The AR Show: Jon Gray and So-Hee Woo (Encore) on Elevating and Democratizing Musical Performance

6:25PM Mar 14, 2022

Speakers:

Jason McDowall

Dana Chermesh

Keywords:

artists

ar

create

encore

people

fans

music

metaverse

design

experience

carnegie mellon

feels

technology

world

cmu

augmented reality

digital

today

spotify

startup

Welcome to the AR show where I dive deep into augmented reality with a focus on the technology, the use cases and the people behind them. I'm your host Jason McDowall. Today's conversation is with John Gray. And so he Woo. John is the co founder and CEO and CIO. He is the head of xr at Encore, a company building a live streaming interactive AR infused music performance app. John is an entrepreneur and software engineer who prior to encore was the founder and CEO of cask, a big data analytics platform, which was acquired by Google in 2018. Before that, he was a software engineer at Facebook, where he worked on messages and several other large scale data platforms. Prior to Facebook, John founded streaming a content oriented social network of the web to Dotto era. So he has experienced across many areas of transmedia industrial design, focused on experimenting with the future of products and experiences. Her special interests include AR and VR, of course, as well as the implications of AI in tech fashion, John, and so he are both graduates of Carnegie Mellon University, John with a BS in electrical and computer engineering, and Sohi with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in industrial and product design. She went on to receive a master's degree in industrial product and design from the Art Center College of Design. In this conversation, John and so he talked about how they empower musicians to create engaging AR art to complement their live musical performances.

To me, what really attracted me to Encore is being able to use augmented reality as a medium to circumvent cost and feel creativity to extend beyond the rules of what reality is in general, and give room for really quick iteration and creative expression. And I'm really excited to put these tools in the hands of artists in hopes to give them the opportunity to create additional layers of richness or creative richness to every point of their musical artistry wherever they are, in terms of popularity and fan base.

They go on to discuss how they're establishing a middle class of performance artists through the Encore fan experience app and the Encore Studio app for artists. We get into the business strategy and even some philosophy about art and experience. As reminder, you can find the show notes for this and other episodes at our website, the AR show calm. Let's dive in. Donna, so he all three of us actually attended Carnegie Mellon. But John, you add an extra element to your educational experience you took a year off after your freshman year? What motivated the time away? And how did you how did you spend it?

The motivation for my time away was the shock and awe to my psyche and system of spending the first 18 years of my life in Los Angeles, and moving to Pittsburgh and having my butt handed to me in a way I didn't know was possible. And I was also freezing cold. And a whole bunch of different things around culture shock and personal shock around thinking I was really smart knew what I was doing. And then realizing that I wasn't that smart and had no idea what I was doing. It definitely, you know, rocked me. And I was fortunate to make a lot of really great friends. And that's probably one of the big reasons I ended up coming back. But in that year off, I moved to the beach in Santa Barbara, and didn't do that much. I went to Santa Barbara City College, and I took art history, and I took beach volleyball. And about halfway through that experience, I was reflecting on where it was heading, and decided that I was handed this an amazing opportunity to go to Carnegie Mellon and to get a computer engineering degree, to not take that incredible opportunity to see where it goes would be a colossal waste. And something that I don't think I would have reflected positively later on in my life. It was literally one of those singular moments where I was sitting on the couch with my friend, and didn't want to be sitting on that couch for the next 10 years of my life. And that really, really lit a fire under me to really look at the things in front of me less as things that I had to do, which so much of my life to that point, felt like I had to go to high school and I had to go to college. And these were the things I had to do. And it came a lot more about my choice about really wanting to seize the opportunities that I had to see what I could do with it, how hard I could push myself where I could actually go. And I didn't really stop working until three years ago, and I finally sold one of my startups and I had a moment of time to stop working for a little bit. It definitely lit a bit big fire under me, made me really hungry to go see what was possible and how much I could do. And also I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, you know, and Carnegie Mellon rocked me a little bit at first and

You know, you either get back up, brush yourself off and go again or you walk away. And for me, I wanted to get back up, go back to battle and win the battle. And, you know, I've tend to be somebody who doesn't reflect and like, get that proud of things, because I'm always going to the next step. But for sure, as I think back to the entire process, and anyone who's been there can have some, some compassion for the feeling. It's like, no, it was hard. It took a lot. I had to do, you know, over and over and over again, concerted efforts to get myself over the hump, to put myself into the position to actually be able to pass the classes, do the homework, get through the education. And you know, it's one of the most proudest moments of my entire life, and certainly had I not made that decision. I would not be here right now. I had a similar introductory experience to Carnegie Mellon.

I grew up in a small town in a small town state. And I didn't have to work very hard to get through my high school experience in going to Carnegie Mellon, doing also the computer engineering program, the C program. That program prided itself on humbling. Students press off on being the most challenging program of its type in the world. And they they relished it. The professor's relished this so much like, okay, how can we crank it up just a little bit more, a little bit more this year. And I don't think I had learned how to learn Intel, I went through the CMU experience. And similarly, after my freshman year, I didn't take time away. But I did spend a little of time reflecting. And I realized also that I, up to that point had made a lot of choices, because my parents suggested it was the right choice to make. Yes. And it was around that same exact point where I realized that I was making these choices because I wanted to make them there for me, and I was living my own life. And that was was also equally transformative. I started my first startup at CMU, which I think you did as well. Yeah, around exact same time. My sophomore year of college, I started my first web company. This is 1994. At the dawn of the web, we started on the first first web companies, and people asked me, Hey, can I be an intern at your company? Like, it was me and my roommate, like, we don't even know what do you have me suggest that you should be doing anything for us? Anyway, good times back then. For sure. So how about you did you? Did you have an awakening when you're at CMU as well,

you know, I think my experience is a little different, because I wasn't the most competitive in high school. And I didn't have the best grades. And the reason why I got into Carnegie Mellon is because of portfolio and art. And so most of my friends, were very stem oriented. And so I had a lot of pressure coming into college, needing to make a name for myself, because in school, I wasn't getting the best grades. I wasn't the smartest in the class, things like math and science weren't the easiest for me. And so going into CMU was like the first moment that I got to do something that really meant something to me. And that I got to try my hardest to be the best that I could and really learn and grow from that. And so Carnegie Mellon, for me was like my chance to finally be myself, and work really hard to be the best version of whatever that means. And so CMU is definitely a place that challenges you in every single way. Design is similar in the sense that they're extremely stringent about quality, and very humbling in terms of critique. And making sure that everyone who is there not only wants to be there, but works really hard to stay there. And so you know, I think back on that and and really appreciate how hard and difficult it was to even, you know, make a mark at Carnegie Mellon. And so that carries on, I'm sure for everybody who's gone to CMU into their day to day lives.

Yeah, making a mark. That's a great way to put it. Speak to your making Mark Jones, you kind of hinted you had actually done the startup in college, right, which I think was alongside Facebook with a slightly different perspective. But can you give us quick recap of what you've done in college at the time?

Yeah, Facebook came out college only when I was an undergrad, and my buddy and I hated it, and had a concept for making a social network, but orienting around content. So it was kind of like a social RSS reader called streaming.

And you had that that initial startup experience, but you're actually going to work for Facebook for a few years after college. What was the decision to go in work there?

