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Marrying Music with Tech | Ashish Joshi @ Artium
279 Plays1 year ago
Technology is coming to disrupt the way you learn music, and a company at the forefront of this revolution is Artium. Artium is an ed-tech platform for music learners, they have built a custom technology stack that allows them to train music learners worldwide.
Read the text version of the episode here.
Read more about Artium:-
1.Artium Academy aims to hit a high note in online music training
2.Online Music Learning Platform Artium Academy Bags Funding From Chiratae Ventures, Others
3.Music to Learner's Ears
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and the Role of Music in Technology
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everyone, I'm Ashish. I'm the founder and CEO of Artium Academy.
00:00:17
Speaker
One of the most hyped recent technologies has been blockchain, which is a decentralized technology that powers web3 and crypto projects. But did you know that the very first large scale use of decentralized technology was a project called Napster and it was well for sharing music files.
Artium Academy's Innovative Approach to Music Education
00:00:34
Speaker
In fact,
00:00:35
Speaker
You could see that music played a big role in moving the internet economy forward, from creating decentralized file sharing networks to pioneering streaming services like Spotify. Now finally, technology is coming to disrupt the way you learn music. At a company at the forefront of this revolution is RTM. RTM is an epic platform for music learners. They have built a custom technology stack that allows them to train music learners
00:01:00
Speaker
across the world. In this episode of the Founder Thesis Podcast, your host Akshay Dutt talks with Ashish Joshi, the founder of Artyom, about the amazing product that he is building. Stay tuned and subscribe to the Founder Thesis Podcast and any audio streaming app to understand how disruption happens.
00:01:26
Speaker
So I did my B.Sc. from Nausari in Gujarat, then appeared for entrance exams for MCA and MBA. And I took MCA because MCA course of Somaya had 100% placement. So I took MCA because I wanted to get a job after my college. I actually got through a campus placement in Patni Computers, PCS, which was to be Naram Murti's earlier. One of the interesting companies out there, right?
00:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's where the Ann Murti and his co-founders used to work before they quit and started. Absolutely, absolutely. Yes, yes. So I went through PCS. PCS used to come to our campus every year and everybody who gets to PCS had a career.
Ashish's Career Journey and Insights
00:02:07
Speaker
So we got the pre-placement offers in July of 2001, actually. And we were all partying hard.
00:02:16
Speaker
We have a live set, a co-tensioning, a campus meeting and in September 2001, we decided to go to the world. Almost all of us bought our pre-placement offers back. We were all left to fend for ourselves. We were finding our feet. We had a campus-made company who wanted sales guys for technology. So, tech sales, pre-sales in technology kind of a profile.
00:02:42
Speaker
like a solution selling kind of a solution selling yeah yeah so pre sales in tech and i jumped at it and i said listen so they said they wanted mba systems guys and not mca guys i said they'll give me a chance i'll do a much better job than your mba systems guys and that's how they took me they took me on board for a six months induction program and this we will see you for six months and we'll see if you are good enough
00:03:07
Speaker
And that's how I entered pre-sales in technology. That's how I started my career. And what was this company? Was it like making custom built software or was it selling a product?
00:03:20
Speaker
Yeah, so it was an ERP product company. It used to compete with likes of SAP and J.D. Edwards and Barn in those days. They had an indigenous ERP solution for Indian companies, custom made for Indian companies because of the way we function in India. So, and focus on manufacturing units. So, one of our biggest clients was Sun Pharmaceuticals in those days.
00:03:39
Speaker
So I joined then signed up agenda pharmaceuticals and a lot of pharma companies is where we provided our ERB solutions. And we also used to provide in very early days, there used to be SMS driven flight tracker, flight information. You write a sort of a code and seek information around ticket scores and stuff, et cetera. Very early days out there. That five digit number to which? Absolutely. Absolutely. The short code used to call it short code. So the SMS driven solution is what we used to sell.
00:04:09
Speaker
So I actually moved to a company called Mises, Mises Infotech, which was an IIT Bombay incubated company. So those guys were the pioneers in what today you call as telco-based content management, content delivery systems that you see the whole, the whole, the world of vast value. Like live cricket score.
00:04:33
Speaker
Valuated services that you see around telecom solutions, right? So Mises was a pioneer in that space. So I remember we delivered the first content platform for Loop mobile in those days, which was BPL mobile in Mumbai. So you send a code, short code, and then you get a ringtone delivered.
00:04:54
Speaker
onto your phone, sound monophonic tone actually. So that was the first solution that we delivered. So I was with Mises for two years. Mine was a business development pre-sales kind of a role out there. Very interesting sales and BD combination out there. So yeah, from there I moved on to join Handama.
00:05:14
Speaker
Hangama.com, Hangama Mobile. Hangama Mobile was in 2006 the number one valuation services company in the country. At Hangama, I was out of India operations, looked after telco partnerships, OEM partnerships, delivered kiosk-driven content through Planetimes of the World and also very interesting again four years of my work life out there from 2005 to 2009.
00:05:39
Speaker
Is it like a funded start-up kind or is it like a part of a bigger group or what is Hangaba? So hangaba.com in those days of course was started by a guy called Neeraj Roy but Neeraj came from a sort of investment background. He was backed by Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala had funded Hangaba in those days.
00:06:00
Speaker
So, you should sit on a board. Also, even today, Hangama.com, Hangama Mobile remains to be one of the largest media companies, content-driven media companies. Hangama has its own OTT app, both for music streaming, but they have not been able to compete with likes
Building a Digital Music Ecosystem
00:06:15
Speaker
of Ghana and Sauer on the music streaming side or the Netflix and Prime members on the video streaming side, actually. But Hangama still is a pretty significant company in media tech space, actually, even today.
00:06:28
Speaker
So of course, those four years of Angamma were almost like a crash course in the video space. And if you look around today, I must tell you, Angamma's contribution to the industry is Eros International, digital CEO is from Angamma, or some of the top music guys in the industry of Angamma. So Angamma almost was like a sort of the foundation of your video tech space in that sense, right? So everybody who worked in Angamma is something of significance in the industry.
00:06:56
Speaker
So Voice of Anama was like a crash course and from there I moved on to join Universal Music, the world's largest music label in 2009 when there was a point of inflection in digital music streaming space. Right? Globally the music labels were seeing decline in physical sales and digital was growing. So they hired me as a head of digital for South Asia and I started building very interesting properties at Universal Music. In fact at Universal Music I got
00:07:25
Speaker
Genuine exposure to the business of music globally. I used to travel the world, I got exposed to the way the streaming business happens with Spotify and iTunes partnerships. I did launch a couple of very interesting consumer facing initiatives in India as well. So we're very interested in that. One of the, one of the things that I must mention today, people claim of doing master classes as one of the, one of the largest, master class globally is a very interesting platform where iStros come and deliver master classes.
00:07:52
Speaker
Even years back, I launched a production based on my story, on voice, with Universal and Airtel, where the music masters would come and deliver this one hour session where they'll tell you stories about how a song came up in the background, backstory of the songs and stuff, et cetera. And those ads you do is to feature during IPL alongside Nokia's ad of Shahrukh or Brinka Chopra, right? So first time ever, the musicians of this country got recognition.
