Kirt Debique - SyncFloor & The Future of Music Licensing
Kirt Debique, CEO and CTO of SyncFloor, is a 20 year Microsoft veteran with experience as an engineer, architect, technology strategist and general manager. He has worked on mobile productivity, real-time communications, multimedia systems, distributed security, and operating systems. An accomplished inventor with 37 technology patents, Kirt is also the owner and founder of Brick Lane Records, a Seattle independent label.
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Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over three years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. To live your healthiest, longest life possible, you need to understand what's going on inside your body. People age at different speeds, and generic annual blood work doesn't properly evaluate your biological age, but Insight Tracker does. Insight Tracker is a truly personalized nutrition and performance system designed to extend your health span and slow down the aging process. Created by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics, Insight Tracker analyzes your blood, DNA, and fitness tracking data to identify where you're optimized and where you're not. You'll get a daily action plan with personalized guidance on the right exercise, nutrition, and supplementation for your body. Add interage 2.0 to any plan to calculate your true biological age and see how you're aging from the inside out. For a limited time, get 20% off the entire Insight Tracker store. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future. That's insight tracker.com forward slash future. All right, we are live. Kurt DeBeek, welcome to the future of fitness, man. Thank you so much, Eric. It's great to be here. Yeah, it's it's thrilling. I this is I was like saying before, it's an unusual topic for the show. You know, unusual we'll talk about technology, we'll talk about you know business trends. I mean, this is all this is this covers all of those things, but it's music. And uh I don't think I told you, but I you know, in my 20s I worked at radio stations and uh, you know, um I didn't make any money, but I I was so thrilled to be there. Like they could have paid me in free concert tickets, man, and you know, just understanding a little bit about the music industry and and labels and seeing those come through all the time. You know, it's something that I am kind of fascinated with. And you know, obviously in the fitness industry, and and you'll get into it because you're gonna tell the story better than I can. Um, music rights are a big deal now. And um, you know, how do you I've I've even heard stories of over the last few years of just boutique individually owned and operated gyms um getting cracked down on by you know whoever, whoever they're using for music.
SPEAKER_00
And it's it can certainly can certainly happen.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, we're we're gonna get into all that. And if you can, uh before we get into that, give us a little bit of your your background because I know it's it is unique um as a CEO and the CTO of the industry, and then we'll we'll go from there.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, no, that sounds great. Uh so um uh my name is Kurt D'Eek. I'm originally from the uh Twin Twin Island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Um uh came to the US uh to do uh computer engineering uh in Miami, at the University of Miami. Um and um then when I was graduating, I did a summer internship at Microsoft. I was sort of on my way to do grad school at Stanford and um stopped there for the summer and never left. So so that sort of you know sort of took took my my life in a different direction. And um it was super fun. I I learned a ton about um technology and you know building software and um you know running teams and and getting interesting innovative business done. And um, you know, I'd I'd had that career at my at Microsoft for uh going on to 20 years, and um during that time, and especially in the latter part of that time, I connected a lot with the sort of music and art scene in in Seattle and you know, there's this which you know which is where you know I was living and working for Microsoft um at the time and still do uh in terms of living in Seattle. And Seattle has an amazing music and you know art scene, of course. And um I, you know, I I kind of got to the point where I felt that you know I wanted to figure out how to get involved and to help with what I'd been seeing among a lot of people I'd cared about, um, which was this, you know, sort of crazy disruption that was happening in the context of you know music and technology. Um and and I didn't think of it initially really as like I'm gonna go do a music tech thing. I really wanted to go help by doing a music thing. I I thought, you know, I might be able to come in here and come with a different set of principles about running a music label. Um, and that could have been quite naive to decide that the way I was gonna help was sort of run a music label because I've never done that. You know, but you know, I you know I went in, had a lot of fun, learned a ton, helped help some artists, and um and it was in the course of doing that that you know I ended up you know sort of figuring out a way to connect sort of those two major threads in my life um and major passions in my life, um, and try to do you know more in the context of the industry and independent artists and the independent artists ecosystem, the businesses that support, you know, labels, publishers, um, etc. that support uh independent artists, um, and to do it at another level of scale. And and that sort of led to the founding of SyncFloor.
SPEAKER_01
Right on, man. So we could just out of curiosity, what uh when you had your label, what kind of music were you were you guys producing?
