Marrying music with tech | Artium
Marrying music with tech | Artium
One of the most hyped recent technologies has been blockchain, which is a decentralised technology that powers Web3 and crypto projects.
But did you know that the very first large-scale use of decentralised technology was a project called Napster and it was built for sharing music files?
In fact, you could say that music played a big role in moving the internet economy forward, from creating decentralised file-sharing networks to pioneering streaming services like Spotify.
Now finally technology is coming to disrupt the way you learn music, and a company at the forefront of this revolution is Artium.
Artium is an ed-tech platform for music learners, they have built a custom technology stack that allows them to train music learners worldwide.
In this episode, Ashish Joshi talks about building and scaling Artium.
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Additional readings:-
1.Artium Academy aims to hit a high note in online music training
2.Online Music Learning Platform Artium Academy Bags Funding From Chiratae Ventures, Others
Read the text version of the episode below:-
Ashish: Hey everyone. I'm Ashish. I'm the founder and CEO of Artium Academy.
Ashish: I did my BSc in Navsari from Gujarat, then appeared for entrance exams for MCA and MBA. And I took MCA because MCA course of Somaiya had a 100% placement. So I took MCA because I wanted to get a job after my college. I actually got through a campus placement in Patni computer, BCS which used to be one of the interesting companies out there.
Akshay: Yeah. Yeah. It's Where the co-founders used to work before they quit started?
Ashish: Absolutely. Yes. So I went through PCS, PCS, used to come to our campus every year, and everybody who gets to PCS had a career. So we were all, we got the preplacement offers in July of 2001 and we were all parting hard. And September, 2001 almost all of us got our pre-placement offers back. We were all left to friend for ourselves and we were finding our feet. And campus company IT who wanted sales guys for technology so tech sales, pre-sales in technology kind of a profile.
Akshay: Like a solution selling?
Ashish: Solution selling yeah. So pre-sales in tech. And I jumped at it and I said, listen, so they said they wanted MBA systems guys and not MCA guys. I said, give me a chance. I'll do a much better job than your MBA systems guys. And that's how they took me. They took me onboard for a six months induction program. And this, we will see you for six months and we'll see if you're good enough. And that's how I entered sales, pre-sales in technology. That's how I started my careers.
Akshay: And what was this company? Was it like making custom built software or was it selling a product or.
Ashish: So it was a ERP product company. It used to compete with likes of SAP and JEdwards and Barn in those days.
They had indigenous ERP solution for Indian companies, custom made for Indian companies because, the way we function in India. And focus on manufacturing units. So one of our biggest clients was Sun Pharmaceuticals in those days. So I joined then signed up Urgent pharmaceuticals and a lot of pharma companies is where we provided our ERP solutions.
And we also used to provide in very early days, there used to be SMS driven flight tracker flight information. You write sort of a code and seek information around ticket scores and stuff etc... Very early days out there.
Akshay: Yeah. That, that five digit number to which.
Ashish: Absolutely. The short code used to call it short code. So complete SMS driven solution is what we used to sell. I moved to a company called Mysys Infotech, which was an IIT Bombay Incubated company. So those guys were the pioneers in what today you call is telco based content management, content delivery systems that you see the whole the world of vast..
Akshay: Live cricket scores..
Ashish: Yeah, Valuated services that you see around telecom solutions, right?
So Mysys was a pioneer in that, at that space. So I remember we delivered the first content platform for Loop Mobile in those days, which was BPL Mobile in Mumbai. So you send a short code and then you get a ring tone delivered onto your phone, write the monotone sound, monophonic tone actually. So that was the first solution that we delivered. So I was at my for two years. Mine was a business development pre-sales kind of a rollout there. Very interesting sales and BD combination out there. So yeah, from there I moved on to join Hungama.com Mobile. Hungama Mobile was in 2006, the number one, valued services company in the country. So at Hungama I was operations, looked after telco partnerships, OEM partnerships delivered kiosk driven content through, planet Times of the world. And also very interesting, again four years of my work life out there from 2005, 2009.
Akshay: Hungama is it like a funded startup kind or is it a, like a part of a bigger group or what is Hungama like?
Ashish: So, Hungama.com in those days, of course, was started by a guy called Neeraj Roy. But Neeraj came from sort of investment background. He was backed by Rakesh Jhunjhunwala in those days. So he used to be sit on a board so even today Hungama.com Mobile remains to be one of the largest media companies, content driven media companies. Hungama has its own OTD app, both the music streaming, and but they have not been able to compete with likes of Ghana and SA on the music streaming side, or the Netflix and or Prime Amazon Prime on the video streaming side, actually. But Umma still has its a pretty significant company in media tech space actually. So of course, of those four years of Hungama were was like a crash course in the media space. And if you look around today, I must tell you Hungama's contribution to the industry is Eros international Digital CEO is from Hungama, Or some of the top music guys in the industry are Hungama, so almost was like a sort of the foundation of your media tech space in that sense. Right? So everybody who worked Hungama is something of significance in the industry. So 4 years of Humgama was like a crash course. And from there I moved on to join Universal Music, the world's largest music label. In 2009 when there was a point of inflection in digital music streaming space. Globally, the music labels were seeing decline in physical sales and digital was growing.
So they hired me as a head of digital for South Asia, and I started building very interesting properties at Universal Music. In fact, at Universal Music, I got genuine exposure to the business of music globally. I used to travel the world. I got exposed to the way. The streaming business happens through Spotify and its partnerships. Did launch a couple of very interesting consumer facing initiatives in India as well. So did very interesting stuff about that. One of the things that I must mention today people claim of doing master classes as one of the largest what masterclass, globally is a very interesting platform where Masters come in and deliver masterclass. 11 years back I launched a product called MyStory on Voice with Universal and where the MyStory would come and deliver this. I mean, one hour session where they'll tell you stories about how a song came up in the background, backstory of the songs and stuff etc... And those ads is to feature during IPL alongside where Nokia's ad of Shah Rukh or Priyanka Chopra right? So first time ever the musicians of this country got recognition and their ads are featuring on mainstream television. So again, that was interesting four years at university was an interesting story. And then I thought of moving to the consumer tech side because so far I was more on the B2B side, the businesses side, the music in distribution side. And I moved to this company called Dhinganaa a music streaming service to head their business development. Dhingana in those days it used to be Silicon Valley based startup started by two boys from bay Area Indians, in Bay Area guys. So, Dhingana was almost like a bootstrap product. But in, in no time, they started competing with Saavn and Ghana and even became bigger than them in number of subscribers. And as a product also. They were very good.
