33 | André Miranda / Musiversal: Why the Future of Music Is Human (Even in the Age of AI)
44m 7s
Andrei, a classically trained musician from Portugal, transitioned from film scoring to entrepreneurship by founding Museoversal, a platform that enables remote recording sessions between musicians and music creators. The key problem Museoversal solves is the high cost and inefficiency of traditional music production, which often leaves songs as unfinished demos. By offering a $249/month subscription, creators gain unlimited access to over 150 professional musicians for recording, mixing, and mastering, effectively turning a home studio into a full-scale production facility. For musicians, the platform provides stable monthly income and flexible work from home, replacing the uncertainty of gig-based earnings. Andrei’s journey involved overcoming early funding challenges, but a pivot to a subscription model just before COVID attracted significant traction and investment. Regarding AI, Museoversal views it as a tool for creating initial sketches, but the company doubles down on the value of human-to-human collaboration, which they believe will become more premium as AI-generated music floods the market. Future plans include scaling to 20,000-30,000 sessions per month and launching a free online community with live workshops from industry experts, including Grammy winners. Museoversal’s branding centers on creating musician jobs and making live recording sessions the standard, positioning human artistry at the heart of music production.
[Music] Listen founders, welcome to this Founders meeting. Your Monday morning snack to cake of the week. I'm your host Halika and every week we're diving into the minds of Founders worldwide, uncovering strategies and stories behind their biggest wins and toughest challenges. Whether you're just starting out or scaling to new heights, this podcast is your shot of motivation. [Music] Andrei, welcome to this Founders meeting. Thank you for inviting me. I'm really excited to talk about some music, some technology today, so just really glad to be here. Just to give a little intro to you, Andrei, you are a classically trained musician who has transitioned into tech and entrepreneurship, and your company, Museoversal, is revolutionizing the music industry by providing musicians with steady work and music creators with affordable high quality talents. I'm excited to dive into your journey and learn more about how you're disrupting the traditional music production model, super exciting. Yeah, so that's exactly what we've been trying to do over the last five years. Essentially what Museoversal does, it essentially hires musicians that become available on their home studio to then do remote recording sessions for music creators around the world. But although this is mostly happening in the US, and if you really think about it, all that we're doing is bringing the classic way of producing music, which would be in the recording studio, and we're putting it online. So it can be done at scale, much more efficiently at a lower cost, but without taking away the income for the musicians and without taking away the magic of the recording session. And so I think it's just going to be more and more valuable in the future, this element of human collaboration where there's one human collaborating with another human to create art. And you're already seeing a lot of pressure in the music industry to make sure musicians are present. There's a premium paid and placed on human music. It's kind of ridiculous to say this, human music, but it's true. And we're seeing that unfold, which is just really a little bit scary for artists, but it's also very exciting to see that there's a permanent premium attached to human musicians. Yeah, I'm really excited to start with your childhood and build a momentum from that. Could you tell us about like how was it growing up? You of course live in Portugal, currently. You are from Portugal, but you lived in the USA for some time, who was under as a child and how did you grow into the entrepreneur you are today and how has your childhood early experiences shaped your path? Cool questions. I was born in Lisbon, Portugal. I lived there until I was 21. Then I went to study in the US and NYU, the York University. Those are two very different places with two different cultures, but in a way, I was always exposed to American culture from a very young age. As are I think 99% or more of Portuguese kids or European kids. So you watch the movies, you eat the food, you listen to the music, you play the video games. And so when I was going to a musical here in Lisbon, I felt this huge disconnect between what the university and academia wanted me to do versus what I wanted to do. They essentially only cared about contemporary music, which is that kind of music that it's not classical music, it's played by an orchestra, but it's not classical. It's contemporary, which means to layman, it sounds weird, it sounds bad, if you will, right? Because it doesn't use the traditional scales and music theory. And so I didn't want that, I wanted to make film scores. And so I just had this cultural misalignment with the European high brow music composition culture. And I went to the US to explore this more commercial cool quote unquote side, which is film scoring, music for films. And that's where the idea for music verse all started at the very early stages. I