SPEAKER_00
It was it was a quite a mix, because I have a I have a fairly you know sort of uh big mix of tastes, and so I had you know a post-punk psych rock band, I had a you know uh uh indie folk band, I had a modern African hip-hop band, I had a synth pop band. You know, I myself do um sort of uh uh dark wave, you know, electronic music, and so so quite quite a quite a mix of stuff. But you know, the idea is that we felt that it was a collective of artists that really wanted to push each other to do, you know, sort of interesting and innovative work. And we thought of ourselves as a collective. Um, and and in running the label, part of what I wanted to do was to have a set of principles that really had artists could think of themselves as a business and that it was an investment in their business, not alone, and that a lot of the ways that you could actually make an artist try to benefit from partnering with them at a different level um could kind of come to the fore.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, very cool. So give us uh some insights. So Sing Floor, what what was the uh tell tell us about the problem? What where were you out to solve?
SPEAKER_00
Sure. Uh so one of the things that we saw, you know, so the the label is called Bricklane Records and is called Brickliane Records. And um one of the things that we saw was that you know, as a label, you're you're you know kind of trying to attach to a lot of different you know methods of monetization of the IP that's residing with you and the artists that you're partnering with. And you know, one sort of you know interesting area of doing that was was what's called sync licensing. And this but sync licensing for those who don't know is is taking music and pairing it with with visuals, uh audiovisual content. And so typically and traditionally, um what people most think of there are are film TV and advertising. And so so that and that's what we were you know sort of thinking about in those terms. Um of course there was this there's this whole thing that's happened where you know the explosion of of creativity and and what people think of as the creator economy has brought a whole host of sort of new licensees into that world of sync licensing, whether that's from you know gaming to podcasting, um to fitness, um, and so on, right? And so and and and as you you bring more and more people in, what really you know you see is is sort of a straining um caused by all the complexity that's involved in licensing music and music rights and how they're they're articulated. Um, but but you know, sort of putting that aside for the moment, you know, we kind of said, okay, well, that complexity is already creating a lot of friction in the context of of acquiring music for these, you know, sort of traditional media purposes. And part of that friction also created an issue for independence, independent uh labels and publishers trying to represent artists getting access to that opportunity. So, so you know, if you step back, you know, some of the things I tell people about is that you know, most people's view of what's going on in the music industry tends to be, you know, major label known good, and then you know, sort of uh independent artist unknown bad, right? And and you know, our perspective is that the independent music ecosystem is this beautiful, you know, amazing, raucous ecosystem. It's quite fragmented, so it's hard to get your arms around, but it produces some of the music that people are deeply connected to. 40% of the economic activity in the music business comes from the commercial independent music sector. Um, 52% of the Grammys last year were won by independence. Um and it's just that people don't necessarily know the provenance, but these are real artists and real culture, real like real impact. Um, another way to kind of look at that is that, you know, when we talk about like fitness, for instance, the the music we have from independent uh uh the independent ecosystem um available for fitness, you know, the top 50 artists on our fitness tier have an average of well over half a million monthly listeners and represent well over two and a half billion streams on Spotify, right? And so so when we tell people that they go, oh, we didn't know that was the kind of music you were talking about, but that's exactly it. But the the yeah again, it's really hard to get your arms around. And so what we what we saw was an opportunity to to aggregate that content, make it truly discoverable for the purpose of licensing, right? And create a really frictionless workflow to go from discovery to curation to licensing and make you know sort of opportunity be more accessible to everybody in that ecosystem.
SPEAKER_01
Interesting, man. So give give us some examples of like who are maybe people would know, you know, some artists who are in the classified as independent.
SPEAKER_00
Sure. And and so uh, you know, some of the artists that we you know we talk about that are you know, sort of in our index, for instance, um, are people like Tori Mois. We actually have a couple of MF Doom tracks in our in our uh uh our our aggregate ecosystem, uh artists like Bale uh on Bank and things like that. Um we have artists from subpop. So we have artists from these luminary labels, right? You know, Shabazz Palaces and things like that. Um uh and and so when you kind of look at who we span, right, there's so much diversity there that what what really comes out for people is they realize, like, wow, not only do I know some of these artists, but this is all really great music that I'm I will know, right, at some point, right? Because of the artists that are sort of on the rise. Um, and and wow, I'm getting a chance to connect into that, right? And and take that and and get that in front of, you know, in the case of fitness, the people that I'm trying to serve with a great uh you know experience.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Man, it's it's it's there's so I I feel like it's evolved into if you want to if you want to license music properly, right? Um you you there's like this this big divide where it's become you either just get some you know kind of crappy music off of whatever, right? Just you know prediction libraries, yeah, whatever, just basic stuff like this stuff I use for my intro and my podcast instance, right? Um or you go pay a ton for like big artists, right? And so I guess how did that and my own curiosity, how did that happen, right?
