Nicole d'Avis - Open Music Initiative

Lawrence Peryer:  How are you doing?

Nicole D’Avis:     I am doing, you know, I'm doing well. I'm hanging in there. It's a pretty interesting sort of unforeseen and yet very necessary time. And obviously when we first connected online, and you know, I signed up, I didn't nec-, neither of us foresaw the sort of social movements and Black Lives Matter would be so very front and center. And I'm, you know, thrilled, I think is probably the wrong word, but like relieved and happy to be supporting it and being an ally.

                              But it's exhausting and overwhelming for even a white person. So yeah, trying to be a good ally, be a good worker and center my work sort of appropriately, be a good parent, be a good friend. So yeah, a lot of influx of information as I'm sure, you know, many are going through.

LP:                        Yeah. Where are you based geographically?

ND:                       I'm in Boston. I live in the city of Boston in Roslindale, which is sort of a residential neighborhood south of downtown.

LP:                        And how has – how have the protests and the movement manifested there if at all?

ND:                       I mean it's definitely been present. I have two youngish children. And so yeah, they're six and nine. And my nine year old is quite like precocious and sort of aware. And even my six year old is, you know, able to like handle complex conversations at his level. We've gone to some protests with the kids. There's been some really impressive movements, especially coming out of a community organizer who's been doing the work in Boston for some time, and sort of speaking truth to power and challenging Boston's leadership and literally sort of putting a seat on the stage or taking a seat at meetings where she wasn't invited, a woman, Monica [Keningrant 0:03:56].

                              She started feeding families in Boston immediately after the pandemic and shutdown hit. So she led a really impressive movement. You know, I would say that the Boston police are not on the level of like Seattle, where Seattle is really trying to hit a new low, and just committed to being the worst it seems. But there's been troubling images for sure coming out of some of the protests and my family took a bike ride on Friday down, actually to the Berklee College campus.

                              We went through the bike path. And I had to explain to my children why there was National Guard soldiers with machine guns on their mother's workplace campus, just stationed all over the place. So yeah, it's present.

LP:                        Yeah. You know, I don’t know if we discussed this earlier when we were first communicating, but I'm in Seattle.

ND:                       Oh. Oh wow.

LP:                        Yeah. And I'm not from here. I moved out here a few years ago. I'm from New England and lived in New York for about 20 years. But like you, over the weekend I went out and did some exploring and went through downtown and, you know, it's just disturbing to see in a modern American city that we would have barricades and bombed – you know, all the stores are boarded up, and yeah, it's – as you said at the beginning, you know, in a way it's necessary.

                              You know, I think everybody expresses the caveat of not like to see unrest and violence and things of that nature. But it would be very hard for me to sit here as a middle aged white man and experience that frustration that leads to that. So I can't really – I'm just in no position really to barely comment, never mind, you know, judge –

ND:                       Yeah, yeah. No, my brother's in Seattle and so he has obviously, you know, been sharing sort of what's been going on and it's really troubling and scary. A lot of like the tear gassing and – but yeah. I mean I, my father's Bolivian and I grew up in like a white suburb of Boston and so I like never like totally felt like I felt fit in, and like, you know, I'm certainly like white passing, you know, half Latina. And so I don’t know, it's just sort of the concept of like not – and like in a very like WASP-y suburb, like didn't feel like I fit in or people would be like, oh, where are you from?

                              Which like now in Boston are like traveling, like it's, you know, I would never sort of be looked at, you know, as non-white. But growing up I was. And my dad was like, you know, short and brown and still is. And so –

LP:                        He didn't get taller and paler?

ND:                       Has not grown. But you know, the Boston winters have not like helped with his tan, but yeah, so – so you know, I guess the concept is sort of like not fitting in and sort of like not – and you know, of just sort of being aware of like what the like normal is or what sort of like the mainstream is, and not quite fitting or feeling like you can conform to that. And so I guess on some level it's a bit of a relief to know like just be able to have conversations about race and justice, like in sort of polite company.

                              Because it was never really, like there was a place for it, and then there was all of the other places. And that's always felt really uncomfortable to me. So the only, you know, I guess silver lining for me is that it's entering other conversations where I think it really belongs.

LP:                        Yeah, I appreciate you saying it that way. Because I've experienced a very similar feeling where in the past, rightly or wrongly, I've had the mental model of like the time and the place basically, and what's appropriate for what venues. And I never, never felt entirely comfortable with where the boundary would be. But that's very much flip flopped for me over the last week or 10 days, and now I feel remiss and negligent and irresponsible if I don’t have these conversations and if I don't ask my colleagues from maybe under-represented groups or people that I'm having these podcast conversations with, if I don’t ask them very directly about what's going on for them and what they're experiencing.  

                              So in that way, yeah, that is a positive, I think, to be taken on this, that we can put some of that stuff aside and just have these conversations with each other and not dance around it.

ND:                       It's a bit random, but have you ever been in like a space or an event with someone from New Zealand or Australia and seen how they open the events where they like know the land that they're on as native land, and sort of pay tribute to like whatever native people were in that? And then it's like a, it's just like done and like I got a Courtney Barnett record from like the last band camp, I guess like the May 1 one. And that, at the back in the liner notes it talks about where it was recorded and that native land. And so I think it's an interesting way to like open up conversations that like aren't about like, you know, the record, it's not a social justice record. It's just like it's just Courtney Barnett.