was wondering, what was the key problem or challenge you were trying to solve when you started music verse all? And was there an aha moment that made you decide to launch this company? Kind of. So it was more like a present and always present problem. Because every music creator, let's say songwriters, music students, they always write music, they're always writing music on their computers at the piano, whatever it is. And of course they intended to be a finished piece so they can enjoy it and other people can also enjoy it. And the fact is that most of those songs never actually make it to the stage of fully produced song. They're always kind of like a demo. They're kind of like a sketch for how things might sound. And it's cool for a while, but after like five, ten years of doing it, it gets really boring. You kind of want to see the whole thing done. And so why aren't people all taking their music to the studio to record and make it beautifully produced so other people can enjoy? Because it costs a lot of money. That was the only issue. And so that's when I decided, okay, let's try to solve that problem. And when you start dissecting the problem, you realize music production is a very inefficient market. And there was so many things to fix to make musicians usable by music creators. We just not good enough that you would go online and find a random musician for like $200 a song. And then half of the time it didn't work out very well. That just turned everybody off and just spent people's money without having the result they wanted. And so, music verse in shores that every recording session is going to be great. You're going to get the files the way you wanted them. And if you cannot, it's fine because you have unlimited sessions. So you can just book another one and keep going. And all are at a fraction of the cost because musicians don't have to rely on the sporadic payment for a gig. They're actually receiving a stable amount every month, which completely changes the rules of the game and the economics of music production. It just makes it enticing for the musician economically, but it makes it affordable and usable by the music creators. I wanted to hear your pits because of course you have two audiences. It's the musicians and the music creators. If I was your target audience, like how would you convince me that this is the way forward? And I should give it a try. Well, if you were a music creator, I would say for $249 a month, you got unlimited access to all the musicians on our roster, which is around 150. And so you would immediately understand that's the price of a recording session, but you're getting 100 plus people and you can book a ton of sessions with them to work on anything you want. And so it's like it transformed your laptop and bedroom into this massive studio. You can just do exactly whatever you want. You can fully produce any type of song from your bedroom, from beginning to end, from writing, the recording session with the musicians, mixing, mastering, even marketing the song afterwards, which is also a service we have. So it's a pretty cool tool. And it's also a lot of fun to use. It's not only that the subscription is productive and deficient. It's a lot of fun to produce music with another musician instead of just being in front of your laptop, like for hours editing stuff. Yeah. The first is if I was a musician that was like we talked about musicians have a hard time sometimes having a steady income and having access to music creators as well. And you have a waiting list as well at the moment. So you're fully booked. Yeah. The bit for musicians is very simple. Like if you get hired by a music reversal, you got a steady payment every month. And so you can make your own schedule and you can work from home essentially recording from your home studio. And you can be sure that at the end of the month you have a certain amount of money, which is really helpful. And it doesn't mean you have to only do a music reversal. Like some musicians only work for a music reversal. But most of them they do lots of things. They work for a music reversal on the times where they don't have other stuff to do. And then they have gigs outside or other recording sessions or they teach or it's like a compliment to people's income or the full thing. It just depends on how people want to use it. As a trained musician transitioning into this like tax startup world, what were some of the biggest challenges you faced and how did you overcome them? I think it
every musician is a little bit of an entrepreneur, even though they don't know it, at least the composers, because you're naturally creative. And so you're naturally interested in new ideas and the idea space and exploring things. It doesn't necessarily mean everyone wants to make a company, but I really truly believe that every musician has a little bit of this in them. And so it wasn't that difficult for me to do the transition from an aspiring film composer to an aspiring entrepreneur, because most of the time music creators and film composers, they are just promoting their work in networking and trying to find the clients, which for them are filmmakers or film producers. And so it's not very different. At the end, the film industry is an industry, and so it's not only about making music, it's also about the business. And so it was a pretty easy transition, but there are some fundamental differences between the