I'm Tom Ray from the band Lorenzo's Music and this is the Lorenzo's Music
Podcast. This is a show about meeting musicians and creators and talking to
them about what they do this time around I meet with a startup that created a new
music app my name is Tanner Kahl and I am a co-founder and creative director at
live undiscovered music or LUM I heard about this company because they are
based right here where I am in Madison Wisconsin when I first heard about them
the app was just getting ready to launch that was curious about what it was so I
reached out to them to see if I could stop by and ask about it they invited me
to the building where they worked downtown we sat outside on the rooftop
terrace so I could learn more about what the app does like literally because
since it wasn't released yet I knew nothing about it
the only information that I had was that it was a new music streaming app so the
whole thing was kind of intriguing because I was asking questions not
knowing if they were even going to be relevant whatsoever
it's a music streaming service but it's actually built on a standalone social
network so you can think of it as kind of a mix between you know Spotify and
then like Instagram and Facebook and we exclusively focus on emerging artists
you know that tail end of the music first of all so we're here in Madison is
are you from Madison or where it from the Madison area yeah I actually went to
Stoughton which is about 25 minutes south of here yeah did you go to school
did this happen is I went to UW Madison I'm actually just finishing up school I
have just a little bit of school left but I'm actually going part-time until I
graduate because you know boom is taking off much faster than we could have ever
imagined you know we're really excited that now that's where I want to pour my
my efforts into and how long have you been doing this loom was founded out of
like a uw-madison based based think tank you know all me and my buddies were all
longtime friends you know we grew up together went to high school middle
school together at college and during our senior year you know this was the
time we were all gonna be pursuing different jobs moving across the country
and we're like let's do some research into industries let's really work it out
I feel like if we really pull our resources together in our minds that we
can come up with something really special and this all started probably
about last October so less than a year ago started researching industries that
were growing really rapidly but had antiquated business models businesses
that couldn't keep up with the growth of the industry and we were really really
shocked to find out that streaming was that that industry companies like
Spotify and SoundCloud are really really big but they're losing money hand over
fist these days and the streaming industry itself was growing at 60% every
year but they still are doing really poorly financially and we started doing
more research and we found out that a lot of this was you know because of the
way their business models are set up paying these corporate record labels but
it's also from the frustration of their users some artists underground artists
they'll put their music on Spotify and it'll just sit there they won't make any
money no one's able to find it listen to it and the discoverability as a fan it's
hard to find new new music on Spotify with I'm just curating playlists of the
the same corporate music over and over again it's hard to find that underground
music there are a lot of talented underground artists out there and people
want to listen to them the artists will just be able to create an account and
upload their music like right out of the gate yep
artists that are on the platform now have the ability we send out the beta
they signed up and then there's actually a panel on our website where they can
start uploading musics been really great we've had a lot of music circulations
there's been a lot of connections made already you can already see people
artists starting to collaborate and stuff and it's really cool to see so
there is chat involved in it or messaging at least of some sort a direct
messaging feature hasn't implemented yet but that'll be coming very soon more of
a commenting system right now you can like an artist can upload a track and
then other artists can go on and comment and hey this is really cool we should
get together and work together some time starting to see those connections so
that's that's really awesome to see I think I read in a recent article about
the collaboration feature has been something that someone said they didn't
expect and that part is really cool because it is I mean with the internet
the one thing is like you can reach tons of people with your music but it's
really hard to go like oh I'd love to do something with that person especially
once we get that direct messaging feature and it'll be a little bit more
private they can they can do things behind the scenes more and it's really
cool to see artists being able to get real-time feedback which is something
that they haven't been able to do on previous streaming platforms you know
they upload a song and as a fan I can go on and say hey I really love your the
beat or the the melody or that's what the artists have really been responding
to mostly is that feedback people like to hear that their stuff is good know
who would have thought
we started thinking like oh we want to hit all these major music cities we want
to hit Nashville Atlanta LA New York all these major music hubs but then we
started doing a little bit more research on how startups and specifically in the
Madison area like each Street particularly how they scaled and
competed with like bigger bigger markets that like they were competing with
GrubHub and we're competing with these much bigger markets as well and then we
kind of changed it up a little bit based on their model and that was start where
you have your presence and grow from there so we we already have a very good
presence in Madison you know we're gaining a lot of traction here and from
there we're starting to expand out to like Milwaukee Chicago the twin cities
you know Ann Arbor stuff like that where we can get in there more excessively you
know mix it up more in those areas and then grow from there so we want to kind
