Michael Walker: Yeah. All right. I'm excited to be here today with my new friend, Matt Ford. Matt is a serial entrepreneur, CEO of a company called Prism.fm, which is revolutionizing efficiency in the live music industry. He is balancing business, creativity, and family as a founder, father of two, and a passionate artist, and I'm excited to have him on the podcast.

Third on the way?

Matt Ford: On the way.

Michael: Oh, congratulations! Oh my God. I'm there with you. I've got three kids as well. I've got a 6-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 2-year-old. So I—my God, thank God. Yeah, I'm right there with you.

So I'm excited to have him on the podcast today to talk about his company Prism and what it's doing to connect events organizers with the folks who are performing at those events. And just a little bit of a wider conversation about the state of the music industry and ticketing services and how, as an artist, you can use these types of events to connect with your fans and grow. So, Matt, thank you for taking time to be on the podcast today.

Matt: Yeah, you bet. And we were talking before that my bread and butter is the promoter and the venue side. Obviously, musicians are a key part of that, so I'm looking forward to sharing what I've learned over the years.

Before I started Prism, I put on about a thousand events around Austin with local artists. I think one of the things that I want to talk about is just the live music scene in general and how artists can use that as a part of their career. I've worked with a lot of artists on doing their first album release ever.

When I was a promoter, I paid one band—we split the door money at a show, and it was $30 each, and we had Indian food outside of the venue. That same band, I got to add a bunch of zeros at a festival a few years later and saw them explode.

And then through Prism, everyone from local bands is being booked all the way up to Bruce Springsteen. So happy to share my experience in the live music scene. If you'd like me to give a brief explanation of what Prism is, I'm happy to jump into that.

Michael: Cool. Yeah. Bruce Springsteen, the Boss. Yeah. It's cool to see him go through Prism, for sure. I bet.

So, I mean, maybe a good place to start is, I would love to hear your inspiration for starting Prism. What was the problem that you kind of set out to solve with the platform? Why did you create it in the first place?

Matt: Yeah. So, when Prism was a twinkle in my eye, I'll say I was in college, and I taught myself how to code around the same time that I was picking the guitar up. I had played piano when I was a kid, but I didn't really appreciate music until I got to college.

I think those interests have always intertwined for me—both music and software. So that was the precursor. I started a company when I was in college—precursor, no pun intended—with Cursor.

Michael: Software developers now.

Matt: Or excuse the pun, perhaps. Yeah. Good. Wow. Nice connection there, for sure.

But yeah, I started a company when I was in college, and it was pretty successful, thankfully—not so much financially—but I worked with a ton of promoters and venues and festivals around the country. I learned a lot about this crazy industry.

I ended up moving to Austin and was just kind of thinking, “Okay, how can I help use software to make the industry better?” I started off building a—sorry—an Airbnb for venues and artists. I'm paraphrasing this, but it was a tool that bands could sign up to say, “Hey, I want to play,” and venues could sign up and say, “Hey, I want to host musicians.”

I did that for a few years, and it actually became a tool for me to book bands. Just about every local band at the time in Austin signed up, and there were thousands in Austin alone. I put on about a thousand events in and around Austin.

There's a lot that I learned about the booking industry on the kind of entry level, I will say. I realized that it was a platform the industry didn't necessarily need, but it helped me identify what would become Prism—which was more of a professional booking tool for when you graduate out of the local scene and you're moving into more hard-ticket venues.

The inspiration was I was putting on thousands of events, and my finances were all over the place. It was really hard to keep track of everything. Generating offers for artists, settling my shows—I was doing all of this in spreadsheets.

A lot of the professional venues that I had met were also doing that in spreadsheets. They were also telling me, “Hey, our venue isn’t really hungry for a way to open the funnel for more and more local artists to knock on our door. But what we do need is a way to keep track of the chaos that we're experiencing.” So that was the light bulb for Prism, to be short.

I try to be as brief as possible. I could just keep going forever, but it's your podcast—I'll let you guide me.

Michael: This is great. I love hearing how the seeds were planted for the platform.

Now, moving into the current state of the music industry and the platform that you've built—you’ve worked with a lot of different artists, including Bruce Springsteen.