Yeah. So we started streaming because we hated Facebook. And then three and a half, four years later, as we were winding down trimming, I went to work at Facebook. And so definitely, you know, was literally going to the enemy, our perceived enemy. But as I've told the story many times, you know, I spent two years at Facebook, and, you know, went there to kind of lick my wounds, put some money back into the bank, after a failed startup, but actually what it did was like, fundamentally transformed me as an entrepreneur. You know, seeing the success there, I joined in the end of 2009. And there was about 200 engineers at the time. And two years later, there was 2000 engineers. And so number one to be there during that growth was pretty crazy, even from a logistic standpoint of how do you have enough chairs and desks for that many people that quickly, but even more, so for me, it was really about kind of purposeful, startup building. I think one of the reasons I didn't like Facebook from the outside was, it felt very lucky, it felt like they were the right place at the right time. And we're just able to kind of take advantage of these things happening around them. And when I went there, I saw how purposeful everything was, how intentful it all was how they were not just lucky, they were incredibly good to great. And, and I really walked away with that as this notion of, you know, startups, or a lot of ways around conscious trade offs, and culture. And so after Facebook, and experiencing that culture there, which was the smartest people I've ever worked with working the hardest they've ever worked and loving it. You know, that's a really magical experience for the company and for the people. And I wanted that. And you know, one of the big things there is really around the notion of trust and empower. And I think there's actually a lot of corollaries to Carnegie Mellon grads in that, because ultimately, hiring people who you can trust, and then focusing all of your energy on empowering them to do the best work of their lives, is this really cool equation that allows you to work with great people, everyone works really hard, everyone is there to achieve everyone's there to do their best work. And you just move forward in this really fast, fast way. And I think for builders, fastest fun, you want to do as much as you can. And that was what I learned there was how to move fast, how to have fun, and how to make trade offs and how you run your business to actually create the culture that you want.

You had your next crack at that at a startup that was really very a different direction. It's a big data integration platform that Google ended up acquiring. And we'll come back and chat about that here just a little bit. But then, in this current startup, you're focused on streaming music, bringing a new kind of musical experience, both for artists, and for the end for the fans, what drew you to encore what, what motivates you to create, you know, a new way of streaming music?

For sure, I think, you know, my last company and enterprise software company, in many ways, I was trying to optimize for a better chance of success, you know, consumer is tough, I had a consumer startup, that was tough. And I worked at Facebook, where everything was working. And it's really, really, really hard to replicate that. And so, you know, took a lot of the really hard problems that we were solving at Facebook, and was like, hey, there's other companies that are gonna want this, this is something that I think I can sell. And, you know, enterprise companies have a lot of more intermediate outcomes. It's not just the kind of you win it big or you miss completely. And I think that was a lot of went into my last decision was, you know, I want to go deep on tech and build stuff, and then convince people that I'm adding value and win them deal over deal. And there's something really nice about that, because you can control it in so many different ways. What I lost there, and what drove me to encore, was really that we had no mission. You know, we certainly had missions, we had a vision statement, we had a reason for existing, a lot of that boil down to saving giant fortune 500 companies money and time. And the thing that, you know, I took two years off after after past three years off, just working with other people, startups and helping people and ultimately measuring myself, what calls do I have, where I have a more energy at the end than I do at the beginning? You know, what, where do I find myself drawn and that's, that's the most amazing part of being able to take a little bit of time off is to be able to temperature check yourself and actually mirror and monitor your own behavior. And the things that I found myself drawn to were the things that had some type of bigger purpose and mission. The entrepreneur friends that I had, that I was the most jealous of were the ones who are literally saving lives are the ones who were literally helping people have a career, those things that really impacted other people felt like, you know, as we all know, startups and being a founder CEO is stressful. It's tough. It's a weird set of trade offs that I'm not sure why many of us make it. You need reasons to wake up every day. You need something to get you up out of bed, you need something that's going to drive you for five to 10 years, right and the more times you do it, the more you realize this is a big, big journey and you're going to have to spend a lot of time talking about this And so you better love it. And for me, you know, the notion of technology as a democratizing thing has always been key to what I've done. And the notion that, you know, as I dug into the music space, as I dug into crater platforms, as I dug into AR and mobile AR, by helping Ian, who's the original founder of encore, explore encore, I found myself falling in love to these different ideas of it. And I found myself really saying, like, wow, we could actually change people's lives, we could create a middle class of music. One of the most exciting things for me, as we can be responsible for incentivizing artists to create more art, we could put more art into the world by our existence, those things are incredibly exciting to me. And so it takes, you know, being in the lab, writing software, and designing products, UI, UX, and all of that stuff, which is really fun, and I like to do it. But it gets exhausting to be able to do that work, but towards an end, that is actually going to impact people in a real way and bring technology and access to people that don't have it is a really, really exciting thing. If you throw all of that, behind a wave of a huge market opportunity. That's how you pick your next startup.

You talked about this idea of creating a middle class of musicians and middle class of artists. What does that mean? I presume the implication is that there's a poor group of artists, and there's a very successful rich group of artists. And there's this big gap potentially in between. That's right. Can you expand on that? What is the typical experience? I think we, when we think of artists, generally we think of the big names that we all know. Yep, we know of the the stereotype maybe of the starving artists, can you kind of talk about the market dynamics, and why that are the only the two extremes and there's a missing middle class here.

Yeah, and the reality is like the extremes are really, the head is very, very, very small. The tail is very, very, very long, and music. And so music is not even a one percenter game, and maybe not even a point 1% Or game, it's more of a point oh, 1% or game, the artists that you're familiar with, are in the point oh, 1% of artists. If you look at a platform like Spotify, right, so artists make the majority of their money today in streaming revenue, that's where the majority of the market comes from, you know, 1% of artists drive something like 98 to 99% of the revenue. I believe the top point 1% take home 90% of the revenue on Spotify.

Top state, let's repeat that the top point 1%

The top point 1% Take 90% on Spotify tastes 80%. Wow. So that tells you what the dynamics are of the music market, right? In many ways, like being an artist is almost like being a YouTube blogger. If you don't have millions and millions, you're not making a living, right. And there's this long tail of people who have 1000s or 10s of 1000s, or even hundreds of 1000s, of listeners of plays of all of that stuff. And they have a full time job that has nothing to do with music. And I think that, you know, number one, it's because of the nature of streaming streaming is a kind of a zero sum equation, Spotify and the DSPS. They take a percentage of their revenue. And then as an artist, you take your streams and you divided by the total number of streams that month. And so artists are actually competing with one another for a fixed pie. And if you can imagine that an artist like Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift and Drake, and massive artists, when they release big albums when they, they have a huge impact on everyone else's trimming revenues, right? December is famously the Mariah Carey month, every artist does a little worse, because Mariah Carey's Christmas songs do so well. And so it's a very interesting kind of zero sum world in music. And so music artists, you know, to be able to make it have to find followings on social, they have to catch streams on Spotify and DSPS, they have to have a merch line, they have to tour they have to do five different things in order to actually give themselves a full time income. When you look at that, and then you compare it to something like the gaming industry, or you compare it to what's happening in these other creator platforms. You're seeing that microtransactions direct to fan subscriptions, those business models are working really, really well for other types of creators, other types of apps like games, and has not made its way into music at all. MUSIC Today is 999 a month for all music. And that really gets to kind of what the whole vision mission of the company is, which is you know, 999 a month for unlimited music devalues music tremendously. And even worse, I can sign up for Spotify, pay my 999 and only listen to one artist. That artist does not get my 999 It's not how it works. My stream is just as valuable as someone else's stream. And so the model is really not optimized around artists and their fans, and how to actually monetize that. It's all music is unlimited, it's practically free. And by the way, if you become big, then you can actually make a living.

