Guest Post for the Webby Awards

I was asked by the great people at the Webby Awards (the “Oscars of the Internet”) to put together a think piece based around the question/theme:

“What do we need to Overwrite in 2021?”

It’s a great series they are putting together, centred around an open, important question that I enjoyed reflecting on. I ended up writing a piece titled:

Overwrite Big Tech’s Colonization of Culture

In this piece, I talk about how Big Tech has colonised culture, and how we need to rethink and rebuild new systems to be more aligned with the interests of the creators who help build these platforms in the first place.

LINKS:

My piece here.
Wider series here.

The Future: What's happening at Queen Mary University on Artificial Intelligence and Music

A few months ago I joined the Advisory Board for the Queen Mary University Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) for Artificial Intelligence & Music (AIM). Queen Mary is genuinely one of the world's leading centres for this area of research, a crucial area for the future of music and the creative industries. AIM's research is focused on 3 broad themes: music understanding, intelligent instruments and interfaces and computational creativity.

I'm delighted to play my part in this, however small. And it's already been a rewarding journey and one with a lot of learning.

Last week we had a Board Meeting that involved a number of student showcases, which were impressive and inspiring. I decided to write this post to share a flavour of the work going on there, just 1.5 years into the formation of this new Centre for Doctoral Training.

David Foster is working on a paper titled "Automatic identification, reproduction and synthesis of jazz performances". He is using machine learning to interpret and reproduce a specific musician's style, and recurrent neural networks to predict the next note in the sequence. Imagine being able to select a score and choose to play back the saxophone in the style of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane or Shabaka Hutchings! This is interesting research, not only because Jazz is arguably the greatest artform in the world (yes, I welcome your challenge on this!), but also because is it currently underrepresented in music information retrieval (MIR) research.

Lele Liu's research is on "Joint multi-pitch detection and score transcription for polyphonic piano music". She is using scores from the MuseScore website as training data, played back on the Native Instruments Contact Player using 4 different piano styles. I learned about a number of interesting challenges from her short talk. For example, figuring out what to represent in the left hand vs right hand score when automatically transcribing polyphonic music. And the challenge of outputting a score it in a visually elegant manner, for which I learned of this very cool project called LilyPond. 

Andrea Martelloni's work is on "Percussive Fingerstyle Guitar through the Lens of NIME: an Interview Study". NIME means "new interfaces for musical expression" - so we're moving from software to hardware, and a fascinating area for innovation in music. I loved his presentation, which was more of a qualitative deep dive into a scene of guitar playing called "percussive fingerstyle guitar" which maximises the instrument for percussion and melody in parallel - check this out for a primer. The goal was to understand how these players use the current form factor and what can be reinvented to create a new interface. Excited to see where this one goes.

Other presentations were on "Automatic Music Transcription (AMT) using Deep Learning" (Mary Pilataki-Manika), which is looking at the challenge of multi instrument transcription amongst other things. And finally "Musical Smart City: Perspectives on Ubiquitous Sonification" (Pedro Sarmento). In his research, Pedro looked at the sonification of air pollution levels (NO2) on Mile End Road applied to the piece Air on the G String by Bach. Very interesting to mull over how smart data from our cities can be used and interpreted sonically.

This is just a subset of the research and we will continue to have presentations from the students, and we will continue to discuss how the CDT can play an important role in researching and representing the breadth of topics that are important to the future of the music and creative industries.

CALLS TO ACTION:

1. I'd love to hear opinions and advice from people who know about this subject to help me make the most of my role in the Advisory Board: Recommended reading. What areas of AI & Music are you excited by? What worries you? Any topics you really think we should be discussing in the Board Meetings?

2. The Centre are always interested in conversations with new industry partners, so hit me up if you think this is relevant and you want to find out more.

END OF AN ERA: STEPPING BACK FROM MIXCLOUD

After nearly a dozen years, this month I’m stepping back from my full time role at Mixcloud. I will continue working with the business as a board advisor, and my Cofounder Nico Perez is taking on the CEO position. I’m excited about where he continues to take the business, with my ongoing support from further back.

I’ve lived my life bounded by targets and goals, and for a short while I aim to have no overarching one. Instead, with the novelty of free time, I plan to spend at least a year gaining new experiences, exploring, learning and challenging myself in new ways. Practically, I want to focus on social impact projects, health & wellness, creative pursuits, and being more with family, before figuring out what’s next. This year is about breadth not depth.

I’m excited to embark on this new chapter of my life and I’d love to have conversations with people I can help as well as those who have been through a similar journey. Feel free to reach out in all the usual places — Twitter, IG, Linkedin, and of course Mixcloud.

I’ve got a lot to say, so I’m going to take it somewhat chronologically. I’d like to talk about the early days of the company, the hard things and good things about building a startup, grief, my decision to step back, and what I’ll continue to do at Mixcloud. Finally I’ve got some well deserved shout outs to give!