I'm curious to hear your perspective on the—what’s the word I'm looking for? Not the meme—like sort of the pulse of the time, like the cultural moment that we're in. There’s a specific word for it. I'm blanking on it right now.

Matt: Oh, I can pick up what you're putting down.

Michael: Yeah, yeah—the zeitgeist. That's what I'm looking for. The cultural zeitgeist as it relates to live events and artists booking shows.

At the time we're recording this, we're still in a little bit of PTSD from COVID times, which obviously had a large impact on the event industry.

But I'm curious to hear your perspective on the zeitgeist at the time we’re recording this—where we're at right now as it relates to artists and booking these types of events, and specifically as it relates to ownership of the data for artists and ticketing companies.

I was kind of struck when we just launched a campaign for one of our artists who has over 690 million views on their YouTube channel. I was helping them launch their campaign for their next live tour, and they told me that they don't actually have access to who's buying the tickets.

So when we're setting up their automations, I'm like, how can we follow up with people if I don’t know who has gotten a ticket or not yet? It has to be very blanket and sort of for everyone. That’s wild.

So yeah, I'm done with the long-winded question, but I'm curious to hear your perspective on where things are at right now and where you think things are headed.

Matt: Yeah, thank you for the question. There's definitely a lot there. I'll try and address it one at a time. First off, for the record, I have not personally booked Bruce Springsteen.

Now, we hand over the software to these wonderful promoters, and they're booking everyone from local bands to Bruce Springsteen. So I just so happen to see that someone used Prism to book Bruce Springsteen. But yes, we did make the software to make that possible.

And yeah, it is a really interesting moment for live music, and I think a lot of musicians are asking themselves how live music plays a role in their career.

Giving you an answer back, I think where my mind goes is just the arc of 15 years ago—before Spotify, even before Napster—recorded music was obviously a giant revenue stream, and touring kind of marketed the recorded music. The recorded music was where folks cashed in, and then the game has switched a little bit.

Now, recording music maybe markets the tour, and the tour is where folks cash in. I think you throw social media into that vat now, and there are questions like, "Hey, can I blow up on social media?" And then that leads to a tour immediately.

I'm talking to a lot of promoters about these concepts. They're finding artists that have giant social media followings, and sometimes it leads to a sold-out show, and other times it doesn't.

So I think in terms of artists, when they're deciding how live is going to play into their career, I think that's the ultimate question: Is this something that's driving people to your recorded music, and you're trying to make money off of that?

I will say it's not 15 years ago when recorded music was as lucrative as it was then. But Spotify—I just heard that recorded music has now eclipsed the pre-digital music era. I think it's more spread out, and as we all know, there are pennies given per millions of plays on Spotify.

But really understanding why you're playing live—is this the end result to cash in? Or is the end goal to build your online following, and then you're essentially going to be an influencer online?

Social is a really important part of that, and promoters are again looking out for bands that are blowing up on social media. That could definitely be impetus for a club to take a risk on you. But it can't carry you forever.

It's kind of a confusing era, long story short. Social media is wildly powerful for live events. A huge social media following does not guarantee that.

I don't have the vision to say when an artist really—you know, when you're Chapel Rhone and you have an amazing online following, and then you can actually sell out massive amounts of shows—versus someone who has a blip on TikTok and it doesn't lead to real sales.

To your point, being conscious of making a deal with the promoter that you get access to the ticket buyers, I think, is absolutely essential. You need to continue to take responsibility into your own hands to build your following.

You can ask the promoters, "Hey, a part of me doing the show is I want access to ticket buyers." Or maybe you ask to control the ticketing link yourself. Depending on the venue's deal, they maybe can or can't do that. A lot of these venues are locked into specific contracts with ticketing vendors.

But surely they can get you the contacts from the event if you ask for it. And it's a matter of asking for it. I think the whole point of getting the contacts is so that you can build your following and have this ecosystem between posting great stuff online, using social media to both send plays to your online recorded music and getting people out to the show.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Awesome. Okay, that's great that you—go ahead. It is great that you can ask—

Matt: Of course you can ask. I think they would likely do it. Whether they do it or not, I can't guarantee that, but of course you can ask. And oftentimes they will.

Michael: Got it. I mean, where my mind goes to is like, for artists who want to promote the event—if you're running like an ad campaign, for example—then you kind of need to have the ability to track who's purchased, who hasn't, so you can run traffic and optimize the campaigns.