free-lancer, which is what a film composer would be, versus being a startup founder CEO, which involves different kinds of things, involves creating a company that could scale, and that could be invested. And so the spirit has similarities, and it's kind of like translatable in some ways, but the skill set is just like way, way, way bigger. You need a much wider skill set to be a startup CEO than you need to network in the film industry. But definitely, it's a really interesting transition, and of course, it had a lot of exciting days and a ton of really difficult ones as well, of course, but I think everyone in the audience that created a company would immediately expect that. Yeah, talking about transition, of course, I would love to talk to you about the rise of AI and music creation tools, how has it impacted your business model, and the musicians that work with you, and what opportunities and versus challenges has this AI wave presented? We actually see a lot of our users using AI mock-ups, AI sketches, to ID8, and then have that as a starting point for the musician. And so they're kind of using AI in the same way they were using digital audio workstations like Logic Pro five years ago. You do a sketch, you take it to a place where it's kind of your idea, but then you want to finesse it, or you want to embellish it, or you want to have someone else's input, and kind of craft it, polish it. And so the only difference is that the threshold for who can reach the stage of a demo has lowered dramatically because before you need to understand music theory or really grind a lot on the computer to get to a demo stage, or you just have a really crappy demo. And now you can have AI, do a lot of the work for you. So it's just incredible. Like we're seeing even non-musicians using Meet Measy Versal, which is kind of interesting. And we recently had a few months ago, had this client that chose a filmmaker, and she was doing this short film about Christ. And instead of using the budget for a composer, she used the budget to hire an orchestra via Meet Measy Versal, because the AI wrote the music for her. It's an example. And by the way, she won an award, some more in LA, I'd have to check exactly which festival it was, but that music won an award, and that documentary as well. And so what I'm seeing is AI having these multifactorial effects that in some cases, they shift where budgets are being spent. In some cases, they decrease the budgets being spent. And in other cases, it brings new people to the market to work with musicians that otherwise wouldn't. And so it's very complicated to say exactly how things are working, because there are lots of people doing lots of choices that it's just difficult to understand. But I think the aggregates move that we're seeing in the music industry is positive with AI, because it brings more people to the table. That's what we are seeing. The negatives might be that budgets are shifted from one place to the other. So that's going to create instability and a shift in demand that might cause some issues in the short to medium term, i.e. for example, this is client. Shifting the budget from the composer, that would otherwise use the computer to generate the music, right? Shifting the budget to the orchestra itself so that the composer was not used before. Composer would be used, but not the musicians. In this situation, musicians were used, but not the composer. So the budget shifted. That has consequences. And so no wonder the music industry and communities very scared and skeptical about AI, because it has the potential to really change how things work. And we're going to see the unfold in the next coming years. It's all happening really quick. Yeah, and it's changing week by week. There is no way to predict it, it seems. But I agree with you. I think that the human to human collaboration will even in the future, or the next, let's talk about next month's years, increase in value, both for the humans creating and receiving. And I even feel like people out there are already on the fence of AI created stuff that they don't feel as connected to it. Yeah, there is lots of AI music that people don't even know it's AI. They just think it's regular music. And so what I think is going to happen is there's going to be a huge avalanche of music coming out for people to consume. And so the number of listeners is not going to increase the number of songs will. So that's going to essentially create inflation, right? So the value of each additional song is going to decrease, which is something we saw already like in the early 2000s, 2010s, etc. with a lot more songs being created by people. And if you go Spotify, there's like a ton of songs nobody listens to already. And that's been the case for many years. And so that long tail of songs that nobody cares about is going to keep exploding with AI. And so the pressure to stand out for music creators and composers is going to keep increasing because against this avalanche of a decreasing value of a single song, right? It's going to be diluted that value. You're going to have to make something really special. You're going to have to stand out. And so if you want to stand out, it's going to have to be through something that is unique to you personally, right? That is conveyed through music or that is conveyed through live shows or through a backstory. Something that makes people follow you because of you. And