                              But I think it's a really interesting way to like center that and just sort of have that as like a blanket this is how we begin things, is like we know people that were displaced out of this land or what this land is.

LP:                        Yeah, I actually, that's interesting you bring that up. Because I had not experienced that until I moved out here. And it's not done, it's not done 100 percent of the time consistently. But it is done out here in Seattle, especially in more independent events. I've been to film screenings, a couple of smaller concerts, where that moment has been taken. And you're right. It's – in the context or in the events where it is done, it's very, it's clear that it's not necessarily matter of fact but it's part of the just, it's – it would be part and parcel of the National Anthem at a sporting event, like it's done [unintelligible 0:11:02] part of the program, if you will.

                              I didn't realize that that was something that was something that Australia and New Zealand acknowledges.

ND:                       Yeah, yeah, I don't know if that's specific, I don't really know where it came from. But I like it.

LP:                        Yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate you giving me some insight into, at least an initial insight into your background. How did your dad end up outside of Boston?

ND:                       Yeah. So he's Bolivian. He grew up in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba, Bolivia. And he was the youngest of three. And there was sort of this like movement at the time, I guess in Chicago, they needed doctors. And so there was a lot, there was just sort of this like movement to bring doctors to Bolivia, educate them in the United States, and then I think they were supposed to go back. But a lot of them stayed in the United States.

                              So my father's older siblings were studying in the US. His father died when he was really young. And so his mom moved, he was about 10. His mom brought him to Chicago from Bolivia. And so he grew up in Chicago. He went from being Federico to Fred. And you know, his mom had to teach herself English and get a job and get used to sort of, you know, life in a completely new place.

                              So he did that. He wanted to study film. So he was at USC. Met my mom there in LA. She was born in LA. And so that's where I was born. And then I think that, you know, there's sort of just the desire to strike out and have sort of a new space for themselves. All of the family at that point was in Los Angeles and so when I was six we moved from Los Angeles to Boston to Boston. Or you know, north of Boston to the suburbs, in Hamilton. And that's where they've been.

LP:                        And how did your parents – go ahead.

ND:                       No, I was just going to, you know, good school system and, you know, quiet streets, etc. And you know, sort of idyllic suburb life.

LP:                        Yeah, very aspirational, yeah. What did your parents do? What was their, what were their careers while you were growing up?

ND:                       So my, you know, everybody had been sort of on the medical track for my father, and he I think was sort of pre-med and it really wasn't the right track for him. And so he ended up leaving college and got a job working in like data, accounting, and sort of business management for a local travel company. And he sort of has taught himself and sort of navigated his career. And so now he works in sales and he does a lot with like satellite antennas internationally, a lot of sales relationships across Latin America, with like broadcast technology.

                              And you know, but it's been a bit of a meandering career for him, and he sort of had to like find his path. And then my mom, you know, growing up was more or less a stay at home mom, and now works in criminal justice, which is, you know, an interesting career to be in right now, and works a lot with victim witnesses and supporting victim witnesses in the county where she is.

                              But is definitely sort of an art, an artist I think at heart. So that I think was a big part of – her mom was an artist and that's always been a big part of our life. So yeah, I think both of them had sort of had like meandering and, you know, I don’t know, who does have like a sort of singular career path these days anymore?

LP:                        Yeah. I always envied those people, like the kids who knew in high school what they were going to be and then they went and did it. I could never relate to that. I can barely understand now what I'm going to do.

ND:                       In retrospect it makes sense, but yeah.

LP:                        Exactly. Yeah, I guess there is a little. There's always some revision, some revisionist history to the career path. But – so what role did music and the arts play throughout your childhood and as you were growing up? Was there a presence? Was it around you?

ND:                       Yeah, yeah. I mean my, my grandmother was an incredible painter. I mean it's really like, you know, frankly wild to like sort of come to terms with this, but she as a teenager worked in, in an internment camp, a Japanese internment camp, because she was in Los Angeles. And so she worked in one of the post offices there. And she spent a lot of time with Japanese people, Japanese families. And learned flower arranging and a lot of sort of like artistic traditions. She was actually a public school teacher in Venice Beach, and so, you know, I have no like real knowledge of whether this is true, but I like to think that a lot of the Z-boys and the, you know, the Dogtown sort of skate originators like those would have been her students, like back then. And that whole scene.

                              And – but you know, similar, I guess, you know, that was her job. But that was her job, but she always was an artist and always, you know, and always, you know, when we were little we spent a lot of time at her house and so there was always like, just like creative artistic opportunities, music, and she would always just make sure that like we had like, you know, musical instruments and art supplies, and her garden was incredible.

                              She had all sorts of like fruits and vegetables that you can't, you know, you can barely still now find in the stores. But she just was a really curious person and I think, you know, inspired me, I think, a lot to sort of be the person or sort of follow some of the paths that I have. And even though I sort of like, I bring the resources into my family and my home and sort of what I make available to my kids, I think that that's sort of led that a lot.

                              So yeah, the arts were always just sort of present, not necessarily something that I sought as a career, but just something that you have in your life as sort of a base foundation.

LP:                        And music more particularly, was there music played in your house? Were there, you know, you mentioned your grandmother had – did you grow up playing an instrument?