And only if you become big, and your odds of that are incredibly small.

Yeah, I mean, it's a point 1% game, like we said, and here's another statistic 60,000 new tracks uploaded to Spotify every day, every day, every day. So you're talking like 2 million new songs per month that you're trying to get discovered in between. And so there's something really exciting about that, you know, there's these, there's some metrics out there about how much more music is created now than prior eras. And it's insane, right, because music production technology has been democratized for over 10 years. And so and now it's going into your phone. And so people can create music more easily than they ever could. And now they can distribute it. Because you don't need a record label to print your cities, you need an API to push it to a DSP. And so that access has created tremendous amounts of music in the world. But for the people making the music, it's become harder and harder and harder to make a living from it. And I think that the backdrop for me, which is really interesting is, musics never been bigger. People actually listen to more music now than they did five years ago. There's big things that got created, like tick tock, and peloton that in so many ways, would not exist without soundtracks, right? Music is really at the backbone of those two things. And artists are not making a ton of money from their peloton rights. They're not making a ton of money from tick tock. Right. In many ways, the opposite is happening. And these things are again, just ways for artists to be discovered, hoping to then make money through other routes.

Is there evidence that from the demand side of music listening, that there is interest in that longer tail of the work of the all of those artists? Maybe it's the case that we just all really only want to listen to Justin Bieber? Or is it the case that we actually want access?

It's a really, really good question. And I think, you know, something that is definitely it was more of an open question than when we, you know, have now been in this company now for 18 months. I think one of the things that gives me the most urgency around what we're doing is that it's, it's all there in droves. So what really, we're tapping into today with the artists that we work with is nothing to do with discovery. Ultimately, discovery is really important for artists and fans, right? Artists need new fans, fans want to find new music. We're not even in the discovery game today. Encore is in the monetize the following you already have game. So the artists that we work with the ones who are most successful, you probably have never heard of them. But they have a discord. And there's 2000 people on it. They have 50,000 or 100,000 monthly listeners, they've got 500,000 followers on Instagram, right? Vast majority of music fans have never heard of this person. But they have super fans, there is a group of individuals whose username is a play on the artist name, or their that artists fan, whatever that artist has fan accounts about them. And that actually happens at scale. There's 1000s, and 1000s and 1000s of artists who have 1000s of fans. Today, they're looking for ways to monetize and engage that group. And they struggle. And so what's really exciting for us is how we work with artists. And we really just add to what they're already doing. We don't ask them to stop doing anything, we just add something new that they have. And so what's really cool is we tap into existing fandom, an existing following. And we give the fans new experiences that they wouldn't have without encore, they give the artist the opportunity to do the experience, but more importantly, to monetize that and actually get paid. And so we're really just introducing this new medium, which is like mobile live AR performances, which really just leans into the superpower of artists, their live performance of music, and leans into what fans want, which is performances from the music artists that they love.

This goes back to it was Kevin Kelley, who had written this book or essay about this 1000 true fans or 1000 raving fans, this sort of thing. And so what you're describing is that you're giving an opportunity for these for the artists and those 1000 raving fans to get connected and to support each other.

That's exactly right. And I think you know, that's the thing we look at with the other creator platforms, they've tapped into that. You know, you can have 1000 true fans as a twitch gamer and monetize that audience really effectively. And as an artist, you just can't do that today.

Twitch though, doesn't work for these types of artists. From musicians.

So there are some musicians on Twitch twitches full time job twitches for five hour streams, four or five times a week. If you're an artist who is willing to do that, then Twitch can work for you. Typically, what we see is that if you're someone who is comfortable, like live producing, with your fans watching really great for Twitch, if you're a DJ, if you're doing something that allows you to split your attention between the thing you're doing and your audience, that something like Twitch makes a lot of sense, Twitch doesn't make sense for performance. And that's really what we're about is performance. Even more so short, and mobile performance. And so Twitch sits at your computer, Twitch makes it so that you have to engage over a long period of time on an ongoing basis. And what we say is, hey, you're dropping a new single next Thursday, next Friday, come promote and do a show on Encore 30 minutes before it hits the streaming services, invite your superfans, you're going to drive more streams, you're going to drive an incredible experience, and you're going to make money. Ideally, it's going to take 15 minutes.

That's compelling. So what what drew you to working with encore?

I think at the very beginning, it was the unknown. I was just really interested in augmented reality as a medium. And to me any opportunity for experimentation and expression was enough for me to want to know more. I think like any kind of budding relationship, you fall in love with it more and more every day. And the reason why is because of all these, you know, initiatives that we're really trying to add to help make artists feel like they have the opportunity to really visualize their creative dreams. And I think something that I realized in like, let's say the last, you know, six months is getting to talk to these artists, my question has always become now what is the cost of creative freedom and creative expression, being someone who's trained in that, I have experience and opportunity to access those resources, pretty much from day to day, but talking with these artists who don't necessarily have the resources and are banking on their success through community favors and who they know. And, you know, their buddy, who maybe knows a little bit of Photoshop and all that kind of stuff, it becomes more and more difficult to add visuals into their artistic expression authentically. And you can really only put all that attention into, you know, one song out of the many. And artists are there to tell a story through their album through their music. And they're not able to do that, because they don't have the money to front the cost or they don't have the technology or Tech experience to dabble. And so, to me, what really attracted me to Encore is being able to use augmented reality as a medium to circumvent cost and feel creativity to extend beyond the rules of what reality is in general and give room for really quick iteration and creative expression. And ultimately, as we're getting closer and closer to putting the app into the hands of artists, I'm really excited to put these tools in the hands of artists in hopes to give them the opportunity to create additional layers of richness or creative richness to every point of their musical artistry wherever they are. In terms of popularity and fan base.

There's one element of adding a visual component to the storytelling. But here you're talking about augmented reality. There's another dimension in adding AR Why Why does AR make the experience better for the fans or for the artists?

I think to me, I love AR Because it's an equal balance of virtual absurdity, and real life. I used to work at Microsoft during the HoloLens experience. And that actually, strangely enough, all the iteration was in virtual reality. Even though we were designing for AR we designed in VR. And what I loved about that was like the escapism the complete darkness of going into space and seeing the stars and being completely encapsulated into something else. But what makes AR super unique is we're not trying to replace the people you want to know, right? We're not trying to say Khadi who has changed your life through his music and through his expression. We're not trying to take that away from you by replacing him with something more in authentic. We're trying to help you find a more real connection and still understand him in a way that feels closer or more akin to being at a concert, while not being inaccessible, you know, buy expensive tickets or location or tour dates or any of that kind of stuff. And so, to me, AR is being able to create the unimaginable in an accessible way, both for artists and for fans.

You talked about your time at CMU. For you the the entrance point was through a very robust portfolio design portfolio. Where did that passion for design originate?