TAKING IT BACK

The warehouse where it all began. We moved in as guardians on peppercorn rent, working out of Nico’s bedroom using WiFi dongles because we couldn’t get a real Internet connection!

In the summer of 2008, myself and my Cofounder Nico quit our jobs to build a platform to connect the world’s best radio and DJ content to listeners. After searching high and low for some technical brains, we found our other 2 Cofounders, Mat Clayton and Sam Cooke, and Mixcloud was born.

We launched a year later, at the end of 2009 (things moved a lot slower back then!). We “broke” Twitter (4 out of 5 Trending spots), and very quickly some of my favourite DJs signed up and started sharing mixes. We were solving a real problem and it resonated.

BACK TO NOW

Questlove from the Legendary Roots Crew streaming live and direct on Mixcloud 🔥

Allow me a minute of celebration. I’m incredibly proud of what the whole team, past and present, has achieved. As we wrote in a recent blog post about Mixcloud’s 10 year rebrand…

“A decade on from our humble roots in a warehouse in North West London, our platform has proven a powerful one for championing audio culture. We’ve seen 1.7 million creators upload their content, building a unique catalog of 50 million handcrafted shows– DJ mixes, radio shows, and podcasts to satisfy every genre, mood, taste and scene. People from everywhere have come to listen deeply, with the average logged-in listener engaging for over an hour a day.”

We’ve had 10s of millions of people download our apps, and 20M people tune into Mixcloud every month across all the different platforms. I’m particularly proud of the brilliant, diverse community we have built — with many of my DJ and musical heroes on the platform.

Every year since launch, Mixcloud has grown. Both in revenue and audience.

It’s been a joy.

And it’s been f***ing hard.

THE HARD THING ABOUT HARD THINGS

As Ben Horowitz viscerally wrote in “The Hard Thing About Hard Things”, building a startup is hard. At Mixcloud we certainly went through the high highs and low lows; the last decade has been a rollercoaster to say the least.

Digital music is a tough industry. We’re up against giants like Amazon, Apple and Google who bolt music onto their businesses to sell other things. Then there are the pureplay music giants like Spotify, Pandora, Deezer and many more. Mixcloud has always been the David versus these Goliaths.

For our first decade, we were completely bootstrapped — initially because we failed to raise money, but then we adapted and figured out how to survive. In the first 2 years we didn’t pay ourselves a penny. For the next 3 years, the platform kept growing fast but we were reliant on lumpy revenue from brands and advertisers, so as founders we sometimes sacrificed our salaries to keep the platform alive.

THE GOOD THING ABOUT HARD THINGS

The most recent team pic I have from our company retreat in April 2019

Those days are done. We now have a brilliant team of 45 people who I am honoured to work alongside. We have wonderful lead investors WndrCo alongside fantastic investors such as legendary rapper Nas, legendary banker Stan Shuman (who helped Google with their IPO) and legendary growth expert Alex Schultz (who helped grow Facebook to 2B+ users). And we’ve created a unique and magical culture at the company, with a diverse team of people passionate about music, audio, coding, DJing and technology; united by a love of building products and communities.

But it doesn’t get easier. We’re still David versus many Goliaths. And that forces us to think differently. We learned to be nimble. We learned to hustle. We learned to be resilient. This has helped us make smart and creative business decisions.

18 months ago we launched an innovative subscription model called Mixcloud Select that is unique in music streaming (built around the creator, not the platform). We launched a new arm to the business, LOUD, which connects brands to our community whilst investing in the culture. And more recently, we launched an incredible new live streaming product in response to Covid-19 which is solving real challenges for creators who want to stream legally and monetize what they are doing online.

WHY AM I STEPPING BACK?

I consider myself one of the luckiest people in the world, going into work everyday to build a platform around my passions, with people I love, having fun and learning along the way. And of course the soundtrack to the last decade has been second-to-none. Also I can hand-on-heart say that right now is the most exciting time for the business since we launched.

So why am I stepping back? There are a number of reasons why I made this decision towards the end of 2019, catalysed by the sudden loss of my father last Summer.

At my dad’s funeral in July 2019, I was standing in a line with my closest family outside the crematorium to shake hands with the guests, as is custom in Indian culture. A man I’ve never met, an old buddy of my dad’s from school in Kenya, shook my hand and held me by the shoulder, looked intently into my eyes and said into my ear: “The 2 most important things in life are your body and your family”, and he walked off. The line stuck with me.

Losing my father made me see the world differently. It gave me perspective.

I have poured a dozen years of hard work into this business; I’m incredibly happy and proud of what we’ve achieved as a team. (But believe me, it’s not always been this clear. There have been many ups and downs, questioning whether we’re doing well enough; in the startup world the goalposts are always moving and you’ve always gotta be “killing it”. The curse of the entrepreneur and a topic for another time.) I feel ready to move on. Truth be told, I need to move on. I need a break.

