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Kaylee Williams: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the “Iowa Tech” podcast. It’s your host, Kaylee Williams, and we are here in the Jethro’s BBQ Studio with a face you may recognize, Eric West, the founder and CEO of Music League. Hey, Eric. How you doing?

Eric West: Okay, good. Thank you. It’s good to be here

Kaylee Williams: Good to have you on the pod. Um, it’s funny, I just bumped into you downtown. You office above xBk, which feels very appropriate to me.

Eric West: Yeah, it was– it’s awesome. Well, well, it’s– I’m fortunate enough to have, uh, Toby Parks, who owns xBk,

Kaylee Williams: Mm-hmm.

Eric West: uh, and now also the old Firehouse next door, uh, on my, uh, advisory board. Um, yeah, it’s one of her… She’s, she’s a hustler. Uh, one of her, one of her side hustles, or not a side hustle, excuse me, um, was a contract attorney w- uh, for the music industry. I think it was Sony in particular at one point. Um, and so she has a lot of really valuable insight into the music industry that I thought would be valuable. And she’s right here, uh, in Des Moines, which is awfully convenient. So, uh, we worked out a pretty good deal, uh, for me to rent space- Yeah … in her firehouse, which is awesome. So I, I knew, I knew that it was the right place for me when a couple days after I set up my desk and had that in front of the window and everything, I heard this like faint kinda drumming sound from a, from a distance, and realized that it was the band next door doing their soundcheck. And so I just opened my window, and then a few minutes later, they coincidentally opened the side door at xBk, and I could hear it clear as day. And I was like, “Yep, this is exactly where Music League should be located.” Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty

Kaylee Williams: I really love that. And it was totally serendipitous to bump into you. I just didn’t expect to see you, and it kinda led us to this because it was like, “Oh, Eric, what’s going on?

Eric West: Sort of, yeah. Yeah, then again, yeah, it must be meant to be ’cause then we saw each other in Iowa City briefly too.

Kaylee Williams: Yeah, that’s right, at EntreFest?

Eric West: Yeah. Contraband? Uh, yeah, well walking the streets of it, yeah. Well, that sounds bad, but not, yeah. Just walking the streets.

Kaylee Williams: the streets in Iowa City. Um, so, uh, just a weird memory that I wanna share ’cause I think it’s interesting how startups find their home where they’re gonna office. I remember visiting the headquarters of a product called RunSignup. Do you remember– Have you ever used RunSignup? It’s like the product for if you ever sign up for a 5K or a 10K or a

Eric West: Kinda, yeah. I think that, yeah. It sounds familiar

Kaylee Williams: the logo. They’re a big company, and they were– Their headquarters was above a, um, like a hardware shop, a locally owned hardware shop, and I, like, went into the hardware shop and I said to the guy, “Am I in the right place? I’m looking for RunSignup.” And he’s like, “Oh, the, yeah, the tech guys, they’re upstairs.” And I went

Eric West: tech guys

Kaylee Williams: just this really cool hardwood floors, like wide open space, and there were like 10 dogs in there and, and it was the RunSignup team,

Eric West: I do. I love that. I love the Firehouse space too. I walked in there one time one late afternoon working late, and I stumbled on an interview from IPR with one of the bands that was playing next door. It’s

Kaylee Williams: Oh,

Eric West: yeah, kind of things that happen in that building. It’s pretty sweet.

Kaylee Williams: So Music League. Tell us about Music League. Give us the elevator pitch. And, uh, you know, our listeners probably are familiar, at least some of them are probably familiar, have downloaded it, even played the game. But, um, why don’t you just give us the quick overview?