So for me, I came from actually a family of only artists, dancers, drummers, painters, singers, the whole kit and caboodle at this point, but because of that, I had this really strong foundation and creativity. That was the point that I find peace and inspiration every day. Now, that for me is where I find safety. But when I applied to school, I kind of didn't know what that meant in terms of like a career. And so I applied to everything, I applied to be a fashion designer and illustrator and animator, graphic designer, industrial designer, literally anything and everything. And when I got into Carnegie Mellon, I applied to two different programs, one being fine arts and one being design. And I didn't get into the fine arts program, and I got into design program. And that was my first choice that was made for me. And I was like, I'm going in for graphic design. And then I fell in love with physical things, designing physical objects, and I became an industrial designer, because I learned how to build things that solved problems. And I always like to talk about kind of my most impactful takeaway from like the first class, when you choose industrial design, they take you in the shop, and they're like, these are all these tools, you're probably going to cut your finger off, don't do that. You're gonna stand for hours. But the most important thing we're trying to learn is how to use physical form, to create an instruction manual. And I really liked this idea of a shared understanding without explanation. I think it made design for me not only really utilitarian and a career path, but still satisfied. The emotional poetry for me. And I think that still continues to be my two driving forces is how do we use physical form, even in a digital space to solve a problem without losing the abstractness and emotional fulfillment or creating art,

as you went from this focus on this particular class was was one specific class across all of your classes, and you'd said this, The Beauty The poetry in this thing was how do you communicate? How do you have shared understanding without explanation, which I think from from any sort of design, that's, you know, you've mastered it if people understand it without having needing any sort of explanation? As you kind of went through school and as you went through your various artistic expressions, throughout that time, and after? How did that evolve for you from being more focused on the physical objects to being more focused on digital embodiments, maybe a physical things or of tangible thing? Yeah,

I think with Carnegie Mellon, it's really hard to avoid technology, because the whole school is embedded in invention. No matter where you go, you might stumble onto a robot trying to give you a high five or something, you know. And so even within traditional design, you're always encouraged to look at the future, and how design will change. We were never rooted in only holding on to the artists in practice. But what you imagined design to, or how you imagine design to make an impact in 10 years and 15 years and 20 years and 30 years. And so the reason why the digital became really interesting to me, and then eventually, you know, virtual reality and augmented reality, which I was actually introduced to in grad school. It was the fact that when I looked at a digital object that had three dimensions, I felt that we were treating it still like a 2d object. We were treating it as a background, we were treating it as a small part in a in a huge story. Because this medium was created through gaming, the gaming experience these extremely extravagant environmental designers and great storytellers. And I never got the satisfaction of the relationship between a person and an object in virtual space. So when you're designing industrial design, we're not designing a space we're just designing a very intimate relationship between you and a product. You and a mouse you are in a cup you and a backpack. And so when I look at this digital I'd became more and more attracted to like, how can we make every moment that you interact with a digital space equally as fulfilling and equally as intimate? And so we're not kind of like swimming in digital trash. Everything is meaningful at every step. And you can imagine, like in a full environment, if you have an ability to explore every nook and cranny, every plant every flower, you're not necessarily just saying, Oh, I'm going to forests Every moment has its moment. And so that, to me, is the new age of digital design that I'm really excited to be a part

of not swimming in digital trash. I like that visual. How do you bring that perspective to what you're creating it encore?

Yeah, I think a little bit as a force function of developing new tech, were trying to capture moments in a song, right? I think at the heart of knowing the way the music industry is and how you develop music, videos, and sets, everyone wants to tell these extremely intricate stories that require a Million Moments and million objects really expensive monoliths. And I think in our case, in attempts to not overstimulate with just constant visuals, constant virtual things, we start to question how we can simplify and how we can capture, use a moment to really tell a full story. And so with these new sets, to encourage simplicity, and the value of minimalism and simplicity. In a digital object, it's easy to put down a million things, but how do you make five things valuable is the the challenge that we're facing. But I also think we'll create more authentic sets and more authentic, you know, virtual environments that aren't just to shock and aren't just to blast you with, you know, flashing lights. But to create intimate visual art.

What is this this artist experience that you've created, you kind of talk about the the desire to tell the story visually, this notion of creating a set of, of creating a set of meaningful digital objects to enhance the storytelling experience? How do you bring those together for an artist today?

I think it's, it's the idea of customization. And that sounds really productize. And kind of a weird way. But I think every person comes with what they imagine themselves to be, right. And maybe for some artists, that means who they are today versus who they are in their full discography over time. But our goal is to make sure that people are able to contribute through their own images or their own, you know, custom art or how they want to build the scene. We're using that as a way to, to create more intimate sets that feel in are individualized, and not just for any moment for anybody.

How does an artist experience this? What do they need to pick up the mobile phone, download the Encore, creator edition, get to work.

I mean, pretty much it's it's really that simple in terms of going from nothing to creating your own set, exactly that downloading the the studio encore Studio app. And once you open it up, you have the option to upload a bunch of your own custom assets, or you can just jump into the Encore library and start building. And what's awesome about it is that quick iteration, I think, with any kind of artist or designer, sometimes it's so hard to put something down because it feels like that's the thing that's gonna last forever. That's the idea you have to run with and tell everybody about. But what's awesome about democratizing this tool and being able to put it into the hands of artists is they can design iteration after iteration. And it can take, you know, five minutes, you can spend 30 minutes on it, it's really up to you how detailed you want to be. And then going live is like a different part of the process. But in terms of just exploring AR and telling your visual story is extremely quick and simple to get started.

And what is the goal of the fan experience? John, you talked about this idea of making, you know, rather than a four hour stream that you have to engage in here, you can do it in a few minutes at a time a concert, I'd only be 510 1530 minutes. What what is the goal around the fan experience here?

I think in short, we see the opportunity for live performance on mobile. You know, it's interesting thing we're Where do I see live shows on my phone? You don't, you know, I think over COVID You know, scheduled Pay Per View style, live events became a thing, but I don't think a really scalable thing. I think probably most of us missed half of the ones we put in our calendar and a lot of that was Lucky about timing and all those things. And I think there seems to me to be an opportunity where there's a lot of incredibly talented individuals out there. And there's nowhere for them to perform. They're literally locked into in person, real life, physical locations, and real in person, physical audiences. That doesn't really work for most artists. And I think that's the lowest hanging fruit is live performance is the superpower of most music artists. And most music superfans love to see live music, especially from the artists that they follow. And so that's tapping into something that just simply already exists. And I think, you know, that's why mobile AR, and mobile live streaming, are these really enabling technologies to make all of that possible. Listening to so he talk is awesome about the way she thinks about all of this. And I could not agree more. But to me, it's, you know, all I can hear is this very direct connect between, you know, industrial design, design with utility and purpose for a function versus designed for art's sake. And I think that's kind of one of the big things that we're here to do. On the AR side, I think there's been some incredible live music AR performances out there, there's been some incredible VR music performances out there, they're staffed with teams of designers and CGI people, and turned into these, like beautiful performances that are more to do with the designers than the artist. And I think for us, it's really about the function of the creative, not necessarily the creative for the creative sake. And I completely agree with what's so he's saying, putting five objects and making them have purpose is both harder and better. But to the artists, if we can make that work, and we can unlock how that will work at scale, that's just so much more accessible. And I think that really gets to is, you know, these artists don't have their own design team, they're not going to have a bunch of people working around trying to make them a custom one off fortnight performance, they maybe just have them and their friend who maybe has a little photoshop skills, or can copy and paste stuff off the internet. And how do you turn that team into a team that can actually create really engaging live performances, the AR doesn't have to be the center of attention, the artist is performing and doing their thing, and they're the focal point, right. But there's a reason that when you go to see a live show, there's screens and Pyro and lights, right there, accentuating and highlighting and engaging you deeper into the live music performance, there's a reason that music videos are filled with visuals. And that they can be a really fun way to listen to a song. Right, because those things are additive to that entire, you know, auditory experience. And that's what's so cool about what we're doing. And the awesome work that Sony has done is just in so many ways, what we've done is gotten simpler, and in that a lot better, and a lot more accessible.