00:08:20
Speaker
and their ads were picturing on mainstream television. So again, that was interesting. So again, four years at the university was an interesting story. And then I thought of moving to the consumer tech side, because so far I was more on the B2B side, the business side, the music and distribution side. And I moved to this company called Dingana, a music streaming service to head their business development. Dingana in those days, it used to be Silicon Valley based startup started by two boys from
00:08:50
Speaker
Bay Area, Indians in Bay Area, ex-young guys. So, Tingana was almost like a bootstrap product but in no time they started competing with Samara and Ghana and even became bigger than them in number of subscribers and as a product also they were very good.
00:09:07
Speaker
And it was a subscription-based product, like a paid for not ad revenue. Okay. No, right. So I was on the label side, right? So we were actually distributing our content to these partners and I love Dingana. So I joined them in a year's time. Dingana got acquired by RDO and then RDO got acquired by Pandora.
00:09:26
Speaker
So, I joined a priority firm called CA Media. And the CA was churning Peter Churnin's Asia arm for investment. Peter Churnin, if you don't know, he was the CEO World President of New Scop. So, Rupert Murdoch's man. The man who made Avatar and Right. So, all the big media moguls in the industry. And he left Scop and started his priority firm called the Churnin Group, TCG Group. And the Asia arm was called CA Media.
00:09:55
Speaker
So, it was run by somebody. They used to invest in media companies. Media companies, yes. So, Andamol, Shine, OML, Graphic India, Fluence were the investments. So, Fluence was 100% incubated company by CA Media. And they were looking out for someone to run that company as a CEO.
00:10:15
Speaker
as a head of the business. So I joined Fluence to run the celebrity influencer network. Again in 2013, way out of its time, we had signed up with Mr. Bachchan, Salman Khan, Satyantan Dukar, Priyanka Chopra, Mohan Lal, Rajnikanth, you name an artist.
00:10:31
Speaker
and we had signed up with all these guys and introduced them on digital world. We laughed about it today. In those days, we used to call largest celebrity digital network. We didn't know that we were actually creating the largest influencer network. Today the word influencer is so prominent, right? But we actually created the largest influencer network around celebrities. And I still remember Salman was using 1100 when we introduced him to
00:10:55
Speaker
Twitter, right? So,
Challenges and Opportunities in Music Education
00:10:57
Speaker
so very interesting days of Fluence was there for two years, built a very robust business. And by that time, my friends from Dhingana, they were on to the next startup called Mezi. I mean, out of Valley, Mezi was Nexus Ventures Partners back to Summer Capital and all those guys came and put it on. A cool startup focusing on creating an experience for shoppers. So it was an AI-led human assistant shopping concierge service.
00:11:25
Speaker
which later on pivoted to becoming a travel concierge platform. Completely air driven out there. So what was, I mean, what did you identify as the white space, the opportunity? So I'll tell you, honestly, this thought occurred to me in 2015 for the first time about a platform for music education. One of my friends, I mean, he was also very keen to do something like this.
00:11:48
Speaker
So we realize that India is so deep, diverse and rich in music. Probably we are richer than any other country when it comes to musical pedigree or the depth that we have. We have 14 languages and we have music across languages. Our average consumption of music is above the world average. Despite of so much of depth and diversity and richness, we have not had a music education platform synonymous to what you see in the West, like Berkeley's or Royal School of Music or Juliet's or whatever.
00:12:18
Speaker
while there was a Shama Daoist Dance Academy that all of us had heard from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, Fanjai's model, and everything about it.
00:12:25
Speaker
But there's nothing in music education. When I started digging deeper into this, we realized that music education in India is perceived to be tapasya, sadhana, etc, etc. Whereas music is more traditional. You join one of the garanas. Yes, yes. Whereas if you do research, more than 96% of people are learning music because music to them in the mental world is what gyms to them in the physical world.
00:12:53
Speaker
Right? Everybody has their own reason. The kids are learning because it's scientifically proven that it improves your cognitive side. It gives you a sort of an impetus to right brain, which has got direct impact on the left brain growth. You know what I mean? So confidence building and stuff, etc. That's why kids learn music. A lot of the working class people they learn music because music is healer. It helps to elevate your mood.
00:13:15
Speaker
and you want to perform better in your karaoke session or the next party or whatever, etc. You don't want to become sornigamore shayagoshal. That's not the aim of the 96% of people who are learning music in this country. So if that is the case, then why do we have to give a size and shape to music learning, which is so serious?
00:13:33
Speaker
So, we started digging deeper further and we realized that we had more archaic traditional learning methods, more theoretical driven method. So, for example, let me tell you, I am born to a mother who was Vishwanath Indusani classical. So, my mother was Vishwanath Indusani classical.
00:13:49
Speaker
What is this term you're using? Visha what? Visha Rati. It's a degree in Pakistani classical. So I used to love singing when I was a kid. My mother used to teach me, just casually. I mean she never taught me actually because my father, like many of the fathers believed that it was a waste of time to learn music. So I used to, so music was in my genes. Now, but by the time I grew up to become a little
00:14:18
Speaker
my voice matured to be an adult voice after 1617. I also sing better than my mother. Because my mother learned theories of Hindustani classical more than the practicalities of singing in that sense. And that probably is a case in many cases. People are giving examples, exams of Vishara, etc. So ours is more theoretical, little traditional archaic methods of learning, which I'm not saying it's bad. I'm not passing the judgment on that part. But we realized there was a need for a performance-driven curriculum to be launched.
00:14:48
Speaker
Which means, which prepares you to perform better as a singer, perform better as a keyboard player, perform better as a guitar player, because all you care, you're learning to perform either in front of your friends, either in care organization, either in your party, in office or for yourself. So if that was the need, then there was a requirement for a performance driven curriculum.
00:15:08
Speaker
And with that in mind, Akshay, we realized that if we were to go out in the market and say, hey, listen, we have arrived with the first ever government-driven curriculum, people would say, who are you to even preach that? So we thought there was a need to build a sort of an academic board, first of its kind, where we sign up the maestros of industries, music industry to come together. And they all become like faculty heads in the academic board.
00:15:38
Speaker
and they put their heart and soul in designing these curriculums. So they are the authorities. So when you know that you are learning a popular film music course designed by Surunigam or in the starting class course by Shubhamudkal, then you know that someone is put in the heart and soul in doing something. There's some work which is called band use. We also realized there was a need for a finite music curriculum. Usually what happens is most of the music learners, they keep learning forever.
00:16:08
Speaker
without any finite goal. So you do not know what are investing for, right? So we also gave a size and shape to the curriculum and we put out the whole thing. Now, Akshay, so that was sort of a research which went behind and I realized there was a need for a performance driven structured music education platform.
00:16:25
Speaker
where the curriculum has to be designed by the maestros, delivered by teachers who are performers of their own accord, trained by these maestros to deliver a sort of a structured curriculum. Using technology, again, because we realize that India is not a country where you can build a brick and mortar business in scale.
