faster? How do we get people paid faster? How do we accelerate payments for rights owners? And I think that's kind of been the thesis that I've been going under for the last 5, 6, 7 years of trying to really understand how to accelerate the flow of funds to all the rights owners that are involved in a song and an intellectual property into a recording or composition,.which kind of brought us more into understanding.
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:32
So you've already talked about that you started as a drummer and enjoying music, and weren't the tech guy. So, but you taught yourself how to be using the early Apple Computer. Are you now the tech guy? How did you become the tech guy? Do you have a battalion of tech people that make you the tech guy? 'Cause a lot of people there's a, there's a tech underbelly underneath what they did, or they were, you know, taking apart appliances in their parents' home or, or something. How have you become the tech guy?
Bruno Guez:
00:19:04
So I mean, I remember going back, you know, to the mid '90s. There were no databases back then for us to easily manage metadata. So I had to keep track of credits on all the records I was licensing and producing using FileMaker Pro. And I was, you know, building FileMaker Pro databases so I could keep track of who we, you know, who, the credits for those songs and who we needed to pay. You know, fast forward to 2003- 2004, you know, the beginning of cloud. I started looking at, you know, can I use Salesforce as a CRM for managing all the metadata for my label? And started kind of learning about how to use, you know, cloud-based software for, you know, creating relational objects, relational databases, so we could have a database called Tracks, a database called Releases, a database called Artists. And just kind of creating a way of mapping all this information that our label needs to keep track of, and be able to create this, you know, CRM automation around marketing. And, you know, going back to 2004, we were already doing, you know, SEO optimization for landing pages, when somebody would come to look for Google and say, what was that song in, you know, Grey's Anatomy, you know. We were one of the top ranking pages, because we were creating landing pages for every time we had a license, on film or TV, with all the keywords that were relevant to the Google search engine. And then we were able to capture a lot of emails and help our artists grow their audiences, and then automate the process of say, you know, discover this artists on these iTunes Store links and things like that. But when I got to Israel, obviously, I wasn't going to sell a product based around Salesforce. But I had kind of built the prototype early in, you know, the decade before just to basically understand how to manage a record label's metadata, and the data structure and the schema of the data, you know, and all the metadata fields and all the things you needed to know, to just keep track of all the data. And I think that just kind of became the foundation for me saying, Okay, I need to build better tooling, better software, if I'm going to continue to run my label, because I don't want to have 10 more people, you know. It's too expensive to employ. And I just didn't believe that the amount of subscribers in the streaming era would be growing fast enough to offset the loss of revenue from downloads. So there was this middle period where, after 2009, till about 2014, I just didn't see a big business in running a label, and it was still too much risk considering that streaming was an exciting new opportunity. But the size and the volume of streaming was just not yet warranting the risk in running the label.
Bruno Guez:
00:21:56
And from the moment I started developing the tooling, I obviously had already the experience and understanding metadata structure and rights information and contracts, you know, data models and those kind of things. So it was actually pretty easy for me. You know, it was actually me applying myself in V2 kind of way. I did it before, it was my own pet project. But now I need it to be a prod . . . you know, a product that other people could use, that to kind of create some type of standards around metadata for how do you describe rights. How do you describe release information, track level information, artists level information, those kinds of things.
Bruno Guez:
00:22:36
So it kind of came naturally. And you know, I hired a development team and engineering team. And, you know, I would tell them, Okay, this is what the data model is for a track, for a release, for an artist, for a DSP report, those kinds of things. And I was interested because I wanted to build this product. And I think just through my interest, I became a product guy. Maybe not so much the tech guy, but I understood tech enough to know what I needed to do to get the product to look and feel and be user friendly. And what I realized along the way is, you know, you learn about back-end development, you learn about front-end development. But I loved good product. And I cared a lot about user experience and usability. And I was always frustrated with products that did not meet my expectations, or were just not intuitive. I really put a lot of effort into developing intuitive product that deals with a lot of complexity in music, data, and metadata. I think, you know, the first iteration of that product, you know, we designed three different times before I was comfortable releasing it, and that was 2014, 2015. And that product lasted, you know, seven years. And now we've completely rebuilt the front end application, as we have to learn how to scale, you know, our operations around the world. So today, I'm proud to say the team's done incredible job at, you know, creating a web application that's responsive, that can scale down all the way to a mobile phone, you know, for artists and labels in Africa who don't have desktops necessarily, who are using, you know, uploading music from a mobile device, to you know, distributors in Indonesia and Hong Kong who use it in Chinese or who care about the Taiwanese market and the platform localizes to 25 languages. It's you know, Arabic and Hebrew right to left. These are not easy things to do.
