On this episode of Where Do We Go From Here?, I speak with someone you’re probably going to be hearing from a lot throughout the life of this series. Daouda Leonard is an old friend, a mentor, and a partner. We’ve worked together for almost a decade under the banner of CREATESAFE, a music tech studio Daouda founded in 2017. Over the years we’ve built tools like the deal simulator, which allows anyone to easily visualize the economics of record and publishing deals, and Grimes’ elf.tech, one of the first responsible AI music tools that allowed for fair attribution and compensation.
We met years ago when I did A&R at a music publishing company and he managed DJ’s and producers. I immediately admired all the people he represented and his taste in music. We started exchanging songs and artists with one another. We quickly found ourselves aligned with similar frustrations about the nature of the music business and a shared desire to figure out how to build more equitable systems for artists, producers, songwriters, and the countless others who support their careers. Daouda has always pushed me to question my assumptions, to avoid lazy answers, and to take deep, purposeful breaths. Our conversations often feel like collisions of hip-hop infused mysticism and left brain pragmatism.
We cover a lot of ground in this episode and, at times, probably didn’t double back to give as much context on some things as we could have. As an ad hoc guide, I’m linking to some of the companies, tools, and artists we mention throughout our talk. You can also follow Daouda’s latest creative journey, Growing Up Wu, to learn more about his thought process.
A few key takeaways from our conversation…
The new (digital) streets. Daouda and I spoke at length about the current era of music discovery, in which traditional gatekeepers have faded away. New paradigms of music consumption and broadcast reign in chaos. Paradoxically, a culture of highly personal, largely invisible sharing through chat-based networks like Discord, Telegram, and WhatsApp constitutes what Daouda refers to as “the digital streets, the internet native streets.” He continues “the new streets are Instagram shorts, TikTok, Discords, Telegram. There's this crazy leaker culture on Telegram…You're clicking links to get into different chats to find leaked music. It's mind blowing. I'm like, yo, who's doing this?” We also discussed how tools like Untitled have made the storage and sending of unreleased music seamless, opening up a new kind of social file sharing among those within the music industry (worth noting as well that Untitled also bucks convention in its content marketing, as one of the few tooling companies to launch a compelling content presence through its quirky series Texting Interviews).
The grand format shift. Daouda believes that we are living through a major shift in the way music is broadcast and consumed, often leading to a kind of platform collapse where the means of creation or performance and the means of consumption are combined into one (for example, a producer like Kenny Beats making and playing beats live on Twitch while viewers watch and comment). Daouda lists “Blockchain technologies, AI [artificial intelligence], AR [augmented reality], VR [virtual reality], XR [extended reality], quantum computing, [and] gaming” as other pillars of this format shift that artists and their teams need to learn how to navigate.
The evolving role of technology in creative careers. Throughout the time I’ve known Daouda, he has always lived on the vanguard of new technologies and musical ideas. Late in the episode, we talk about how he uses tools like "Claude, Google Notebook LM, and maybe Mid-Journey now, and ElevenLabs" to ideate creative works and plans. Elaborating on the notion of the digital streets and the importance of the shifting archipelago of platforms for artists, he notes the importance of platforms like "Substack, Twitch, Discord, Instagram, TikTok, Reels, Spotify," all of which require different "brand guidelines" for creators to navigate. We also get into a minor disagreement about the place of AI in music.
Measuring value, pt. 2. In my conversation with Tony Lashley (Ep. 1 of WDWGFH), we spiraled around the topic of music’s value for the majority of our time together. When we spoke of value in that conversation, much of our attention fell on value to the consumer and the consumer’s value to music companies), with a lighter focus on value returned to the artist. Daouda’s mission over the last decade has centered on cutting through the crippling opacity of music industry contracts and structures to return value to music creators. We speak about the lack of tools that existed for artists until the recent past and his vision to correct the historical imbalances that allowed companies to extract from the artists signed to them.
A guide to things we mentioned…
Untitled - In their words, “the best place to listen, share, and organize your work-in-progress music.”
Offtop - Like Untitled, a slick, fun app for the sharing and storage of unreleased music.
Stem - A distribution company that launched in the 2010s and introduced easy payment splitting and transparent royalty accounting with its clean design.
Royal - A platform that allows people to sell music rights to consumers and notionally has something to do with the blockchain. I am a skeptic, to say the least!
Dom McLennon - Former member of Brockhampton, incredible multifaceted artist, and friend of the pod. His 2024 album The Changing of the Trees is excellent and overlooked.
Google Notebook LM - Google’s increasingly powerful information synthesis AI tool.
Claude - An AI assistant a la ChatGPT.
ElevenLabs An AI speech synthesis company, which, per their website provides a “voice generator [that] can deliver high-quality, human-like speech in 32 languages.”
Daouda’s Five Obsessions:
Ino Casablanca - “Paraplui”
oklou - “choke enough”
Tate McRae - “Sportscar”
Bad Bunny - DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
Central Cee - CAN’T RUSH GREATNESS
Special thanks to Anna Kasper for producing, Will Grogan for providing music, and Hugh Huntingford for designing the Applied Science logo and podcast cover image.
Though Los Angeles’ fires are finally fully contained, the efforts to rebuild remain daunting. As always this year, please find some resources below with direction on those in need of donations, volunteering opportunities, and reliable information sources.
LA Country has launched an exhaustive website with resources for preparedness and recovery (including links for debris removal and right of entry forms).
Mutual Aid Network of Los Angeles’s spreadsheet lists an expansive number of funds, organizations, and aid types across the expanse of the city. A great place to start.
A comprehensive volunteer and support guide from local organization LA2050.
A good post from The Angel on different ways to get involved with relief efforts.
A book/PDF written for parents to help explain the enormity of wildfire to their children.
PBS SoCal’s resources for how to talk to children about wildfires.
A U.S. government fact sheet on protecting children from wildfire smoke and ash.
A spreadsheet of GoFundme’s for Black families from Altadena who have been displaced or lost their homes. Altadena is one of Los Angeles’ historically Black centers, a place where generations of hard-earned wealth and equity in the land were decimated in a matter of days. (first seen via Saul Williams)
A collection of GoFundme’s that are under 20% funded, shared by 5PM LUCKY (via Ventura-based brand RatBoi):
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