So I'm curious—do you have any insight? Is that possible right now? I mean, you would think that that's in the venue's best interest as well, or the ticketing agents. If the artist is also going to be promoting the event, to give them an ability to run traffic to it or send their audience to it.

Matt: Yeah. We certainly see promotion. I think the very, very best bands—you can just throw them on a bill and their name draws in thousands of people. The vast majority of artists aren't going to do that, at least not immediately.

So I think a venue deeply appreciates it when there's a collaboration between the artist and the artist deeply pushing this to their followers and building an audience.

Again, circling back on why you're playing is really important as a musician and why you're touring. Are you building a local following? Are you in Dallas or Austin, and you want to have a really great local following? Or do you want to start building audiences across the country and be able to do a tour? Are you releasing an album?

So again, the more you can be a partner with the promoters on these shows and play your part in getting people to show up, the better.

I kind of feel elementary even just saying this, but I feel like I should—and I'm sorry if it's so simple that I'm offending people—but the whole point of a live concert from the venue's perspective is getting people to show up.

There's such a distinction between playing a venue that has a built-in following versus playing a show where it's on you—that you're the draw for the event.

"Draw" is a really interesting term. I think it's the right term: how many people do you draw in just by throwing your name on the bill?

But I think there's a lot of push and pull to draw. The pull to draw is your music—who you are as a person and just having gravity to your brand that you've built up. That's the pull side. The push side is doing really good things on social media and marketing.

And frankly, I could understand from an artist's perspective—it's like, I just want to really make great music. I don't want to be a social media expert.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Matt: I can empathize with that perspective. But what works? What brings people to the venue? What do you want out of your career? We all have to do things that we don't necessarily want to do.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And like, for context, one tool that we've built with Modern Musician is a software that we're about to launch in a month called Street Team. So it's in private beta right now. We're using it for our clients, but basically it's like a CRM platform where artists can connect with their fans—sort of like if Patreon and Discord and Facebook groups had a baby. But instead of Mark Zuckerberg owning your baby, the artist owns the fan data. They can stay connected, they can send emails, they can view where their fans are located on a map and draw a radius around a city and send an email just to people that live within 30 miles.

Love that for a certain show. So I think that, with live events in particular, I just imagine that being really valuable for—getting people to come out to shows. If you have a group of fans that live an hour away and you can directly message all of those people, I think that's going to help venues a lot to fill up the dates. It's always going to give them more security—not having to guess, "How many tickets can we sell?"

Matt: To advocate for the point of participating in the promotion of these events—people miss shows all the time that they would go to if only the right message had landed. I'll speak for myself—I miss shows all the time where I was like, "Oh my God, Yo-Yo Ma was in town? What the hell?" He's got plenty of draw in the world.

So if you do take that extra effort to say—and these things are straightforward—this tool you're building sounds amazing. Just drop in an email making sure folks know. Again, I think this is why it is really important to take responsibility for at least the base layer of obvious things. Get the social media posts out. This tool that you're building sounds amazing. Send out emails to folks in the region. Bandsintown is a really good tool as well, where you can market to some similar artists.

And I don't think you have to—maybe some artist teams will get really excited about the marketing and geek out about the data science of it—but without having to go that far into data science, there's a whole lot that you can do to make sure that, hey, just making sure folks don't miss the opportunity to see you that want to see you. That's the baseline.

Michael: I love what you're doing there.

Matt: Thanks.

Michael: Yeah. And 100%. I like the way that you framed that around, really, you're just letting people know that this thing exists. And if it's something that they want to do anyways, it's just like communicating that message.

I think what I hear a lot as a place that artists get hung up is in sales—like making an offer of any kind—which is understandable because most people didn’t become an artist thinking, "What’s the fastest way to make as much money as possible? I know, I’ll make music." So it wasn’t their first goal.

But it’s obviously really important for them if they want to make music in a sustainable way and invest more time and energy into their artwork and make it even better and more awesome. So it’s really important. But learning how to ask is hard sometimes. It’s easier when you realize that your goal isn’t to convince people to do something they don’t want to do—it’s just to let them know that this thing exists that they probably would think is really cool and valuable.