ND:                       So my mom plays the piano and I am a very stubborn person and I like to teach myself things. I'm similar to my dad in that way. And so I sort of, you know, dabbled in instruments. I played, it's a very sort of like Lisa Simpson image; I was, you know, a small kid with like a large saxophone through some of elementary and middle school.

                              That wasn't the right fit for me and it wasn't until college, and I just started – I took, like I audited a guitar class. And so, I mean there's, you know, instruments hanging behind me. But I would not say that I'm, you know, like for example, in Berklee company I would not say that I am a musician. But I really enjoy it. And I like putting, I like sort of forcing myself to put music out there, learning how to play songs and getting them comfortable enough to, you know, put out there on social media or whatever, just because, you know, sort of that concept of being familiar or comfortable with failure, and like messiness.

                              But my coworker said something about like, oh, you know, I didn't know that you play guitar or something, but it auto-corrected to okay guitar. And so like that's, I don’t play guitar, I okay guitar. It's sort of – that's what I say.

LP:                        That's amazing. What is it in your background academically that led you to Berklee? You know, what were you preparing for a life in?

ND:                       Yeah, so I thought I was going to be in – I mean you know, environment education; then I thought I was going to be an architecture. Thank goodness for internships, because I think that those sort of show you either a career path that's great or when you're like, yeah, maybe not. So I went to a tiny liberal arts college on an island in Maine, College of the Atlantic. The only major there is human ecology.

                              At the time there was 250 students. I think now they may be to up 400 or 500 students. And the whole program of study is extremely self-directed and interdisciplinary. And you have to take courses from all different sort of course areas or study areas. And so my sort of field of study or path – I spent a long time. I did a study abroad in the Bhutan Peninsula in Mexico, and I spent a long time returning there and studying sort of this, the history of that region and this really sort of interesting history of the Mayan people and their ongoing war with the sort of Spanish and the Mexican government.

                              And there is still sort of bastions of Mayan people in villages that didn't necessarily consider the caste war, which is what it was called, to be over, and sort of still worse – like these Mayan little armies and collectives. And so the history of the region was really interesting and I ended up studying sort of the indigenous or [unintelligible 0:21:32] place based architecture in that area.

                              And you know, is there a through line or like a connection to my current work? You know, if you look back, perhaps. I left, I taught middle school Spanish for a year in my old middle school after college, because I needed a job. Not a lot of Spanish speakers in Hamilton. So I was able to secure that job pretty easily. I taught along side my old middle school teachers, which was a trip. And then I started working in Boston in youth development work, in the Latino population mostly, Puerto Rican and Dominican.

                              So that was sort of – I had done a lot of like activist work in college, you know, as one does. But that was sort of my first formal introduction to community organizing, youth development work and sort of community informed programming. And so you know, since then my work has sort of been this intersection of community organizing and social justice, creativity, and technology and innovation.

                              And so I went from that work in the community, in a small community organization, to then working – what was then called the Intel Computer Club House Network, I think now it's called the Clubhouse Network. But it's a network of a hundred or so after school programs throughout the world that use creative tech as an empowerment tool for young people. And they're in South Africa, in Taiwan, India, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, across Latin America. And that was my first sort of introduction to what I now understand to be called designed thinking or sort of that iterative creative process.

                              You know, but I think what was interesting is that like I'd been really just absorbed with indigenous architecture and place based architecture and how people design buildings and spaces based on the place and people in those buildings or that are going to inhabit those buildings.

                              And so you know, looking back at a lot of the work and observations of learning and reading that I did then, it's interesting to see like, oh, that's designed thinking, like okay, this is not as novel a concept as many sort of, you know, designed thinking has sort of become this like fancy, really like buzzy word. But you know, it's also the same as community organizing, like coming up with solutions and programs that are based on the people that are, you know, that would most be impacted.

                              So yeah, now I bring that work to Berklee; after the Clubhouse Network I came here, and Panos, who I work with. Panos Panay, he's a Berklee alum, he founded Berklee's Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship after having founded and built for 15 years and then selling Sonicbids; and so he had been building the institute for a year and he bought me in to do some program development and delivery. We started a high school program, we did a trip to Silicon Valley for students.

                              And since then we've built the institute to what it is, kicked off the open music initiative, with partners of ours. And yeah, it's been a pretty incredible five or so years here.

LP:                        Before we finish threading that needle about your work at Berklee, I just wanted to – I wanted to explore something you mentioned a minute ago about the Mayan communities that have not ever really closed the door on the [unintelligible 0:25:26] what, does that manifest in the form of like insurgency or is it a mindset?

ND:                       I think it's more a mindset. And you know, I've been thinking and actually wrote and put something up on [media 0:25:46] yesterday about this, because it's just been sort of front of mind, and that's, I don't know, but for me that's how writing works; it like builds up and then it just sort of like, I don’t know, just sort of explodes out and especially writing, creating with kids in the house, where there's like no coffee shop that I can go to.

                              Right now that's sort of what creativity looks like in my life. So anyways, I've been thinking about this village, and I lived with this shaman who is incredible. But he had been, his family sort of lineage tracked back through the caste war, and his family had been sort of instrumental in leading the Mayan insurgency or the Mayan army. So to answer your question, they did not see themselves as Mexican. When you spoke about Mexico – so I mean if you know where Cancun is, it's like two hours outside of Cancun is where these folks lived, down like a down road. Nobody had cars. There was like a [unintelligible 0:26:49] that would go out that would go out, that you would hear leaving the town at like 6 AM and would come back.