What has been, as you've created this, you're applying now, all of these technologies, these concepts to enable both the fan experience and the artist experience to be so much better. What has been some of the biggest challenges, whether it's around the the AR or the streaming technology, in ultimately bringing this sort of experience to life.

You know, artists are all different. And they're different in their vibe and mood, they're different in their personality, they're different in their goals and aspirations. And so when you build something from music artists, it's not like it's a one type of person. It's a very, very diverse group. And so I think one of the inherent challenges is doing something for a group that's very different and diverse within it. And understanding, you know, what are the truths there? What do we tease out? What are the commonalities, and how do we actually kind of reach artists at scale? I think probably the biggest singular thing is, is just how are people going to do this without so he will, you know, I think, ultimately, she's done an amazing job and has designed like, hundreds of shows at this point, right? And they've gotten better and better while they've gotten simpler. And you can see in the evolution of our own shows how they are way more accessible to a non designer now than they were when we started. So I think that's always been the challenge is how do you take non designers, non technical people, but people who are artistic and have their own ideas and give them something that will work without us involved?

Going back to this almost this concept you describe Earlier, so we about designing something that can be understood without having to explain it. This is embodied really here in this sort of app experience for the artist and for the fan that they have to take and create was ultimately, technically at least a very complex thing, right, you have all these different digital objects that they are putting into a scene that they are enabling during live streaming performances, all the live streaming elements to it as well. And they have to then interact with it as a fan of the fan experience of this particular app. I love that there is this true dimensionality to the artists engagement with the digital art, even though all the art itself may not be 3d. But the engagement with it is very 3d, you can the artist can walk in front of and behind and those sorts things around the digital eye. And it's it's really compelling. It is a massive challenge to be able to make this accessible for the artists. That is, that's what I imagined anyway, in my own habits, massive challenge to make this truly accessible for the artists. Have you kind of overcome Have you worked through this sort of understanding of what the artists needs are their understanding of the technology and ultimately getting to the point where they can use it without you?

Well, we've been doing kind of a handoff, right. And so in the very beginning, we ran really bespoke shows, we did pretty much everything for them. So they just showed up and we're able to perform, and that really was testing the the breadth of what is successful AR. And over time, we're able to kind of tell what is not only successful AR, but what is effective AR? What is useful AR and I think that to me is also a point of augmented reality in general is where is it the most useful and where is it the most valuable? And being able to talk more individually with artists and hand over an app before launch date to see you know, exactly that challenge? Like, is it too hard is that is it something that's easily understood, I realized the moment you give an artist the ability to create something, they are willing to try and do anything. And so something that might feel complicated, only feels complicated, if you don't want to do it, the moment they're like, Wow, I can put this image or this object behind me and I can be at a corner in LA, I can be in my bedroom, I can be in the parking lot, I can be at the beach, and I can just accentuate there's not even a second thought of how many objects are available. You know, whether or not this technology is too new, how difficult are the steps, they're willing to learn it through every step. And I'm sure, no matter what industry you're involved in, it always feels more difficult if it's homework, and it feels pretty freakin fun, if you want to do it. And so I'm surprised actually at how easy it feels for them, when they really a lot of them have never interacted with something like this before. And they're really non technical. It seems not to matter.

It's amazing. John, you talked about this idea that ultimately we're trying you're trying to open up an opportunity for the middle class of artists, and create a new opportunity for them to create visually stunning, amazing experiences, great oral experiences, but also get paid. How is it that artists get paid through this platform, and will give you the confidence that the fans are ultimately willing to pay for this type of experience?

We're really taking a lot from gaming, and really look at the gaming industry as you know, music something like a $30 billion annual industry and gaming's well over $100 billion. You know, Activision just got purchased for $70 billion, roughly, which is more than the market caps of the two biggest record labels combined. So gaming is this massive industry. And one of the things that I look at that is gaming has a diversity of business models, you can buy a $60 shrink wrap game in a physical store and play it on $1,000 console. Or I can take a free phone, download a free app, play it all day for free. And then the next day spent $100,000 on the free game. And so if you just think about how many different ways there are to spend money in gaming, once you get a game, they're selling you upsells they're selling you the new versions, they're selling you all these things. And so gaming has been incredibly innovative, and always is really driving the forefront of a lot of different technologies. And I think monetization, gamification microtransactions in app purchases, all of these kinds of things have been perfected in the gaming industry. And we really want to bring some of those greatest lessons to the music industry. And so we see a lot of power in our 10 cent clap And so everything that we do is all oriented around our virtual currency, which is claps and the clap costs 10 cents. You know, that's a kind of idea we had before the company was ever a company before we had built anything. And it's been something we continuously have been testing. And so far, the results have been really great. In that, number one, we really think it's important to switch the experience from something that feels like tipping and donations, where we think that really cheapens somebody's art and craft, the notion that, you know, they're a performer on the street corner, and you have to give them a donation. Versus this is somebody who's doing something of value, and you pay them for this thing of value that you receive. And I think the most natural thing in live events, and music is clapping, it's applauding. That's how you show your love. That's how you show recognition for a great performance. And so the clapping, and the action of the clap has actually turned out to be a really awesome one in the app, where fans are showing their appreciation in a very natural way that maps to the analog world. But they're 10 cents a pop. And so, you know, what we like about it is it's we think of it as free adjacent, right? So every show costs a clap. And that's the only money you need to spend as a user. What's awesome about that is, if it seems like that's not a lot of money, if you compare that to what a stream view fan gives you on any other platform, like a YouTube or a Spotify, or anything else, you're fractions of a penny. And so even starting out at 10 cents, you're talking 10 to 100x, more than what an artist would get on other platforms. And then you're doing the other thing that really gaming figured out really well, which is a lot of this is about capturing whales, a lot of this is about capturing the really, really big spenders. And you know, if you look at like Zynga games, it's not an 8020 rule, it's like a 95, five or a 99. One, right, like 1% of the users can generate over 90% of the money. And so that's the other side is we want to have a very low barrier to entry, but one that recognizes the value of music, and art, but allow for opportunities for fans to be recognized by their peers, allow fans to get closer to the artist. And so the experience is all gamified and whoever crops the most gets to have a video chat with the artist, the artists can launch live polls about hey, what song should I perform, and you're voting with their claps. And so the clapping, the interactivity, the microtransactions and kind of gamified experience creates this really fun kind of environment where money is being exchanged. But it feels a lot more like fandom, it feels a lot more like support. And it kind of blurs that line a little bit. You know, you when you walk into a live show, you're not necessarily thinking like, oh, I paid $2 a minute to be in the show, you're not thinking about that you pay your money, you you want to be engrossed in the experience, you want to be immersed inside of it. And so we've found that, you know, this quick action of the clap, assigning some value that is small enough so that you're not throwing dollars, you're throwing dimes, and that seems to create the right kind of conditions for a really fun experience that, you know, can turn 500 fans, and 15 minutes into as much as $5,000. That's a really exciting combination that we've seen work with a certain set of artists and you know, as we expand and grow, want to see that with, with way more

how ultimately, you know, this sort of, you're applying all of these lessons from the gaming world gaming experience to music, which is a naturally creative, sort of medium, and more accessible, maybe then then even creating games. Is that enough to keep this a really sticky experience? What is it that the music that keeps coming down coming back? Is it the visuals is the fact that they get to engage with these sort of claps they get to be the super user and engage with the artists maybe after show? If they clap enough? Is that the combination? What is it that you found that really makes this a sticky experience for for the fans?