Matt: Yeah. Something that's standing out for me is this distinction of how much of your audience is represented by an agent versus before that—probably the majority before that. So I think understanding the difference in booking shows when you're represented by an agent versus not is a really important thing to understand.

A lot of shows hit Prism at the moment—agent and beyond. Though there's plenty of local bands that are kind of bands before agent that hit our system as well. Before you have an agent, you really gotta stick your nose out there to get the venue’s attention and do it respectfully.

Why does the event—why are you going to stand out? Are you releasing an album right now? I've heard promoters say they love it when artists say, "Hey, my goal is to have 400 people show up to this event. Here's why I believe it's true."

So just being very honest. Understand that these venues that you want to book shows with are getting a thousand inbounds. On one hand, you're exactly who they want to be talking to because they host live music concerts. But on the other hand, there’s a thousand people getting in touch. So being really honest about how many people are going to show up, why that’s going to happen, how that’s going to happen—that’s a way to stand out.

And then as you build up your following and evolve into getting an agent—if that’s the route you want to go—that's the work that the agent moves on to doing. But the level of draw that you've developed switches the polarity from the artist having to convince the venue to let them play, to venues eventually bidding on you.

I don’t mean to be offensive with that language—like “bidding”—but the polarity switches at some point where the venues are fighting over getting the show for you. But before you hit that level, the polarity is the opposite. You’re one of many trying to get access to the venue. So how you stand out is a really interesting question.

Michael: Hmm. Oh, that's so good. Yeah. I just imagine an artist being able to pull open their map and say, “Look, I have a thousand people within 30 miles. And I’m going to filter by all the people that purchased tickets for me in the past.” So based on that, this is my community. This is who I think is going to come out. I imagine that being a really helpful tool to communicate with the people who are booking the shows—to plan and manage those events more accurately.

Matt: Yeah. What all artists want is to reverse the polarity. I shouldn’t say all artists, but one trajectory of an artist's career is to reverse the polarity and to be the person that folks want access to from a venue perspective. And the way to do that in live is quite simple: have a track record of an amazing amount of people showing up for your events. However you solve that is up to you.

Some people may just work on making that awesome track, and that’s it—they don’t waste their time on social. Other people make that amazing track and also pair that with really creative social media strategies. They use Michael’s software when they're promoting their event. But it’s an amazing asset—your track record of getting people to turn out to an event is the thing that eventually reverses that polarity and makes the game easier.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Okay. So, let's zoom out a little bit, go down a little bit of a different path. But it's also something I would love to hear your perspective on. It doesn't feel like we're quite there yet, but there's been a lot of development and things that feel like we might be on the cusp of what Mark Zuckerberg refers to as the Metaverse.

Augmented reality—I know the Vision Pro came out. It was above consumer level, so it didn't really have its moment yet, but it's really cool. The quality is pretty amazing. It feels like we're approaching more and more of these digital spaces. Where my mind goes to is how that factors into events and coming together in live real time.

Even like what we're doing right now—I feel like is an event of sorts, because we're here together in real time. We're recording this—this is like an event. A different kind of event, but it's a digital event. Like magically, across the world, we're connecting in real time in a way that's purely like magic. A few thousand years ago, they'd be like, "What? You're talking to someone else? He's in that portal? That little—what?"

So I'm curious to hear your perspective on where things are headed as it relates to events and digital spaces.

Matt: Yeah, I have a lot of perspective on that and a lot of opinions. I'll try and consolidate it down because it is just such a big conversation.

I think during the pandemic there was a moment where a lot of livestream companies popped up, and we were asked to do livestream stuff. I kind of stayed away from that because my perception was, as the digital world becomes more and more in our faces and we're looking at our screens all day long, people really, really value that real-world experience—whether it's a sporting event, a concert, or even showing up to a theater to watch a movie with people.

Even—why do you get out? Why leave your incredible home theater to go to the movie theater? So, I'm personally a big believer in Zion. If we use the Matrix analogy—the last human city in the real world—versus all of us being wrapped in the Matrix.

At the same time, there are cool opportunities with the Metaverse. Hangout FM just relaunched, which is a really interesting—kind of, I wouldn't call it Metaverse, but an online hangout space.