SPEAKER_00
Well, so yeah, that's that's yeah, that's uh that's a great question. So so really I think I think where that came from is that um if you if you look at the way music rights are sort of expressed, right? You know, there's a ton of complexity there. There's complexity just in the stuff itself. So music typically has sort of IP associated with the composition and with the specific recording of that composition. So there already there's this bifurcation of the rights. And and when I say that, you know, you can think of it as you know, sort of there's what you might compose in terms of, you know, sort of the the melody and the chords and the things like that. Um, and then you you uh and the lyrics, for instance, and so on. And then there's the specific recording of it that turns into sort of what people think of as a music file that they're gonna listen to, right? Now you can you can have the same composition recorded in multiple ways, like for instance, covers, right? So so that's part of the reason that it's that this sort of bifurcation exists, but already that creates some amount of you know sort of complexity. Then what you have is that all the people that are associated with making those things, in particular on the on the publishing side, the composition side, there may be multiple people represented by multiple entities who have a piece of that thing. And so you end up having this really fragmented story for every single song, or potentially having that fragmented story for every single song. And so that in and of itself created complexity. And as it turns out, the more you get into sort of the major label realm, right, the more fragmented those rights become. And so the further more difficult it is to negotiate access to those rights for various purposes. And of course, the more expensive it becomes. And so that complexity and that sort of expense started to drive people to trying to find, well, what's the simplest, easiest way for me to just get my stuff done? If I have to sacrifice quality, then fine, I'm gonna sacrifice quality. I don't want to, but I'm gonna do that. So that's where sort of, you know, it's what what's called production music libraries came from. Um they came from people from sort of actually, you know, people think of them as sort of jingles plus plus, if you want to, you know, kind of look at it that way, right? It's sort of they were the things that were sort of creative for these sort of background, you know, elevatory-y, you know, jingly kind of stuff. And they've, you know, sort of continue to evolve, of course, but but that's kind of their provenance. And and given that, right, you you automatically get a sacrifice in terms of of quality and also sort of cultural impact, right? These, you know, you're the idea when you when you look at music that's made by real artists that you care about, there's a whole bunch of cultural credibility that comes with that, right? And cultural momentum that comes with that, in addition to the fact that they're making songs, they're making art, they're making things that have an arc. And that's the stuff that truly inspires the people who are using it, for instance, for fitness, right? And so so that's where you you're sort of sacrificing all of that. And so what we saw as a huge opportunity was to take this commercial independent ecosystem, go find the best music in that with the most consolidated rights, and build a way for people to discover and curate and use that music in an affordable manner. It was sort of the the taking the best of all worlds, right? That's in the middle and making that accessible.
SPEAKER_01
So if I'm if I'm getting this right, Kirk.
SPEAKER_00
And I'm not excited about that at all. Yeah, yeah, it's very Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Uh totally. Um If I'm getting this right, so that like the big you know, studios and and some of the more, you know, I guess popular songs, the majors majors, yeah, it it's very the there's a lot of a lot of players within within each song, right? There's a lot of layers, a lot of people own bits and pieces, but as you get more towards the you know, the center of the independence, there there's less players per song.
SPEAKER_00
That's right, that's right. You get more consolidation, and so we can find those consolidated rights music from the best folks, the best content. And and now the the complexity that kind of comes in is that you know there are lots and lots of these smaller, you know, independents. And so thinking to yourself, okay, well, how do I find them? How do I, you know, work with them, that becomes hard. So that's where our job is to take you know a great set of them and have them be accessible in one place, using software to smooth the process of discovery and curation. And so we have a hundred plus partners now in our index, right? And that that's a that's a hard you know, sort of number to get your hands around if you're trying to do it individually as a uh a fitness company. But you can come to us and get access to all of that content, that diversity, and that great, great commercial music, right? Um, in a simple way.
SPEAKER_01
When you say partners, Kirk, what do you mean?
SPEAKER_00
Uh so labels, publishers, distributors in the music industry, they are what we call our catalog partners. So we work with them to bring the best of their content into our aggregate index. We built a new kind of search engine that allows somebody who's looking for music with a creative intent in mind to find that really easily. We've built a bunch of tools, especially for people who are in the fitness realm, to be able to curate the experience around a playlist of that content. So they can put the stuff together, they can uh mark in and mark out, so they can start the song here, end it here, they can speed it up, they can slow it down, they can use just the instrumental, they can do volume automation, they can do all these things that are essentially like sort of a mini DJ suite on that playlist, and then they can use our stuff to make their class happen. And that makes people really excited.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that is really cool. So, why why fitness? I mean, when you looked at this, you didn't come from the fitness industry.
SPEAKER_00
That's right.
SPEAKER_01
Um, but you obviously recognize an opportunity here. Uh what was it? How did you identify this industry, this vertical in particular?
