Matt Searle

Yeah, so we sit on the edge of networks. We mean, the real thing, like if you think about like, a lot of people think about internet as download speed. But when it comes to latency, it's actually your latency. And then jitter and packet loss are the most important things. So we're solving for that in ways that other companies aren't. And then we're using AWS as backbone to kind of like do the math for you of where's the quickest path from right, you know, for the South by Southwest activation, a 5G router in Austin, Texas to Sony Studios in LA, finding that fastest path, delivering that fastest path.

And that's interesting. Are you going to plug in like Accenture just brought, but speed test net?

Yeah.

Do you access your protocol has to access I assume just pinning as many different places as possible. And yeah, that's the winner.

Yeah, and we use AWS for that. So it's all it's all we're we're an official product of AWS. So Amazon's like a reseller of our tools. And like, we'll have Amazon music is sponsoring, helping us sponsor the South by Southwest event. And they're like helping us pay for the event and pay for the video crew to come in. So it's all in collaboration with them. And like I said, they they consider us a last mile tech for them. So yeah, it's really cool.

So you're announcing it, you're at a stealth.

Are you in market?

We don't we are like building the website right now so that we can start signing up beta customers. So the goal is and we're pretty much there is after South by Southwest, we're open for beta to deliver to other people.

Yeah. And is it operating as kind of like a SaaS product? So like subscription fees?

Yeah, it'll be a subscription free. We'll have some sort of freeze tier. I don't know if you guys have ever used Riverside FM, kind of not exactly copy their model, but a similar model.

But for musicians because Riverside is great for podcasting, but

but you have to have a free tier. You have to have a free tier to get people in right and so we'll have a free tier.

That would be limited time window it or

yeah, it'll be a time window thing. Yeah.

I mean, this will explode the music collaboration stuff on social.

That's the goal. That's the goal. I mean, there's tools that exist right now. Our goal is to disrupt the market. Yeah.

Who's the biggest tool in the space right now?

I mean Source Connect is probably the biggest tool. Audio Movers is relatively big. They're actually owned by Universal Music, which between you and me, Universal Music is talking to us and they own Audio Movers.

Audio Movers has kind of been downgraded to

really like they've become like a multi channel audio tool for remote collaboration. So it's kind of turned into that rather than a low latency audio path. Whereas we're really trying to tackle the low latency audio path.

What one of the big things that we're talking about in this and in these sessions is the technology is changing so quickly. AI is changing software development, business building, all of these things so fast that it's very difficult to keep up with the changes. So we're just asking people out there, you know what they're seeing, what they're feeling, what they're hearing. So the first question I have to ask is like, is there anything new out there or anything that you're using right now that's exciting you and that you think everybody should be able to do?

I mean, I think it's interesting being in a small tech company in the world of AI and like being the head of product because for like our software, we did all of the wire frames for like our UI UX designer.

In like three days with because of the AI tools that exist now, whereas, you know, like designing the wire frames for an app would taken us a month, two months in a, you know, five years ago, six years ago.

So I think it's interesting, you know, I think we all know AI is not going to completely replace humans that this world of the matrix most likely won't happen. I guess maybe it will. But the way that AI can enhance humans work, like my big thing is that AI is not going to completely replace humans. And that AI is not going to completely replace humans' job. Like my biggest thing that I tell people is a lot of people said that Photoshop was going to kill photographers jobs. Photoshop created more jobs in photography, right?

have a similar effect in some of these industries, where yeah, it's replacing a wireframe designer, right? Like we didn't hire or need a wireframe designer, but it enabled the CEO and me as the head of product to get to a UI UX designer, what they needed to start working a lot faster. And it was a lot more collaborative in ways that, you know, a small company that can't afford to hire a wireframe designer, right?

Wouldn't have been able to do in the past.

On the Scott work side, sure.

Yeah.

On the design side, but in the music industry specifically, there's a lot of controversy, I imagine, around some of the, like, what are you seeing on that side?