Eric West: yeah, um, it’s competitive music discovery. Um, highly social competitive music discovery, I think is the best way to put it. Uh, it’s, it’s a game that revolves around, uh, songs that fit a particular theme. And so your group of, uh, people can be friends or family or coworkers. Uh, those are our three main groups. There’s also open leagues where you play with strangers, and in this case they could be from anywhere in the world. There’s 100– People play from 170 different countries. Um, but the m- the, the, the core use is for groups of people that you know, and, uh, everybody within that group is given, uh, a theme or a prompt, and you submit a song that you feel fits that theme. Um, and that’s where it gets fun because it can be really music geeky, like songs with the best pentameter or, uh, you can go real personal and be songs that remind us of our freshman dorm if you’re playing with college friends, uh, or family. So like, you know, songs that remind us of the summer cabin and, uh, all the, all the cousins and aunts and uncles will be reminiscing about songs they used to listen to, uh, 10, 20, 30 years ago as they were all growing up. So, um, there’s a nostalgia factor, there’s a, uh, um, a discovery factor, and everybody plays for different reasons. A lot of people play for a lot of reasons. Um, but that’s, that’s the core of Music League. Um, and we’re actually literally within the next couple weeks we’ll be releasing 2.0, which really leans, really leans hard into the, um, the social component of the game. Um, which when we built it as a game, it didn’t occur to us, I, I think, you know, everybody kind of assumed there would be some social, social, uh, aspects to it, some interaction beyond just talking about the game and playing the game. Um, that ended up being most people’s motivation for playing, um, is that reconnection or in the case of a coworking league, getting to know people, uh, where there are no more water coolers, uh, with virtual workers and remote work. This is like one of the best ways to get to know people in a very laid back way. And so, um, we’re leaning into all of that with version 2.0. It’s coming out real soon. Plus the music industry’s role really becomes more prominent at that point too.

Kaylee Williams: Yeah. That’s very exciting. And if I’m remembering correctly, you can vote for your favorite song in the queue, right? So if everybody submits a song,

Eric West: I kind of forgot the key component.

Kaylee Williams: No, that’s okay. I just, I was like, “I gotta make sure,” ’cause there can be a winner,

Eric West: Exactly, there is a winner, yes. Um, and there’s losers too, unfortunately, and I’m often one of those. But, um, the, uh… Yeah, I’ve– That’s– Thank you for reminding me. You submit the songs and then later you, you listen to the playlist anonymously, so you don’t know who submitted each song, and then you come back later and you vote on which song you feel fits the theme the best. And, uh, it can be, you know, if it’s a subjective theme like songs that remind us of our cabin, your voting is, is pretty much up to you. There’s no real hard and fast criteria. Um, if it’s a more, uh, objective theme like the best hip hop of 1998, uh, everybody submits a hip hop song from ’98, and you’re kinda just voting on the song you feel is the best song. Um, not necessarily that it fits the theme because by definition they all would, or you don’t vote for it

Kaylee Williams: Gotta be salt and pepper on that list,

Eric West: ‘ 98 probably would be. Yeah,

Kaylee Williams: That’s my weakness. What’s my weakness?

Eric West: Yeah.

Kaylee Williams: wheelhouse. Um, men.

Eric West: my wheelhouse. That’s the year I graduated from college. Um, yeah, and then you get a winner for that round, and they get X number of points depending on how many points the admin decided to make available. Uh- Okay … and then each round rolls up and you get an overall, uh, winner in an ongoing fashion. Each, each round that goes by adds to your point total, and so at some point in time you get an overall winner, although some leagues kind of go on indefinitely, so everybody plays a little bit differently.

Kaylee Williams: I– Can I tell you, I’m fascinated by the concept of an open league. Like, I get the idea of if my college roommates and I wanted to do a playlist of, like, songs you forgot existed from, you know, 2008 to 2012, like when we were in college. But tell me a little more about these open leagues, because you could be playing with people from India, from Asia, from the United Kingdom, and they might be putting songs in there

Eric West: Oh, they are? Yeah.