SPEAKER_00
It's like any of any of the fun stories, right? You kind of trip over things in some ways, right? So what happened was that you know, as I had kind of mentioned before, we were we were definitely focused on on traditional media, film TV advertising, particularly focused on advertising. We'd also done some experiments in podcasting, actually. We have a product that's called Songs for Podcasters that, you know, sort of an independent podcaster can come and use all of these great tools, find and very easily licensed and affordably licensed, you know, music for their podcast. Um the the what happened was that, you know, within the context of the pandemic, as we were kind of looking at our business and looking at what are the different types of impacts we were seeing, and certainly with respect to traditional media, there were sort of two major kinds of impacts that were happening. One is that there was a lot of pullback in the context of advertisers and so on. Like you, you have, I think, some experience with what that probably um, you know, what probably happened, you know, across advertisers. They had to kind of look back, brands had to look and say, well, how do I want to even talk about my brand in this context? Which means that, you know, sort of the production pipeline from the perspective of of you know, sort of agencies slowed down while they were figuring that out. In addition, both for agencies and production companies in advertising, as well as film and TV, they were just trying to figure out how do we do this thing safely. Right? All of those things sort of created sort of a bit of a uh sort of traffic jam in the context of production, right? And and that meant that post-production also started to slow down, which meant that the music licensing, which typically happens in post, you know, was something that was impacted. And so we were of course looking at our business, looking at all of the the different things that that we should be thinking about in that context. And and you know what happened was that while we were doing that, a couple of interesting things occurred. Um, one was that we we really looked and said, well, you know, are we hooked on to the big idea? Because we know we'd been focused on this sort of vertical market serving traditional media, but in order to build that application, we'd actually built a platform, a B2B platform, that allowed us to create apps for different sectors. And so we were kind of looking at that and telling ourselves, well, huh, you know, maybe that's the big idea. That's you know, this ability to take this great ecosystem of content and target it at lots of different things, like shape and and customize for different types of sectors. At the same time we were thinking about that, uh, we were introduced to um a fitness company, a digital fitness company, that um through one of our you know, sort of uh venture capital investors. Um, and really they just introduced them saying, you know, the company was saying, hey, you know, I've got to figure out this music thing. I'm a digital fitness company, it's super complicated. Um, you you've got any advice for us, um, or anybody that we could talk to. And they said, Hey, you know, one of our portfolio companies works in this thing. They're they're not working on that, they're doing stuff for traditional media, but they could probably give you some advice. So we started talking to them, and as we talked to them, we kind of go, Well, wow. We actually think we could help you. You know, uh so we started thinking that. And at then at the same time, and this was sort of the the clincher, um, on our site, there's a way to, you know, besides sort of self-serve, being able to search for content for for music and so on, um, for what you're doing for for advertising, there's uh a thing that you can go through and say, Hey, um, here's what I'm looking for creatively. Can can you guys help? And we have our music analysts help. And so it's sort of a form kind of thing that you you come through. Um we got one of these notifications and it said basically, hey, I'm not a I'm not an advertising company, I'm actually a fitness company. But help. So they're like, wait, what? We're like, something's something's happening out there. And so so we really dove in, and as we dove in more, we realized like, wow, we have something that's incredibly differentiating. In fact, we have multiple things that's that are incredibly differentiating. One, we have great content, especially in the context of what people were trying to do with respect to VOD and live to VOD and so on. We have great content that's simple to license and very affordable to license, right, for that purpose. And two, we have a platform that we can actually really target at this sector in a way that actually helps them go end-to-end in a uh really beautifully rendered, intuitive discovery, uh, simple productive workflows, and simple licensing. So end-to-end they get what they need. Um, and as we started to look at that more, we said, hey, we should be, we should be in that business. There's no question about it. You know, and so so we started, you know, sort of going after that.
SPEAKER_01
So what uh when you started to kind of hone this specifically to that, you you saw the need, you're like, okay, well, we can we can tailor this too. What did you have to do to make it specific to fitness?