00:16:44
Speaker
and we were reaching out to global Indians from day one. So tech head today, tech today, you and I are chatting over technology and you are almost feeling like we are sitting in person, right? So idea was to use technology to deliver an in-person experience, in-person elevated music learning experience to the learners. And like, so essentially you're building an ad tech for music, that could be. Yeah, you can say that. You can say, I don't know how many listeners would love to listen to the word ad tech nowadays.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah, I mean you can say we are in the music tech space, to be really honest.
00:17:17
Speaker
Because basic education was existing, we are using technology to elevate the experience and therefore break the barriers of geography.
Growth Strategies and Financial Insights
00:17:24
Speaker
So what was your zero to one journey? Like how did you convert this idea into your launch? What did you launch from this idea? So to be really honest, action might sound sort of pompous, but having been part of startups earlier, I spent a lot of time in researching in a manner that I don't have to keep reinventing or pivoting the model as far as possible.
00:17:46
Speaker
So, so far we haven't had the need to pivot or probably change the model. We were clear from day one that we wanted to be academic first, vertically deeper. So I didn't want to become a horizontal tech platform in that sense, basically, or extracurricular platform. So academic first, vertically deeper. And I was clear from day one. In fact, before we launched our MVP, we had already signed up with Shubha Mukherjee and Sonigam Ji.
00:18:14
Speaker
So we were clear from day one that we wanted the maestros to be the part of our academic board. We wanted to have academic board. And then we wanted these guys to become faculty heads out there. So that part was there. So a few things I'll tell you, which were very clear from day one. Academic first, vertically deep, music only, maestro-led curriculum designs, performance-driven curriculum. So let me give you some insights as to the work which went behind in preparing for an MVP.
00:18:42
Speaker
So few realizations that I had Akshay very early on is that in performance arts business, if you purely apply business sense or business logic, you're not going to get anywhere.
00:18:53
Speaker
You have to have creativity built in from day one. It's performance arts, right? So people have to believe in your depth. They have to believe in what you're building from that perspective. So, therefore, very first sign up, or I would say sign up, but someone that I acquired as a full-time with us, were two guys, a guy called Abhijit Patil, who had 16 years of experience in designing music education program for kids.
00:19:20
Speaker
So he was our first employee, whereas founders, we realized that we didn't have the depth of music pedagogy, right? It was important to build. Then the second person who we got on board was Anand Vaidyanathan, who is our chief of pedagogy, India's finest voice expert, probably the leader in voice expertise, with 40 plus years of experience in music education. So he became our chief of pedagogy, right? So with them, we built a lot of depth in what we were trying to offer to our learners.
00:19:50
Speaker
Then I knew that building a music education platform means depth in technology.
00:19:58
Speaker
Now I had two options. Either I hired a CTO and then built the entire team ground up which would have taken me a year and a half more. Or else, figure out how to go about building an MVP with the help of all the techy friends that I have had by virtue of my experience in the past. So I partnered with one of my friends and built an MVP which was good enough for me to go out on the market and offer a one-on-one live experience.
00:20:24
Speaker
Obviously, Zoom was integrated into our ecosystem, so video conferencing was sorted using that as a platform. And also, we were clear that CTO in a tech company is like a Bahu that you get in the house. She can make or break the house. So I took maximum time to hire my CTO because I knew the guy who comes on board has to be the one who is the captain of my ship from a tech-imaginism perspective out there.
00:20:50
Speaker
So we hired a product head from Silicon Valley. She sits in Silicon Valley. Again, why from Bay Area? Because in the depth of product understanding in companies in Bay Area is much better than the depth of product understanding in Indian companies. So that was one of the things. And our CTO is what we hired eight months after we launched, or the six months after we launched MVP. So a few things we were clear. We've built a big public one more thing that actually we were clear about.
00:21:19
Speaker
Many people would have advised us to go with that is five, six, seven stream genres of music to be launched. We just went one by one. We launched Hindustani classical first. We went popular. So within vocal also we went genre by genre launch. Because we realized you need to build depth in world of the pedagogy from one perspective. Secondly, understanding consumer behaviour is very important. Even behaviour with technology and whatever advancement that technology needs,
00:21:46
Speaker
as you scale up, as you progress, also comes through the learnings of individual. Every course, by the way, demands differently. My guitar and keyboard has different demands on technology as compared to my some of the vocal courses, right? So we learn brick by brick, build brick by brick, sorry, and learn block by block. And that's how we built the entire ecosystem. Our popular film music in the Sunday classical remain only two courses for seven months.
00:22:13
Speaker
Then we launched Hindustani classical in Karnataka, South Indian film music. And this year in March or April, we launched guitar and keyboard and tabla. What is the kind of packaging and pricing? Like you must have got like say 20 hour course for X rupees or what like what is it? Yeah. So it's simple. All the courses basis, the genre that you decide is bring age into 24 months long course with an assumption that you will take one class a week. So four class a month.
00:22:42
Speaker
Okay, every class is one hour and you pay 750 rupees an hour if you are an in customer and 1000 rupees an hour for advanced course. 750 is basic and 1000 is an advanced course. If you are an international student, you pay $25 for an hour and $30 for an hour for advanced course, basically.
00:23:00
Speaker
So it's not like a fixed course, like say like a Carnatic film music course for X rupees and this includes this duration. Yeah, so it is fixed course.
Leveraging Celebrity and Partnerships
00:23:11
Speaker
That's it. So it's 18 to 24 months. So depending on what course is select, for example, in the Islamic classical is 24 months. Popular film music is 18 months.
00:23:18
Speaker
You pay either a monthly basis, quarterly, six-monthly, yearly or the full course. If you pay for the full course, the percentage discount that you get is higher as compared to a monthly or a quarterly course that you take from us. So the course duration is fixed. Why offer monthly payment? Because that would cause churn then. I'm sure that monthly renewal rate will not be 100%.
00:23:42
Speaker
Yeah, so interestingly Shay and I knew because I was learning music myself by the way. During two years of honeymoon period with Amex, I started learning music also myself. So while I was learning music, I realized that music has a level of stickiness. If you cross the first four classes, if you ask anyone around you who's learning music, if you learn for four or five classes, no. Then the minimum time they learn is two years, three years, four years, five years.
00:24:12
Speaker
So the idea was to give a sort of a sachet based pack to people initially, to come on board and try us.
00:24:19
Speaker
Obviously, as we speak today, as we are evolved, 85% of subscribers in our ecosystem are paying us for long term. We are thinking of actually removing monthly payments completely. So what you're suggesting we are taking as a serious, it's a deliberation that we are going through right now. But that monthly bank was almost like increasing our funnel, top of the funnel for us.
00:24:41
Speaker
Probably your customer acquisition costs would have gone down. You would not have had to spend so much in onboarding customers. Because if you're selling a course with a single big ticket price, then you would need a sales team, like a telecaller team, which would be calling customers and you would also have to spend a lot of money on Facebook ads and so on, like performance marketing and so on. So some of those costs would have got cut down by doing this.
00:25:05
Speaker
No, so to be honest, cost of acquisition probably is definitely improved over a period of time. Like any other ad tech platform or any other platform, we are also keeping vigilance on our CAC cost of acquisition. Of course, some of the innovation that we are talking about has helped us reduce our CAC heavily. Our sales team is very limited.