I think the Sphere is a really interesting case study to look at. Instead of doing something crazy with the Oculus Rift, they made it a physical venue that you show up to, and then you have this incredible digital experience at a physical venue. So one reason why I like live is I do think that the Metaverse and AI and the digital world will keep on advancing and advancing, but I think that the live experience then becomes more and more powerful because people need it.

This is a reason why I would advocate for folks to really kind of nail down their live strategy. Just as a human, it's something that I appreciate deeply. Obviously I'm biased because, A, I love concerts, and B, I have a business that—the more the live music industry grows, the more that we benefit from that, which is a great aligned incentive.

Long story short, I think incorporating VR/AR into concerts, being creative about doing Metaverse-like things as a supplement to live, is a fantastic idea. And live's not going anywhere. My hope is that it's one of the biggest industries on planet Earth ten years from now—when AI has automated everything else, we're still going to have a live music industry. That's my perspective.

Maybe someone will dig up this podcast ten years from now and be like, "Oh man, that guy got it wrong. No one leaves their house, they're just jacked into the Matrix." But sometimes you gotta take a stand for the reality you want versus prognosticating the reality you don't want.

So I'm a big fan of utilizing the Metaverse and stuff, but also realizing that perhaps as the Metaverse becomes more appealing, so does the actual real-world experience.

Michael: Mm. Good stuff. Yeah. So it sounds like what you're saying is that—I mean, one thing that we've learned from COVID even—is just pent-up demand for live, in-person, real experiences.

It seems like that's one of the reasons that immediately after we got back out is because there was all this pent-up demand. Because we wanted to have that connection. And there is a deeper level of connection right now that you get through live events—being there in person, rubbing shoulders with people that are also fans of this band, sweat flying around everywhere. There is something about that communal experience.

Matt: That was the thing that everyone was longing for during the pandemic—"I can't wait to be sweaty in a mosh pit again."

I remember earlier in the podcast you were talking about zooming out to the macroeconomic—and I hear a lot of conversation right now around the idea that there's a sugar high that has worn off in the live music industry or the live industry in general. I do think that's true. A lot of people came out raging from the pandemic and going to every single show imaginable. But that wasn't sustainable.

Nor was COVID the reality. So I think it's figuring itself out right now.

But yeah, I'm a big fan of physical.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And yeah, it is kind of like a pendulum swing, isn't it?

I agree with you. I think that there's something magical about live experience, about connecting in real time with community. And that's kind of what live shows and music is all about—community and coming together and having this shared collective experience or collective consciousness.

And I think the only question mark that I have around the future of these types of events is whether it's possible to have a higher-quality live experience that can match the in-person things as well. Which right now is just not possible. Because right now, I would say the best thing that we have to connect digitally is what we're doing—through live conversations, live connections. But it's not perfect.

It's this little tiny portal on your screen. It's different than if you were here right now. I could give you a high five, we could just share the space together, but in a very real, physical way. There is an actuality—even in the digital—of sharing the same moment in time.

So I wonder if—and who knows—maybe that's a good thing or a bad thing, or what the repercussions are of having a Matrix that we're plugged into. Maybe we're already in some kind of... like we're not in base reality. In some ways, you could argue that our brain is simulating all this stuff happening around us. It's already started. How do you know...

Matt: You're not a brain in a vat?

Well, you are a brain in a vat. The vat is your skull. And everything we're experiencing is electrical signals.

Everyone needs to rewatch The Matrix, because that was a prophecy. I just rewatched it, and it was like, "In the year 2020, we reveled in our creation of AI, and little did we know it was our destruction."

Michael: Oh geez, I need to rewatch it. I love that movie. It's one of my favorite movies.

Matt: Rewatch it, because one of the problems with AI right now is—these models are not sustainable. There's an energy problem with these models. This is why you see people trying to bundle clusters.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Matt: Sam Altman's investing in nuclear fusion, and there's... it's just not—it's just not—it's the more you put into compute for these things, the better they get. But like, it's just... everything is just like dumping cash right now. Right now. But the story in The Matrix is eventually AI is like, "Oh, wait a second. These humans are batteries." And it is remarkable how much it got right. I guess the kung fu and jumping across buildings and agents and stuff is like... a little, I don't know, Hollywood. But the underlying concept's really, really far out there.

Michael: I definitely felt like it struck a nerve.