of start at a central point and that's Madison and grow from there what would
be the thing that kind of inspired you to create this platform I know you said
it was on there were antiquated business models but why would you choose music
that is a very tough one yep we as a group are just huge music lovers we love
music we go to concerts all the time always listening to music always like
trying to find new music trying to be the person that finds the next coolest
artists or the next big song you know and literally when us as a group wanted
to share music with each other we would go onto SoundCloud or Spotify we would
copy and paste the song link and we would send it to each other in a
snapchat group and it was extremely inefficient yes in a snap check and it
was so inefficient and it was a struggle and a pain and music is a very social
experience how do we we can make this such a more social we can make a more
enjoyable platform for everyone and that's our social networking feature
that's built on you know now I can go and just tag my friends in a song that I
find rather than have to copy and paste a URL to a different app itself and I
like the idea of that I really do it what about the I'm trying to think of a
good example Oh ello Google allo now say you were going to send a message in the
platform that they were going this is going to replace
hangouts which it didn't but or hasn't yet who knows what they're going to do
but if I sent somebody a message in alo it didn't necessarily have the SMS
feature but I'd send it in like Oh to respond you need to download
I mean is it something that's gonna be platform centric so if somebody sends a
like like say I I'm gonna I'm gonna do worst-case scenario here just to give
the example what I mean so let's say I find a really cool song and I decide to
send it to my father and go here you go and I send him the link from that if he
didn't have the app would it go like send him to a webpage kind of like if
you don't have Facebook it will at least send you to a web-based component or is
that even something you consider just something I'm spitballing out there
that's something that I have we haven't really thought about really we don't
know exactly how every little component is gonna work yet right now our our web
platform is just like a website that's like a holding place before we actually
get the platform integrated into a website and once that is integrated that
then he would be able to do that but for now if everything stays in app so once
you're on the app you can still like tag people in links and stuff if you do want
to direct someone to a different streaming site you can do that obviously
we prefer if they stay in the app but um yeah that'll be something that'll be
coming down the road and and I didn't I wasn't trying to put you on the spot it
was like I know that you guys are just gonna be launching of course you don't
have all the bells and whistles figured out so but I was I was just curious and
I loved the fact that we kept the scenario of my dad is still involved in
this in the conversation and I thought that was great what about the concept of
streaming monetization yes so our whole premise is that we use streaming as a
means to an end for these underground artists as they can break into live
entertainment around I don't remember the exact figure but like 80% of the
revenue that artists made and like last year was off of live entertainment
rather than streaming they could get 10,000 plays on Spotify a month and get
a check in the mail for $60 or whatever but they could go out and do one show
and they can make $200 and that's just one night and so we're using streaming
as a catalyst so there's a major local emphasis on our application you know
there's a we have a following feed where you can go and see what all your friends
are interacting with musicians they're listening to but there's also a local
feed so you can see what's happening in your local area without even having to
follow them and we put that in there so people could go on venues included and
they could see who's really doing well in the Madison area and then they can
use that the men all this artist is doing really
well in Madison we would love to bring them into our venue to open up for
someone and that will drive liquor sales because you know this artist already has
a presence in Madison and you know the bars and venues all only care about
liquor sales anyways actually you bring up a good point that is relevant to me
as of just recently I had an idea for a live show I'd to ideas but I was looking
for local artists there's no real way to do that how would that work do they need
to label that they're from there or is it when you sign up for the platform
you'll you'll put where you're from but it also pulls your geographical location
at all times so if I go and fly to New York I can still see what's going on in
New York and the local feed but yeah but also on our explore page there's like a
whole explore page where you can find like the highest rank nationally the
highest rank locally who's trending nationally what artists are trending
locally and it's all sorted you can sort all that by genre you can do songs
artists events media and you can find everything locally nationally but you
can get very specific on where you want to find your music how come you did go
with the Loom name like so I know there's a lot to make it the boo sound
do you feel like you're always going to have to explain that it's not Lum
that is exactly why we put the ELA yeah we we love the name live undiscovered
music because it just fits in with everything that we stand for and
everything that our application does and so we were going by the al um Lum it
just doesn't sound good you know so we started calling it loom you know and you
know loom large you know there's a lot of like really cool things that you can
do with that we found out that everyone just started calling it Lum so we
decided to put the lot over it and to try to get some more clarification and
people are starting to catch on a lot but you know we still get Lum once in a
while was there a specific app or application that kind of inspired what
you did with this yeah I think there was a little bit of inspiration but it