unknown
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
Um, so so there are a number of different uh sort of you know angles on that. You know, one, there was a very different um, you know, sort of go-to-market sales motion, really, like that that it was um, and that that implied a number of things in the product. So, so typically, you know, um in traditional media, you know, an agency might, you know, an agency producer or editor or so what might send uh a brief and say, hey, I'm looking for some stuff for this ad and you know, I want it to feel like this and maybe these references, blah, blah. Or they may sign up, you know, for an account in our system and then they kind of do some searches and then go through a workflow. But it's typically sort of project by project. Sometimes for an ad, it might be just one sort. at a time that kind of thing and so it's a it's a particular kind of workflow and so the app that's built on the platform is sort of you know oriented around that what we found with fitness is that it felt much more like sort of a B2B you know sort of SaaS workflow right like so so the the the idea is that we would you know meet a customer right we would we would actually set up a portal that was specific to them and so on our on our sort of platform you we can build these portals that's that's sort of like your place to log in for all of your trainers and your your production company your production crew etc to to go ahead and log in they could log in and they could use all of the great discovery tools we had but the way they wanted to be able to to you know sort of consume the content was sort of class by class so sort of playlist by playlist so we had to kind of orient it around the idea of building a playlist for a class and then sort of saying yep I've got it all together I've curated it I want that right and when and when they said that a couple of things also got got included the curation ended up needing sort of more of these sort of DJ like tools than necessarily let's say when you're looking for something for an ad might need. And two, you know sort of this idea of sort of batch acquiring it, you also needed a way to render that for either a live class production or live to VOD or download the batch for VOD. So it added a few workflow things as well. And then finally in terms of of sort of uh think of it as as affordability and and the actual licensing we kind of said well gosh if you're looking at a fitness class right a fitness class you know cost of production is X right on average right and you're also uh licensing multiple songs for that production so the per song cost needs to be sort of differently thought about than you might think about it for an ad or for a film with a number of scenes or what have you. And so we kind of worked through all of that with our customers and with our partners and came up with something that felt really good with respect to what we think of as micro licensing for fitness. And so once we did all of that we ended up having this thing where a customer can go through this process all through the month be pulling together their classes, doing live classes, doing VOD, et cetera, et cetera at the end of the month we were kind of tracking all of their licensed activity in a ledger and then we send them an invoice at the end of the month and we say here you go here's all your licensed activity right and they pay that and then when we they pay that we can then at the end of that month go ahead and pay out all of our partners right based on that. And so both sides are super happy right because it's this kind of regular monthly kind of turnaround um and it's very very simple for the licensees simple to use simple to make their classes happen simple to pay for affordable to pay for and for our our catalog partners they're happy it's a great microlicensed stream of in of income and it's regular.
SPEAKER_01
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SPEAKER_00
I guess let's let's talk about a little bit more about where uh you guys are finding your particular niche within the fitness industry overall because I know you mentioned digital fitness video on demand um where where are you guys seeing the most channel that's it's it's yeah so so we you know we have we have actually customers across a number of different you know I guess subsectors um and and as we kind of you know go on our journey um uh as we we build out uh our work in this in in fitness uh we're learning about which you know which ones are sort of the ones that really hook on the most um I would say that one thing that we we we sort of consider to be a significant wedge um is when you is when you need to deal with with VOD or live to VOD right um you know if you're if you're pure brick and mortar live then sort of doing you know sort of get getting access to that that's that's been a s you know for uh to a large degree a solved problem for a long time right but but as soon as people start to think about you know sort of you know a recorded fitness class and that can happen in multiple ways you're doing it specifically to build out your library or you're doing live to VOD because that's a great way to keep your library fresh as you do live classes you record them. Right so so uh immediately that whole thing that falls right squarely into that place that we are great commercial music that you can use to synchronize with your your your recorded content um and we make it super easy to find and acquire and and and and get it licensed. And so that's something that you know time and time again that's that's a big deal. The other thing that we're seeing is that you know all of the tools that we pull together to let people you know sort of curate that experience right um are really incredible when people sort of get their hands on it, right? This idea of like oh wait like not only am I getting all this you know great content but I can shape that content to the to the class I want. And you add automatic tools for me. So for instance we add things like auto splicing. So if you have you know a playlist of content uh we look for the transitions you know in terms of fade out and fade in and we chop those off automatically so that the transitions are tight. We we you know the speed up and slow down thing people love being able to explicitly mark in and mark out people love. And then you kind of get into this other stuff which is all about workflow. So once you have a team of people trying to make these recordings right um you you have a whole bunch of things that you want to be able to easily do like how you share for instance content right so and how do you how do you keep your classes fresh? How do we help you because we're music experts but also how do you easily in the software find sort of the latest stuff that we've brought into the ecosystem and things like that. So all of these things are things that that as we continue to build into our software right it makes people really excited.
SPEAKER_01
And what points does does an initiate an extra charge like let's say I do a live I do a live session I record it I put it on a video in demand library at what points am I incurring charges in your so I can I can tell you about our our uh our pricing as such the way we do that.
SPEAKER_00
So so they're essentially sort of two things like we have um uh VOD pricing recorded fitness pricing and live fitness pricing um you know uh if you're doing live to VOD you you incur both um so on the VOD side it's it's actually super simple you pay a license fee for each song in a class so if you use a song in a class you get that fee and if you use that same song in another class you pay that fee again but once you've recorded that class with the music you can put it up and as many people for as long as you like can consume that video. So it's a one time charge. And that charge is five dollars five dollars per license fee. And then on top of that when we send you your bill at the end of the month we we have a 10% service charge. And so the effectively it's $550 per track in a class right so you have 10 songs for you know in a a class that you're recording $55 is what you pay for it and that's it and you're you're off and going.