                              So that was the – or like I would hitchhike and then ride in with the Coca-Cola delivery truck. But it was like five miles down a dirty road. And when you talked about Mexico, they were thinking like Mexico City. They didn't know or look at themselves as Mexican. I don't think that they really looked at themselves as even from Quintana Roo, which is the state, or as [Yucatan 0:27:17] which is the region.

                              You know, I don’t think that a lot of like change or, you know, certainly like there was people that worked in like pig farms and the hospitality area of Cancun. Of course like they were going there. Most people were bilingual, Spanish and Mayan. And I assume that a lot has changed since I was there 15 to 20 years ago, 15, 18 years ago.

                              I assume that a lot has changed just by – I mean I, you know, mobile technology hadn't really arrived anywhere. You know, at that point in those like early 2000s, it was just starting to kind of be commonplace, and I assume that mobile technology has changed a lot. I mean they had, there was one person who had a cable TV subscription and so he'd be sitting in the house and the channel subscription; you'd be sitting in the house and the channel would change, and you're like, oh, who changed the channel?

                              They're like, oh, [foreign language], you know, like but he's – what? Like [foreign language], he changed the channel. We're like, oh, okay, so he's like a block away. So you know, there was contact with the outside world, of course, but they were very much, I think, still in a lot of ways their own people and community and culture. And they had contact with other Mayan villages, and they would come – I mean this is not the point of your podcast, is like the history of the Mayan people.

LP:                        Oh, it's fascinating, fascinating.

ND:                       But there had been sort of this, this talking cross, that it appeared in the tree in the city of [Carrea Porto 0:28:55], and so they would go back there and have various like ceremonies. So they were connected, you know, to other Mayan villages and families in the region. So yeah, for whatever reason, the history and culture there just really, and you know, the sort of history of colonialism and assimilation, acculturation, just really caught my interest and continues to kind of stick with me for whatever reason.

LP:                        In the remaining pockets of the Mayan population, is there a governmental structure or a tribal structure? How are they organized?

ND:                       That's a good question. I mean I know at the time, and the way, where I met this Mayan priest, he was part of – there was always a guard at the talking cross, which is this space in – is it in Correa Porto or it's in – yeah, it's in, in this city outside of Cancun called Filipe Correa Porto. And so there's always, at the time there was always a guard there, and then they would hold various ceremonies at, you know, specific important dates around the year.

                              So that was certainly sort of one organization. And I think that that was sort of the remaining – and I think it would be really interesting, I mean quite frankly I don't know if the priest that I lived with is still alive. He, yeah, he was old when I was there. I don't think he really knew how old he was. And so it'll be, it would be interesting to know whether that's still something that has been passed down through generations and whether, you know, the teenagers that are probably now in their 20s and 30s, whether that's something that they're continuing.

LP:                        Yeah. Well, thank you.

ND:                       Yeah. No, thank you.   

LP:                        Can you – describe for me what the institute is. What's the Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship and what is its mission within Berklee?

ND:                       So Panos, as I mentioned, he's a Berklee alum. He was the first graduating class actually of Berklee's music business department and was there when that department, or that program was founded by [Don Gorder 0:31:15], who's retiring this year. So it's been pretty amazing to see Don build the program. And you know, he left, he started Sonicbids, which is at the time sort of this innovative idea of instead of doing press kits, that you have to like fax and mail around, you can put them online and book your gigs online.

                              And he was looking for his next step. He'd been in close contact with Roger Brown, who's the president here at Berklee. And I think Roger was on the board at Sonicbids and Panos had been involved as part of the leadership sort of advisors at Berklee as well. And so Roger said, hey, you know, why don't you go sort of take a break from the fast pace startup life and, you know, come teach a course or two on entrepreneurship; why don't you run this institute.

                              And Panos, if you were to meet him, is a high energy sort of full throttle person in all aspects of his life. And so, you know, the joke was that he was supposed to like just kind of chill out and take a breather, and he definitely did anything but that. So he started out with one or two courses. He did a lot of like talking and learning to other folks in the entrepreneurship education world, so he went over to the D School, he made a lot of connections and I think already had a lot of connection at MIT. Early on in his time at Berklee he just sort of coincidentally met Michael Hendricks, who's now global design director at IDO, and is based in the Cambridge office across the river from Berklee. And so I think that, you know, out of all of those creative collisions, the institute has sort of become what it is today. And like I said, I came on a year into it. There was a few courses; he was holding these events. And so you know, now what the institute is, it's still very true to sort of Roger's vision and I think Roger charge upon us, which is to infuse the startup mindset throughout the Berklee community.

                              We're different in that we're not, you know, just for a select group of students. We're not an accelerator, an incubator, where you're either in or out. So students will come to me and say, like, hey, I want to be part of the institute, how do I join? And I say, actually, you already are. Just by virtue of being at Berklee. You know, we had this really interesting conversation with our advisors early on and that's another thing Panos did a great job of, is assembling this group of advisors that I think helped shape and helped ask the right questions.

                              And somebody asked the question, you know, do you want to be sort of in this one sort of specific part of the institution or do you want to be in the bedrock? And we have done the work and continue to, you know, tried to do the work in Berklee to be sort of throughout the bedrock. So if you look at a Silicon Valley student trip that we take every year, this was our fifth year doing that, and we go, you know, Facebook, YouTube, Apple, PlayStation, Skywalker, Dolby; you know, we go all up and down the peninsula; you know, that student trip has been the first one and the only at this point that includes Berklee online students.