that's kind of the opposite of going into Suno or Udo and prompting an AI that's going to spit something generic, right? Both things have some value, but you cannot dispute. There's like orders of magnitude more value when a specific artist has a backstory, an intention, crafted the song with his own fingers and with people. And so, in a way, nothing has changed because it has been the case that a superstar will have an incredible ability to monetize their songs and have lots of years listening because they have all of this. And if I uploaded my song today to Spotify, nobody would care. And so there's nothing new under the sun here. It's just that this trend will accelerate. Yeah, very interesting times ahead, of course. But talking about standing out and me, of course, coming from the branding world. I'm very interested to know how you crafted the brand of Museiversal and how do you stand out in the market and how important this branding to you? It's important. So branding is kind of a deep concept because it has to do with who you are in your core, what your core values are and how do you express them day-to-day and in your communication. And so it's not merely like a logo or the website colors. Our branding has been from day one that we want to create more musician, quote unquote, jobs. We want to create more demand for musicians and we want to make live music production collaborations, live recording sessions, the standard for music production. So even before the AI wave, we were all about the human connection and the value of the live interaction between a creator and the musician. And today that transpires to our branding. So it's not that with this like AI, if used properly, but we want to ensure that the musicians and creators are the centerpiece of the music industry and not, you know, and not to thought. We just deeply believe that AI technologies should be used to help creators bake better music and never substitute them.
And so this distinction is extremely important in the way we position ourselves in the music industry. Because there are companies positioning themselves in a different way, which is, say, making limited songs with the prompt. And that's not necessarily in the best interest of music creators. Or at least it's not yet reflecting that, if that's the case. Yeah, that creates this curiosity in me regarding the future. And the future you see ahead and your vision for the future of Museoversa, like where do you see the company going in the next two to five years? Well, first, like in the next coming months to a couple of years, we're just working on scaling our current business model. We just want to onboard more musicians and more music creators. We're doing about 10,000 recording sessions a month. So we want that number to be like 20,000, 30,000 in the next year. Yeah, it's starting to be a big number. And so that's one thing. We just want to create more musician demand to make more recording sessions. But there's something particular about this year. So we are bringing to market what we call Museoversa online community. And it's nothing more than a huge, a huge amount of online workshops on every single topic, regarding music production, music industry, songwriting, mixing mastering, all of these things. That we're going to give away for free to the music community. So anyone can sign up for free and watch all of the workshops, which are live. So you can ask questions, it can interact. And this is us essentially doubling down on the importance of community, collaboration, idea, cross-ponization. We think that's a way better way to spark ideas and creativity, and help people come up with new ideas, new skills, new ways of doing music production, new connections, writing buddies, etc. And also we're going to have a lot of industry speakers, that have, you know, our Grammy winners, etc. So they will be learning from the best. I'm really also interested to know more about your investment journey so far. How have the different funding rounds and investor relationships kind of shaped the growth and direction of the company? So the first funding we had was a very small funding round from an accelerator. And at the early stages, we didn't really know what kind of product we wanted. We just knew we had this problem of wanting to make music production affordable and creating, quote unquote, jobs for musicians. So we're like stumbling and the dark a little bit. At that moment was hard to raise funds. We did raise a seed round, which was mostly based on the investor's faith. I believe in that I could execute something worthwhile more than a business plan really, because I myself was not entirely sure of what we're going to build. But then right before COVID, we started working on this new idea, which was really different. And it still is really different. What if instead of making a marketplace when providers can charge a fee for the services? And if we do this subscription service where people pay to have access to all of the musicians and everything is included at that moment, we got a lot of traction, so growth and funding became a little bit easier. Then we spend a couple years trying to figure out how the business works because it's kind of a at the beginning complicated model to figure out. And then slowly, but surely we kept like ticking off problems that the business had solving those until the list of problems you have gets smaller and smaller. And