wasn't like the apps itself that inspired us it was the lack of app that
inspired us we thought it was really great and we started doing all this
research and it turns out there's almost nothing that even comes close to what
we're doing and making music of a more social experience and that's kind of
where we came from with that are there gonna be like videos and photos
integrated in or are there already right now we have photos integrated
videos will be coming a little bit after launch but yeah that will
definitely be coming and we already do have you can take pictures right from
the app and upload them onto the feed your profile all that stuff so yep
photos are in right now but videos will be coming very soon so how did you
actually I want to say that I read that you guys want a competition but I could
be wrong so I'm saying basically like how did you fund this when we started
doing this whole process the first people that we reached out you know
we're friends and family we had a lot of interest from our friends and family
that's where we raised like some of our money but we also had some interest from
some angel investors in Madison so we got some like some of our money from
there and we're actually just closing out our first convertible note here in
the next couple days before launch I didn't know we had any angel investors
in Madison that's that's a new one to me okay how do you find them you know you
just got to spread the word and contact a bunch of people you use the
connections that you do have so there was no sort of startup thing like that
that you joined it was really just kind of green roots your home campaign sort
of thing actually we just today it marks the day that we graduate from the G beta
program yeah so it's an accelerator program for startups in there in a bunch
of cities in the Midwest including Madison and it's just an accelerator
program for young startups and they kind of connect you with with connections
that you need in the area possible investors if you're if you need that
stuff we just graduated from that program so what about copyright are you
gonna have people monitoring for like I I D content tags or things like that
what I can say about the the subject is that if you have any questions about our
copyright there's an FAQ on our on our website that you can refer to and have
you ever thought about I know before we started I talked a little bit about the
Creative Commons licensing have you ever looked into something like that like wfm
you out in New Jersey has a website called the Free Music Archive and the
music is all under Creative Commons license so that people can download it
and use it and listen to it and there's no worry about copyright but they also
have one that they created themselves for though do live in studios kind of
like KEXP does out in Seattle but they put it under their own license which is
called the Free Music Archive license which just means
this version can be used by us but it can't be used commercially or have you
thought about any of those kind of licensing structures what I will say is
I don't know all the ins and outs of all that stuff with our copyright and legal
but we do have a very very very good legal team that is on top of all of that
in there they've got us covered okay and then you have any of you been in bands
at all like where any of you musicians or is it really just music lovers one of
our co-founders has a little keyboard in his room if you count that but um one of
our interns actually is in a band called Shady grapes here in Madison her name is
Helen yep she's their band is very good everyone should go check them out but
other than that we don't really have any other musically inclined co-founders but
we're music lovers that's for sure I actually really like the support that
music lovers do put forward online a lot of again like with the music blogs and
stuff some of them become really popular and helped promote a lot of bands so
what is your prefer to music genre right now my preferred music genre is actually
the the EDM electronic music you know it's actually one of the most rapidly
growing music genres with the rise of music festivals and all this stuff
giulia become popular with some of the younger demographic and stuff the really
love going to these music festivals in this EDM electronic music and that's
kind of where I'm at right now but I also still do love a lot of genres you
know there's a lot of really really great talented artists on our platform
already and I've had a pleasure going through and listen to all the genres and
while right now that is the one that I'm listening to the most I still definitely
listen to a lot of the other genres and what about music festivals have you guys
done any promotion or any outreach to music festivals yeah we actually have
been doing some promotion at some music festivals you know we kind of went up to
Summerfest in Milwaukee and that isn't has a lot of our target demographic
there you know a lot of high schoolers go up to that we started talking to them
and they love the idea so yeah music festivals are a big thing for us is
going as fans to listen to music but also it's been a great way to spread the
Loom vision and we went to Lollapalooza a couple weeks ago you know walked
around talked to a bunch of people possibly setting up some things where we
can maybe table at these in the near future set up a booth or something but
yeah it's a great way to reach our target demographic and spread looms
vision to the world I do like that you networked but you were also just like
but we were really just going to Lollapalooza we came for both for sure I
definitely wanted to catch a few shows well if I'm paying the money to go there
since this interview was recorded the Loom app was officially released and you
can check it out at live undiscovered music.com
problem is I have an Android phone so I still haven't been able to check it out
yet if you haven't already you can subscribe
to this podcast at Lorenzo's music.com where you can also check out our music
and download everything for free on the next show I'll be talking to a musician
that reached out to me to be on the show who lives on the west coast thanks for
listening and I'll talk with you later
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