Yeah, so I think it's really interesting. So I went to NAMM this year, and I went to a panel with all of Universal Music's studio heads, and then they actually had their like, so he's not their CTO, but he's their technology guy at all of Universal Music, the biggest record label in the world. And they are talking about AI tools, and they straight up admitted at this conference, it's like, yeah, our studios use these tools all the time. We're using them all the time. And he brought up an example, I can't remember the artist, but there was an artist that did a Christmas song, and they wanted to do it in Spanish. And they was like, well, we have these AI tools, we could do a Spanish version in her voice, even though she doesn't speak Spanish. But here's the thing, here's how they had to do it. So yes, they used probably Suno to make the vocal her vocal, but they still had to hire a totally badass singer to come in and match the cadence. So she can't sing exactly the same way as the original singer that sang in English, but she has to match the cadence, right? She has to match the beat, she has to match the performance of the English version in Spanish, and then they can take that recording, which took a ton of talent and a ton of art, and then make it sound exactly like the original singer in Spanish. So I think that that's what's interesting is, you're gonna see a lot of that in the future, where yeah, we're gonna have a lot of AI slop, and for the most part, it's not gonna go anywhere. But with talented people and smart people using AI tools to enhance a talented performance, you're gonna see a ton of that in the future.

We can't pretend that the industry that brought us Millie Vanilli is not going

to-- Of course, of course. And think about it too, like there's a drummer I follow on Instagram, and she did an ad for "Suno" this week, and all the comments are like, "No, why are you doing this?" And it's like, "Hey, if you're a drummer," it's like, "Yeah, okay, I wanna collaborate "with real people as much as possible," but it's like, that's not always realistic. If I can just go into "Suno," make some guitar tracks of some idea I have, make some bass tracks of an idea I have, maybe even put in some temp vocals, and I'm a badass drummer, and I'm gonna play real drums to it. There's still art to that, right? Like, yeah, we want human collaboration, we want AI to do our laundry and do the dishes, right, so that we can do art, like that's the reality of the world, we don't want AI to do art for us, but these tools are gonna exist, and they're gonna enhance art. They're gonna enhance art in ways that we haven't thought of yet, and it's gonna be rad.

That's awesome, the camera didn't kill painting.

Exactly, yeah.

And there's still people that are gonna do stop motion, right, there's still people, like, and in fact, I don't know if you have kids, I have kids, my kids want nothing to do with AI.

All of my kids are completely anti-AI, and you're gonna have kids that are gonna be out there with Walkmans, my son has cassette tapes and records,

and, you know, like, the future is still analog, like, it's not going away, people want this stuff.

It's the adults we have to worry about. Yeah, it's our parents we have to worry about. Right. All in the obviously the, we talked yesterday, like, I've got a Lebanese developer that I have to replace now because of, like, the conflicts happening in the world. So, I mean, the socioeconomic state of what is happening is frustrating, because you wanna just hire the best people and sometimes the best person is in Lebanon. And now that person had to escape to the mountains this week, right? So, I mean, that's a worry, but it's, you know, I don't lose sleep over it either. Like, you just gotta, you gotta live, you gotta do your thing, and sometimes you have to drown out the noise. As far as AI, I'm not scared of AI, personally. Like, I don't, I see it as a tool. I see it that there's a future where, you know, you have agents, AI agents, doing the stuff you don't wanna do and then you get to do the stuff you wanna do. That sounds great to me.

Rather than explore AI than people?

Yeah, well, yeah, of course, 100%, yeah.

Well, getting to people, like, if you hire internationally, and you're building a software tool that allows people to collaborate internationally, music has traditionally, although been a universal language, is an in-person experience. Yeah. What do you find in, like, you know, mind collaborating overseas, what do you enjoy about working with the, you know, international teams?

Yeah, one of the things that's been awesome is with Sony, we're actually working with their international head of A&R, and she's in London for this activation at South by Southwest.

And for her,

and what's interesting, to kind of backtrack a little bit, sorry,

when I came on as head of product, you know, the team was really designing for, hey, we're gonna use this to record. And it's like, okay, that's cool, but the reality is, when someone wants to record something that they're putting permanently on tape, and they're gonna release as a record, they're not gonna do it over the internet. They're gonna do it in person. They're gonna fly the person, they're gonna fly the drummer out, they're gonna fly the bassist out, and they're gonna do it in person. We're not gonna replace that. There may be some cases where people use our software for that, but for the most part, that's not where it's gonna happen. And I told our CEO, I said, where we're gonna be huge is in songwriting, and collaboration, and rehearsals. The stuff before the recording, the stuff before the show. Allowing people all over the world to collaborate so that they can prepare for coming in person and doing the in-person thing, right? So this is the tool that allows you to up your game or create something so that you can go and be in person and share it with people in person. And so that's why we're doing the songwriting camp at South by Southwest, because we really feel like our software is actually gonna be huge in that world. And so, what's the biggest thing that you're gonna do in the music creation space?