so you're more ready to accept capital and scale. So then we raise a series a last year. And now we're in that stage where we're between series a in the potential series B. If we need to raise that. And I don't know about other entrepreneurs journeys, but ours was not like. You know, you're walking down the street someday and you kick a rock and it's like, oh my God. I know how to scale the business. Oh no, it's more like you go to work every day. You try to solve the problems one by one. Many times by failing and having to do it again. And slowly and painfully you get to the right answers. That was my experience. I'm not sure if over people have the same one, but it's not easy. Yeah. And I guess of course there are different challenges in each stage, you know. And sometimes people think like, oh, series A, that's a that's the dream. You know, but what are the daily challenges of a founder of a series a company? I think this is a stage where startups probably go from a very small team with undocumented processes where just like, hey, we need to do this happen. These kind of Slack message things can happen. But once you start scaling the team and everything really, you start understanding that your job is no longer to be involved in the day to the operations of sending an email or revising the copy. And it's in talking to your team to build processes. Right. How the structure basically works like a well-functioned machine and make sure that whenever you deploy a dollar or a euro. It's actually being productive instead of just being wasted with a process that doesn't work or is not being monitored properly or that is misaligned with the goals, etc. And so it's very different. I think it's a stage where you go from founder to becoming a CEO. And it can be quite confusing at the beginning. At least I felt that at a certain point I wanted to be extremely involved in day to day things. And because I couldn't really where I shouldn't I felt a bit frustrated and I felt like I was not doing a good job because I felt like a good job was, you know, sitting for three hours doing a specific task. But in fact, I should be doing that. I should be working with I should understand if that task needs to be done over and over again. And if so, create the process so that happens. And move on to the next thing. It's a different ballgame. For me personally, I have to say this. I think it's way cooler when you have nothing. And you just like in this permanent anxiety survival mode where you just have to build the whole thing from scratch without knowing anything. That's very it's very cool. It's very creative. I think in many ways it's also more challenging and more difficult. Actually, the journey from zero dollars to one dollar. In many ways, it's more difficult than certainly from one to two million. That is orders of magnitude easier than zero to one. Wow, very interesting. And I relate to this, of course, because this transition between being a founder to being the CEO, it's often something that, you know, is not in people, you know, they are not used to or not even wanting to be the CEO, but they kind of have to. And like letting go of your responsibilities and handing them over to someone else, this transition is like much more than just like handing it over, you know. I think it goes like very deep into like emotional that it's an emotional process actually. And letting go of responsibilities and tasks that you maybe believe that you do the best, you know, to someone and trusting someone to do it. Even maybe hopefully better than yourself. Do you have any tips on this transition to anyone that is like out there and facing the same kind of journey? I just think this transition is very personality dependent. I think it's different for different people. And for some personality types, it might be the stage where you finally feel like you're doing a good job. It's just might not like the chaos of the very early stages. But like I said at the beginning, I think founders are usually creative people. And so I think it's more likely they feel a little bit out of place once they have to create systems at work instead of doing the work themselves. I don't know what my tip is really, but my way of working through this was just to accept that your role is going to evolve over time and not be attached to anything specifically. I happen to believe that every single person on the team is better than me at their task. And so I'm just a generalist that is able to understand every corner of the company. And that probably has a better aggregate understanding of the whole company than any individual person on the team. So I'm kind of the opposite of the team members, if you will. And so I can bring insights that perhaps they don't have. And I can propose things that they wouldn't be able to because at the end of the day, you have more information than they do about the general situation of the company. Which is exactly what you should have if you want to make strategic decisions, right? And you have a general idea of what's the opportunity, what are the challenges that you check with your team so they can help you think. And so I enjoy that part. I think that's very cool. Where it gets a bit more difficult to manage is you have to rely on your team to make decisions for you as well for the company basically. And sometimes you agree with that decision and you understand that the decision and sometimes.