Yeah, so I would go off of what we hear from fans, you know, where we get feedback or where they're posting about it on their own socials, or they're talking about it and the fan discord with their favorite artists, you know, and I think it's really two things. One is getting closer to your artist. So the artists are participating and responding to what happens in chat, the top clappers in a show, get a one on one FaceTime with artists at the end of the show. And those turn into these really, really cool moments. And a lot of the times the kind of stuff will be like hey, how do you pronounce your name? I'm always seeing you on Discord but I've never actually heard how you pronounce it. Or man, you've been with me since the early days. I really appreciate it and all these types of things in so many ways like fans are getting credit for being the super fans from the artists in front of all the other fans and so on. They're obviously geeked out because they get to talk to to their artists. But they're also getting a lot of respect and kind of love around their peers. Because, you know, first of all, they paid the money to get to the top of it, but also like the artist is recognizing them as one of their super fans. That That part's really, really cool. The other is what we talked about earlier, which is, we're creating just more opportunities for more experiences to exist, that just wouldn't exist if encore wasn't here. And so when you look and you know, we just actually have some pretty cool, we've been working with an artist DC, the dawn, for about six months, he has an album that comes out actually, this Friday, really, really highly anticipated. Leading up to the release of this album, we've done, I think, four or possibly five single drops, where a singles coming out, and DC has come on to encore the night, the single drops and does a live performance for his fans of the new song. And then he's always doing another encore, and then usually a poll and letting fans choose, you know, hey, what fan favorite should I perform. And so he's done like five performances. For his fans, each time you have five to 800 people showing up. He's making three to $5,000 each time. And so what you end up is okay, over the past six months, had he not done his encore shows, all that would have happened for his fans, our releases to Spotify, and the streaming services. And he did two really small live shows where he was part of a group of a bunch of other artists, both of those were in Los Angeles, the only opportunities you had to engage with DC over the past six months were on his Instagram, these two 500 person live shows in Los Angeles and a bunch of Spotify single releases that you listened to by yourself. Instead, we had five amazing live shared experiences between him and his fans that he loves to do, the fans Eat up, they talk about it, they screen record it, they post it, they are there hours before the show starts talking about what's gonna happen. And so we're just tapping into a fandom that already exists. And giving an artist this new lane, this new tool, this new medium, to actually express what's already out there in the world. And I think that's what's so exciting. And that's kind of you know, the thing we always talked about with the company earlier is like, the music artists is the creator left behind. They're the original creator. They there's more super fandom in music than anywhere else. Except all of these things we talked about the 1000 true fans, these creator platforms, this direct model to fans just doesn't exist yet in music. And, you know, what we believe is that AR and mobile technology is actually this really powerful force for accessibility. The challenge is, no one wants to watch you on a selfie cam on Instagram Live. Because there's an expectation of low quality, there's an expectation of this is idle chitchat, there's an expectation on both sides of that equation. And you know, we really see that first of all, flipping to the world camera, where an artist is now standing up in the world and performing to something instead of talking to their phone, like they're having a video chat changes the mood immediately. And then like we've been talking about just the right amount of visual design, allows to accentuate highlight, you know, set the mood and create those moments that are going to make that performance which even analog would still be good into something that's great. And really feels like an elevated piece of live content.

How important is it to be live?

Great question. We believe a lot in the power of life, a couple of different reasons. One is live is both more exciting and more forgiving. So there is something to every party involved. That makes it a much lower stakes, but higher engaging kind of experience. So if you can imagine, okay, I'm going to do an AR performance of the song. Okay. And then one world, I'm going to do it live one time, for whatever the fans are there. In another version of it. I'm going to record this and put it on YouTube as my music video. And I want everyone to be watching it over and over for the next five years. You can imagine there's a little bit of a difference there in terms of what the expectation would be of the quality. And all of a sudden you're in the world of okay, shouldn't this be highly produced now? Shouldn't this be highly edited? Shouldn't this be all of these other things? And you know, one of the things that's awesome about music is like live music is really great. And so hearing these things live, both is an awesome experience from a music perspective, but really, I think takes the pressure off on the visuals and the AR to be something that has to be perfect to be something that has to be highly produced. I think as soon as the requirements are really really high production that actually involves have expertise and tools and offline and all this kinds of stuff, you've lost the plot, you know, I look at take a lot of influence from stuff like tick tock right to me, tick tock is, in many ways as simple of giving a consumer level video editing tool that all of a sudden made anyone possible to create these really nicely edited videos synchronized to music. So it's like an, it's an automatic editing tool that allows for this higher kind of quality of content to be produced by anybody. And so now it's like, I don't have to worry about the technology and the tool so much, I worry about what I can do with my creativity inside of these constraints. And that's a lot of what we think about, as you know, here's our new constraints. Here's our new system for how you can be creative. It's really easy. You see an image on the internet, you want to take a photo with your phone, here's how you bring it into your AR world, do whatever you want with that. And that is really exciting, because it's very open ended. But ultimately, like really accessible.

How do you grow from here? You just getting started? You've proven a lot to yourselves with a small community of artists and growing community of fans. But how do you grow that community of artists and fans from here,

artists, first, we're very artist centric company, I beat the drum of artists success, as really the mission and core of what we are here to do as a company, you know, we make 20% of what an artist takes. So we have an 8020 split, it's the only way that encore makes money. And so we're very directly aligned with the artist. If they are making money, we're making money. And so our belief and what we have validated is, if we can get artists on here, they can get their fans. And we've created sufficient tools on the artist side and sufficient engagement on the fan side for that to work. And so it's really about how do we onboard tons of artists? And how do we make the software as easy to use and accessible and repeatable and scalable as possible, really moving from a world where first we were doing everything. In recent months, we've been standing shoulder to shoulder with artists as they do it, and we help. And more and more. It's okay, take it home with you. Okay, more and more people picking it up randomly that we never spoke to self serving their way towards creating an amazing AR environment and doing a live performance. For us. This is really about moving from what we talked about production to product. You know, in many ways, we've been a production company who has used our software and kind of dog food did what we've been building to validate that we can create the content that the experience is great that artists have fun that fans have fun that they're making money. Now that we have validated that in a more of a closed environment. This needs to be set out to the world, and to see what people start to do with it.

Sounds amazing. And so this this week, specifically, as we are recording this, you are taking another major step forward in that regard, and opening up the platform to more creators.

Yep. So starting February 16, anyone will be able to download the Encore Studio app, which contains all of our AR capabilities in terms of how you can build worlds, upload your own content, save them, share them. And then you have to become an artist to be able to perform shows. Anyone can download the app, anyone can create their account. And then they submit to us to become an artist. And we are quickly onboarding lots and lots of artists onto that.