Akshay: And it was a subscription based product. Like a paid not ad revenue.
Ashish: Right. So, I was on the label side. So we were actually distributing our content to these partners, and I loved Dhingana so I joined them in a year's time. Dhingana got acquired by Rdio, and then Rdio got acquired by Pandora later. So, I joined a firm called CAMedia, and CA was churning British's Asia Arm for investment British. If you don't know, he was the COO and president of NewsCo. So the big media mobiles in the industry, and he left Newsco and started his private equity firm called the Churn Group to CG Group, and the Asia arm was called CAMedia. So it was run by some.
Akshay: They used to invest in media companies.
Ashish: Media companies. Yes. So Adam, AllShine, OML, GraphicIndia, InFluence were the investment. So InFluence was a 100% in Cubed company by CMedia. And they were looking out for someone to run that company as a CEO as of the business. So I joined InFluence to run the Celebrity InFluence Network.
Again 2013 way out of its time Amitabh Bachchan, Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Mohanlal, Rajinikanth you name an artist and we had signed up with all these guys and introduced them on Digital World Digital rather, I mean, we laugh about it today. In those days, we used to call largest Celeibrity Digital Network. We didn't know that we were actually created the largest influencer network today, the world influencer is so prominent, right? But we actually created the largest influencer network around celebrities. And I still remember Salman was using 1100 when we introduce into Twitter. So very interesting days of fluence was there for two years. Built a very robust business. And by that time, my friends from Dhingana, they were onto the next startup called Mazi, I mean out of Valley. Mazi was a Nexus ventures partners back to Summer Capital and all those guys came and later a cool startup focusing on. Creating an experience for shoppers. So it was a AI led human assistant shopping concierge service, which later on pivoted to becoming a travel concierge platform completely air driven out there.
Akshay: So what what did you identify as the white space, the opportunity.
Ashish: So, I'll tell you honestly, this thought occurred to me in 2015 for the first time about a platform for music education. One of my friends he was also very keen to do something like this. So, we realized that India is so deep, diverse and rich in music. Probably we are richer than India. The country, when it comes to musical pedigree or the, the depth that we have. We have 14 languages and we have musical first languages. Our average consumption of music. Is about the world average, Despite of so much of depth and diversity and richness, we have not had a music education platform synonymous to what you see in the West at Berkeley's or Worlds of Music or Judy or whatever. While there was a, that was dance Academy that all of us had heard from Kashmir to Kanyakumari model, never knew about it, but there was nothing in music education. When I started digging deeper into this, we realized that music education in India is perceived to be etc.. Etc..
Akshay: Right It's more traditional? You joined one of the Garanna's..
Ashish: Yes. Whereas if you do research, more than 96% of people are learning music, because music to them in the mental world is what Gym to them in the physical world. Right. Everybody has their own reason. The kids are learning because it's scientifically proven that it improves your cognitive side. It gives you a sort of a pedestal right brain which has got direct. The left brain growth get a point. So confidence building and stuff etc... That's why kids learn music. A lot of the working class people, they learn music because music is a healer, it helps to elevate your mood and you wanna perform better in your karaoke session or the next party or whatever etc... You don't wanna become sogo. That's not the aim of the 96 people are learning music in this country, right? So if that is the case, then why do we have to give us size and shape to music learning, which is so serious. So we start digging deeper, further, and we realize that we had more archive, traditional learning methods, more the theoretical driven method. So for example, let me tell you, I'm born to a mother who is Visharad in hindustani classical. So my mother was a Visharad in hindustani classical.
Akshay: What is this term you using?
Ashish: Visharad in hindustani classical. It's a degree in classical. So I used to love singing when I was a kid. My mother used to teach me just casually. She never thought taught me actually. Cause my father, like many of the fathers believed that it was waste of time to learn music, engineer, lawyer, so music was in my genes now, but by the time I grew up to become a little, my voice matured to be an adult voice. After 1617, I used to sing better than my mother, with my mother learned theories of hindustani classical mode than the practicalities of singing in that sense, and that probably is a case in many cases, people will give examples exams etc... So ours is more theoretical, little traditional archive methods of learning, which I'm not saying it's bad, I'm not passing the judgment on that part. But we realized there was a need for a performance driven curriculum to be launched, which means, which prepares you to perform better as a singer, perform better as a keyboard player, perform better as a guitar player because all you care, you are learning to perform either in front of your friends, either characterization, either in your party, in office, all for yourself. So if that was the need, then we, there was a required for a requirement for a performance driven curriculum. And with that in mind Akshay we realized that if we were to go out in the market and say, Hey listen, we have arrived with a first ever performance driven curriculum, people would say, who are you to even preach that? So we thought there was a need to build a sort of an economic board. First of its kind where we sign up the maister of industries, music industry to come together and they all become like faculty heads in their academic board and they put their heart and soul in designing these curriculums. So they are the authorities.
So when you know that you have, you are learning popular film music course designed by Sony then you know that someone is putting heart and soul in doing something. There's some work which has gone band. We also realized there was a need for a finite music curriculum. Usually what happens is most of the music learners, they keep learning forever without any finite goals. You do not know what you're investing for. Right. So you also gave us size and shape to the curriculum and we put out the whole thing now, Akshay so that was a sort of sort of a research which went behind and I realized there was a need for a performance driven structured music education platform where the curriculum has to be designed by the maros delivered by teachers who are performers of their own accord, trained by this maros to deliver a sort of a structured curriculum using technology. Again, because we realized that India is not a country where you can build a brick and mortar business in scale. And we were reaching out to Global Indians from day one. So tech today you and I are chatting over technology and you are almost feeling like we are sitting in person. Right? So the idea was to use technology to deliver an in-person experience, in-person, elevated music learning experience to the learners.
Akshay: And like, so essentially you, you're building an ed tech for music. That would be..
Ashish: Yeah, you can say that. I don't know how many listeners would love to listen to the word Techknologies nowadays, yeah, I mean you can say we in a music tech space, to be honest, music education was existing. We are using technology to elevate the experience and therefore break the barriers of geography.
Akshay: What was your 0 to 1 journey? How did you convert this idea into your launch? What did you launch from this idea?