00:25:24
Speaker
Demo operations team also is very limited because we have built very interesting product features out here. So therefore from that perspective, I think our CAC has definitely come in in control and we are doing better than others for sure. But what is good for us is our intentions are upwards of, okay, so let me put it this way. In last 18 months of operations, we have had less than 2% people asking for refunds.
00:25:49
Speaker
But what would be the renewal percentage? What is the average duration? Like somebody who's joining the platform, how many months does he pay you for? Yeah, so more than 85% of people have been learning with us for more than a year now. Okay, so out of 100 people who join, at least 85 of them do more than a year of classes.
00:26:12
Speaker
And I'm saying the other 15% have not left us. They are inactive. Okay. Like they could renew or they could join back, huh? Yeah. For them, their money is with us. They're not asking for refunds. It's like a gym membership. I will start. They want to start, but just not getting time to start. What is your CAC LTV ratio that customer acquisition costs and long term value of customer? It's a little confidential, but I'll still tell you that we are an output of three.
00:26:42
Speaker
And what is your major way to acquire customers? Do you do it through performance marketing? Or do you have celebrity endorsements? What are some of the strategies to acquire customers? We focused on acquiring the nine gems, the industry was also to
00:27:02
Speaker
With them, you also get the social media presence of theirs, right? So between all of us, everybody is put together, we have more than 35 million subscribers on social media. We get a lot of organic traction, internationally and domestically, that our celebrities put. And then further, we invest very small amount of further boosted posts out there. So that they call us a pure organic traction and traffic that we get.
00:27:24
Speaker
There are inorganic methods that everybody else is using, the typical ads, GDN and Facebook and the ads that you do otherwise, performance marketing based actually. We also figured out very interesting growth hacks. You partner with some of the platforms internationally and promote to them. A celebrity social media, of course, is one of the biggest. We've also started promoting what I call as the content driven marketing.
00:27:48
Speaker
which is what you invest one time, but it stays on for a long period of time. So, Akshay, we partnered with Warner Music to promote our talent onto the network and launched a platform called Art in Originals. So, I promise to the learners, Akshay, is that we deliver an experience to you of learning
00:28:10
Speaker
And in that journey, you take the path from a learner to a performer and performer to a potential influencer. So now with these guys, we are creating original content, original songs with our teachers, with our students, et cetera, which you put out on social media, on YouTube, on all the digital platforms and
Content Creation and Distribution
00:28:31
Speaker
distribute. That also becomes a sort of acquisition channel for us.
00:28:36
Speaker
And these are posted on your handles, like when your learners are producing. Yeah, it is. That is a very good hack. Now every person will promote it to their circle and that way your channel will automatically get more views and subscribers. Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you see, we are actually one of the biggest playground of raw talent, right?
00:29:00
Speaker
We are actually nourishing and nurturing those raw talent to become the talent of future. Even our teachers, Akshay, even the teachers that we have had on board with us are some of these guys who have been on in an idol and starting a car and all those weird issues. So they are performance partners. So this is like your version of placement support. Like traditional tech companies, they have a placement support. They say, we'll help you get a job. So your version of help you get a job is help you become an influencer.
00:29:29
Speaker
Absolutely. So that's what we are saying. That's what that's a journey to take with us. We have built our entire technology around three components. What is the learning part? So all the key elements of enhancement of learning experience are built to our learning part. Then there is a performance. So you practice and perform. We also allow our students to perform fortnightly on a performance platform. So they do live performances to a larger audience. They invite their friends. And your performance platform is RTM Originals.
00:30:00
Speaker
Artium Originals is an influencer platform, that's a last block. Performance platform is a platform through which we conduct our masterclasses, we do our live showcase events and stuff, etc. After they have done performance, they are groomed enough. With them, we curate a song, we do a sort of a digital single with them, we shoot and then launch on Artium Originals.
00:30:21
Speaker
which then becomes a sort of a window to that digital world that you can get distributed on iTunes, on all the audio platforms, on all the streaming platforms, on YouTube, etc, etc.
00:30:33
Speaker
So somebody who's getting into RTM original, so their RTM original is like a music label for them. Absolutely. So I wouldn't like to call ourselves music label because that's not the territory we want to go. But we are more like a publishing platform for them. We are almost like a platform where our ambition is not to become the label. We want to become a platform to curate and distribute genuine talent and give them wings to fly.
00:30:56
Speaker
But like, RTM originals are distributed on Spotify on like all of these platforms that you, like anybody coming on RTM original is now also going to be available on Spotify and so on and so forth.
00:31:09
Speaker
Absolutely. And they start earning also like like Spotify pays out artists. So yeah, absolutely. Okay. Amazing. Amazing. Okay. Okay. But this would be I mean, is this like a like a music level has a deal with an artist with a certain time period, like for three years, you have an exclusive deal. So is that the same with RTM originals, that when you identify
00:31:34
Speaker
high potential talent and RTM originals will have a deal with that talent for X number of years and you will manage and produce and distribute and have a revenue share and all of that. Absolutely. Absolutely. So the idea is that we are creating IP in partnership with an artist, technically, right? We are investing into IP. So the IP of what we are creating with them remains with RTM.
00:31:58
Speaker
where RTM keeps a very small margin because like I said, I don't intend to make a series of money out of it, but passes on a large chunk of revenue with the artist. And we in turn have back to back partnerships with, I mean, there's a company called global business junction, which is one of the largest distributors of digital content in India. They have a partnership with Warner. So we have partnered with these guys who are then distributing our content across platforms, basically.
00:32:22
Speaker
What is the role of Warner here? I mean, why don't you directly go to Spotify or Apple Music? We directly go to Spotify and Apple Music using Warner's channels purely because Warner potentially is... So there are two layers. Warner is partnered with a company called GMG, Global Business Function, which does the digital distribution for a lot of Warner content.
00:32:45
Speaker
Now, these guys have very interesting revenue shares with all the partners. And I wanted to leverage the debt, the distribution promise, the revenue share, etc, which is difficult for me to build. See, a lot of people put in hours and years and years. Yeah, it will take you years to build.
00:33:05
Speaker
Absolutely. Years and years to build something that they have built, right? Where my intention is not to do something on my own from scratch. I would rather leverage someone else's efforts and partner with them and use the depth to garner maximum traction, maximum eyeballs for my artists. And this music which the artists produce, it's your, like you and the copyright to it. Yes. The IP of that belongs to us.
00:33:31
Speaker
Okay, okay. So this is also like a long term asset like this catalog. Eventually this catalog can also be monetized. This is something actually I've done it as business. The distribution part of the whole thing, I've been using tech site for years. I understand this business. What the education part, which is the first part that we are doing is tougher.
00:33:51
Speaker
So we are choosing to do the tougher part first. And the latter part of the whole thing is something which comes naturally to us. My co-founder Vivek Raja is also from the media industry. He has spent 10 years of his life as an operator with Star, Viacom, etc. And then he was with CM Media, as an investor later on with KKR Group, investor in media focused assets and companies.