Kaylee Williams: that you’ve just never, even artists you’ve never heard of

Eric West: All the time, yeah. Um, yeah, well, and first you hit on a p- a pretty significant value proposition for the music industry when you mentioned songs we forgot about from 2008 to 2012, and that happens in open leagues or private leagues, that the rediscovery of the catalog is huge for the music industry because they are sinking literally billions of dollars into catalog buys right now, uh, trying to derive value out of something that’s frankly stagnant in many ways. They want to get value out of all those old songs without the expense of promoting a new artist. Uh, so I talk about our relationship with the music industry kind of indirectly, but that’s, that’s one of the main reasons that they really like what we’re doing. Um, so sorry, that was a bit of a tangent. But to answer your question about open leagues, um, it is the, the grow- the growth of the open league within Music League, uh, has been one of the driving factors to the expansion of the social component of the platform. Um, because what we were finding was, yeah, you discover songs you’d never heard of because you’re in a league with people from Japan or from, like you said, the UK. UK’s our second biggest market. Well, Canada’s our second biggest market, but UK is neck and neck. And Australia, so we’re kind of a Western, you know, uh, English-speaking place. Uh, although also Brazil, uh, as a side note, which always really confuses me because the app is exclusively in English, but I suppose they all speak enough English down there. But yeah, huge, huge market in Brazil for us. Um, so if you’re playing in a league with Brazilians and they’re submitting songs that are known to them and familiar to them, there’s a real good chance you’re never gonna heard that song before or even that artist. And so that’s, you know, drives the music discovery quite a bit there, too. Um, just playing with people who join the, the league based on a theme, um, but interpret that theme vastly differently than you do. Um, so they’re sharing songs that mean something to them, and you may or may not like it, but you wouldn’t have heard it otherwise. Um, and that goes both ways. Then you’re sharing your favorite songs with other people all around the world, um, or again, with people you know if you’re in those leagues. So it gives you a chance to kind of show off your chops, your musical, uh, fandom

Kaylee Williams: Yeah. People get, and I, I wanna say weirdly passionate, but I actually don’t think it’s that weird. People get very passionate about music that they like. There’s something about it. It, like, touches your soul and it makes you feel things, and sharing that with others is so joyful. I feel like you’ve captured a little lightning in a bottle here

Eric West: I, I, yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. Yeah, that’s, um… People, I think people are passionate, and we could talk to music scholars about why, but, you know, my theory is it’s, I don’t think we realize how much of it, it’s, it’s a f- it’s part of the fabric of our lives.

Kaylee Williams: Mm-hmm

Eric West: You know, from your early, very earliest days, you’re, you’re hearing music, and then as you get older and older, you start to kind of whittle it down to what you actually like, but it never goes away, um, for music fans. Um, you know, I, I, I saw a study at some point, and it’s stupid to quote a study that I can very vaguely remember from years ago, but a, a s- pretty significant percentage of people, when they hear music, they hear it as noise, that it’s not musical to them. It doesn’t strike any sort of joy, or it doesn’t hit any of those, like, receptors in your brain that it hits for people who do like music. Um, but that’s, you know, uh, 80% of the people in the world do at least like music or appreciate it. Yeah. That’s, you know, that’s why our TAM is pretty sizable ’cause anybody who has ears and enjoys music is, probably has internet access, and then the-

Kaylee Williams: gonna say internet, a smartphone would be convenient, but you can play from the web, right?

Eric West: Yeah, you can in fact, yeah, and currently that’s a better experience than our mobile apps. I hate to, hate to admit that, but, um, that’ll all change with this, this platform rebuild that’s coming out in a few weeks. Everything’s gonna be, um, platform, uh, unified.

Kaylee Williams: Okay. So tell us a little more about that and maybe about your role in the company. Are you an engineer?

Eric West: No, I, I wish I was. I would’ve saved a lot of money if I was. Um, no, I’m, uh, I’m the business side of it all. Uh, um, I… Good, my title is founder and CEO, but, uh, I, at this point I kind of handle everything except the engineering. Uh, although I’ve learned a hell of a lot about product, um, ’cause that’s something that I can handle. You know, I don’t have to get my hands dirty with the actual coding or engineering of anything, but I can look at the product and, you know, drive it the way it needs to

Kaylee Williams: And you’re talking to customers, so that’s the boots on the ground insight that has to inform the engineers, you know?

Eric West: I’m talking to customers whether I want to or not. Uh, they’re, uh, they’re– We have a very passionate user base, which is great. Uh, if, you know, if we mess something up, we hear, we hear about it, which is much better than indifference. You know, I’d, I’d rather, I’d rather we don’t have any problems at all, of course, but when we do, it would be a lot more concerning if nobody cared. Um, and in this case, when something goes off the rails, it’s– we hear it loud and clear. Um, but yeah, uh-

Kaylee Williams: luck with the V2 launch.