You don't fully understand that decision because you don't understand the facts underlying that decision and so You might end up agreeing with something because you trust the person and you trust that the data That was given this correct without having the time or resources to validate everything and so that is the part where Having a very good team and very good employees makes a huge difference You can easily imagine that a nay player would be fantastic for the organization and anything else than that could represent a pretty big risk because you'd be forced so to speak to agree with decisions that are going to compound in the wrong direction that can destroy a company and I originally see some stuff that diverges a little bit from the path that I believe the company should be in It's kind of difficult to know when to intervene because you also don't want to be a tyrant You know, and you need to be aware that you don't have all the answers to every single thing And so there is a very real probability that what you think is correct is incorrect and The team actually has the best ideas forward and so You just have to almost like a mind game, you know, you have to really always be studying your own company and the market and and the processes and assessing if the teams and the company is working properly and well-calibrated and Yeah, I've constantly it's calibrate yourself to and so It can be fascinating or it can be terrible depending on your personality. I kind of like this kind of It's almost like a game in a way. So I kind of like it But I believe this is a transition From you doing work yourself everything is in here To kind of like having a team that needs to integrate really well with with your own Agenda and what the company should be doing Yeah, do you use any tools to kind of align the team? You cannot call these tools, but we have meetings and we have documentation and Usually we'll have like a short conversation about a about a topic if it's new and then we Write our ideas to develop them and then another person or people would come in and Comment criticize or give the counter arguments on the document so it can get really complicated sometimes and Then essentially at the end it converged and be like okay, let's agree on this and let's produce next steps But that's the alignment right and of course you have the company wide meetings where you just share what is happening to make sure everybody knows But essentially alignment is all about communication Sometimes you's written when you want to go deep sometimes you use spoken if you want to go interactive essentially Yeah Who is a founder or entrepreneur that you particularly admire and Why do they inspire you? I don't know man, but I have to say this so I always admired Elon Musk a lot these days I don't understand what happens like during 24 and 25 I feel like that was a bit weird incursion into politics But Elon Musk is someone that I respected because he First of all the topics of this startups are amazing. I really interesting because they are on the frontier And so I think for any entrepreneur a creative person exploring the frontier is the most exciting thing Especially like the way that he communicates so it's known that he's on the autism spectrum Like a light version of that called aspergers and that gives him some really interesting characteristics which is He's very inclined to tell the truth at least the way he understands the truth to be Which I think is great in an entrepreneur and so you'll see him saying stuff like I don't know if this is gonna work or Probably gonna fail which is I think what he believes and it's exactly the reality and that's so refreshing compared to entrepreneurs at show up saying You know promising things that they know to be false I think when he does promise things a bit like politicians a bit exactly like politicians right Accept to make more money, but when he promises things I actually believe that's what he That is the goal for himself and I just think it's really cool that he just the way of his pitching is he shows up He says what he thinks and he kind of leaves it at that right There's no embellishments. There's nothing else besides the mission and what he's doing and what he wants to do And I think that's one of the reasons why he's so inspiring to everyone People know that when he speaks they're just listening to the guy talk to the guy think Instead of a pitch. I love that and whenever I have the chance I try to do that too, you know Sometimes you have to give pretty boring answers to investors about like how the details work But I love just sharing exactly what I what I think about the company even in one it's not good And I think that builds a level of trust and We move a lot of complexity from day-to-day conversation is essentially but the politics parts I think it's Dilling with society is different from dealing with the company or a technical problem. So I don't think the approach can be Implemented the same way Yeah, but I really admire what you said and that value of standing And telling the truth because like you said, I think it's very taboo actually to be an entrepreneur or a CEO or a founder of a company and actually be able to stand up and tell the truth And it is what it is and and it does create trust to be able to tell the truth To your team inform them its communication and communicating