                              So we look at sort of this broader Berklee community. It includes conservatory students, so dance, theater, classical music, Berklee online, Berklee Valencia in Spain, which is predominantly Master's students; and then even with the Berklee students it's really important for us to have students of all majors and programs; songwriting, music therapy, film scoring, certainly electronic production and design, and music production, of course music business.

                              So with our programs we really try to, you know, impact and connect with as many students as possible and sort of infuse this idea that a musical training or an artistic training is sort of analogous to an entrepreneurial training, and that the instincts and mindsets that you develop as an artist are the same ones that entrepreneurs practice. And sort of by virtual of having trained as an artist you have also trained yourself to be entrepreneurial, and then just making the connections and starting to see.

                              And then, you know, some students do want to start their own businesses and be entrepreneurs and experiment and innovate, so we also make spaces and create opportunities for them. And then finally we've been a bit of a sandbox, both for the Berklee community, so we are often – when you have an idea at Berklee, we have the reputation of like if nobody else will say yes, we will. And so it's not the worst reputation to have. So because of that, we got to partner with [Erin Bara 0:36:37], who's a Berklee alum, a faculty; she was the founder of [unintelligible 0:36:41] Girls.

                              She's been really involved in women and music, and she wanted to do a study in the US on sort of the socioeconomic landscape of women working in the music industry. This was before MeToo. And she had a really hard time getting any kind of footing or support within Berklee. And you know, I think that a creative entrepreneurial world, a landscape, is not really as abundant and sort of fully actualized unless it includes everybody, and unless sort of everybody has equal opportunity to engage.

                              And so it felt really important to examine and amplify sort of where women currently are in the music industry. So we put that research report out. So we've been a sandbox and sort of an experimental place for the Berklee community to try out different programs and then sort of spin them back out to the mothership, and then also for the sort of industry as a whole, we've done some really interesting experiments, whether it was like designing an AI music, photo program with Royal Caribbean where vacationers could put in their photos and it would sort of read the emotions of the photos and spit out algorithmic music.

                              So yeah, we do a little bit of everything.

LP:                        Wow. And what is Rethink Music?

ND:                       That is a good question.

LP:                        Hey, wait a minute.

ND:                       So that predates me. And it actually predates the institute. So you know, I've obviously spoken about my career and education path. I love music, total music fan. But I did not study music business, I'm not an IP lawyer. I'm not a musician. And so this whole industry and sort of network was new to me. And so one of the first things that I was a part of when I, when I joined the institute, was this Rethink Music event. And like it was, it was awesome. There was a bunch of interesting folks there that I still follow or have sort of seen the evolution of their careers and movements and, you know, interesting sort of block chain startups that have since fizzled, and other companies that now exist; that was where I first heard Karan Gandhi speak.  

                              We had Imogen Heap, I think, Skyped in. So it was a really interesting event. And so Rethink Music, I think, was originally founded to sort of rethink the music industry, look a the future of the music and history, and it was, I think, very much a think tank. Like I said, it sort of, it predated me and it predated the institute, but the institute I think was a good sort of home for it.

                              But I was – I definitely remember being a bit shocked at the passion and in some cases acrimony between folks sort of debating music rights and metadata handling. I didn't know that it was such a contentious topic until a few months into my time at Berklee.

                              So you know, Rethink Music gave birth to a report that we did that also ruffled some feathers, this Fair Music Report, where we looked at payment streams. The person, Alan Bargfrede, who was head of Rethink Music at the time, worked with students to do this report and work with the data sets that they were able to get their hands on, which understandably were not a ton, because again, that's kind of the point, right around the opacity and imperfect nature of a lot of the data sets around meta-data and payments and rights holder information.     

                              But we published this. Like I said, I think we ruffled some feathers. The data wasn't perfect but I think that we knew that to a degree. And what we ultimately saw, and Panos, Michael Hendrick sort of bringing in this design thinking mentality, and then Dan Harple, who had worked in sort of the open protocols and data space along with some partners with MIT, a colleague, Berklee, at Berklee, George Howard, and you know, a lot of other partners from the industry; ultimately we saw that as an education institution, as an arts and artists centered institution, we could be a convener.

                              And I think that, you know, a lot of credit goes to those folks in seeing that. And Open Music Initiative sort of was born out of that, of how can we convene the industry rather than sort of, you know, poking holes or poking the bear, how can we be a convener towards interoperability in education.

LP:                        And so that's – thank you for setting that up so well. Talk to me about Open Music Initiative. Please. I'd love to understand not only the work you're doing but how you're interfacing with the industry.

ND:                       Yeah. So actually I was just looking at the date, because June 13, 2016 was when we sort of officially launched. And it's easy right now at home to like lose track of what the actual date is. So we're coming up on our four year anniversary, actually.

LP:                        Oh.

ND:                       Yeah. And so Open Music Initiative, like I said, you know, when that happened, we had this idea and I think sort of born out a lot of those, born out of a lot of those conversations that Panos had with, you know, Michael and George, folks at MIT, to be this convener and to bring the industry together. And I think that that was also sort of part and parcel with a lot of conversations that he had probably had with various industry companies that had relationships with Berklee.