00:34:15
Speaker
So, we have a lot of depth out there in terms of our understanding in this space basically. In the long term, will you earn more from education or from the distribution business? See, it's a very tricky question to be really honest Akshay. We do not want to decrease right now from the origin of what we are trying to build.
00:34:36
Speaker
then that distribution piece, the performance and the influencing part that you're building is to get maximum traction on the learning part. So for example, I was to give you a very loose examples, like every year Akash should become popular because few of the guys are going on to become the IITG's top rankers out there. So more people start believing in Akash's tutorials.
00:34:59
Speaker
That's the closest example I can give you. We want more and more people to believe that Artem Academy is one platform which is serious about music education. We are truly building the gold standard of music education in that sense. And therefore, I mean, one of the other things that I keep saying is we want to become the Harvard of music education. Harvard may have the best campus, best faculty, best learning, and also best placement platform.
00:35:28
Speaker
Now in this process actually, in this process, if we end up creating a large community of people on our platform called Artem Originals, potentially we could morph into something else which is bigger. But right now we are not, we are using Artem Originals as a top of the funnel to have more and more people falling in love with Artem.
00:35:49
Speaker
Although, you know, I'm guessing if you get like these breakout stars, like a Sono Nigam, these level of stars on RTM originals, that could be like a massive, I mean, it could be much bigger than the education business.
00:36:06
Speaker
I'll give you one example of Akshay what you're thinking. The performance platform we built today for our own internal talent where they are performing live in front of the larger audience. Tomorrow a lot of the artists who could use this technology perform live.
00:36:21
Speaker
to a global audience. In that process itself, we might end up creating the largest fan interaction network. What stops me from then giving out this platform to any artist? If you are an artist, you can start, you do InstaLite, right? You do little, you do ArtinLite.
00:36:38
Speaker
because I'm going to give you a curated performance platform. And then you garner your fans out there. Like there is a sub-stack for writers. So similarly, the sub-stack for music performers is what you could build with the performance platform.
00:36:53
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Amazing. Which would also help them monetize through ticket sales and all like something like that. Then you're nailing it. I'm loving the way you are already thinking ahead because you can monetize it using, you could create your own dollar club, crowd sourcing, payment dollar, and I'm going to give you content for the entire year, et cetera, right? You could do ticketing out there.
00:37:18
Speaker
Absolutely, new ticketing type. You could have a TikTok model. So you give 10 rupees of flowers, 15 rupees of flowers, tokenized stuff, et cetera.
00:37:27
Speaker
You could do completely brand funded content. So, you know, you could build a channel and say, you know, what my book said, then you run the whole thing. So there are multiple models of modernization once you create a sort of a final impression network. So tell me about your economics of the model right now. What do you earn right now? Like what's your AR right now?
00:37:48
Speaker
Yeah, so we already 1.25 million plus A in error and we are growing 20-25% month-on-month. 1.25, how much is that in rupees? That would be around 9.5-10 crore rupees, yeah. Okay, pretty good. 10 crore, annualized 10 crore. Okay, amazing. How have you funded it so far? Yeah, we've done two rounds of funding, seed round, we've raised $750k.
00:38:12
Speaker
in pre-series air from companies like some of the institutional investors like Whiteboard Capital Jet Synthesis Group. Sono Nigam, who is our patron in chief also invested in that round and then we had very interesting, I mean very good marquee angel investors then. Then we did our pre-series air round led by Chirate Ventures. We raised three million dollars led by Chirate and then Whiteboard Capital Jet Synthesis pro rated in this round. We also got Annika Capital again an institutional investor
00:38:39
Speaker
to join hands with us in this round. We also got very good Maaki angels like from Mamaat, from Zometo, the co-founder, and to be Frintech's co-founder, Fraso's co-founder Vikas Dusada. So very interesting bunch of people who have come on board with us in this round. So yeah, I mean, we are scaling up pretty fast. I mean, one of the things that we are looking at as a focus area, Akshay, we are planning to expand heavily for
00:39:06
Speaker
international audience in an expattered population outside India, where we see more sincerity of learning from their side. Their need to stay rooted to Indian culture is higher than Indians in India. And their sincerity is pretty high. See, the kind of class is also pretty high internationally. The second biggest market for us is South Indian population in South of India. The love for music learning is of a different level.
00:39:36
Speaker
Music to them is pious, it's part of the culture. So they're very sincere about learning music. So that two markets have been identified, so we're going behind them. Already 15% of our total subscriber base today, as we speak, is international. Without having to spend too much money on international market yet, because we just raised the capital, now we are expanding in international market.
00:39:58
Speaker
But that's our organic growth.
Financial Sustainability and Future Plans
00:40:00
Speaker
What is your breakup of costs? Like what percentage of cost is paid to the instructors? What percentage do you pay to these influencers who are designing the curriculum? What percentage is spent on marketing? Just help me understand. So with all the maestros, we have a deal which I genuinely can't talk about, but it is more sort of, I mean, you can understand we signed up the deal with maestros before raising our seed round of capital when they're bootstrapped.
00:40:28
Speaker
So you can imagine, but yes, there is no revenue share there. These guys have taken one time fees from us to curate the curriculum. And we have a three to five years relationship with each of these guys. So of course, he's invested himself. Relationship is very different. He's almost like a co-founder in that sense, basically, right? So that is definitely different relationship out there. With our teachers, we pay around 50% of the revenue share per class.
00:40:56
Speaker
So remaining 50% you're left with, how much of that is spent on marketing, how much on tech and operations and overheads and all that type? See, we have close to 40% gross margins on this, right? Because if you remove components of the teacher payout and some discounts that we offer on each of the class, et cetera. So of those 40%, I mean, we have marketing expense, content expense, cost of acquisition through marketing, of course, and that kind of stuff actually. At scale, what do you expect your margin to be?
00:41:25
Speaker
in four years of time, when we are, we are aiming to be at $180 million in ARR. And at that point of time, we'll be at 30% margin. And this $180 million, you're talking of purely education revenue, not the distribution revenue or a mix. So yeah, so 80% of revenue will come from one-on-one life classes and one-to-many life classes. So we'll introduce one to three or one to two at some point in time for sure. So 80% of it come from education.
00:41:55
Speaker
We also expect to do sort of a model where we'll have curated content in a linear fashion made available to you. Pre-recorded content. Like a self-learning course. Self-learning kind of course. Yeah, of course. Obviously it's an extension, right? We could even introduce some of the hybrid models. The two of the class that you take is one one, and then there's one class which is self-learning and again, then you take one. So it's a hybrid model that we introduce out there. Right. These are basically ways to make it affordable.
00:42:25
Speaker
Absolutely, absolutely. So through these models, we will either building other 10% of our revenues will come from pre-recorded kind of master classes in our list. And last 10% would come from the other models of business that we have estimated. Which sounds like an underestimation. Now you're saying just 10% will come from distribution. To me, distribution seems very exciting.
00:42:48
Speaker
Unfortunately, we live in a world where sometimes when you are too ambitious and you're talking too much, VCs feel that you're all over. You're trying to build multiple businesses together. You're not focused.