outwards like what's going on does create a lot of authenticity Which I hope that in the next years will increase especially in this wave of AI where we just want honest true stories and that's what's gonna be very interesting and actually stand out But what advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs or founders running their companies especially Those coming from non-traditional backgrounds maybe who are looking to disrupt an industry To entrepreneurs that didn't start yet I think the only advice I would give them is to just start with no fear and just go at it and if necessary Allow yourself to not get a right of the first time or second time and just keep doing it because it takes so while to If you're everything correct, so just start I think a lot of people get lost in wanting to do things the right way instead of just starting It's never the right time. It's never the right uh, you know, you never have all the resources Um, and so there's always reasons to not start your business or to anything And so if you're looking for the right conditions, it's not gonna happen You know, it's the right conditions is You just go to your local office or online you incorporate a company you build a website And you just start working on it right now and then the advice to already existing entrepreneurs Those that are in early stages than we are I guess I don't know what advice I have for them because you know Advice is kind of tricky because you're thinking about a particular situation And it might be different for everyone. So the advice I had in mind which worked for for me was To just never give up, you know, even if you're like really tired or if it seems like you have a lot of challenges That are you cannot really overcome or it just not worth it If it feels that way just accept it and be like cool. So I'll keep doing my work with this feeling and just uh keep grinding That might be the wrong advice for someone who if gave up on their business would do a much better business the next day And so you never know with advice and I don't I don't like when founders or CEOs give advice That say you want to do this no you don't got to do this you need to be intelligent and he needs to Really think about your next steps without overthinking The difficult balance It cannot be a zombie walking but you cannot be trapped in overthinking either You got to be smart which is difficult Yeah and following your intuition like connecting to intuition is sometimes very tough actually when you have a lot of mentors and coaches Like telling you what to do next and and maybe investors or or your team members and just be able to like Silence the noise and then collaborate with someone that you trust and even in the process It's hard to acknowledge that you don't have all the best answers, you know So it's good to get inspiration and it's good to get collaborative in the process But yeah, there is a lot of noise that builds up this kind of lit you know over our intuition and But then of course like you said it's also important to be open to pivotal faces, you know, it's good to sometimes just kill your darlings and start Again from a different perspective, right? Totally definitely one advice. I think it has a high probability of being correct most of the time is To not commit to anything when you're not feeling relaxed So making your decision when you're
interfere or very anxious, it's probably going to be the wrong decision, even though it feels correct at the time. There's this very interesting concept where at least this is the way I think about it. When a person processes information and reacts to it, it's using kind of two systems in their brain. By the way, don't quote me on this, this is not scientific, but this is the way I feel about it, okay? When I take information, I'm able to process it rationally, always, but I'm also kind of like processing with the lens or a filter, which is given by my emotions at that time. And so I can receive the same information or problem when I'm anxious. And then the same thing when I'm relaxed or excited, and my rational processing will be slightly different because it's being filtered by the emotion. And so you just have one brain. So these systems are working together at the same time. And so even though when you're anxious or not feeling great, you're thinking rationally, because that's the system you are using, it's making rational sense. And the logic is there when you think about it. It's probably not the same logical consequence or sequence that you would use if you're a different mind state later on. And so it can be tricky. And I learned that. So from that moment on, I was like, okay, this is cool. I'm going to come back to it tomorrow. And if necessary, I'll come back to it as many times as necessary until I make sure that I'm having a neutral vision on that topic. Because sometimes there are some big decisions you need to take that are irreversible. So you've got to make sure they're correct. Yeah, but I love that insight. Wow, the emotional filtering that we perceive information in different ways, depending on our state of being, you know, wherever our nervous system is. But I know that we're running out of time. What is your future forecast on how to blossom as a brand this year? We just made a big move in LA. And so we move some of our team members there. We are doing a