SPEAKER_01
And how does that compare with more more of the traditional models?
SPEAKER_00
Like $55 incredibly affordable micro licensing. But we we felt that it was really important because of two things the density of music usage within a class so you you could it's easy to use 10 songs for a class and the cost for um for making that production so we typically tried to look at it as well what percentage of the cost of making that production makes sense with respect to licensing the music right and so so once we kind of got that like it was easy to actually get to a place where both you know the licensees and our partners felt like yeah this is this makes sense. And what we're relying on there is that people are making lots and lots of new content so there's a volume of that and they're also trying to keep it fresh. So there's a constant refreshing of that volume of content. On the live side we charge 0.4 cents per attendee per stream and and we have sort of a couple of ways of dealing with that is that we you know if you're if you activate uh a playlist to do it live and you're using our software sort of end to end then um then you can tell us the number of attendees or if you don't want to do that if that doesn't make sense for the way kind of things are structured um we can negotiate with you an a a rolling quarterly average attendance which will essentially set the per stream per instructor you know or class fee right and so so that so we you know we just multiply it out essentially and say that's an average and so we have two ways of dealing with that and you know really simple and like I say we we're recording all your licensed activity in a ledger and at the end of the month we send you a detailed report with all your licensed activity in the bill so it it you know it says we've talked about mostly digital fitness but what about brick and mortar?
SPEAKER_01
I mean I I you know I used to have CrossFit classes music was like I swear to God I s that's people were going to fight over the music at times of what song was going to be played during a class or particular workout. Spin, you know I've done probably not a lot but dozens of spin classes I enjoy them but the thing that makes the ones really good of course are the instructor in the playlist right um so that in-person experience with music is absolutely critical. How are you guys why are you I guess why is that not the first place you guys are going is there complexities with how music is licensed there or what do you guys see in that area?
SPEAKER_00
Well well so so I I would say it's almost the other way around which is that um it's really clear that as soon as you get into digital and particularly digital plus recorded um there's a lot more complexity and we're we're sort of evaporating that complexity and so we're very differentiated for people in that realm. I would say that you know if it's if you are doing a pure live brick and mortar class right we're you know we we give you access to great music we give you great access to tools to make that happen. And I think that are some people who would really you know sort of benefit from that. But at the same time we are less differentiated in in what has been a sort of solved problem for a long time the pure brick and mortar live uh you know music experience. And so you know it it it didn't make sense for us to sort of invest in the um in the sales motion to try to you know sort of take our product and go there because there's less differentiation right now right now as you know as we build out our sales motion for for digital fitness you know our our sales guy is always you know our head of sales he you know he goes in and he's like yeah it's really easy to have this conversation right we may not win every every sale or it may take time for it to be evaluated but boy the conversation's super easy because it's really clear what problem we're solving it's really clear why we're differentiated as a solution you know it's it's it's you know that's where you want to be yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense man so give me an idea like where um as SyncFloor is a business like where where are you guys when did you when did you officially found it have you guys taken on investment like where what stages are you guys in? So so you know we're a startup um we're what would be called a pr uh a pre-seed going to seed startup uh you know heading towards uh our seed round of funding um this year um and the you know we we were founded in 2017 um we basically I would I would say the arc of the company has been um the first couple years we were doing essentially deep tech right uh we have a patented uh music search technology um that's that's is still incredibly differentiated in the industry um and is really optimized for this idea of being able to express creative intent um with sentiment and references and get back relevant great commercial music results and there's still I I don't think anybody I've seen that does it you know in the way that we do and with the kind of uh efficacy that that we that we have um so so that was sort of the the sort of deep tech part and we did that for the first couple years I would say the second couple years we were we were really focused on ecosystem building content because you know your your search might be great but you've got to actually bring back interesting results that are available for licensing. And so going from you know sort of zero partners to you know um a hundred plus partners now and you know uh 22000 plus uh you know uh songs available for for licensing in our index overall across all tiers of usage that that you know took time and and we were kind of building that out right and obviously we were doing other things during those times but those were I would say the major sort of you know sort of focal focal points. And we were focused of course on traditional media a lot. Now we're in the phase where I think of us really commercialization. We hired our head of sales in October uh last year. And so you that that right there gives you a sense of like okay yeah we're we've kind of said okay we've built we've built the engine we've got the content in the ecosystem now we've we're going out and trying to you know sort of convert based on that and so that's that's the stage that we're