Eric West: Oh, God. Yeah. Well, luckily beta’s going pretty well.

Kaylee Williams: Okay, good. You’ve got it in beta.

Eric West: Yeah, with a very small group of be- beta testers for now, and that’s gonna expand, and we’ll see how that goes. Um-

Kaylee Williams: What are the big, um, you mentioned a couple, but what are the key updates that are gonna be happening to the platform?

Eric West: Uh, leaning into the social component. Um, so the ability for– Well, I’ll back up. The– I’ll identify the problem, the current model, and then you’ll probably see where it’s going. Um, right now, when you’re in one of those open leagues and you meet somebody, uh, who submits a song by a band that you love, um, that you don’t think anybody else loves, like you mentioned earlier, that love of music, that’s a, an instant bond, um, because they are so passionate about music in general, and usually specifically one or two of their favorite artists. So when you find somebody else who has a love for that artist and they’re relatively obscure, uh, that’s a strong bond. And currently, once that league is over, you lose track of that person. Um, and so we’ve heard from a lot of users who say, “Well, you know, I wanna continue playing in a league with that person,” or, “I wanna friend them.” Um, so that’s, that’s something we’re going to allow for people to, uh, meet one another randomly in an open league and then become virtual friends. Um, and then also to continue, you know, uh, an online relationship with your IRL friends. Um, so it’s real traditional kind of, I’d say, old school social media. Um, just kinda think MySpace era social media components that we’re gonna embed to it. Um, that’s really exciting to me. That’s what the music industry, uh, when I talk to labels or, um, digital marketers for bra- for, well, for all brands, yes, but also specifically for musicians, um, that’s what they want ’cause they want that space for their fans to interact, um, ideally without them doing anything, and that’s what’s happening. Um, but without a central place for them to meet outside of the silo of a game, it’s really hard for us to do anything with that, to monetize it anyway. Um, so now they’re gonna be spending time together in the app talking about their favorite bands, going out into the larger music league world and, um, advocating for that band, like basically promoting that band for the band without them ever asking. Um, and it happens now. I can see it in the backend data, um, that so we’re gonna foster that, those relationships and that at some point then the artists and the, the brands will come into the app and start to meet their fans.

Kaylee Williams: Oh my gosh, how fun. Yeah.

Eric West: it’s gonna be

Kaylee Williams: I’m thinking about my 40-year-old husband. He loves this band called Drive-By Truckers. Okay. And the only other people that I’ve met who love Drive-By Truckers at the level and intensity of love that my husband has for this band are boomer men.

Eric West: That

Kaylee Williams: think about that chat room, and then if you had the opportunity to interact with, like, the guitar player from Drive-By Truckers, like he did like a AMA or something- Mm-hmm in Music League, how cool. How much fun would that

Eric West: And not even an AMA. And, I mean, I feel bad for artists who– whose job is to make music, but they’re being forced to make content. Some of them love it, you know, and that’s some, some of the more successful artists aren’t necessarily better musicians than another musician, but they are better content creators.

Kaylee Williams: playing the game

Eric West: But what Music League will be able to do for them is let them literally play the game, and that’s all they have to do. Um, and it’s fun for them ’cause it’s a music-based game that they would probably play anyway. And actually we, we– I know for a fact there are already a ton of musicians playing Music League. Um, let them play, and let them play in a way that their fans can watch. Um, we’ve been internally calling it a Voyeur League, which is not a great term probably for a few reasons.

Kaylee Williams: I actually kinda like

Eric West: Yeah. Well, yeah, we may, we

Kaylee Williams: The intrigue.