00:43:02
Speaker
Sometimes when you undermine underplay or that you're building, they feel that you're not ambitious enough out there. So we generally feel and see between all three founders, we have 60 plus of experience, professional experience. All of us have 20 plus of professional experience out there. So we believe in first building a very robust business model with what we're doing.
00:43:23
Speaker
stay grounded. I always say Akshay, I tell this to every VC, we are not playing a T20 game. So don't expect tremendous growth every month. Neither are we playing a test match. We are playing a 50 over game, in which in first 10 hours of power play, we'll hit the ball out of the park, which we did. From 2 lakhs to 7 lakhs of revenue, 8 lakhs of revenue in a month, in 16 months is not bad, for sure.
00:43:49
Speaker
Now it is time to build the innings, middleovers by building amazing learning experience, build tools around it, offer extension of what learning, so all these performance platform, influencers stuff, et cetera. So I'm curious about the name you chose for your business of RTM. Can you help me understand that? Yeah, so RTM is the Latin name for the word art.
00:44:18
Speaker
When we were building a platform around music education and vertical deep platform, we were not too sure whether we'll go vertical, extremely deep, or we might build a horizontal platform. So we wanted to make it a neutral name out there and therefore, RTM was the name chosen out there. But if you want to ask me, what is RTM? RTM is we are trying, we are building the gold star in music education, using the depth of modern pedagogy and technology.
00:44:47
Speaker
to elevate the learning experience of a learner to deliver almost in-person experience. And in that process, a learner takes a journey from a learner to a performer, and performer to an influencer. So that's what RTM is all about. But it is in this space, and then I'll lead up to how you are doing things differently from them. And that's where this can be even. Help me understand the landscape. Like, who are you competing against? Are there like a tech for music or a tech for like performing arts space?
00:45:16
Speaker
So, so there are many, no one specifically in the model that we are operating. So there are a lot of aggregated platforms providing this education as a service. Yeah. In fact, you have Whited Junior, which is also providing you coding, you providing music. So there are a horizontal plays. So what are you doing differently from them? So yeah, I mean, before that, I'll tell you actually our real competition is the offline learning.
00:45:45
Speaker
that people learn offline, and people who believe online learning is YouTube learning. These are two real competitions. Because this category is large enough, it is more than a $10 billion market performance arts business, actually. Out of that, music itself is $4 billion in that sense, basically.
00:46:03
Speaker
So this is large enough category. See what has been happening in performance art space is that everyone expects you to deliver a life free life class, a demo class. Like the first class will be free to give you a taste of the course. It's part of the sales process basically. Absolutely. But unfortunately, 80% of people who book your free class, a life class or demo class, they don't turn off causing serious heartburn.
00:46:28
Speaker
Amongst teachers. Yeah, because teacher get time blocked. That also reflects very badly on the regular classes that they're taking for the paid customers. Exhausted teacher, and their interest level, their love and affection and warmth for the brand also reduces over a period of time. So this is one major issue plaguing the industry.
00:46:56
Speaker
And that concept has worked wonderfully well. These academic experts would be like semi-professionals who are not at the teacher level, but they are still trained on that specific kind of music. They are teachers turned professionals. So they will be teaching music at some point in time. They are genuinely experts. So after the class comes along, in fact, they will deliver better experience because they are
00:47:19
Speaker
experts of their exponents out there. So whatever they are. So we have got people who are pretty good in their understanding of music. They are the guys who are trained to deliver almost, I would say, flawless demo experience. A standardised experience to our learners. They will experience the same level of depth of RTM that you will experience otherwise.
00:47:48
Speaker
But you are protecting your teachers from all this, this slightly dirty job. Yeah. And now what has happened is now suddenly teachers are enthused to put in extra efforts in the classes. And that is a delightful experience for our learners. That in turn is engaging them further with us. That in turn is helping us grow organically because there is more and more happening out there.
00:48:14
Speaker
If you see, it's a vicious circle. If you deliver a very good experience in time of someone joining in, trust me, most of the guys believe that, if they trust you, with all our maestros, we have built a brand around Aatyam. People trust us. There's a trust factor out there.
00:48:36
Speaker
So, all we are going to deliver is that people need to understand what is a free class all about, what is a curriculum, what is the RTM methodology, etcetera, etcetera. That we deliver through RTM academic expert model and then we deliver the class students, I mean we give subscription of a student in the hands of the teacher and teachers start teaching actually.
00:48:55
Speaker
Have you done something to reduce that 80% no-show? Yeah, so there is also a model I'm giving out too many trade secrets right now, actually. But there's one more model that we have built in our structure, which is called as what flights airlines do. Multiple booking for the same slot. Now this is where technology comes very handy. So we built a completely automated model, Jahapeh, for every slot we are booking two or three demos.
00:49:22
Speaker
Because our demo rate itself is 20% out of 80. So one in three or one in four is going to turn up. But there could be a potential case where two in same slot might turn up. And none of the guys in other slots will turn up in that sense, basically. You guys are sitting out there, right? So my system automatically sees a free export and diverts that call. I would say call means that I was landed on our video conference platform.
00:49:51
Speaker
to the expert and expert takes over. So basically like for example 10 a.m to 6 p.m you have three or four experts who are available and then the system is automatically routing demo classes to them based on who's available and most of the times there is no.
Technology Integration in Music Learning
00:50:07
Speaker
But there could still be a case where you have more people logging in than experts available.
00:50:12
Speaker
Trust me, that's the case. We are in a seriously good business for sure. So far, Algo is working pretty fine, but we also have a hack for it. If there is a situation, there are two people lined up on the same slot, and not more than one expert is available out there, immediately using a CRM solution, our system alerts our sales team, our operations team. And the guy gets a message on the dashboard that, hey, please wait. Somebody is going to reach out to you right away.
00:50:43
Speaker
and a call out happens.
00:50:45
Speaker
and we'll apologize and we will re-slot him on some other slot. Because that is costly also, right? Because the teacher is still to be paid even if the student doesn't turn up because you block the teacher's time. Absolutely. Do you measure NPS and what kind of... Yes, we have 6.4 as NPS right now, which is not bad. So how does the student experience the classes? Is it a mobile app? Is it like through the desktop? What is the... No, so we are web-first.
00:51:16
Speaker
So far, and I also generally believe Akshay, if a student is going to lie down and take the class, lying down. Yeah, you can't do it on mobile. You have to sit in front of a table. But the music that comes in a map, you can't learn like that actually. Then you are doing this service to yourself, right? But we are coming up with our mobile app.
00:51:33
Speaker
to enable students to practice using the content that we are giving them through a practice studio we have built. So we also built a practice studio for our students, which will allow the students to practice with, for example, you learn Sargam's Yabandish in the class today. The content come in since, you know, dashboard after you have gone. So you need Tanpura, Tabla, Metro name, all these widgets out there.
00:51:58
Speaker
It's all built in your app. So you play with that. You practice. Once you've done rears, you can record your rears and send it as an assignment to a teacher. Teacher gets that assignment on their dashboard. They assess the assignment, and they send it back to you, with annotating one minute, 10 seconds, you went flat, you went, et cetera, et cetera. So we're also solving the problem of, in an offline world, you meet your teacher once in a week.