Ashish: So to be really honest Akshay it might sound sort of compass, but having a part of startups earlier, I spent a lot of time in researching in a manner that I don't have to keep reinventing or pivoting the model. As far as possible. So far we haven't had the need to pivot or probably change the model. We were clear from day one that we wanted to be academic first, vertically depot. So I didn't want to become a horizontal at tech platform in that sense, basically, or extracurricular platform. So, academic first, vertically depot, and I was clear from day one. In fact, before we launched our MVP, we had already signed up and So we were clear from day one that we wanted the, to be the the part of our academic board. We wanted to have academic board, and then we wanted these guys to become faculty heads out there. So that part was there. So a few things I'll tell you, which were very clear from day one, academic first, vertically deep. Music only maestro led curriculum designs, performance driven curriculum. So there's a lot of, let put some, lemme give you some insights as to the work which went behind in preparing for an MVP.
So, few realizations that I had actually very early on is that in performance arts business, if you purely applied business sense of business logic, you're not gonna get anywhere. You have to have creativity built in from day one. It's performance arts. So people have to believe in your depth.
They have to believe in what you're building from that perspective. So, therefore very first sign up, or I wouldn't say sign up, but someone that I acquired as a full-time with us were two guys who had 16 years of experience in designing music education program for kids. So he was our first employee with us founders we realized that we didn't have the depth of music pedagogy. Right. That was important to build. Then the second person who we got on board was, Ananth Vaidyanathan who is the chief of pedagogy, India's finance voice expert. Probably the leader in voice expertise with 40 plus of experience in music education. So he became a chief of pedagogy. So with those, with them, we built a lot of depth in what we were trying to, offer to our learners. Then I knew that building a music education platform means depth in technology. Now, I had two options either I hired a CTO and then built the entire team ground up, which would've taken me a year and a half more, right? Or else? Figure out how to go about building an MVP with the help of all the tech techy friends that I have had by virtue of my experience in the past. So I partnered with one of my friends and built an MVP, which was good enough for me to go to the market and offer a one-on-one live experience.
Obviously Zoom was integrated into our ecosystem, so video conferencing was sorted using that as a platform. And I also, we were clear that CTO in a tech company is like a Bahoo that you get in the house, she can make or break the house. So I took maximum of time to hire my CTO cause I knew the guy who comes on board has to be the one who is the captain of my ship from a tech evangelism perspective out there.
So we hired a product head from Silicon Valley. She sits in Silicon Valley again while from Bay Area because in the depth of product understanding in companies and Bay Area is much better than. The types of product understanding in Indian companies. So that was one of the things. And our CTO is what we hired eight months after we launched or six months after we launched MVP, So few things we were clear. We built one more thing that actually we were clear about. Many many people would've advised us to go with that is 5, 6, 7 stream genres of music to be launched. We just went one by one. We launched in the classical, first we went popular. So within vocal also we went genre by genre launch because we realized that, you need to build depth and work the pedagogy from one perspective. Secondly, understanding consumer behavior is very important. Even behavior with technology and whatever advancement that technology needs as you scale up, as you progress also come. So the learnings of individual every course, by the way, demands differently. My Guitar and Keyboard has different demands on technology as compared to my some of the local courses, right? So we learned Brick by Brick Built Brick by Brick and Learned block by Block, and that's how we built the entire ecosystem. Our popular film music in classical remained only two courses for seven months. Then we launched Indu Classical in Karnatic in South Indian Film Music. And this year, in March or April, we launched Guitar and Keyboard and Tabla.
Akshay: What is the kind of packaging and pricing like, you must have got like, say, 20 hour course for X rupee?
Ashish: So it's simple. All the courses, basically the genre that you decide is written 18 to 24 months long course with an assumption that you will take one class a week, so four class a month. Okay. Every class is one hour and you pay 750 rupees an hour if you're an Indian customer. And 1000 rupees an hour for advanced scores. 750 rupees is basic and 1000 advanced course. If you're a international student, you pay $25 for an hour and $30 for an hour for advanced course, basically.
Akshay: So it's not like a fixed course like a Carnatic film music course for X rupees and this includes this duration.
Ashish: Yeah. So it is fixed for that. I said, so it's 18 to 24 months. So depending on what course is like, for example Hindustani classical is 24 months popular film music is 18 months. You pay either a monthly basis, quarterly, six monthly yearly, or the full course. If you pay for the full course, the percentage discount that you already higher is higher as compared to a monthly or a quarterly course that you take from us. So the course duration is fixed.
Akshay: Why offer monthly payment? Because that would cost churn then? No, I'm sure that monthly renewal rate will not be a hundred percent.
Ashish: No. So interestingly Akshay and I knew because I was learning music myself by the way during two years of honeymoon period with MX, I started learning music also by myself. So, while I was learning music I realized that music has a level of stickiness. If you cross the first four classes, if you ask anyone around you who's learning music, if you just learn for four, five classes, no. Then the minimum time they learn is two years, three years, four years, five years. Music learning has very interesting stickiness, which is established out there. So the idea was to give a sort of a Sasha based pack to people initially to come on board and try us. Obviously as we speak today, as we are evolved and 85% of subscribers in our ecosystem are paying us for long term, we are thinking of actually removing monthly payments completely. So what you're suggesting, we are taking as a serious it's a deliberation that we are going through right now, but that monthly pack was almost like increasing our funnel off top of the funnel for us.
Akshay: Probably your customer acquisition cost would've gone down. You would not have had to spend so much in onboarding customers, because if you're selling a course with a single big ticket price, then you would need a sales team, like a Telecaller team, which would be calling customers. And you would also have to spend a lot of money on Facebook ads and so on, like performance marketing and so on. So some of those costs would've got cut down by doing this.
Ashish: No. So to be really honest cost of acquisition probably is definitely improved of time. Like any other ad tech platform or any other platform. We are also keeping vigilance on our CAC cost of acquisition. Of course some of the innovation that we are talking about has helped us reduce our heavily, our sales team is very limited. Our demo operations team also is very limited because we have built very interesting. Product features out here. So therefore from that perspective I think our CAC has definitely come in in control. And we are doing better than others for sure. But what is good for us is our retentions are upwards so let me put it this way. In last 18 months of operations, we have had less than 2% people asking for refunds.
Akshay: But what would be the renewal percentage? Like what is the average duration? Like somebody who's joining the platform, how many months he pay you for?
Ashish: Yeah, so our, more than 85% of people have been learning with us for more than a year and a half.
Akshay: Okay. So outta hundred people who join, at least 85 of them do more than a year of classes.
Ashish: And I'm saying the other 15% have not left us. They're inactive. Okay.
Akshay: Like they could renew or they could join back, huh?