Eric West: we may change it. But, uh, having the fans be able to watch their favorite artists play leagues with themes like songs that inspired me as a kid or, uh, that influenced our first album, songs we wanna cover someday. Um, again, going back to the industry’s interest in what we’re doing is they could have a theme that songs, um, songs from bands that we feel deserve some more love, and not coincidentally they’re all label mates. And so if you’re a fan of a b- or an artist and you’re gonna, you’re gonna listen to those playlists because you love that artist and you wanna hear what they love. And so you listen to the playlist and all of a sudden we’ve got a few thousand people or a few hundred thousand people, if we’re talking about a really well-known artist, suggesting to their fans, “You should listen to this band.” You can hear that in a podcast or read it in an interview, but you’d have to go to the trouble of finding that music and listening to

Kaylee Williams: That’s right

Eric West: In Music League, when they suggest you listen to that band, they’re not actually suggesting it. They’re submitting it in a league that they’re playing. Yeah. And then their fans are watching and listening and playing along with them because they love that artist. It’s a game to everybody involved, and that’s a lot more, like, organic, uh, way of discovering something that your favorite artist loves. So we’re gonna lean into all that. Um, there’s a lot of new gameplay features, which might be too inside baseball to talk about here, but I’m excited about a lot of those. Uh, and I know that our users are, ’cause again, they’re not shy about telling us. Um, so yeah, it’s, it’s gonna be great, and it’s gonna look better, and we’re gonna be able to improve the ad experience, which has been an ongoing nightmare.

Kaylee Williams: Well, I know you don’t like having ads Who the product.

Eric West: Yeah, nobody does. No. I’m sure you don’t like ads on, on the podcast either, but you gotta do it. I mean, somebody’s gotta pay the bills, right? So, um, the problem with our ad experience in particular is that the original app wasn’t built for 200,000 people to be playing it every month, and we’re north of that now. Um, and so it’s just kinda crumbles under its own weight, and that’s another reason for the rebuild. That’s kind of the behind-the-scenes reason is to make the, the, the platform more stable and able to, um, publish better ads, a better ad experience. Hopefully fewer ads in general because with a better platform and a better place to put ads, we can put higher quality ads that are actually more valuable to us. So hopefully fewer in the long run.

Kaylee Williams: And you can attract more users, so you don’t need as many ads because you’ve got a better value proposition for your advertisers who are coming in to play. So it makes sense. I think that makes a lot of sense. And I just… One thing that I was thinking about before our time together, and I think that this validates a lot of what you’ve shared with us already about how when you consider each of your stakeholders, so you’ve got the labels, right? Who want to see these older, deeper cuts get more spins, more plays. Then you think about, um, young people or really anyone who wants to explore new music, and giving the artists, your third stakeholder group, a way to sort of interact with their fans without needing to like, you know, play the game and create the content and do all the things. Like, I’m thinking about “Running Up That Hill.” Remember how “Stranger

Eric West: Oh, yeah.

Kaylee Williams: Yeah, it was like this ’80s bop that, like, I remember hearing it at one point in my life, but I never… But then it’s like it was in this show, it blew up. I feel like a lot of Gen Z were like, “Wow, what a song.” You know? And it’s like, yeah, I mean, yeah, it w- it’s a great… It’s a bop. But I think, um, it’s almost like you’re c- you’re putting all the ingredients together into a bowl to make a cake here, and I’m just so excited to see, like, could there be a “Running Up That Hill” that just goes so viral as a result of this? Is that the vision?