00:52:27
Speaker
and then there is no competition happening between you and your teacher. You know, through our platform you are constantly interacting with your teacher within two classes out.
00:52:35
Speaker
And that feedback is very less because once a week you will play in front of your teacher. There's nobody giving you feedback. Absolutely. This is one of the problem areas which you see out there. Let me also give you a couple of things that we are doing which is very unique as compared to anyone else. Of course, just practice studio I'm talking about. So the app allows the consumer to practice and all. The app allows you to schedule your classes. So everything minus taking live classes is what we are offering on the app as of now.
00:53:03
Speaker
Right? For the class, let me just stop it and open it. Yeah. Now we have moved away from Zoom as a platform. We build our own video conferencing platform. Now it's a question that I get asked multiple times as to why do we need to reinvent the wheel? We are not reinventing the wheel. We have partnered with someone who has vitrable the whole solution for us, but it's custom made for RTM in that sense. But what we're doing is today in our learning experience actually when I'm teaching you right now, for example, if you're my student,
00:53:33
Speaker
I, when I'm teaching you a vocal, I start my tanpura or veteraning from my app on the other side. What we have done is built our own video conferencing platform which allows you to put all these widgets on the dashboard itself and using socket technology.
00:54:00
Speaker
Teacher can start tanpura at his end, parallelly the tanpura at students end also. So when he sings, there is absolutely no lag between tanpura and the singing.
00:54:10
Speaker
And last thing we are building right now is that Akshay, every parent whose kid learns would love to know what are they learning. So of course, we have built a very interesting scientific progress graph, learning graph. So you know all different parameters, how your kid is learning and stuff, et cetera, which is happening. But we are also building a sort of a tool within a video conference platform, which will allow, teacher will be empowered to record that piece.
00:54:41
Speaker
and share with the parent. And as soon as the class is over, by default, the system is shared with the parent. And probably you could put your branding in that video so that when the parent is circulating on WhatsApp groups. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you dissolve what amount of stuff actually with our logo and stuff. So we have now, so these are small things that you evangelize.
00:55:05
Speaker
which will change the experience of a learner and make them fall in love with you. So right now you're doing Indian music, right? What about more stuff for which there is a global demand like more regular like say jazz and saxophone and guitar also I think you already have but like for a global audience are you looking to build more courses? So I'll tell you Akshay, we have built all the vocal courses including Western Vocal as well.
00:55:30
Speaker
So there is Western Vocal included in our thing. Our keyboard classes has got pop, jazz, all the components. Our guitar classes of Western instruments are also there, right? Now the wind instrument like saxophone and all needs a lot of tech evangelism to be built in. So like I was saying, everything that we are doing, for example, when you do keyboard class with us, no auction, our keyboard reflects on the screen what notation your teachers are playing actually. That's a delivery of a different kind.
00:56:00
Speaker
So every instrument that you introduce needs certain level of hardware software integration to give the experience that a consumer will otherwise experience in offline world. How do you do that? Like how does the student see what keys the teacher is pressing on the keyword? So it is we built an entire technology which is allowing the MIDI integration.
00:56:21
Speaker
into our software and we build in a manner that the half portion of the screen gets taken over by what you're playing and teacher also sees what the student is playing on the side basically. What about for guitar? Is there something similar?
00:56:37
Speaker
So guitar, no, guitar is still something that we are trying to figure out. It's still a little bit of a look and feel out there, but there are components that I definitely can't share here, but these are things that is part of my R&D right now that we are working on that will offer. So basically it allows the laptop to have a, it's like camera set up on your laptop. It gives you 360 degree view.
00:56:59
Speaker
of your laptop, right? So tomorrow if someone is not having a MIDI integration out there and when he is playing it reflects on my screen, so teacher knows exactly what the student is playing when he is doing out there actually.
00:57:10
Speaker
But listen, a lot of when you write, a lot of the Indian customers today are learning Western music. And they are signing up in expensive schools, either globally or locally. So through our platform, nothing stops us from getting the best teachers from LA and Western world, offering Western courses to the Indian consumers out there.
00:57:31
Speaker
So that's definitely the roadmap, not in two to three quarters for sure. But you need a lot more funds because you then need to have those Western influencers signed up to really draw in consumers. But see, I'll tell you honestly Akshay, if you're on the right path, funds is not an issue. Though there is a winter and whatever the people are calling, if you feel the right direction, you're growing well, you're doing right, there's a right way. Your model is so much enough.
00:57:58
Speaker
then funding is not an issue. What's your current growth rate? Like why what rate is month on month like? We are growing 20-25% month on month right now. Wow, amazing, amazing. And Akshay, I'll tell you even to elevate the experience of learning, we have given RGM branded headphones, mics, sound card to all our teachers.
00:58:22
Speaker
Every teacher delivers you experience. They are not singing on a headphone, keeping their head like this and stuff, et cetera. You know, it's an experience of a different kind. It's professional experience. All our teachers wear Artyom branded coaties. So they are set with a coatie with Artyom brand on top of it. So you experience truly an Artyom experience out there. Amazing. What does the sound card do? Like can't you just plug in your headphone and mic to the laptop? No, sound card refines the sound further.
00:58:51
Speaker
to eliminate any sort of tech glitch that your system can give you output. So it's almost like bettering the sound. See and that sound card is more required for the teacher side because teacher has to sing and deliver or play and deliver.
00:59:05
Speaker
Okay, this is like a USB plug-in kind of a sound card. Sound card plug-in to your laptop. Okay, amazing. So what do you think is the exit for RTM? Do you think that it makes sense to be a part of a bigger edtech, like Biju's is one name, which I know is not a popular name right now, but similar to such bigger edtechs, or do you want to remain independent?
00:59:32
Speaker
See, if you ask a founder, any founder would say one of the most painful moments of their life was when they had to sell off. I mean, in respect of what money they were making out of it, selling off is a painful process. I mean, like any other founder, I would really want to love to take this company to IPO.
00:59:53
Speaker
given the first choice. We should become a global music education platform, big enough to have an idea of our own. Multilingual education is delivered across. But if you were to ask me who are the set of people who would like to buy a business like ours,
01:00:14
Speaker
Obviously, K to L platforms like by Jews and all already pick in your unicorns like by Jews or an academy. Those sort of people would definitely want to expand their portfolio of offerings for sure using some of the cardium. So that's one option. There are a lot of music labels that I see global music labels or media houses. Interesting in creating interesting amount of talent pool.
01:00:39
Speaker
using education as a process. Like I already know some of the big labels in the West are thinking of starting their own music education platform or music education school through that, because it's an extension of what they're offering otherwise, right? Or use a backward integration in that sense. It's like a PE fund static incubator. Like Sisikoia has that surge. Absolutely. So like that, right? So that would be one of the things that I think some, so the media houses is what I see. Some of the broadcasters are the sort of people that I believe
01:01:08
Speaker
So the audience has so far heard your story, which is about six to nine months old. Give us an update on what's happened in the last six, nine months. Yeah, I think actually two things. So we had the vision very clearly that we want to become India's first outcome driven risk graduation platform. What it means in that sense is with our own set of learners now, I mean, which are learners and teachers put together,
01:01:37
Speaker
The idea was to then give them a platform to perform which we built over a period of time where every fortnight we have performance platform available to our learners to perform in front of larger audience, virtual audience in that sense. And then select a few of them who have the potential. With those sets of people, we create original songs, create video and release to our platform called Artem Originals.