Ashish: Yeah. For them, the money is with us. They're not asking for reference. It's like a gym membership. I will start. They wanna start, but just not getting time to start.
Akshay: What is your CAC, LTV ratio, that customer acquisition costs and long term value of customer. Like,
Ashish: it's a little confidential, but I'll still tell you that we are an upward of three.
Akshay: And what is your major way to acquire customers? Like do you do it through performance marketing or do you have like celebrity endorsements or, what are some of the strategies to acquire customers?
Ashish: We focused on acquiring the Nine Gems now of the industry was also to, with them, you also get the social media presence of theirs. So putting all of our celebrities put together, we have more than 35 million subscribers on social media we get lot of organic traction internationally and domestically. that our celebrities put and then further, we invest very small amount to further boosted post out there. So that call pure organic traction and traffic that we get there are in methods that everybody is just using the typical ads, GDN and Facebook and the ads that you do otherwise. Performance marketing, actually, we also figure out very interesting growth hacks. You partnered with some of the platforms internationally and, promote to them a celebrity. Social media of course is one of the biggest. We've also started promoting our what I call as the content driven marketing, which is what you invest one time, but it stays on for a long period of time. Akshay, We partnered with our Warner Music to promote our talent onto the network and launched a platform called Art Originals. So I promise to the learners actually is that we deliver an experience to you of learning. And in the journey you take a you take the path from a learner to a performer and performer to a potential influencer. So now with these guys, we are creating original content, original songs with our teachers, with our students etc.., which you put out on social media, on YouTube on all the digital platforms and distribute. That also becomes a sort of acquisition channel for us.
Akshay: And these are posted on your handles like when your learners are producing?
Ashish: Yeah it is on.
Akshay: That is a very good hack. Now every person will promote it to their circle. And that way your channel will automatically get more views and subscribers.
Ashish: Absolutely, and if you see, we are actually one of the biggest playground of raw talent. We are actually nourishing and nurturing those raw talent to become the talent of future. Even our teachers, actually even the teachers that we have had on board with us are some of these guys who have been on in an idol and starting up on the all those rare issues. So they shoes, so their performance.
Akshay: So this is like your version of placement support. Like traditional tech companies, may they have a placement support, they say we'll get help you get a job. So your version of help you get a job is help you become an influencer.
Ashish: Absolutely. So that's why we are saying no, that's what, that's a journey that we take with us. We built our entire technology around three components. What is the learning part? So all the key elements of enhancement of learning experience are built to our learning part. Then there is a performance, though you practice and perform. We also allow our students to lot to perform fortnightly on a performance platform. So they do live performances to a larger audience. They invite their friends, our community.
Akshay: And your performance platform is Artium originals.
Ashish: No, Artium Originals is actually is an influencer platform that, that's a last block performance platform is a platform for which we conduct our masterclass. We do a live showcase events and stuff etc... After they have done performance they're groomed enough with them. We curate a song, we do a digital single with them. We shoot and then launch on Artium originals, which then becomes a sort of a window to the digital world that you can get distributed on iTunes, on all the already platforms, on all the streaming platforms, on YouTube etc.. Etc...
Akshay: So somebody who's getting into Artium Original, so their Artium original is like a music label for them?
Ashish: Absolutely. So I wouldn't like to call us as music label because that's not the territory we wanna go, but we are more like a publishing platform for them. We are almost like a platform where our ambition is not to become the label. We want to become a platform to curate. And distribute genuine talent and give them wings to fly.
Akshay: But like Artium Originals are distributed on Spotify, on like all of these platforms you, like anybody coming on Artium is now also going to be available on Spotify and so on and so forth. Absolutely. And they start earning also like Spotify pays out artists..
Ashish: Yeah. Absolutely.
Akshay: Amazing. Okay. But this would be I mean, is this like a music level has a deal with an artist with a certain time period, like for three years you have an exclusive deal so is that the same with Artium originals, that when you identify high potential talent, then Artium or originals will have a deal with that talent for X number of years and you will manage and produce and distribute and have a revenue share and all of that.
Ashish: Absolutely. So the idea is that we are creating IP in partnership with an artist, technically. We are investing into IP. So the IP of what we are creating with them remains with Artium. Where Artium keeps a very small margin because, like I said, I don't intend to make a citizen amount money out of it, but passes on a large chunk of revenue with the artist, right? And we in turn have back-to-back partnerships with I mean there's a company called Global Junction, which is one of the largest distributors of digital content in India. They have partnership with Warner. So we have partnered with these guys who are then distributing our content across platforms, basically.
Akshay: What is the role of Warner here? Why don't you directly go to Spotify or Apple Music and like..
Ashish: No, so we directly go to Spotify and Apple Music using Warner's channels purely because. Water potentially is. So I'll tell you there, there are two layers. Water is partnered with a company called GMG, global Business Junction, which does the digital distribution for a lot of Moana content. Okay? Now, these guys have very interesting revenue shares with all the partners, And I wanted to leverage the depth, the distribution promise, the revenue share etc.., which is difficult for me to build. See a lot of people putting hours and years.
Akshay: Yeah. Yeah. It'll take you years to build Absolutely.
Ashish: Years and years to build something that they have built. Where my intention is not to do something on my own from scratch. I would rather leverage someone else's efforts and partner with them and use the depth to garner maximum traction, maximum eyeballs for my artist..
Akshay: And this music with the artist producer, it's your like you own the copyright to it.
Ashish: Yes. The IP of that belongs to us.
Akshay: Okay. So this is also like a long term asset, like this catalog. Eventually this catalog can also be monetized.
Ashish: So this is something Akshay I've done it as business, the distribution part of the whole thing. I've been in music tech site for years. I understand this business. What the education part, which is the first part that we're doing, is tougher. So we're choosing to do the tougher part first, and the latter part of the whole thing is something which comes naturally to us. My co-founders, Vivek Raicha is also from the media industry, right? He spent 10 years of his life as an operator with Star, Viacom etc... And then he was with CAMedia as an investor later on with KKR group investor in media focused assets and companies. So, we have a lot of depth out there in terms of our understanding. In this space, basically..
Akshay: In the long term, will you earn more from education or from the distribution business?