Since starting the business, I’ve changed as a human being. I’m no longer the 25 year old kid that was hustling to spin records at every party, promoting clubnights every weekend. And I’m no longer a fresh faced, first time entrepreneur. Whilst I continue to love the culture of music, DJing and clubs, I also have new passions. And there are new problems to solve in the world. One day. But right now, I’m excited to take a break.

I talked about the journey and the Hard Things because it’s been intense and demanding. Let’s be real. Building a company is f***ing tiring. It’s not just hard work, it’s also a lot of emotional energy when you’re building and leading a team, carrying the burden of sustainability, salaries, and people’s livelihoods on your shoulders. I went back to work a couple of weeks after my dad passed away, and it took me a couple more months before I realised I have finite emotional energy. For a moment, I’m choosing to put those reserves elsewhere in my life; as the wise man at the funeral said, myself and my family. And I also want to open up more time to do some social impact work.

I feel blessed that I can take this step back with faith and confidence in the future of the company because we have built a brilliant leadership team and a strong ecosystem.

WHAT’S NEXT?

I’ll continue to spend a few days a month with Mixcloud as a board advisor. This means ongoing strategic input to the board, advice and support for key people in the leadership team; and continuing to work with external partners to identify great growth opportunities for the business. So if you want to chat about Mixcloud, the doors remain open!

I’m also excited about giving back, putting more time into helping others in this next chapter of my life. I have already started working with a number of charities and early stage founders.

That just leaves me with one thing. With my best pirate radio voice:

“Shout out to all the people who have been part of my Mixcloud journey to date — the team past and present, our advisors, investors, creators, community, partners. Everyone I’ve met in meeting rooms, conference halls and on dancefloors. We built this together. And we will continue building great things together.”

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I’d like to end with some specific people to name check.

Nico Perez: my initial Cofounder and dear friend for nearly two decades. As you said in your parting speech to me, we’ve spent more time together than anyone else on the planet apart from our parents and siblings. It’s been a joy and honour to build this with you and I can’t think of a better person to continue leading the business to even more success as CEO. I’ve learned an enormous amount from you. You’re never phased by any challenge, you just get your head down and figure it out. And you’re calm; possibly one of the least talked about traits in this game we’re playing. You’ve always been level headed and I’ve only recently started to appreciate how important that has been to the success of the business.

Mat Clayton: we didn’t know each other before we started this business. A dozen years later, we’re still in it together. That’s a rarity and testament to the deep relationship we have built over these years. I love that we could debate business and product decisions til the cows came home, knowing that it would never get personal. We’ve always been aligned on the big things whilst pushing each other on the small things to make the company better. You’re one of the best hybrid product and technical thinkers I’ve come across. I can’t wait to see how Mixcloud continues to evolve with you continuing to lead the product and tech.

Ben Lawrence: you came on board as one of our first employees 9 years ago. You believed in us when we didn’t have much, and you’ve stayed with us to enjoy the ups and downs. We’ve had a lot of fun hacking together a business model for Mixcloud over these years. I’ve always been in awe of how quickly you grasp new ideas and translate them into strategy and execution — a true entrepreneur.

The rest of the leadership team: Xanthe Fuller, I’m so glad to have you back from Maternity leave (with lovely Nia so beautiful and healthy) to lead our Community Team once again. Kazim Rashid, you’ve always brought a fresh and unique perspective as Creative Director, pushing us to be different and better. Chris Prescott, you’ve smashed it as our new Head of Product, bringing a fresh attitude of experimentation and wildly imaginative thinking. Becca Hilton-Miller, the team is everything and with you leading the charge on people and culture, I know we are in hands that care. Jonathan Hague, you are calm, unphased and a joy to work with; and you LOVE Excel; essential traits in a Finance Director. Jon King, I adore your energy, I don’t know anyone with a love and fluency of languages like you, and that extends to both human and computer languages!

All the team at WndrCo, you have been an inspiration to work with, each and every one of you have your superpower. Thank you for believing in us. In particular Anthony Saleh who led the deal, and Ann Daly who was on our board alongside Anthony. And thanks to all our other investors for also taking a bet on us!

The early believers on the team — Sam Cooke (our 4th Cofounder and all round talented man), Richard Morgan (first Community Manager and sick breakdancer), Matt Rawson (first developer and built the first audio player), Andreea Magdalina (our incredible second Community Manager and founder of the important women in music platform Shesaid.So). You all believed in Mixcloud in the early days and that means the world to me. I will never forget that.

All our advisors over the years, past and present: Richard Cohen, Fred McIntyre, Simon Watt, Dan Rowe, Jeff Toig, James Duffett Smith, Doug Holt, Gregor Pryor, Sachin Premnath. (And many more unofficial mentors and advisors too). I’ve learned so much from all of you, and I’m honoured to have had you all involved in the journey.

Now we dance.