01:02:02
Speaker
I think last time when we spoke, we were still in a very early stage but now we can proudly say that we have launched RTM originals as a platform and every week we release new single on the platform which technically we mean that in couple of years we might become the largest library of independent music
01:02:21
Speaker
published to a platform on various DSPs, various streaming platforms, both audio and video put together. So we have a large catalog of IP that we own. That's one flywheel that we have developed.
Music Industry Trends and Artium's Impact
01:02:34
Speaker
Now, with these musicians, talented musicians that we are launching, few of those guys we believe have the potential to become probably the biggest independent musicians, artists, musicians who probably will be able to go out there, perform live, create more and more content. Those in today's language we use as creators.
01:02:56
Speaker
So those creators, we also sign those people on our platform. We have a clear management agreement with these guys, which what it means is we will have rights to launch them on various platforms and through monetization of their assets on various platforms, there will be a revenue which will blow back to RTM. Now again, we strongly believe that RTM Academy will become the fulcrum of the whole ecosystem.
01:03:22
Speaker
But all these tailwinds that we are talking about, or rather the flywinds that we are talking about, will help us create a large top of the funnel. More and more people will talk about the brand Addium, they'll talk about the brand Addium, and they'll want to come back and learn. We've signed up with almost 21 creators now, which are launching our platforms, and we'll continue to do that as we progress.
01:03:49
Speaker
You did give the example of like, say, in Akash, this test for businesses, which are, again, outcome driven. The outcome is you get a rank in IIT. So that automatically drives more traffic to you because you are showing there is proof of success. So you basically want to create proof of success for learners to drive more top of the panel.
01:04:11
Speaker
And then the other advantage is unlike in Akans, where someone gets into IIT, that that's its relationship. But here, if someone becomes a musician, you are still going to be able to monetize that relationship as a talent management agency.
01:04:25
Speaker
Absolutely. So the idea is never to become a talent management agency. We would enable, we want to be the enablers. For example, there are very good talent management agencies, which are doing pretty well, distributing the content and organizing on various platforms. There are agencies which are providing this talent, live shows and you know, real-time performance opportunities and stuff, etc. We could partner with those people.
01:04:49
Speaker
and still make our share of revenues from all these partnerships out. Because talent management and being an agent itself is a business in its own way. But we can safely say that by creating our own IP, we could become the new age digital distribution level or future for independent music in that sense.
01:05:15
Speaker
How does the IP work? Does it belong to the artist? Or is it shared between the artist and the label? So some of the cases we go on the IP, some of the cases we own the IP, but largely the exploration rights, it probably should be with us basically.
01:05:31
Speaker
Okay, so the artist will get some share of the revenue, you will get some share. Absolutely. This is like revenue from Spotify plays on if it is licensed
01:05:50
Speaker
some of the web series would like to pick up a song or a movie would like to pick up a song etc. They have a really library of, I mean sometimes they want to exploit these assets in their jingles or they want to create something like for example, we are also venturing in
01:06:10
Speaker
funded content partnership. So, for example, a lot of these brands today, what do you use content as a strategy to distribute out there in the market. So, we just did a very interesting partnership with Josh, which is not a monetary partnership in that sense. You know, when Josh is up, TikTok probably become the largest short format video platform today in India. They have a huge amount of creators. So, with them around the 15th of August, we launched the next million-sulamira tomorrow called Parabkasul.
01:06:39
Speaker
We published a brilliant track in 12 different languages. All the people who performed
01:06:48
Speaker
in video format in that video, but all the creators of Josh. So, I came and Josh came together to create the largest UGC platform, UGC anthem of country called Bharat Kasu. And almost 100 odd streams of this song, we saw on Josh's platform, more than 10,000 Josh creators created video and shared the video with us, out of which almost 2,000 of them featured in the video.
01:07:15
Speaker
So, interesting partnerships like that will help us. So, I understand your ethics revenue, that is like a subscription for course by the standard, easy to understand. Help me understand the revenue here, like what do you, what percentage of revenue do you make from what the song runs on Spotify? What revenue do you make when there is a console or things like that? Like just give me a broad
01:07:40
Speaker
It's very early right now for us to account the revenues of those platforms because we are only creating those flights right now. Last year because Water Music and a platform called Global Music Junction which is the largest distribution non-digital for water music. I mean they're the partners together. So we had signed a deal last year with them backed by Water Music. I want to realize that this is
01:08:04
Speaker
Potentially, our team is creating the largest bit of talent or future. And therefore, they partnered and said, you know what, we will start publishing your content. Warner has deep integrations with all the DSPs with their own CMS across platforms. So today, whatever you publish to Warner CMS,
01:08:24
Speaker
through using GMJ as a partnership of the platform out there. We do a revenue share between them and us right now. We have started monetizing all our assets in last couple of months. It's very early to count the money. When it comes to the creator management side of the story, we are taking very good steps in that direction too. We have just started getting small inquiries from people who are doing shows to play some of our own talents to perform live on the stage.
01:08:55
Speaker
Those are two flywheels we believe could potentially become big as we go into the future. I'll give you a couple of data points, Akshay, which is very, very interesting. There was a very interesting survey done by a son in the US, where they asked people within the age of 12 to 19, what would they want to become? What would the career path they would like to take?
01:09:21
Speaker
50% of those guys said you would like to become a YouTuber or a blogger or influencer in some way, right? And all those sets of people, almost 30% of people are the music creators. That's the music creators out there.
01:09:37
Speaker
The shift that we observed in industry was 7-8 years back, almost 95% of music consumed on any digital platform was on movie-based content, be it Bollywood, Bollywood, Bollywood, Bollywood, Bollywood, whatever we call them, right?
01:09:54
Speaker
Today, major platforms like Spotify, the split is 65-35% in favor of films and 35% streams are independent music. Now, that's a big shift, right? We are moving towards an industry which is existing in the West, which is largely artist driven and auto film driven industry out there. That kind of an ecosystem where if you see on YouTube in India, let's talk about India alone, 22% of
01:10:24
Speaker
total streams on YouTube are driven by 5% of music content and 90% of billion plus views are all music videos, music content. Which clearly means that while music creators are a third or fourth category in terms of the creator's ecosystem, the stickiness of watch hours
01:10:47
Speaker
The revenue generation part is going to be very, very high when it comes to the creators in the musical ecosystem. And that's one place where I believe we can play a very vital role as a natural extension of what we're offering in our team.
01:11:03
Speaker
And that brings us to the end of this conversation. I want to ask you for a favor now. Did you like listening to the show? I'd love to hear your feedback about it. Do you have your own startup ideas? I'd love to hear them. Do you have questions for any of the guests that you heard about in the show? I'd love to get your questions and pass them on to the guests. Write to me at adatthepodium.in. That's adatthepodium.in.