                              And so we, you know, made sort of appeals to all of these various people to come together with a focus on music and arts and artists and to commit to coming together to look at solutions for accurate and efficient rights holder and meta-data and payments transfer information, which doesn't sound sexy at all but is incredibly important. And with that there's also sort of the education and the innovation piece. So working, you know, we're an education institution, we're artist focused, and so how can we also be a convener around education, intellectual property education for artists.

                              You know, like I said, like I'm completely self-taught, like in this and have just sort of absorbed it over the years. I should not be more knowledgeable on this than a musician, for example. You know, the musicians need to be empowered with this information and it shouldn't be made to be as sort of opaque an intimidating as it often is.

                              And then innovation. You know, I think that, I don't think it's controversial to say that the music industry has not always embraced new technologies or developments. And I say that still as a relative outsider. So I feel a little cautious in saying it because it feels a little bit like, you know, poking holes. But I think that what we hope is that we can be sort of a future proof opportunity to innovate and experiment with technologies that are going to impact to the industry one way another, and how can we be a part of that and innovate it with the technologies rather than sort of like in spite of or in reaction to.

                              So we're now 300 plus members. You know, for all sides and, you know, end to end of the music supplier, the IU chain, you know, some adjacent companies as well, so from the point of creation to distribution and sort of all in between, we were slated to have a meeting in June, actually, this month to sort of ratify a set of bylaws and become a standalone member supported organization.

                              Obviously that was put on pause a bit. What has been really excited is that we have continued the technical development so we've been working on an implementation of the protocols and of sort of the technical values and specifications that we recommend. And so we've been working with MIT. There's a Berklee Master's students that are, have computer science backgrounds that have been working to develop this along with others.

                              And so we have a team of Berklee undergrads, MIT researchers, developers and coders. My colleague, George Howard, and others, it's been really sort of this interesting grassroots collection of folks building a music licensing platform for Berklee students that's going to be sort of end to end creator to consumer, direct, no intermediaries, where Berklee students will have control over their data, their attribution, the tagging, the pricing, the licensing, etc. And we're going to be, in the few weeks sort of finishing the first working sort of version.

                              We shared a very rough alpha in November. But this will be the first working version that we're excited to share with our members. So barring sort of major governance movements, one of the things I'm really excited about is that we still have something where we can, you know, demonstrate rather than sort of talk about, you know, show not tell, what our vision is, and how it might work, and start to invite companies to plug in little by little as well.

                              You mentioned at the beginning of your answer, you used the word important, and I wonder, I don't want to presuppose that our listeners do understand the importance of the work. What problem or need are you solving or addressing? And why is it important at this particular point? Why is the work of the initiative important?

ND:                       Yeah, I mean I think, you know, what's interesting, almost kind of going back to our initial conversation right around it now being okay to talk about race and oppression and injustice, you know, the more that I learned about the music industry and sort of the way that it works, I'm sort of increasingly flabbergasted if I'm being honest.

                              You know, like if you were to reverse engineer something, you know, everybody would be like this is definitely how we should do it. Like this is, you know, going to be something that works where, you know, I know that a lot of folks have put many years, and many years of effort, into making that supply chain and making the transfer of data payment information, and rights holder information more fluid. And I do really want to give credit to that. I had the sort of pleasure and honor of being on a panel at the Library of Congress back in December with a crew of men talking about the work that had been put in on many different efforts, GDPR – no, sorry.

                              The Global Rights Data – not GDPR. I'm getting my acronyms. The Global Rights Database, the work that they've done on DDEX, and you know, it was interesting and I understood, I think, in that moment the passion and sort of the reason for the high emotions. Because they had, they had been putting in work for a long time in trying to solve what's a very, very difficult problem to solve, and you know, specifically to kind of like make it really simple.

                              My last name has an apostrophe. And actually ND's my middle name. My legal is Elizabeth. And so if we were to just look at if I was a musical artist that had intellectual property to my name, and forget like even if I had like an artist name or something, if I was just, you know, ND d'Avis, with an apostrophe, imagine all of the different ways that I might appear in a system. Because again, like legally my name is Elizabeth ND d'Avis. And a lot of computers like don't take apostrophes, etc. So imagine all of the different ways that I would appear in a computer. And I appear in that way when I go to the bank or to the doctor or the dentist or whatever.

                              Like I never know who I am. And so my passport says something different than my drivers license. It's complicated. And so imagine even just for me trying to get seen and identified correctly in every single database as far as what I own, you know, how much of my music was played in a certain place and how much I'm owed.

                              And knowing that every entity along that supply chain from like the, you know, production, the label, the composition or the publisher, the distribution, the streaming services, and then the collection societies, imagine everybody sort of having a different way of organizing their information and then trying to match those up. And DDEX has done a ton of work in standardizing a lot of the file formats in the ways that that information is collected.

                              I think that there is still a lot of work to be done and the work of DDEX is highly technical and is not easy for smaller companies and startups to connect to. And so when I say that this is important, it's important because artists need to have control over how their music is being used, knowing if their payments are accurate, being able to access that money in a timely way. You know, myself with a salary, I'm able to go to the bank and say, this is my salary, it's dependable, here's the transparency of sort of what it is, and so you know, can I qualify for a mortgage.