What about the cameo space? I'm a drummer, I'm a session gig guy, and I can only work in LA. Well, now you can book me anywhere.

Correct, and we're looking at ways to, like one of the things that we're partnering with, I don't know if you've heard of Jamcard. Jamcard is LinkedIn for professional musicians. One of the things that we wanna build,

but if you think about, if you're a gaming nerd, there's a thing called LFG, where you can go on forums and look for games to play World of Warcraft or Destiny or any of these multiplayer games, because people don't like the matchmaking in online games, so they make their own matchmaking system. You can build a matchmaking system for professional musicians using our software and say, hey, I have a session this Friday, I need a drummer. Go to this group of 13,000 professional musicians, they get an alert, hey, there's a gig available on Friday. Oh, I'm open for that, and this drummer says, yeah. And it's already a vetted drummer, so you know that what you're gonna get is someone good.

And yeah.

If they're running on a Roland V kit, they can plug it into the thing.

Yeah, yeah. Sick. And think about this. Think about the synth nerds.

Think about like the Trent Rezners, those people that have these big, huge stacks of synthesizers in their studio. How do you collaborate with people? You have to fly them to wherever your studio is. Now with MIDI over the internet, you can send a MIDI signal really fast.

So I can be in Nashville, there could be a synth stack in New York, I can just be playing on my MPK,

triggering a synth stack in New York, listening to low latency audio coming back to me. Now these synth nerds can collaborate all over the world using our software.

That was the biggest realization for me, getting this Roland drum kit, realizing that MIDI is not angel fire playing stupid jingles on the internet anymore. It's a hardcore protocol.

And with MIDI 2.0, Windows just announced support for MIDI 2.0. MIDI was invented in 1984, where we're all using a network protocol that's 30 years old. And now they're actually,

Roland and a few other people are building MIDI 2.0. There's a guy, Paul McCabe at Roland, that we're collaborating with at our company, and he's on the board for MIDI 2.0. And we're already talking to him about ways that, with MIDI 2.0 and using our audio pipeline, you can do tons of collaborative things that weren't possible before.

So fucking cool, you got any questions? Yeah, yeah, just walk me through kind of, with the software, is it gonna integrate with Pro Tools and Logic Pack and that kind of stuff? Walk through, when you hop on, how does that look? Do you log in, do you get on?

Yeah, so we'll have our own software, our own software window, and it'll be possibly a second screen experience for an audio engineer, but we're already fully integrated into Pro Tools, to answer your question. We have relationships with Avid. Avid's been on board with what we're building. They actually want us to, if you're a Pro Tools nerd, you know that Avid's integrated with a company called Splice, which is like an AI sampling tool. And you can see, like Splice shows up in Pro Tools as a window. Avid's actually working with us, they want us to have Sync Studio as a window in Pro Tools.

So it's just directly integrated. Because the thing we have is, we never wanted to be a plugin, because if you look at the way plugins work,

it's just not a reliable way, and you're gonna introduce latency. So we wanted to be our, we have to be our own standalone software, but we don't wanna build a dot. We've discovered that people that use digital audio workstations have their digital audio workstation, and they're not gonna move off it. So yeah, directly integrated in Pro Tools, we're working with Ableton right now, and we've already built something that works, so that we can integrate with Ableton. And then, yeah, I mean, I worked at Apple for eight years. We'll see if we can break through and see if the logic guys will let us use their code. Probably not, but we wanna integrate with logic, but working with Apple is an interesting experience.

If they want their studio not to be shaded.

I mean, I think if we get big enough, and the logic people see that we're working with Ableton and Pro Tools in ways that we're not in logic, then the conversation will be easier right now. In stealth mode, it's hard to have that conversation with Apple.