Reading Time: 5 minutes
After the interview, I thought: This man is familiar with. Meet Paul Sampson, the CEO of Lickd.
Lickd, as a music solution and micro-licensing company, caters to creators. If this sounds confusing, skip to the interview where Paul Simpson speaks in plain English about Lickd, the current and future state of the online music market.
Q. Can you give us a short personal profile? What is your background and profession?
A. Since 2005, I have been involved in the music licensing industry. I have worked with commercial music and stock music. More recently, I have explored ways to strengthen the creator economy.
After graduating from university, I spent five years working in television, rising through the ranks. In this period, I was faced with licensing problems several times and became interested in the nuances.
After getting to know several music licensing companies in New York, Extreme Music offered me a position in 2005. I took the job and started my career in the music industry. I was relocated to Los Angeles, as Head of US within two and a quarter years.
In 2010, I returned to Europe in a new position and was instrumental in the launch of a European division for another U.S. Music Licensing Company. It was no longer just about stock music. This time it was more about commercial music and unsigned independent artists.
Lickd, a music platform, was created in 2017 as a result of this channel.
Q. Let’s now move onto Lickd. What made you create Lickd and why?
A. Lickd was founded by me because of two words: creator economy. Lickd came about as social media became more common in late 2000s. There were many opportunities for musicians and creators. We see more opportunities for the future, now that the effects of the pandemic on the media landscape have doubled the creator economy.
Lickd was the first major music company ever to develop a music solution that is available for all content creators. We license music from major publishers and labels, including the current chart music, and make it legally available to be licensed. Our software is unique and protects users when they upload music to platforms like YouTube or Instagram. Music recognition software is built into platforms like YouTube that can identify popular music used in content. These platforms assume that any music use in content is an infringement on copyright and will persecute the creator to prevent them from earning revenue.
Lickd’s software is the real magic solution. It sits on the platform to ensure that creators can not only license the music, but are also taken care of. We protect their revenue until the very end of the journey.
Q. Q. What is Lickd s speciality?
A. We are unique. We work with more than 10,000 labels and publishers who are connected to the Lickd Platform, including Universal Warner Sony BMG and Kobalt. Lickd is able to engage labels and publishers in this way and pre-clear their music to be used for any vertical. This was previously thought to be impossible.
Q. Q. Could you tell us about your experience with gaming giants?
A. The gaming industry is huge, larger than both music and film. With such a large audience, any vertical content has an enormous platform to promote music and work with.
Lickd and Epic Games began paying more attention to music as part of their engagement strategies. Senior teams asked key questions such as: “how can we work together with artists” and “what kind of artist do our audiences want to hear in a game?”
This brings with it a number of complexities in terms of licensing and demographics. Gamers that are also content creators live stream their content and create highlight videos for YouTube. We at Lickd already know how problematic in-video music is on YouTube, so we work with Fortnite in order to help bridge this gap. This allows gamers to enjoy the events put on by Fortnite, and also promote and share the content as they would normally.
Lickd offers protection to content creators who are working full-time on these platforms. This allows them to create and manage their content more efficiently.
Q. Q. Could you describe briefly the content agreements you have with bands and music companies?
A. In the last five years, we have built a platform of popular music that includes labels and publishers such as Universal, Warner Music, Sony BMG, and Kobalt. Also, we work with many independent distributors. Around 1.4 million tracks are available on Lickd. Another 6 million have been delivered and are awaiting to be made live. We do our best to encourage and help discover new acts on Lickd.
Q. How does Lickd assist creators in monetising their content?
A. It’s important that I make it clear that, wherever there are opportunities for the music business online, they will need some kind of micro-licensing commercial model and proprietary tech to either enable licensing or protect the end users.
Lickd has the perfect position to serve this market. We want to democratise the music industry for all creators. As the world and digital landscape changes, we will include big brands and builders on social platforms as well as creators.
Q. How do you see the possibility of an AI text-to-background-music generator?
A. AI has a variety of ways to impact music. We’re closely following this, and anyone who suggests that the music industry hasn’t been affected by AI in some way is a fool. We’ve already seen AI-generated songs, songs from one artist sung by another in an AI voice, and chords and melody created simply by putting information into the AI.
It won’t happen overnight, but eventually, music creators will start to trust smart tools and begin creating music using these new methods. Once created, the music still needs to be licensed. There will be commercial models which allow users to access the tools or licensing opportunities.
Music collaboration spaces, music production areas and venues will exist in the metaverse. The use of generative AI can be useful in creating music stems and creating a catalogue of musical elements. This allows people to work together to create an entire song.
AI-generated tools will be needed to generate music at a large scale. I believe you’ll start seeing things like music skins where Avatars want their own soundtracks or music identifiers. How can I tell if someone has entered the room or not? It’s because I heard the music to let me know they were here. There’ll be something similar to the ring walk that boxers do.
There are already music metaverses, venues and metaverse platforms that are based on music creation. Pixelynx is a music-based metaverse that was created by Deadmau5. Deadmau5 founded the platform that was based entirely on music. It was then acquired by Animoca Brands which has a wide portfolio of web3, Blockchain and traditional games.