Bruno Guez:
00:24:46
Yeah, once you've done it, and you've learned the mistakes that you should have done differently. The next time you get the opportunity, you want to do things correctly, and I think we've done a really good job now, at doing that.
Gigi Johnson:
00:25:00
Let me point to current and forward. So looking on your website, I was kind of tickled when you look at your products, you've got a category for Web 2 products, which implies then that there's Web 3 products in the pipeline, and also that you've got the ability to be offering business intelligence tools to go with all of this, can you talk a little bit about the without giving away company secrets, the sort of forward direction and where you're inspired to take this group of B2B clients and tool sets and people all over the world? What's the web three side of this? And then what do you what are you thinking and doing an offering with the business intelligence side of this?
Bruno Guez:
00:25:41
Sure. So, you know, streaming business models provides two data sets, financial data, which comes monthly and consumption data, which comes daily. So for the majority of of, you know, artists, and labels, and, and distributors, the need to understand the daily consumption, the usage pattern of you know, where your songs are streaming across which markets and platforms is important to helping inform marketing decisions, and be able to understand is my, you know, single really taken off in a certain market or things like that. And it really becomes a data infrastructure problem, because there's so much data, when you're processing 3 billion streams per month or more, or 6 billion streams, or, you know, the some of our companies are doing about 80 to 200 million streams a month, individually. And it becomes a challenge to deal with that amount of data coming from many different sources, different platforms, Spotify, Apple, Deezer, YouTube, etc, TikTok. And the volume of data is just unmanageable for most companies. So streamlining, all those, automating the whole process of collecting, aggregating, normalizing, ingesting, de-duplicating, matching, all the things you have to do, so that you could just look at a dashboard and understand what's going on. And your artists can understand where they're performing or not. Yeah, I think what's interesting with that is if you can, you know, accelerate the pace at which people get information about the performance of their assets, it becomes really interesting, not just for marketing purposes, or financial management, and understanding how to run a business, and how to make investment decisions into your artists, how to provide advances to those artists. But also, part of what excites me now is around automating the whole valuation of catalogs, so that any of our customers can understand the value of their work in real time. Because what I found is that it's really hard to gather all the data, share all the data with potential buyers, or lenders or people who want to finance no buying assets or catalog. So a lot of what drives me is can I accelerate payments? And can I automate the understanding for the rights owner? Even if it's free, or 33% share of the song, do you know the value of that song? You know, is there a way that you can understand how much the your third of that song is worth? And can you access, you know, a market where you can offer fractional ownership of that? Or can you sell or list those royalty streams, to potential buyers? And I think that's where the markets really think of . . .
Gigi Johnson:
00:28:25
You could also subdivide your portfolio too, right? So, so someone can see before they are buying some kind of a representation of the financial elements, and that you could also take that sub database and be able to move it to a new owner or a new investor, I wou ld think that were options here.
Bruno Guez:
00:28:45
Absolutely, and the whole idea of creating baskets of songs, that comes with their cash flows, and their valuation metrics, you know, and making that more of a seamless user experience, so that you can accelerate underwriting and then you can share that information with potential interested party will allow independents to easily, you know, more easily sell or, or fractionalize their catalogue and get financed or get funded or access working capital. And I think the, the majors, you know, have whole teams, you know, analyzing catalog purchasing, Neil Young and Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, for $500 million. But the independents just don't have those tools, nor do they have those opportunities. And I believe that what we'll see over the next five years is the growth of the independents will continue. And as a result, the growth of financial services for funding independence will continue. And the better the tools the independents have, then the more likely they'll be able to understand that they also have opportunity for liquidity and for exits.