Eric West: That, uh, sort of, yeah. Um, well, so it’s interesting. W- I, I say that Music League is a gaming platform. It’s a s- which I think first and foremost it is. Um, it’s a music platform, and it’s a social media platform all kind of wrapped up into the same little package. Um, but it’s also a data platform. And when AI come, you know, it’s get- getting better and better at looking at data and analyzing things, like the amount of data that Music League generates every day, uh, every minute is staggering. And the use of that from the music industry, and that includes record labels, that includes artists themselves, venues, promoters, uh, even, you know, music journalists, there’s all stuff within Music League that I think is gonna be fascinating for them. Um, and as far as a vision moving forward is, you know, I c- I can look at the first time a song was submitted to Music League, and I can track how it kind of blows up within Music League and extrapolate that out into the larger world. For the music industry, that’s pretty valuable information. Like, I could even say that we’re a leading indicator neck and neck with TikTok in that regard. Um, my son today, nine years old, was– I’d– We were getting ready to leave for, well, for me to come here and for him to go to daycare. Um, and I heard Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” playing on whatever, TikTok, or not TikTok, I think it was YouTube. Uh, and she just passed away, so I’m sure that she’s in the news. Um, and I, I just thought, “Well, that’s funny,” ’cause that’s an ’80s song that he never probably would have heard otherwise, unless my wife and I happened to be listening to it, which is also unlikely, although it is a great song. And then I, I said, “Do you know what that song was?” And he said, “No, but I liked it.” So we listened to it on the way to daycare. And, um, yeah, uh, Music League could definitely do something like that. Um, I told a story on another podcast. Um, sorry, Kaylee, I, I did h- I went… I’m not, I’m kind of cheating on you. This isn’t my first podcast. Um, they, the, it’s a grandmother wrote in and said she’s playing in a league with her family. And, uh, her, the basic gist was, “Thank you for this platform because my, I finally got my grandkids to listen to The Beatles.”

Kaylee Williams: Cool

Eric West: Yeah, and so that kind of thing is already happening, and there are going to be ways for us to foster that, uh, to I don’t know what the word would be. I don’t– It’s– It still has to be organic for anybody to care. Um, we can’t force anything. We can’t fabricate it. Um, but there are definitely gonna be ways where we can make it easier and more likely, uh, for that, that total eclipse of the heart to blow up within Music League or a new release. And for an independent artist, that’s, that’s gonna be something that hopefully they’ll do on their own. You know, they’ll establish a presence in Music League and then encourage their fans to go out and proselytize for them in the larger Music League ecosphere.

Kaylee Williams: Yeah. I, I feel like I could talk to you about this for, like, a solid hour and just go down these rabbit holes of artists and bands. I do, b- because this is the Iowa Tech podcast, I do wanna talk a little bit about your experience building the company and building in this ecosystem, because you’ve been at this for a while now, right, Eric?

Eric West: Yeah, it’s been a few years, which is kind of hard to believe. Um, it all came to be in the, in the pandemic,

Kaylee Williams: Yeah, 2020. That’s right

Eric West: yeah, yeah. Well, a little late. 2022 technically is when we incorporated. Okay. Um, but it was, yeah, 2021. I, I, I heard about Music League actually years before, um, from a friend when I was… My first startup was a f- a physical therapy company, which ended up being kind of a work comp consulting company when we pivoted. Um, none of that’s relevant except that while working some conference with, I ran into an old high school friend who was also in the work comp insurance business, and he knew that I was a big music fan way back then, and he still is and I still am. And he asked if I’d heard of Music League, and I said, “No, I’ve never heard of it.” At that point it was just a web app, uh, that my partner started, uh, when 10, 12 people were sitting around a break room arguing about music. And they came up with a very rough version of what Music League is today. I mean, it’s evolved a ton since then. You probably wouldn’t recognize it from what it once was. But, um, I heard about it. I thought, “This is a cool concept,” and then I kind of forgot about it, um, until pandemic and I found myself, uh, laid off, uh, after being, after having a job as CEO of a billing company for about six months. It’s like, “Oh, that’s, uh, really nice.” But good news, bad news is I had a lot of free time all of a sudden. And so, um, yeah, we launched a, a business around that game. And from those 10 or 12 people, solely word of mouth, um, over 1.1 million users today. Um, not active, monthly active. No, that’s closer to 200, but

Kaylee Williams: Ja. Ja.

Eric West: over 1, 1.1 million registered users of Music League starting from 15 people in a lunch break room. Yeah. Um, all because it’s got product market fit. Um, there’s– It’s undeniable at this point that, that people love this thing enough where they’re willing to put their social capital on the line to suggest it to friends and invite people to play. Um, so as far as building the, the platform itself, um, I mean, that was just, uh, engineering and, and built a product and tweaked it over time and, um, yeah. Now, now we have a small team of engineers to getting 2.0 off the ground and, um, some AI agents helping out along the way, of course. Uh, so yeah. Does that answer your question? Sorry, I kind of- Yeah.