Ashish: So, it's a very tricky question, to be really honest, actually. Feed the, do not want to digress right now. From the origin of what we are trying to build, the entire distribution piece, the performance and the influencing part that we're building is to get maximum traction on the learning part. So, for example, I was, to give you a very loose examples, like every year aka should become popular because few of the guys are going on to become the ITGs, top rankers out there. So more people start believing in aka. So that's the closest example I can give you. We want more and more people to believe that Artium Academy is one platform which is serious about music education. We are truly building the gold standard of music education in that sense. And therefore, I mean, the things that I keep saying is we wanna become the Harvard of Music education. Harvard may put best campus, best faculty, best learning, and also best placement platform. Now, in this process, actually in this process, if we end up creating a large community of people on our platform regionals, potentially we could morph into something else, which is bigger, but right now we are not, we're using our originals as a top of the funnel to have more and more people falling in love with Artium.
Akshay: Although, you know, I'm guessing if you get like these breakout stars like a Sonu Nigam, these level of stars on Artium originals, that could be like a massive I mean, it could be much bigger than the education business.
Ashish: Yeah, absolutely. Like I'll give you one example of Akshay what we're thinking. The performance platform we built today for our own internal talent where they're performing live in front of the larger audience tomorrow. A lot of the artists who could use this technology to perform live to a global audience, right? In that process itself, if we are, we might end up creating the largest fan connection network. Not what stops me from then giving out this platform to any artist to perform. Akshay, if you're an artist, you can start, you do install. Right. You don't need to do Artium in life cause I'm gonna give you a curator performance platform and then you Ghana your fans out there..
Akshay: Like there is substack for writers. So similarly like that substack for music performers is what you could build with the performance platform.
Ashish: Yeah, absolutely.
Akshay: Amazing. Which would also help them monetize through ticket sales and all that. Something like that.
Ashish: You're nailing it. I'm loving the way you are already thinking ahead because, you can monetize it using you could create your own crowdsourcing dollar and I'm gonna give you content for the entire year etc... You could do ticketing out there. Absolutely. Do ticketing type. You can, you could have a model. So, you give 10 rupees flower, 15 rupees flower tokenized, stuff etc... You could do completely brand funded content. So you know, you could build a channel and say, you know what my said the whole thing. So there are multiple models of modernization once you create a sort of a fan impression network.
Akshay: So, tell me about your, economics of the model right now. What do you earn right now? What, like, what's your AR right now?
Ashish: Yeah, so we already 1.25 million plus in ARR and we are growing 20, 25% month on month.
Akshay: What part, how much is that in Rupees?
Ashish: That would be around 10 crores.
Akshay: Yeah. Okay. Pretty good. 10 crores analyze. Amazing and how have you funded it so far?
Ashish: Yeah we've done two rounds of funding seed round. We've raised 750K and in Prec from companies like some of the institutional investors like whiteboard capital check synthesis group. Sony In chief also invested in that round. And then we had very interesting I mean very good marque Angel investors. Then we did our procedures round led by CHI Ventures. We raised $3 million led by CHI and then whiteboard capital Jackson. This is prorated in this round. We also got Anika Capital again an institutional investor. To join hands with us in this round. We also got very good machi angels from Maama Earth from Zomato, the co-founder FinTech co-founders. So very interesting bunch of people who have come on board with us in this round. So, yeah, we are scaling up pretty fast. One of the things that we are looking at as a focus area actually we are plan to expand heavily for international audience in an expanded population outside India. Where we see more sincerity of learning from their side. The need to stay rooted to Indian culture is higher than Indians in India. Okay. And they, their sincerity is pretty high. They're all see the kind of Class is also pretty high internationally. And the second biggest market for us is South Indian population in south of India. The love for music learning is of a different level. Music to them is bias is part of the culture. So they're very about learning music and then two markets have you identified. So we are going behind them. Already 15% of our total subscriber base today as we speak is international. Without having too much spend, too much of money on international market yet because you just raised the capital. Now we are expanding in international market, but that's our organic growth.
Akshay: What is your breakup of costs? Like what percentage of costs is paid to the instructors? What percentage do you pay to these influencers? Who are the who are designing the curriculum? What percentage is spent on marketing this? Help me understand.
Ashish: So with all these maestros, we have a deal, which I generally can't talk about. But it is more sort of, I mean, you can understand we signed up the deal with Matos before raising our seed round capital when we're bootstrapped, so you can imagine. But yes, there is no revenue share there. These guys have taken one, one time fees from us to curate the curriculum, and we have a three to five years relationship with each of these guys. Sony, of course, is a veteran in chief. He has invested himself, so relationship is very different with him. He's almost like a co-founder in that sense, basically. So that is definitely different relationship out there with our teachers. We pay around 50% of the revenue share per class. Basically 55%.
Akshay: So remaining 50% you're left with how much of that is spent on marketing, how much on tech and operations and overheads and all that?
Ashish: Right. See we have close to 40% gross margins on this. Because if you remove components of teacher payout and some discounts that we offer on each of the class etc... So those 40% I mean, we have marketing expense, content expense, cost of acquisition to marketing of course, and that kind of stuff actually.
Akshay: At scale, what do you expect your margin to be?
Ashish: In four years of time when we are we are aiming to be at 180 million in ARR. And at that point in time we'll be out at 30% margin.
Akshay: And this one 80 million, you are talking of purely education revenue, not the distribution revenue or a mix.
Ashish: So, 80% of revenue will come from one-on-one live classes and one to many live classes. We'll introduce one to three, one to two at some point in time For sure. So 80% of it come from education. We also expect to do a model where we'll have curated content in a linear fashion made available to you pre-recorded content.
Akshay: Like a self-learning?
Ashish: Self-learning course. Obviously it's an extension. We could even introduce some of the hybrid models where two of the class that you take is one-on-one, and then there's one class, which is self-learning. And again, then you take two. So it's a hybrid model that introduce out there.
Akshay: Right, these are basically ways to make it affordable.
Ashish: Absolutely. So through these models we will either we'll take another 10% of our revenues will come from prerecorded kind of a, masterclass. And last 10% would come from the other models of business that we have estimated.
Akshay: Which sounds like an underestimation. No, you're saying just 10% will come from distribution. To me, distribution seems very exciting.
Ashish: Unfortunately we live in a world where sometimes when you are too ambitious and you're talking too much, we just feel that you're all over. Right. You're trying to build multiple business together. You're not in, you're not focused. Sometimes when you undermine underplay all that you're building, they feel that you're not ambitious enough out there. So we generally feel and see within all three founders, we have 60 plus of experience, professional experience. All of us have 20 plus of professional experience out there. So we believe in first building a very robust business model with what we are doing. Stay grounded. I always say Akshay I tell this to every VC. We are not playing a T 20 game, so don't expect tremendous growth every month. We are neither are playing a test match. We are playing a 50 over game, in which in first 10 over of power play, we'll hit the ball outta the park, which we did. Okay. From 2 Lakhs to 70 lakhs of revenues in a month, in 16 months is not bad. For sure. Now it is time to build the innings middle overs. By building amazing learning experience, build tools around it, offer extension of what learning so all these performance platform influences, stuff etc...