                              How does a musician do that right now with sort of the varied reports and the latency of payment reports? And then, you know, like I say, going back to sort of this question of social justice or even racism, when we look at, you know, so often the artists that have, you know, gone into musical careers and tried to make a living, artists need to have control over not only how their music is used, whether the payments are accurate, but also their sort of reputation and attribution as artists.

                              So even, you know, for independent artists starting out, while the payments and the amount of the payments may not be the most important part, you want to know, are you being attributed correctly for your work so that others can discover you. And you know, as somebody who deeply loves music, and it's just such an important part of my life, I want the music eco-system to continue to support independent and emerging artists.

                              And so you know, we want to, and we believe that it's sort of more than time as far as the technologies that exist, that it shouldn't be these databases that aren't able to talk to each other or where errors are sort of still allowed to happen. And so we've been working with folks at MIT and we've been working with the industry and one of the things that I'm incredibly proud of is I think it's always been a pretty, you know, comparatively congenial group when different industry stakeholders come together within the Open Music Initiative. This past November was particularly warm and there was just really some great consensus, to see all of these companies who have coming to these meetings and who have a part of this initiative for years, affirm that they wanted to see Open Music Initiative sort of become this organization and that this was something that they were interested, [unintelligible 0:54:20] said they were interested in supporting the long term was really fulfilling.

                              And I think it was for a lot of people. I mean I saw a lot of smiles and like hugs and back slapping from a group of people that often like to argue and debate.

LP:                        And is the aim of the infrastructure or the architecture protocol, however you refer to the initiative, technology implementation; is the aim to become a global infrastructure or is it a licensable protocol?

ND:                       Yeah, so I can – yeah, it's complex and like I said, I don't have like a technical background in this. So, but I think it's – I can explain sort of in two different ways. So I think one is recommendations on what the architecture should look like, and with DDAX and other efforts in this space; obviously the Mechanical Licensing Collective is now part of the conversation.

                              Working with efforts that are already out there to get good data in and to support good data transfer and good payment information transfer, how can we put together a set of rules so that the information that should be easily transferred or public is able to be transferred in a streamlined, effective, efficient and more rapid way?

                              So that's one thing, is just working on sort of the, you know, not necessarily the architecture but the rules and the guidelines for the architecture. And then the other piece that we, Berklee and MIT were doing, and this is where that platform comes into play, is that a lot of that's abstract, and I think that we're seeing that in this conversation, right, where, you know, even as I'm saying that it's kind of see and imagine; and so what, with a lot of credit to Thomas [Adjorno and Eric Skase 0:56:19] at MIT, and then my colleague George Howard at Berklee, they became really impatient with the talk and they wanted to make and do, and so they went and sketched out this idea for what we're now calling RADAR, which is an acronym.

                              And I think that the words that make up the acronym have now sort of escaped everybody, as they do. But RADAR is the music licensing platform that I was mentioning where Berklee student music is put in, the meta-data is captured from the Berklee students and [unintelligible 0:56:58] it's DDEX compliant. They can price and set the terms of their license for their songs.

                              There's an entire intellectual property education sort of module as part of the uploading process, so they, just by virtue – the same that like in Square Space or Turbo Tax or Quick Books you have to kind of learn a few things as you're putting your information in; it helps you. But it also says like do you want to know what, you know, what this tax code means or do you want to know whether you need this type of certification?

                              And you're like, I don’t know, let me click and see. So we're sort of using that same type of user experience where you have to start to learn what the different copyrights are that a song – and that a song has the two copyrights and what that means and whether you own both of them. So they go through this intellectual property education process. They upload their song, they set the terms, and it becomes available for license. And then on the consumer side, we're working with [Wesley 0:57:57] University, which is based in Cambridge, right near here.

                              And then we'll start opening up to other colleges. Visual media students, filmmakers, animation, video game designers, can license the music directly from Berklee students. And these are students that are going to go on to, you know, be scoring at Skywalker and PlayStation and Marvel; you know, it's Berklee. And so, you know, film students and other get access to the music and there's this direct creator to consumer. We're not a third party, we're not trying to sell the data, we're not trying to make a profit.

                              Our aim for this platform is, one, to sort of show what an inter-operable ecosystem could look like to our members, and that's where the plugging in starts to take place. And then the other is to educate and provide career sovereignty to Berklee students, to start putting the power of data and identity and attribution and reputation in their hands and to kind of help them understand what that means.

                              And so the interoperability piece comes into play, you know, following the open music protocol guidelines. What we start being able to do is say, okay, well, you've designed a wallet, for example, or you’ve designed a really interesting way of capturing meta-data at the point of creation through a digital audio work station; how can be part of the supply chain in the same way that, you know, train tracks or Lego pieces come together? How can these, how can these companies start plugging into this sort of demo that we've built?

                              But I mean it's a demo with a real purpose that we see as taking off. It's not just a demo for demo's sake.

LP:                        So ultimately it is one potential manifestation that products become OMI compliant? Is that sort of –

ND:                       Yeah. That's a great way – and thank you for sort of working that through with us. Because I – or with me, because I understand that, you know, like I said, even for me, it's a bit complex and it's been a steep learning curve. But yeah, I mean I think that our platform, RADAR, is going to have a sort of little tag line that says like powered by open music. And so if you are open music compliant, and we've seen companies sort of in their startup phase already sort of designing with that in mind, then it's going to be easy to plug in, you know, the same way that like when you get out of a Lyft or an Uber, all of that information is automatically know.