in now primarily and we're focused on on on sort of fitness and advertising as the the the main sectors that that we we think we can you know sort of build that differentiation around and um and you know we're climbing the mountain. Yeah man yeah yeah you sure are uh I know that feeling so where where are you guys I guess describe like your sales uh outreach like what what are you guys doing are are you just doing Google searches finding out who's creating content and just phoning them up I mean I think actually we are connected by your head of sales right I think you reached out to me so you did a great job I mean and and so some of this you know given you know you know as he started in October we're sort of building out our uh that motion uh in fact actually hired uh within the last couple of weeks hired a couple of sales associates who are are are working to to help him with the mining of um of leads and stuff like that but fairly typical you know sort of SaaS like go to market motion you're basically doing a bunch of mining mining of leads people in the sectors that we feel are are meet uh an ideal customer profile as we continue to refine what that ideal customer profile looks like in the fitness industry in particular um uh and as we get you know sort of you know leads we we kind of have an outreach campaign that you know it's definitely very uh sort of email focused um and as we get those we can start to bring them through the funnel of you know describing our differentiation and getting them to try it out the nice thing is that the way we we set things up for fitness customers is um you know we set up those portals I talked about we call them dedicated libraries and so they can easily try it out right and there's no fee for that or anything like that. You you you you get a thing set up for you you log in you try out our discovery you try out our you know the various features etc um and then you know when once generally what people start off by doing is they're thinking okay let me see if this content really is as good as they say right and so they check it out and generally people go wow okay this is this is great content. Okay now let's talk about all the features we do. Okay wow oh wow it's that affordable and then you sort of just lead them down the thing until you say hey this this is you know truly pay as you go right so so that's that's a and to me that's a great way of aligning with customer success. Right. So you know I'm not charging you you know if you're not using me. I'm charging you when you're using me and when you're you and and when you're licensing content. Right. And so my job is to make sure that you feel like this is great value for money for licensing the content through this software. And so um so that that's kind of how we we we build out yeah yeah it's it's almost like a uh it's almost like a MailChimp model, right?
SPEAKER_01
Like you get people started as they're early, right?
SPEAKER_00
And then as they build and they land and expand is kind of the thing we talk about, right? You know you say okay great they try it out they go okay well I'll use it for this set of classes this part of my schedule this set of trainers this subset of trainers etc and then they continue finding value and continue to expand you know from from there.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah it's like uh one of my colleagues uh referred to it as I don't know if this is a real thing or if he you know made it up but a reverse churn right when you look at clientele it's a reverse churn um I mean you're a smart guy we went to Stanford right I mean you tell me is that a real thing I decided I stand at Microsoft. Yeah that's okay that's right that's right yeah yeah well I didn't even that was that was 36 minutes ago you can't expect to be a member of member of that where where is this all going? I mean obviously you're you're putting a lot of you know um eggs in this basket right like um there's you can talk to anybody in the fitness industry and they'll have you know a different opinion on you know what what's the future of this industry look like is it you know digital is it going to be in virtual reality is it gonna be um you know brick and mortar is it still gonna run the day like who who's who's gonna do this what where do you see if you're placing your bets now how do you see yourself playing into the big picture and what does that big picture look like let's say five years down the road?
SPEAKER_00
Sure. So so I mean I'm I'm certainly uh I certainly subscribe to you know the belief of of omnichannel is is is is the way I don't think um anybody is gonna get away with saying that I'm just a brick and mortar shop or or um uh they they're gonna have to think about what it means to be where their customers' mindsets are right and all of the stats all of the research shows that people are like look I I want to be I want I I do want to be able to go to a gym but I also want to be able to do the thing in my house and I and sometimes it's because I want to do it with an app and sometimes it's because I want to do it with a device and sometimes you know it's you know people people want the stuff brought to them in whatever convenience or form factor that that makes sense for them. And so so as people start to think about that it means that they have to have a more holistic view of their their their content ecosystem. Right. And and the thing is is that you know when you when you think about it that way right the stuff that you do the the great stuff that a fitness company does right which is really centered on you know whether it's method based or it's it's you know sort of the specific trainer kind of thing the talent based or whatever it is right that's the part that's their differentiation. They want to be able to leverage that in lots of ways and to leverage that in lots of ways means creating content around it and being able to then serve that up. You know so so you know in some ways like you know just the fact that you're able to to to record it and then put it up there means that you're getting more out of the thing that you already did. Right. So I think a lot of these these companies you know sort of need to be thinking about that and music is at the heart of it. And so and so we're there to help solve the problem.