Akshay: Yeah. Right. So, I'm curious about the name you chose for your business of Artium. Can you help me understand that?
Ashish: Yeah. So Artium is the Latin name for the word Art. When we are building a platform around music education and, vertical deep platform we were not too sure whether we'll go vertical, extremely deep. Or we might build a horizon platform. So we wanted to make it a neutral name out there, and therefore, Artium was the name chosen out there. But if you wanna ask me what is Artium? Artium is we are trying, we are building the gold style in music education using the depth of modern pedagogy and technology to elevate the learning experience of a learner to deliver almost in-person experience. And in that process, a learner takes a journey from a learner to a performer and performer to an influencer. So that's what Artium is all about.
Akshay: Competitors in this space, and then I lead up to how you are doing things differently from them. And that's where this can be when. So, help me understand the landscape. Like whom all are you competing against? Are there other tech for music or tech for like this performing arts space?
Ashish: So there are many no one specifically in the model that we are operating. So there are a lot of aggregated platforms providing music education as a service. Urban Pro, in fact you have White Junior, which is also providing you coding you recording music. So there are a Horizonal places,
Akshay: So what are you doing differently from them?
Ashish: So, yeah before that, I'll tell you actually, our real competition is the offline learning that people learn offline and people who believe online learning is YouTube learning. These are two real competitions. Because this category is large enough, it is more than a 10 billion market performance arts business. Actually out of that music itself is 4 billion in that sense, basically. So this is large enough category see, what has been happening in performance art space is that everyone expects you to deliver a free live class, a demo class.
Akshay: Like the first class will be free to give you a taste of the course. It's part of the sales process basically.
Ashish: Absolutely. But unfortunately, 80% of people will book your free class a live class, a demo class. Actually, they don't turn up causing serious heartburn amongst teachers.
Akshay: Because teachers time blocked, huh?
Ashish: That also reflects very badly on their regular classes that they're taking for the paid customers. This is exhausted teacher etc... And their interest level, their love and affection and warmth for the brand also reduces over a period of time. So this is one major issue plaguing the industry. And that concept has worked wonderfully well.
Akshay: These academic experts would be like semi professionals who are not at the teacher level, but they're still trained on that specific kind of music.
Ashish: They are teachers turned professionals So they will teaching music at some point in time. They are genuinely experts. So our classroom, they will deliver better experience cause they're experts of their expon out there. So whatever they're, so we have got people who are pretty good in their understanding of music. They are the guys who are trained to deliver almost I would say flawless demo experience, standardize experience to our learners. They will experience the same level of depth of Artium that you'll experience otherwise..
Akshay: But you are protecting your teachers from all this this slightly dirty job, huh?
Ashish: Yeah. And now what has happened is now suddenly teachers are enthused to put in extra efforts in the classes. And that is delivering a delightful experience for our learners. That in turn is engaging them further with us. That in turn is helping us grow organically because there is more happening out there. Right. If you see, it's a vicious circle. If you deliver a very good experience, a time of someone joining in, trust me, actually, most of the guys believe that. If they trust, you see, with all our maros, we have built brand around Artium, people trust us, this trust factor out there. So all we gotta deliver is that people need to understand what is a free class all about, what is the curriculum, what is Artium methodology etc.. Etc.., that we deliver to academic expert model. And then we deliver the students. We give subscription of a student in the hands of the teacher and teachers are teaching actually.
Akshay: Have you done something to reduce that 80% no Show?
Ashish: Yeah. So there is also a model I'm giving out too many trade secrets right now Akshay. But there's a model that we have built in our structure, which is called as what flights, airlines do multiple booking for the same slot. Now this is where technology comes very handy. So we build a completely tructure, I mean automated model Java pay for every slot. We are booking two or three demos now cause our demo rate itself is 20% out of 80. So one in three or one in four is gonna turn up. But there could be a potential case where two in same slot might turn up and none of the guys in other slots might, will turn up in that sense, basically that these guys focus sitting out there. Right? So my system automatically sees a free expert and divert that call. I would say call means guy on our video conference platform to the expert and expert takes over.
Akshay: So basically like for example, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM you have three or four experts who are available, and then the system is automatically routing demo classes to them based on who's available. And most of the times there is no but there could still be a case where you have more people logging in than experts available.
Ashish: Trust me, that's a case. We are in a seriously good business for sure. So far our elbow is working pretty fine, but we also have a hack for it. Image is, if there is a situation, there are two people led up on the same slot and not more than one expert is available out there immediately using our CRM solution, our system alerts, our sales team, our operations team, and the guy gets a message on the dashboard that, Hey, please wait. Somebody's gonna reach out to you right away. And a call out happens. And we'll apologize and we'll reslot him on some other slot.
Akshay: Because that is costly also like, because the teacher is still to be paid even if the student doesn't turn up because you block the teacher's time.
Ashish: Absolutely.
Akshay: Do you measure NPS? And you know what kind of..
Ashish: Yes. We have 6.4 as NPS right now. Which is not bad.
Akshay: So, how does the student experience the classes? Is it a mobile lab? Is it like through the desktop? What is it..
Ashish: So, we are web first so far, and I also generally believe Akshay if a students gonna lie down and take the class lying down,
Akshay: You can't do it on a mobile. Yeah. You have to sit in front of a table..
Ashish: Yes in Music you can't learn like that actually. Then you're doing the service to yourself. Right. but we are coming up with a mobile app to enable student to practice using the content that we are giving them through a practice studio we have built. So we also built a practice studio for our students, which will allow the students to practice with, for example, you learns something in the class today. The content come since in your dashboard after you have gone. All those widgets out there, that's all built on your app. So you play with that. You practice, once you've done rehear you can record your rehear and send it as an assignment to a teacher. Teacher gets the assignment on their dashboard, they assess the assignment and they send feedback to you with annotating one minutes, one minute, 10 seconds, you went flat, your you want Cetera. So they also solving the problem of offline, you meet your teacher once in a week and then your teacher through our platform, you're constantly interacting with your teacher within two classes out.