Matt: Oh my God. Yeah. Sometimes fiction just really gets it, you know? But yeah, to answer your question, I do think the digital experience is just going to keep getting better and better. And like, we could have an Oculus Rift on and simulate being here, but I'm... I guess I'm old school. I don't think the full live is going to be replaced.

And you're seeing a lot in office culture, right? Like during the pandemic, everyone's like, "Everyone work from home forever." Like, all these skyscrapers are never gonna be filled. But even companies are like, "Actually, we like people hanging around the water cooler." And we like—even all the drama that comes with having people in a physical space every day—it turns out that it's worth it.

And a lot of people are coming—the same pendulum is swinging back. Frankly, it's swinging back much harder in live music than it did in the office setting. But I think the office setting is a canary in the coal mine a bit around our propensity as a society to go full digital. There's a lot of advantages to remote work, and we support remote work at Prism. But we also have an in-person office. And if I could have everyone in the office, I would. No question, I would do it. Yeah, it would be better for sure.

That's not the world we live in, and I'm glad with the setup that we have, and the tools that we have to make connection a little bit better. Not to mention, I get exhausted looking at a high-definition screen. So if the answer is more and more high-definition screens, I think that's just more and more digital burnout, frankly.

I don't know what these HD screens do to our minds, but it's not great over a long period of time. And then having the Oculus Rift on your face is like... you're an arm's length away with my high-definition monitor. But if I stare at this thing all day, it's gonna be rough—let alone having it right there.

Elon's trying to put the chips in the brain, which I totally support for helping quadriplegics get access to mobility and stuff, and helping people see, which is just beautiful from the future.

Michael: I interviewed Noland Arbaugh on our podcast a few months ago.

Matt: Oh my God, cool. How was that?

Michael: It was very cool. Yeah. When he announced that he was open to doing interviews, my mind immediately went to like, "What reason do I have to reach out to Noland to get him on the podcast?" Oh my God. So we created the first song ever telepathically. He used his Neuralink to create a song together using AI plus his Neuralink. And it was pretty cool.

Matt: Oh my God, how awesome. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. I'm not brazenly making a case against Neuralink. But yeah, again, to help someone who is in an unfortunate position like Noland—that's absolutely incredible. But for your average person, to have the cell phone in your brain instead of here—this is already too much. I'm holding my hand up. These things are already too powerful. So I worry about that as a society and humanity.

Michael: I think that's an absolutely fair concern—for multiple reasons. One is, yeah, I don't know, like the radioactive waves—it feels like we... yes. Even the amount of phones that we have next to our heads is maybe a little bit scary, but having it in your brain could be another level.

Also, thought control. When you start thinking about—oh my God—who do you trust to have this device in your brain? That’s a big question.

Matt: Yeah. I had—after college, I started writing a book about the Google chip, where it was like a computer chip that people would put in their brains, and you could download illegal viruses. It's basically the same concept as drugs. But then the whole premise of the book was like a really bad virus, or like, if you could imagine the cybersecurity around getting access to people's brains—very ripe for science fiction dystopia.

Long story short, yeah, I never finished the book for the record, but oh well.

Michael: Hmm. Yeah, it's wild. I mean, it's transcending even just the science fiction. It's happening—it's happening right now. And I think you're right, that there are very few people who would argue that the use case for it right now isn't extremely good. It's extremely good. And the life-changing impact it can make for folks who are getting one is like—oh my gosh—how amazing.

I think where it gets more... question marks and concerns is around using it for everyday life and extending the average human mind to be able to interface directly with AI.

Where my mind goes to is like—future gets weird. Like, we have language, right? Language is sort of this symbol that we somehow, as humanity, figured out—these shared sounds—that when I say this, it triggers a part of your brain that understands your interpretation of what the sound is. That's amazing.

And it's probably why we have communities to the extent that we do, why we are able to trade, and have conversations like this. But also, it's so flawed when you look at language. It's so easy to be misinterpreted. Often, we'll say one thing, but we don't really know what that means.

If you're trying to teach someone what an apple tastes like, but they've never tasted an apple, then no words that you share can give them that experience. I imagine with Neuralink, if we both had this ability to telepathically communicate and actually translate these ideas from abstractions into actual experiences—it gets funky.