Soon, there'll be an overwhelming number of concerts. That's the hope on the platform available for their fans. Exactly. Yeah. So he is you kind of put the finishing touches on the sort of AR experiences that are possible here, do you we've talked a lot about some of your underlying influences in your objectives. Are there a couple of guiding principles that you really focused on in creating the sort of the tool sets the types of content, the types of scenes, this regarding principles you have, as you design this,

I think it's really about creating a stable, creative infrastructure, just having enough building blocks to at least start. And then giving people the ability to upload their own custom assets via images, and eventually, hopefully, some 3d objects as well, so that they can continue to build off the foundation that we provide. And so making sure we have enough effects to try out enough stages and rooms to play with enough base objects to even start to mix and match I think is the best way we can get people involved. Something that we're also really, you know, thoughtful about is the fear of a blank page in any kind of creative software when you open it up and it seems like there's so many options but you feel the pressure of being Uber creative. It's really difficult to get started. And so we've been trying our best To make sure that there are truncated versions of what a scene could look like to be set as inspiration for people to just test and not be afraid. Like I said before, iteration is key in all creative fields. And so whatever we can do to encourage people to be iterative, and to be brave, is the best we can do in a in a new medium like this.

That's great. As you kind of look out over the next 1218 months, who or what in the music industry or in the AR industry concerns you the most.

I mean, one of the things that's just sucking a lot of oxygen in the world is what three NF T's, the metaverse, and all of these kinds of things. And I think were in many ways compatible with a lot of those different things. But, you know, I think that in many ways, it's a distraction, because we're not there yet. And it's starting to eat a lot of the attention. You know, in many ways, what we're doing is a little old school compared to web three, right, we have a an app purchase virtual currency that is like a traditional mobile game. It's not backed by a blockchain. What it is backed by is actual money, right? And those claps are literally worth 10 cents. And, you know, as artists get them, we pay them out within days. And so I think one of the biggest risks is that artists become overly infatuated with the promise of web three and NF Ts, because they're seeing other artists selling stuff for really high prices, and things like that. And I do think that there's a lot of value that will come from there. But there's just no question that we're at a massive speculative hype cycle around these different assets. And so I just worry that people are going to bet their futures on something that is for sure going to be full of change, and ups and downs over the next few years. And I think it's simpler than that, you know, artists are analog creators with an amazing superpower. And they have already existing fans who want to consume what they have the notion that you need a blockchain, in order for that value to exchange hands, party to party. To me, it doesn't seem necessary. And so, you know, I think we have a little bit of a counter narrative, and a little bit of a strategy that says, let's meet artists and fans where they are today, on their phones, with video, even from an AR perspective, right? Fans consume our shows as 2d videos, that doesn't mean that eventually they can't put on an AR headset and see something completely different as the future unfolds. But today, what are they doing? They're watching Tic TOCs. That's what we're competing with not strapped into VR headsets, creating virtual worlds yet, that's not the average consumer today.

So do you have any concern you?

Yeah, I think it's in parallel to that we talked about before, what it means to create value in augmented reality, and also intimacy and creativity. I think we're at this really interesting turning point where people are really concerned about digital ownership. But what also comes with that is this high pressure to create content, and as much content as possible in hopes that one out of your 50 videos or one out of your 50 NF T's strikes gold. And so I'm really interested and concerned about the type of content that is going to be generated as we push more technology out there. And I'm wondering if augmented reality can actually take a step back into what it means to be authentically present, physically, with the layer of, you know, digital art and digital technology without it being? How can I just create as many are scenes as possible, because it will be hopefully the most like thing I've created in the last month or something like that. And so, you know, we talk about what is the gamification of music, right, especially in something like tick tock where things are supposed to be trendy and catchy and be recycled and remixed over and over again. And oftentimes, you don't even know the artists you just know, the clip. We're hoping that because our experience is so fan and artists relationship centric, that we're not encouraging that type of behavior, we're still on the camp of art has, you know, meaning and creating visuals for your shows is not just to create a memorable moment, a viral moment in the sense of just the algorithmic virality of a lot of content today, but it's seen by a lot because it's cherished and loved by a lot,

creating true authenticity with a real artist in that moment. one can hope. Let's wrap up with a few in lightning round questions here. What commonly held belief about AR spatial computing Do you disagree with?

I think for me right now, everyone's very defensive of what it means to be a part of the metaverse and because of that augmented reality is kind of thrown up in the mixing is it even considered a new world? Is it considered a digital environment? Is it even the metaverse? Is it you know, this debate of what is augmented reality? And why is it? Or why isn't it the future of digital environments? I think, to me, I feel like it's not that cut and dry. For me. I think every transaction, every footprint we've ever made digitally is a contribution to your Metaverse or your digital self. And so because the word Metaverse is going to change from now until it's no longer a buzzword. I'm not worried about defining whether something is the metaverse or not I'm more interested in what value does it provide and why augmented reality is even worth, you know, our time and effort moving on. And so I think we'll see where those arguments go and where those discussion points go about what is the metaverse and what contributes in what it means. But I'm definitely not in the camp of AR isn't the metaverse

should be part of the conversation for sure. At least Yeah, at least. How about you,

John? Yeah, I mean, I probably think the same way. You know, I'm definitely very bullish on AR. And personally see the metaverse as something that is overlaid on top of the actual world. You know, I think the alternate realities and everything. To me, it's staring everyone in the face in terms of there's this promise around portability across all of these different things that is kind of required for the metaverse to exist that every Metaverse has their own world. And there's at least four different meta verses right now where you can go and buy real estate, but they're all different worlds. And so I'm a little confused around where all of the metaverse TOC is going and what's actually happening there, where it's just a bunch of walled gardens, there's very little incentives to create portability across it from any of those walled gardens. And, and so to me, there's just more of a reality of like, there can't be a million meta verses, because that's not what it is. Really, the metaphor is like we're humans, we exist in physical space, we have to. And so, AR to me seems so clearly as where we're all headed. Because, you know, escapism aside, I think that reality is, you exist in a space, you have other people around you. Absolutely, you want to use technology, like we're using right now to be able to talk to each other, even though we're in different cities. Right. But that's not a replacement for the fact that we live in a world, we live in a house, we visit different spaces. And there's a lot of really amazing opportunities for how to make those experiences better, how to bring more people into them, how to augment them. And so I'm really, really gung ho about that. And, you know, from the early days, you know, when the company was like four people, and it was me, and so he and a couple of others, I just felt so confident in what we were doing. Because I always felt like, every day we're inventing the future, we are building a design tool for how anyone can build any kind of AR environment in the future. This is not specific to music, this is not specific to performance. It's really a question of like, I call it 3d story building, right. So you know, like an Instagram story, you're dragging and dropping and moving all the stuff around your canvas. And that's a model now that it's really well known by the average consumer, we're doing 3d, that you're building what you want in 3d space inside of your environment. And it's just a really, really cool thing. And every time we show it to someone, they're pulling it in some different direction, like, oh, I want to make a movie with this, or I want to make a podcast with this, or oh, I want to make my music video. And that's, to me, really, really exciting. And I just think the future are in and around AR and AR content creation is going to be really, really important. That's where we're headed.

Fairness, besides the tool that you are building, what tool or service do you wish existed in the AR market?