Akshay: Have that feedback is very less. Because once a week you will play in front of your teacher. There's nobody giving you feedback.
Ashish: Absolutely. This is one of the problem areas which you see out there. Let me also give you a couple of things that we are doing, which is very unique as compared to anyone else. Akshay of course, this studio I'm talking about. So the app allows the consumer to practice and all app allows you to schedule your classes. So everything minus taking live classes is what we are offering on the app as of now, right. For a class app, desktop page, yeah. But now, we have moved away from Zoom as a platform. We built our own video conferencing platform. Now it's a question that I could ask multiple times as to why do we need to reinvent the wheel? We are not reinventing the wheel. We are partnered with someone who has widely labeled the whole solution for us. But it's custom made for Artium in that sense. But what we are doing is today in our learning experience, actually I'm teaching you right now for example if you're a student, when I'm teaching you vocal I start my app on the other side, one tends to negative, the other, killing the experience. What we've done is we built our own video conferencing platform, which allows you to put all these widgets on the dashboard itself, and using socket technology, teacher can start tanura at his end. Parallelly. The tanura starts at students end also. So when he sings, there is absolutely no lag and the singing. And last thing we are building right now is that actually every parent whose kid learns would love to know what are the learning. So of course we have built very interesting scientific progress graph, learning graphs so you know, on different parameters, how your kid is learning and stuff etc.., which is happening but we are also building a sort of a tool within conferencing platform, which will allow teacher will be empowered to record that piece.
Akshay: And share with the parent.
Ashish: And as soon as the class is over, by default system is shared with the parent.
Akshay: And probably you could put your branding in that video so that when the parent is circulating on WhatsApp groups family WhatsApp group.
Ashish: Absolutely. So you stuff actually with our local stuff. So we have now, so small things that you evangelize, which will change the experience of a learner and make them fall in love with you.
Akshay: So, right now you are doing Indian music, Right? .What about more stuff for which there is a global demand more regular like say jazz and saxophone and guitar also, I think you already have, but like, for a global audience are you looking to build more courses?
Ashish: I'll tell you Akshay we have built all the vocal courses including Western Vocal as well. So there is Western vocal in included thing. Our keyboard classes has got pop, jazz, all the components, our Guitar classes, so Western instruments are also there. Right now. The winds instrument like saxophone and all needs a lot of tech evangelism to be built in. So, like I was saying, everything that we are doing first when you do keyboard class with us, no, actually our keyboard reflects on the screen. What notions your teachers are playing actually. That's a delivery of a different kind. So every instrument that you introduce needs certain level of hardware, software integration to, to give the experience that a consumer will otherwise experience in, in, in offline world actually.
Akshay: How do you do that? Like how does the student see what keys the teacher is pressing on the keyboard?
Ashish: So it is, we built the entire technology, which is allowing the mid integration into our software. And we built in a manual that the half portion of the screen gets taken over by what you're playing, and teacher also sees what the student is playing on the side basically..
Akshay: And what about for guitar? Is there something similar?
Ashish: No Guitar is still something that we're trying to figure out. It's still a little bit of a look and feel out there, but there are components that I definitely can't share here, but these are things that is part of my R & D right now that we are working on that will offer so basically it allows the laptop to have a it's like camera set up on your laptop. It gives you 360 degree view of your laptop. So tomorrow, if somebody's not having a media integration out there and when it is playing, it reflects on my screen. So teacher knows exactly what a student is playing when he's doing out there, actually. But listen, a lot of write, lot of the Indian customers today are learning Western music and they're signing up in expensive schools either globally or locally or the, so through our platform, nothing stops us from getting the best teachers from LA and Western World offering Western courses to the Indian consumers out there. So that's definitely the roadmap, not in image two to three quarters for sure.
Akshay: But you need a lot more funds because you then need to have those western influencers signed up to really drawing consumers.
Ashish: But see, I'll tell you, I'll tell you honestly Akshay, if you're in the right path, funds is not an issue though. There is a winter and whatever the people are calling, if you are you, if you're in the right direction, you are growing well, you're doing right business, right way. Your model is almost enough, then funding is not an issue.
Akshay: What's your current growth rate like by what rate is month on month?
Ashish: We are growing 20, 25% month on month right now. And actually I'll tell you, even to elevate the experience of learning, we have given Artium branded headphones, mics, sound card to all our teachers. So every teacher delivers you experience. They are not singing on a headphone, keeping their head like this and stuff etc... know, It's an experience of a different kind. It's professional experience. All our teachers wear Artium branded cots, So they sit with a cot with Artium brand on top of it. So you experience truly Artium experience out there.
Akshay: Amazing. What does the sound card do? Like, can't you just plug in your headphone and mic to the laptop?
Ashish: No. Sound card refines the sound further to eliminate any sort of tech glitch that you your system can give you output. So it's almost like bettering the sound. See, and that sound card is more required for the teacher's side. Your teacher has to sing and deliver or play and deliver.
Akshay: Okay. And this is like a USB plugin, kind of a sound card?
Ashish: Yes. A plugin, sound card plugin into your to your laptop.
Akshay: Okay amazing. So, what do you think is the exit for Artium? Do you think that it makes sense to be a part of a bigger tech? Byjus Is one name, which I know is not a popular name right now, but similar sets, bigger attacks, or do you want to remain independent?
Ashish: See if you ask a founder, any founder would say one of the most painful moments of the life was when they're to sell off. Is part of what money they were making out of it. Selling off is a painful process. Like any other founder, I would really want love to take this company to IPU, given the first choice. If we should be become, we should become a global music education platform enough to have an IP of our own. Right where multilingual education is delivered across. But if you were to ask me who are the set of people who would like to buy a business like ours, obviously K12 platforms like Byjus and all already pick unicorns like Byjus or Unacademy. Those sort of people would definitely want to expand their portfolio of offerings for sure. Using someone like Artium. So that's one option. There are a lot of music labels that I see, global music labels, so media houses. Interesting in creating interesting amount of talent pool using education as a process. Like I already know, some of the big labels in the west are thinking of starting their own education platform or education. Through the cause it's an extension of what they're offering otherwise. Or you would say backward integration in that sense.
Akshay: It's like a PE fund starting incubator. Like Sequoia has that surge.
Ashish: Absolutely. So like that. Right? So they, that would be one of the things that I think some, so the media houses is what I see. Some of the broadcasters are the set of people that I believe..
Akshay: So, the audience has so far heard your story, which is about six to nine months old. give us an update on, what's happened in the last six, nine months..