Matt: Yeah. The idea of communicating without language is hard for us to grasp. And who knows how that's possible or what... yeah. I mean, we think in language. It's a...

Michael: Beam the taste of an apple into your mind. I mean, we're definitely getting into Matrix territory. And then it’s scary. Like, who has access to my mind? I don't know if I want that—to be able to do that.

Matt: And how do you send the things that... like language is a filter of the mind. I can think a thousand things, but only say one thing. So how do you do that with a Neuralink? And not just have the... do we want the unfiltered kind of transmission of people's minds or not? It gets into crazy...

Michael: Yeah, I've thought about that a lot in terms of—I feel like language is a pretty good corollary to it. Some people have really bad filters with their language, and they'll say things with no filters. And some people are a lot more guarded with it. I'm guessing that if and when we have this type of communication, it'll be kind of a similar thing. The filter can still be there, but the intention behind how we share that...

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Matt: Yeah. To me, it's Neuralink takes a giant leap when it goes from helping quadriplegics, paraplegics to—yeah—something that, yeah, communicating without language with your everyday person. That's like—I don't know. It's a big leap. I don't know how that world is at that point, or if we want that.

Michael: Yeah, that's absolutely a fair—

Matt: Point. I—

Michael: I think that I have a tendency to sort of, like—I'm like a tech optimist. And in these things, I'm sort of like believing. But you're absolutely right. Like, there's—that's a huge leap to make. And I know, man plans and God laughs kind of thing, so we'll see what happens as it grows. But I do—I do believe that the future's gonna be crazier than our wildest imagination, you know, and things that are magical—it just seems like not possible. Or—

Matt: Maybe in other ways it's the exact same.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Matt: Yeah. How much is actually—it's different, but it's the same.

Michael: Yeah.

Matt: We wake up every day and we try to make ends meet, and we pursue food and love and sex and sleep and health. And how's that so different than someone from 2,000 years ago, right? I mean, look at the other side—it's kind of ridiculous. What I'm saying is it's extremely different, but like, it's not at the same time. And we still have all these worries, and all this technology was supposed to set us free, but we're all busier than ever. So yeah. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to say what happens in the future, and how much will change, and how quickly we get used to that change.

Michael: Reminds me of—I know our brain layers basically have evolved over a long time, but basically each layer that evolves is actually sort of like hacking the prev—like the previous layer is like hacking the newer layer to get what it wants—its needs.

Matt: Yeah.

Michael: You kind of have that primal security brain that's all about sex and safety, and it's kind of like attacking the mammalian brain that's all about social systems and all that.

Matt: Yeah.

Michael: And then we've got the prefrontal cortex that's sort of abstracting incredibly future projects, but it's just being hacked by our deeper drive. So—

Matt: Yeah.

Michael: Very, very interesting.

Matt: It is interesting. Yeah. It's gonna be a beautiful future, but hopefully it's a future that's—it's gonna be an interesting future. Hopefully it's a beautiful future, and the good things are still there, like going to a concert.

Michael: Amen. Cool. Well, Matt, man, it's been great. I can see you today—super fun. This is a fun, fun conversation.

Matt: Yeah.

Michael: We appreciate—we charted some territory that I really enjoy talking about, but rarely do I get to talk about it as much as I did with someone that I think is able to articulate and kind of provide good points and counterpoints to bring to the table as well. So I appreciate the conversation—always happy to do it.

And Matt, for anyone that's listening to this right now who is an artist or maybe like an agent or someone that's interested in connecting more with the platform that you've built, what's the best place for them to go to connect more?

Matt: Yeah, just our website: prism.fm. Generally speaking, we also—there's the tools that we built. Mostly it's on—if you're a musician specifically, it's heavily kind of filtered through the agency side of things. But there's been musicians that have taken a look at it that are doing their own agency stuff. So just go to prism.fm—it's got everything you need.

Outside of the tools that we offer, I have an industry podcast as well—The Live Music Industry Podcast—on Spotify and all major streaming platforms. And I interview promoters and agents and tech CEOs and stuff. So I try to keep that interesting. So throw us a follow on there. And yeah.

Michael: Awesome. Well, like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes for easy access, and thanks again for being on the podcast today.

Matt: Yeah, you bet.

Michael: Yeah, let's go.