SPEAKER_01
Right on man. Yeah I agree. So uh I asked this question in the spirit of you know um collaboration and and uh with our listenership and people who may want to reach out to you but what what do you guys need right now? Like what what's what's one of the biggest you need you have as a founder, as a business what what's uh what are you guys looking at?
SPEAKER_00
No that's great. I appreciate it. Uh the the you know as as a company that's trying to do our best to serve the fitness industry well um you know the more people can educate us about you know how how it it sort of uh sector subsectors right um where the the big needs are where we that we that we can help with that kind of education is is crucial right and so for me you know as as a startup founder what you know where the mantra is always about build something people want right and and find that fit right and and really that comes from talking to people talking talking to lots and lots of people I can't tell you how many times um I've had a conversation with a customer and out of that comes some particular you know product thing that we're like oh wow they really need that and then you know the next week right I talk to a different customer and they're like oh you know what we really need is X I'm like oh hey we just build that you know kind of thing right that's the stuff that's magic right it comes from that constant you know sort of working with customers talking to them responding to their needs and turning the crank over and over again it's how you make a great product for people and so we just want we want to talk. Awesome man and do you want to uh do you want to take an opportunity and shout out to to any of your clients who are doing really cool creative work uh within the industry yeah absolutely so you know so we have we have some some great great clients um people like uh actually they're working on their production run right now with our software um uh uh physique 57 they're doing great stuff uh bond they're doing uh great stuff great customer of ours the class by Tyranty is another great customer of ours all you know sort of very different stuff um you know our friends at hydro are really cool um Um, our our friends at Open are really cool. You know, and so you know, some some really you know great customers doing a lot of cool stuff in different arenas and and we're learning from them. And, you know, we want to get out there and meet more of you and learn more.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that's fantastic, man. And I I love um I I like businesses like this. I like companies like this because you know the competition is it's obvious where you guys sit, right? There's a definitive need, and you guys are being innovative within that, and you're complimentary to everybody. Like that's right. I can't, I don't like, is there competition really?
SPEAKER_00
I mean, besides, right? Yeah, I I think as a startup, they tell you a lot that look, as a startup, you're you're much more likely to you know get knocked out of there by your own sort of struggles than by competition. So focus on you know the customer building what they want, etc. Um, I would say that having said having said that, I would say that in the fitness realm, we feel like we're very, very uniquely positioned. You know, if you if you want great affordable commercial music um for VOD or live to VOD, we're I mean, we're the thing, you know. Don't don't don't worry about that, you know, production library stuff. It's not it's not that's not that's not what you want. Your your instructors are frustrated, your production team's frustrated because the music just isn't that great, right? And they can't get the kind of variety and they can't get that kind of song arc and all those things. Um it's if you want something that's affordable, it's us. You know, uh you know what I mean. If you want something that's simple to license, it's us. If you want a lot of tools to actually enable your workflow end-to-end, right, from discovery to curation to licensing, it's us, right? And so so it's a great place to be. We just need to figure out the best way to meet people and keep bringing them in and responding to them and making it better.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, man. Well, I think it's great. And you know, I I was actually asked this question um on someone else's show, but you know, is what are kind of factors like adopting technology? I'm like, well, listen, you know, there's a couple key factors that we have to concern ourselves with now, and it doesn't, you know, the technology just gotta find the right tech to support in. You know, I think in the fitness industry, accountability for our clients is king, right? And experience, giving them a unique experience is critical, which is where you guys, and the third one for me is community. I think community is really important. But the experience of it, right, is something that you know it makes man, you go you take a class or you do uh, you know, something video on demand, and you can tell where it's just from a production library or like this is cheap. Yep, you know, they didn't really care enough. And that that people notice that all the time, right? Like is you know, I remember when uh I was back in 18. When I had my gym and we were running Pandora and then Pandora started running commercials, and as soon as like I didn't go for the paid version of Pandora, people my clients were all over my ass, right? Like, what's going on? You can't pay 20 bucks. I have to sit here and listen to a I'm like, yeah, you're right. You're right, you're right. And this is kind of like, and that was when it all started, right? Like, oh my god, I gotta pay for my music. Yeah, um, I can't just put a you know C D in and play it anymore. Um anyway, I'm dating myself. Uh Kurt, it's it's been really interesting, man. Where um if people want to get a hold of if if people want to get a hold of you, um obviously they can go to syncfloor.com. That's right.
SPEAKER_00
And you know, feel free to reach out to me directly, Kurt K-I-R-T at syncfloor.com. I'm you know, all ears.
SPEAKER_01
Cool. Right on, man. Well, hey, thanks for coming on today. Thanks for educating us on this uh kind of complicated but not so complicated anymore topic. Not anymore. Yeah, it was uh it was really good. Uh ladies and gentlemen, Kurt Debeek. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Finis. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.