Ashish: Yeah. I think, two things. So we had the vision very clearly that we want to become India's first Outcome driven music education platform. What it means in that sense is with our own set of learners and, I mean, talents which are learners and teachers put together. The idea was to then give them a platform to perform, which we built over a period of time where every fortnight we have learners to perform in front of larger audience, virtual audience in that sense. And then select few out of them who are really have, who have the potential with those sets of people. We create original, songs, create video and release through our platform called Artium Originals. So I think, last time when we spoke, we were still in a very early stage, but now we can proudly say that we have launched Artium Originals as a platform. And every week we release new single on the platform, which technically we mean that in a couple of years, we might become the largest library of independent music, you know published through our platform on various DSPs, various streaming platforms, both audio and video put together. So we have a large catalog of IP that we own.
That's one flywheel that we have developed. Now with this, these musicians, talented musicians that we are launching. Few of those guys we believe have the potential to become probably the biggest independent music, artists, musicians, who probably will be able to go out there and perform live, create more and more content. Those in today's language we use as creators. So those creators, we also sign up those people on our platform. we have a creative management agreement with these guys, which what it means is we will have, rights to, launch them on various platforms and through monetization of their, assets on various platforms, there'll be a revenue, which will plow back to Artium. Now, again, we strongly believe that Artium Academy will become the fulcrum of the whole ecosystem. But all these tailwinds that you're talking about, or rather the flywheels if you're talking about, the funnel where more and more people will talk about the brand Artiu, they'll talk about brand Artium and they would want to come back and learn. We have signed up with almost 21 creators now, which are launched on our platforms. And we'll continue to do that as we progress.
Akshay: You did, give the example of like, say in Akash, like this test prep businesses, which are again, outcome driven, the outcome is you get a rank in IIT and so that. Automatically drives more traffic to you because you are showing that there is proof of success. So you basically want to create proof of success for learners, to drive more top of the funnel. and then the other advantages, unlike an Akash where someone gets into IIT, then that's it's relationship. But here, if someone becomes a musician, you are still going to be able to monetize that relationship as a talent management agency.
Ashish: Absolutely. So the idea is never to become a talent management agency. We would enable, if you want to become the enablers, for example, there are very good talent management agencies, which are doing pretty well distributing the, content and what I think on various platforms that are agencies, which are providing this talents, live shows and real time performance opportunities and stuff etc... We And still make a share of revenues from all these partnerships out there because talent management and being an agent itself is a business in its own way, basically. But we can safely say that we could, by while creating our own IP, we could become the new age digital distribution label. Or future for independent music In that sense, basically..
Akshay: How does the IP work? Does it belong to the artist or is it like shared between the artist and the label?
Ashish: So, some of the cases we co on the IP, some of the cases we own the IP, but largely the exploitation rights in perpetuity.
Akshay: Okay. So, so the artists will get some share of the revenue. You will get some share of the revenue. Absolutely. Absolutely. Got it. And this is like revenue from Spotify plays or if, it is licensed.
Ashish: Some of the web series is would like to pick up a song or a movie wants to pick up a song etc... They have a ready library of, I mean some brands want, wants to exploit, these assets in their jingles. So they want to create something out of it. Like for example, I'll tell you. So, we also, venturing in brand led, brand funded content partnerships. So for example, a lot of these brands today, what do you use? content as a strategy to distribute, out there in the market. so we just did a very interesting partnership with Josh, which is not a monetary partnership in that sense, but it was a win win Josh is after TikTok probably become the largest short format video platform today in India, they have a huge amount of creators. So with them, around 15th of August, we launched, next Miliya Sur Mera Tumara called Bharat Ka Sur, where we published independent brilliant track in 12 different languages and, all the people who performed, in video format in, in that video, but all the creators of Josh, so Artium and Josh came together to create the largest UGC platform, UGC Anthem of country called Bharat Ka Sur, and, you know, almost. 100 odd million, streams of this song we saw on, Josh platform, more than 10,000 Josh creators created video and shared the video with us out of which almost 2000 of them featured in the video basically. So interesting partnerships like that will help us.
Akshay: So I understand your edtech revenue, that is like a subscription for course, very standard, easy to understand. Help me understand the revenue here, like what do you, what percentage of. What kind of revenue do you make from what the song earns on Spotify and revenue do you make when there is a concert or things like that? Like, just give me a broad...
Ashish: It's very early, right now for us to count the revenues on those platforms because we are only creating those flybills right now. Last year, because Warner Music and a platform called Global Music Junction, which is the largest distribution on digital, for Warner Music the partners together. So we had signed a deal last year with them, backed by Warner Music, where Warner realized that this is potentially, our team is creating the largest bed of talent. And therefore they partnered and said, you know what, we will start publishing your content. So Warner has deep integrations with all the DSPs with their own CMS across platforms. so today, whatever we publish to Warner CMS, through using GMJ as our partnership, platform out there. And we do a revenue share between them and us right now. We have started monetizing all our assets in last couple of months. It's very early to count the money. when it comes to the creative management side of the story, we are taking baby steps in that direction too. We have just started getting small, inquiries, from, people who are doing shows to play some of our own talents to perform live on the stage. But those are two flywheels we believe could potentially become big as we go in the future. into the future.
Akshay: Got it. Got
Ashish: I'll give you a couple of, a couple of data points Akshay which is. There's a very interesting, survey done by Sun, in US where they asked people within the age of, 12 to 19, what do they want to become what the career path they would like to take. And 50% of those guys said, we would like to become a YouTuber or a blogger or, in some, some way.And of those sets of people, almost 30% of people are the music creators. That's aspirant, music creators out there. the shift industry was seven to eight years back, almost 95% of music consumed on any platform, digital platform was all movie based content, which beat Bollywood, Kollywood, Dollywood, Mollywood, whatever you call them. Right. Today, major platforms like Spotify, the split is 65, 35 in favor of films and, 35% streams are independent music. Now that's a big shift. We are moving towards. an industry which is existing in West, which is largely artist driven and not a film driven industry out there.
Now, in that kind of an ecosystem, where if you see on, on, on YouTube in India, let's talk about India alone in 22% of total streams on YouTube are driven by 5% of music content, And 90% of billion plus views are all music videos. Music content, which clearly means that while music creators are third or fourth in category in terms of the creators ecosystem, the stickiness, watch hours. Revenue generation part is going to be very high when it comes to the creators in the musical system. And that's one, one place where I believe we can play a very vital role as a natural extension of what we are offering in our team.
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