Kaylee Williams: No, it does. It absolutely does. I– Tell me a little bit about the ecosystem. Is Iowa the right place to be building Music League? Does it matter where you’re building Music League?

Eric West: Um, uh, probably not. That probably isn’t the best place to be doing this.

Kaylee Williams: Where would that perfect place be? I mean,

Eric West: For me, it’s here. For me, it’s Iowa, and I’m not gonna change that. And I lo- I love– So the reason I say it’s probably not the best is solely because of people’s biases and their misconceptions about all things Midwest and Iowa specifically, um, that they see in the news that Iowa is probably not the most welcoming, uh, state for new technology and, and let’s say, uh, progressive ways of thinking. Um, I’ll tread lightly here, but it just isn’t. There’s a reputation internationally that this is not the place to go and build something new and innovative,

Kaylee Williams: really disruptive

Eric West: right? Especially in, in the entertainment industry. And so this goes both ways. When I talk to people in the state, they look at me with a blank stare because I’m not talking about a fintech, I’m not talking about ag tech, I’m not talking about med tech. I’m talking about consumer-based entertainment tech.

Kaylee Williams: Yeah

Eric West: So there’s a lot of blank stares, um, and when I have a chance to explain it, which hopefully I’ve done today, I think people start to understand why there’s a massive potential here. Um, on the other side of that coin, when I talk to people from music industry or the gaming industry, um, from New York or London or Sydney or Austin

Kaylee Williams: Or Las Vegas.

Eric West: or Las Vegas, they look at me like, “You’re from where? Sorry?” And I said, “Iowa, you know, about four hours, four hours west of Chicago.” They’re like, “Oh, okay, I know where you are geographically, but I still, business speaking, no idea what you’re talking about.”

Kaylee Williams: Yeah.

Eric West: And I was like, “Well, we’re making it work,” you know? Um, and so I would love to, to be one piece that changes that mindset, um, that Iowa is a place where you can build something that’s really cool and will, I think, can actually change the world in a way. Um, yeah, we’ll, we’ll see. I mean, I’ve got big visions for this thing. I, I think that as it evolves into a social media platform, the c- core draws the game, and the game will always be there for our fans that have, have gotten us this far, and it won’t change. They’ll always be able to play the game that they love. Um, but the world around it is going to expand, and that’s, that’s where Musical.ly can go from a very successful, growing, um, profitable game to, uh, a zeitgeist level, like social media phenomenon.

Kaylee Williams: Yeah.

Eric West: We’ll see.

Kaylee Williams: it’s very exciting. And you’ve got your big launch of your V2 coming up. Would you encourage our listeners to wait until that’s live before they download the app or create their profile online, or should they just go for it?

Eric West: well, there’s not much of a profile to create right now. Okay. Um, that’s another thing that will change is that- Right … the, the, the, the sh- subtle shift to more of a social media platform, um, will include a lot more robust, uh, user profile.

Kaylee Williams: Do you have a date for when the

Eric West: Not a hard date, no. I, well, I was emphatically told by my-

Kaylee Williams: wait to publish this until after, but I know how it goes with launches of new products, that it can

Eric West: great to public to tell us Um- Lots of I, I’d like to think late August at the latest. Um, like I said earlier, the beta test is going well, so I am optimistically maybe mid-August. But yeah, if it’s not out by late August, something’s gone horribly wrong.

Kaylee Williams: Which you never

Eric West: You never know. You’re right.

Kaylee Williams: on wood. You never know, but, um… Well, Eric, this is so fascinating. I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that this is coming out of Iowa because entertainment tech is really just not our wheelhouse. I think that’s a factual statement. There’s nothing wrong with saying that, that it’s not an area that a lot of investors get excited about here. It’s not an area that I think a lot of, um, uh, like resource providers see very often. Like, I don’t know if you could walk into an SBDC office today and be like, “This is what I’m building,” and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, I just saw like 10 similar thing.” You know what I mean? It’s just not quite. We have historically seen big wins in other industries: ag, insurance, um, you know, HR tech, I guess technically if you wanna think about like Workiva and WebFilings before that. But, um, but yeah, I think you’re, you are doing it. You’re making it work, and this new launch of the new product, it, y- the fun thing about this is that you’re gonna know quantitatively pretty quickly if it’s effective, and it sounds like your users qualitatively will make sure that you’re aware what they think of it when it goes live.