Gigi Johnson:
00:29:55
So my last question is then a future direction which is kind of the Web 3 side of the house as to sort of rethinking the connective tissue. I'm assuming that's some of your heartbeat going forward. And how are you looking at Web 3 opportunities? And is there anything you can share with us that you were tinkering with this in the, in this regard?
Bruno Guez:
00:30:17
Sure. So we've been developing, you know, Web 3 infrastructure for four years, initially around a digital wallet for creators, where they could manage their rights and their royalty flows and payments. We've connected you know, streaming, royalty data from the Revelator platform to those wallets so that any rights holder would receive their share of the money flow, and could even request advances against their future cash flows, based on the consumption data. So we've done that. The interesting part that I'm seeing now that obviously, the music industry is interested in NFTs, they're interested in digital collectibles. And when I look at the Web 3 space, I look at three different types of marketplace opportunities. I look at digital collectibles. I look at licensing into Web 3 and Metaverse are gaming applications. And the third part is around the securitization, or the digital securities, you know, selling IP [Intellectual Property] or fractional IP to marketplaces that are compliant and regulated, and that can offer tokenized securities for music IP. And I think, you know, when we look at the next five years, you know, the streaming landscape will look a little different, because I think there'll be new marketplaces, new types of marketplaces that open up, you know, more direct to fan, and tokenized economies around communities and fan powered communities that will go beyond just what artists are able to do today, which is earn money from streaming, I think this streaming income will just be an input into the value of IP that can be monetized through a digital asset across different types of marketplaces, whether it's a collectible, or licensing your song into no Decentraland, or The Sandbox or, you know, other types of Web 3 properties . . .
Gigi Johnson:
00:32:08
I was gonna say, are maybe places where people are actually going, but that's a whole nother we're recording this in October of 2022. When people are kind of going, how many people actually are showing up in these spaces, you actually good to have music data side of this that could help validate that as well.
Bruno Guez:
00:32:24
Completely. So I do, you know, love the infrastructure of Web 3, I think we're moving from a, you know, a web to internet, which was based around the flow of information. You know, it was an information based internet. And I think now we're moving into a value based internet, where value gets exchanged between parties. And I think we'll provide a lot more interesting opportunities around engagement around direct fans and direct to fan and direct to collector and community building. I think that's really exciting.
Gigi Johnson:
00:32:56
Well, Bruno, we've been talking for a while, it's been great talking. Is there anything we have not talked about that you'd like to cover before we wrap up?
Bruno Guez:
00:33:06
Um, I don't know, I think I'm just, you know, the only thing I could add to what I said earlier, is, there's . . .I've never been more excited about the music industry. And I've experienced, you know, different phases of it, I've experienced the analog world of, you know, the, the 80s, and the 90s, I've experienced this digital, you know, 2000 . . . 2010s. And now I'm experiencing it again, for the third time in a way, which is a shift in the business model into distribution channels. And it's the most exciting time I've seen in my whole career. So, you know, while it may seem cryptic and complex, and people associate, you know, Blockchain with cryptocurrencies, you know, is the underlying, or the underpinning technology, but it's so much more than that. I think that I'm really looking forward to seeing how this technology becomes adopted and becomes used for the next five to 10 years and how it creates more democratization of access to music, IP, and allows, you know, more creators to make a living from their art.
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:19
So if people are also excited about this, and would like to reach out to you to connect with you and your company, how would you like them to reach out and who would you like to reach out?
Bruno Guez:
00:34:30
So I think Revelator.com is a good place to start, you can contact us from the website. And if you're interested in music, IP, whether it's from the seller side, or the buyer side, or if you're a record label, that's looking for better tools to help you understand the value of your work and monetize your IP or a distributor looking to launch a service and create the DIY self distribution model. I think we're a great company to work with.
Gigi Johnson:
00:35:00
Thank you so much for joining us, Bruno. Have a good evening as you're already deep into your evening and appreciate this great conversation.