                              Like you know, the company knows where you just went, your bank account has been debited. All of that is automatic. There's no reason that we can't be sort of bringing payments to artists and information on song usage into the 21^st century.

LP:                        Well, it's interesting. You know, you used an analogy around, you know, the time to talk about race and social justice and now the time to have some of these other, you know, to apply it to this conversation about what you're working on, but I also – the other analogy, I think, is that people talk about sort of how did we end here. And I think it's less, it's less applicable today, but certainly the system was designed to be opaque, right? Like –

ND:                       Yeah. Yeah, purposefully. A hundred percent.

LP:                        Purposefully. And I don't think that's a controversial statement, whether you're inside or outside the industry at this point. Again, I don't think the system's necessarily designed to perpetuate that today, and as someone who's been both on the inside and the outside of these organizations, it's just the, it's the edifice that's been built up on top of 70 years of that –

ND:                       Yeah, completely.

LP:                        And it's really hard to tell the difference sometimes between malfeasance and like incompetence or tradition or – I do wonder. I want to be mindful of your time, but I have sort of one other question as it relates to OMI, which is – and may not have total visibility into this, but how does, how do you account for, or how do you think – what are the solutions around legacy data? You know, you mentioned the variation of your last name.

                              I think of like Neil Young and Crazy Horse, with the ampersand or the and or –

ND:                       Beyoncé.

LP:                        Yeah, yeah. How will these large corporations with, you know, 100 years of accumulated often contradictory meta-data, how will they ever catch up?

ND:                       I mean I think of course it's a complicated question, and we are starting our use case with new data and new artists, right? So we have sort of evaded that. Having said that, I think that – so open music is block chain agnostic, I'm not going to sort of even pretend that I'm the person to explain what block chain is. But when I say block chain agnostic, both meaning like that we don't sort of recommend or require that anybody uses block chain we don't require like any specific block chain. But having said that, this concept of nodes of validation and a network of sort of checks and balances I think becomes really interesting. And I think that there is technologies that have now come out as much more accepted and commonplace block chain, artificial intelligence and machine learning, that are now accelerating conversations that I think were really scary and difficult to have, and a bit intractable.

                              So to your point, as far as legacy data, I think that there's interesting ways to start sort of opening up the conversations and letting checks and balances happen. And I think, I mean also like the MLC is going to do that, right? And I think it's, it's interesting, it'll be interesting, you know, January 1 of 2021, like gosh, what a year to decide that you're going to build something. I do not envy the folks that are in charge of building the database around the Mechanical Licensing Collective.

                              But that's going to be another check and balance. One of the things that we recommended and wrote some recommendations around is that there be some open protocols within the database for the Mechanical Licensing Collective, so that people, for example, could build applications on top of that. And so I as an entrepreneur could basically build a widget that makes checking the veracity of the information really automated and user friendly. And to sort of allow applications like that to be built on top.

                              So I think that we are – I personally believe that – I mean look at like Wikipedia, look at other ways of sort of checking and balancing incorrect information, IMDB. I think we're at a place where there's enough correct information and there's enough sort of automation that can happen where if we allow the connections and the protocols between these systems, I think a lot of that will sort of equal out. And I think that the last piece that's interesting and sort of game-ifying the concept, is around sort of user or audience engagement and user generated information.

                              And that's something that people love to do. It's, you know, it's free labor but it's sort of that social recognition and gratification, social network, you know, game-ifying it. So I think that there's also that piece. People care about liner notes and, you know, having, being in a community of music geeks there's a lot of people that for sure would give time to going down the rabbit hole and putting in the right information or putting in information that's not there on sort of who played, you know, base track or the saxophone solo or whatever on this or that track.

                              So I think the solutions are out there. I think it's just about, you know, opening and connecting the ecosystem.

LP:                        Yeah, I think those are really strong points, and I think that you've given me hope for something that I always viewed as an intractable problem.

ND:                       It's true. It's true.

LP:                        Yeah. I hadn't thought about the implications of machine learning or AI and automation around solving those problems. You know, coming from the small thinking that's often associated with, especially the rights management or recorded music side of the business, I've always thought of it as a brute strength problem and not brute – not brute strength in terms of something that could be solved with algorithms. And that's actually very encouraging.

ND:                       That's nice to hear.

LP:                        And then the crowdsourcing component of it is fascinating as well. You've combined that, the gamification with the passion for music, and that does seems like a great path. So thanks for providing some optimism around something that –

ND:                       Hey, we can all use a little bit of that. It's overwhelming, right? Like you start to think about – I mean the Virgo in me, you start to think about like all that bad data and, whoo, it's like overwhelming.

LP:                        Yeah. You know, I mean I've been around those conference tables on, you know, in major label contexts, and it seems insolvable sometimes. So that's great. Well, thank you so much for your time.

ND:                       Yeah, likewise, thank you.

LP:                        And for sharing your insight. And I'll look forward to following the work and joining the initiative and seeing some really cool entrepreneurial ideas that get built on top of it. I think that's one of the more exciting parts. I think getting artists paid correctly in a timely manner, and then seeing what innovation can be built on top of it will be things to watch for the next couple of years.

ND:                       Yeah, well, thanks, thanks. This was an interesting conversation. And thanks for the opportunity.