Just waiting for those contact lenses, those good glasses. Right? Ultimately, every surface should be a screen, and, you know, or the ability to be a screen. And I think that's that's all going to be really I think the reason that I'm so bullish on IR is that it provides the opportunity for the technology to disappear in a way that's actually better than how we are today. You know, to me, it's like there's this branch either we all strapped into VR headsets for the rest of our lives, right and that that's certainly one future or through technology. Through blending the digital and real worlds, we stop even recognizing the differences. And instead, it's functional. It's all oriented around what are my goals? What do I want to see? Who do I want to talk to? What experience Am I trying to have. And it's not this pure form of escapism. And it's not this thing that requires you to shut out from the world called the mobile phone. And you know, it's, is it really that much difference between when people are on their phones, and people are in a VR headset, like you can snap your fingers around them, and they won't even necessarily know you're there when they're so engrossed inside of their phone. And I think that's some of the promise of putting the screen into our eyes, right? As glasses as lenses, anything like that, or projecting it. Because those things are really going to allow technology to disappear in a way and come in and out of our lives. And something that's a lot more functional, and less escapism, less distraction, less taking me away from the present

in more human centric computing experience all around us. Absolutely. So what do you think? What's what's missing for you? What do you want to see exist?

Honestly, I I agree with that wholeheartedly. I used to work on you know, HoloLens products, and we got, I remember when magically for sent out there, like dev kit, and we were testing that out, the thing that is missing is that it is so painful to us, in terms of the hardware, and as an industrial designer, go to my grave knowing that, you know, when things are heavy and things are uncomfortable, you lose out on the value of the experience, because you're too focused on those types of things, right? What was a bummer is trying that technology and being able to say, I don't care that I'm sweaty, and my head hurts, I want to do this. Seeing holograms within a physical space is actually quite magical. And it does feel like you're immersed in a place. That is real. in virtual reality, there is full immersion. But it feels like you're trying to be a part of a video game, no matter how realistic it seems. And so there's kind of like you're putting on a character, you're trying to be somebody else, you have the opportunity to wear a mask and play your alter ego. But in augmented reality, you're still expected to be yourself. And so I'm really excited to see you know, when we can make that more accessible and still achieve the immersive feeling that those head mounted displays provided without the pain of them being clunky.

With our ability is going to be a key attribute of these things. Before they're broadly successful. For sure, for sure. If you could sit down and have coffee, with your 25 year old selves. What advice would you share me for you? Maybe it's been your your 20 year old self?

You know, I think for me, I always thought about design as this like, way out in for creativity. When you're doing art for like, how are you going to make money? How are you going to do all this stuff. And so design was the way to kind of transform it into something extremely practical, and more obvious what a what a career path look like. But I was always really attracted to the unknown in the future. And so I'd say around that time, I went from designing medical tools and safety tools to being like, I just want to be a part of tech r&d. I want to dive into design theories, called speculative design design fictions, which is really using science fiction and design academia to predict what could happen in 10 years or even see what do you want to happen in 30 years? And what do I have to do today to achieve that? And I think that, for me was really scary because it means basing your life and your career off of darkness. It's just this void of like the unknown, how could I possibly continue and build a career off the bat? And I think, as I've gotten a little older and had a lot of new experiences, I realized that art and design don't need to live independently from practicality. And so you can have both the unknown and the wide open fields of trying to create emotionally and abstractly without losing out on utilitarian goals, you know, and productize experiences. And so if I go back to myself, then I'd say try more things, try new things, be willing to explore art that isn't 100% gonna, you know, equal a paycheck today, because it'll be equally as important in 510 years. John,

I guess I have the reverse situation going to a similar place. I mean, I think before encore, I neglected to consider myself creative. And really, I think, you know, when I was young I played for instruments, love to paint, I was obsessed with art class was an very, very creative, artistic, musical oriented person. But I was also really into computers. You know, my heart, my life took a very hard turn starting freshman year at Carnegie Mellon directly towards computing. And I think a real move away from the world of subjectivity, towards what I felt was more objectivity, really away from a world that I felt like was, you know, chasing dreams, not making money from it, hoping that eventually it all worked out. And wanting to be at a place where I wanted to give myself financial stability as soon as I possibly could, you know, and really wanted to make money, and be a professional and do all of those things. And those led me towards a very, very decided path of saying, I'm going to be technical. And I'm going to build software, I'm going to build companies and startups and do that kind of stuff. And all along the way. I've always been incredibly design oriented, and have always cared about all of those things much more than most software engineers. But I just really ignored that side of myself. And if I were to give myself some advice from when I was 25, it would be to look at myself, as someone who has the capabilities of creativity. I think the creative process is so hard, because it's something from nothing. And it's so subjective. And as somebody who's very engineering, I want things to be right. And I want to know that they're right. And it turns me away from that world. But working with people like Sophie and going on this adventure, working with music artists, and doing all this stuff, like gives me tremendous energy, tremendous joy. And when I have the most fun, you

think that's the, that's the benefit of giving yourself that permission, that acknowledgement that confidence is that it will open up, more fun, more enjoyment,

and you'll just do it more, you'll be more untethered. You know, I think like, like, so he's saying, skip looking at a blank page. And a creative tool is really scary, and having the confidence to just go forward. And it doesn't matter where you were, you start, because you're going to iterate, you're going to make it better, you're going to learn, you're going to go through that as a process. And I think, you know, understanding these things as a process, understanding them as solving for different things, and there is no perfect answer. It's very much living in the gray. And despite it being my name, my reputation is that I don't always live in the gray. And I think, you know, part of that wanting to be in the creative sphere is being comfortable in the gray,

being comfortable in your own skin, being comfortable in the gray. That's right. Any closing thoughts you'd like to share?

from me? You know, I'm just really excited about AR technology in general, I think, you know, the thing that we haven't talked about is mobile AR has made leaps and bounds in the past five years. If you looked at what was possible five years ago, it was early days, very rough, lacking in general usability, all these things. And today, you can pick up AR kit, on iOS, and out of the box on commoditized, mainstream, you know, personal computing hardware, doing really, really incredible things that you used to have to like render on farms before offline. And now it's happening in real time on a phone. And so I'm really excited about where we're already at today. But even more so over the next few years, because, you know, I think there's going to be an AR arms race, there's gonna be a lot of people shipping hardware, shipping software, making content, that's be really exciting time in AR. And I'm just really feel like I have this opportunity to show people who don't know a lot about AR, what's already possible today that I had nothing to do with building, you know, six degrees of freedom and human segmentation and object occlusion, and all these kinds of things that all come for free now. Really create magic inside of the phone in real time. And I think there's going to be so many cool things that happen with it.

So, yeah, I

think coming from a non technical background, with a lot of technical friends, I'm really just excited to be able to provide this highly performative technology to people so they can create today, I realized that with new mediums, it's really inaccessible. And people are super, super creative, and they have amazing ideas, but they don't necessarily have the time or they're afraid to spend the time to figure something complicated out. And so I think with something like encore and a lot of different resources coming out in the next five years, I'm just excited to see people who have been stuck in traditional materials, try a new medium, and help build out a creative world that we've really never been able to see. And we're starting to see that just from the start of things like filters and things like that. And so I know that in the next five years, it's just going to grow exponentially. And we're going to start being really inspired by a new age of media.

Where can people go to learn more about you, and the work that you're doing there at Encore?

You can find us on social media. We got a rapidly growing discord community of artists and AR creators. And our website. Clap for encore.com.

Awesome. John. Sophie, thank you so much for the conversation. Thank you. Thank you, Jason. Before you go, I'm going to tell you about the next episode. And I speak with Dana Harnish, founder and CEO of in situ, an augmented reality powered civic engagement app that democratizes city planning. Then as a former architect in deeply passionate about urban development, we talked about our goal of developing viable, dynamic data driven tools to empower residents and leaders to better deal with 21st century urban challenges. I think you'll really enjoy the conversation. Please follow or subscribe to the podcast. Don't miss this or other great episodes. Until next time,