Eric West: Uh, yeah, I’m sure we’ll hear from him. Um, you’re right, yeah. The, the, the metrics are gonna be really fun to, to watch and see. And then we’re, uh, we’re trying to raise some money, and the main reason for that is, well, six months ago, I would’ve told you it was for tech help, but I mean, AI has put– cut that cost down to about 50%. Um, but the marketing costs have not dropped even with AI, AI’s help. Marketing is still expensive. The CAC is– our CAC currently is zero

Kaylee Williams: Do you have to pay licensing fees as well for these songs that you’re hosting on your platform?

Eric West: The, uh, that’s an interesting question. No. The short answer is no. Um, because, uh, well, a number of reasons. I’ve had established really strong relationships with, uh, the labels. Um, not all, not all of them and not– Some stronger than others, I’d say. Um, but, um, they’ve said to m- to me in no Without outright saying it, it’s like if you can figure out a way to bring value to the industry without an actual just paying directly for licenses, they would be more than happy to help, help me along. And, and that’s one of the main reasons 2.0 is coming out, because we moved from that point as if we’re a B2C, uh, deriving revenue from our users, uh, slowly but surely then shifting over to a B2B model or a two-sided platform where brands and, in this case, artists and labels, uh, can use Music League to access consumers. And ideally at that point, then all the ads go away, every feature is free, um, and we just keep people in the app. I’m not reinventing the wheel. This is what Facebook did 20 years ago. Yeah. You know? Um, it’s not scale at all costs, um, but I do– I need the funding to scale and, you know, once I get up, up I think 500,000 monthly, um, ideally then we can turn everything off. There’s, there’s n- nothing that the consumer has to do to play and enjoy Music League and spend time in Music League because their mere existence will be generating the revenue we need to support Music League.

Kaylee Williams: Okay. I see the vision. How can, uh, if investors wanna talk to you or if people in the ecosystem wanna reach you or get to know Music League, how can they access the product and how can they, um, how can they find you, Eric?

Eric West: Um, the, yeah, the product’s on, you know, the app stores. Uh, you can download– Also, you can play on the web, uh, and you can download a web app, uh, instead of a mobile app, um, which I, I recommend, uh, and that over the mobile. Uh, but, uh, two months from now it’ll all be– it’ll be parity from web to mobile, and so you won’t know the difference. Um, so if you wait a couple months, uh, it doesn’t matter where you get it. But the Google and, and Apple, uh, app stores both, both have the app. Um, and then our website’s musicleague.com. Um, easiest way to reach me is probably through support@musicleague.com or my LinkedIn. Um, yeah, I’m not, I’m not hard to find. Yeah. There? Yeah, right. Um, yeah, there. That’s, that’s good

Kaylee Williams: Sorry. Sorry to

Eric West: Yeah, you just doxed

Kaylee Williams: put you… I daxed you.

Eric West: I did.

Kaylee Williams: He said pop back to SPK. Well, Eric, uh, this is truly a pleasure. I kinda wanna have you back at maybe like six months after your launch to talk through how it went, what you learned. Um, you know, I know a lot of our listeners are founders and builders and operators, and so really getting into it and lifting the hood with, with, uh, founders and CEOs like yourself is part of the exciting bit, right? ‘Cause it’s always messy, and it’s always more complicated than the story we tell when we’re on stage and we’re talking about this great new launch. And so if you’re, if you’re comfortable with that, we’d love to bring you back and, and talk about it. Maybe do a retro together

Eric West: Yeah. I’m, I’m game. Yeah, let’s do it. And, uh, yeah, for sure. I’ll be here

Kaylee Williams: Well, thank you for being on the pod today

Eric West: Thanks for having me. This has been fun

Kaylee Williams: This has been another episode of the Iowa Tech Podcast. See you next week