lot of things in there. So too many things for this year is going to be our events in LA. Or at least we're going to be very present within that area of the US to meet new people. And new music creators, musicians are going to be at events conferences. And the other thing is our online community where, as I said before, we're going to have two workshops a day coming in very soon, two live workshops. And we're going to be hosting tens of thousands of people. So it's going to be big opportunity for everyone to learn a lot and to make new connections. And I'm personally really excited about it because I saw already a few of them workshops. And I think people are really liking them. And we're not even done like fine tuning how they work and the guests and everything. So when this is all said and done, it's going to be really cool. Amazing. Andrei, please continue to revolutionizing the music industry and empowering musicians through your innovative work at Museoversaula. It's been really exciting to learn about your journey so far. And I'm eager to follow what you accomplish next. Thank you so much for joining us on Founders Meeting today. Thank you. It was great to be here. Thank you for joining this Founders Meeting. If you're feeling fueled up, hit that subscribe button so you remember to fill up your tank next week as well. And hey, if today's episode brought you some value, share it with your fellow founders who could use a little Monday motivation too. Keep building, keep believing and keep smiling doing what you love. Until next time, keep on going people, you got this. [Music]
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Andrei, a classically trained musician turned entrepreneur, founded Museoversal to revolutionize music production by connecting musicians and creators via remote recording sessions.
The platform offers a subscription model ($249/month) giving creators unlimited access to 150+ musicians, enabling affordable, high-quality music production from home.
Museoversal provides musicians with steady monthly income and flexible work from home studios, solving the problem of sporadic gig payments.
AI is seen as a tool for creating demos, lowering the barrier for non-musicians, but Museoversal emphasizes human collaboration as the core value, with AI used to enhance rather than replace musicians.
The company aims to scale to 20,000-30,000 recording sessions per month and launch a free online community with workshops for music creators.
Early funding was challenging, but a pivot to a subscription model before COVID drove growth and investor interest.
Summary:
Andrei, a classically trained musician from Portugal, transitioned from film scoring to entrepreneurship by founding Museoversal, a platform that enables remote recording sessions between musicians and music creators. The key problem Museoversal solves is the high cost and inefficiency of traditional music production, which often leaves songs as unfinished demos. By offering a $249/month subscription, creators gain unlimited access to over 150 professional musicians for recording, mixing, and mastering, effectively turning a home studio into a full-scale production facility.
For musicians, the platform provides stable monthly income and flexible work from home, replacing the uncertainty of gig-based earnings. Andrei’s journey involved overcoming early funding challenges, but a pivot to a subscription model just before COVID attracted significant traction and investment. Regarding AI, Museoversal views it as a tool for creating initial sketches, but the company doubles down on the value of human-to-human collaboration, which they believe will become more premium as AI-generated music floods the market.
Future plans include scaling to 20,000-30,000 sessions per month and launching a free online community with live workshops from industry experts, including Grammy winners. Museoversal’s branding centers on creating musician jobs and making live recording sessions the standard, positioning human artistry at the heart of music production.
FAQs
Museoversal hires musicians to record from their home studios, providing remote recording sessions for music creators worldwide. It brings the classic recording studio model online, making it scalable, efficient, and affordable while preserving musician income and the magic of human collaboration.
Many songs remain as demos because studio recording is too expensive. Museoversal offers unlimited access to 150+ musicians for a flat monthly fee of $249, allowing creators to fully produce songs from their bedroom at a fraction of the cost.
Musicians receive a steady monthly payment, can set their own schedule, and work from home. This provides financial stability and complements other income sources like gigs or teaching.
AI helps users create quick sketches, which musicians then refine. This lowers the barrier for non-musicians to start projects, potentially expanding the market. However, AI can shift budgets away from composers toward musicians, creating both opportunities and instability.
Museoversal prioritizes human connection and live collaboration between creators and musicians. It positions itself against AI tools that replace humans, aiming to keep musicians and creators as the centerpiece of the music industry.
In the next 1-2 years, Museoversal aims to scale from 10,000 to 20,000-30,000 recording sessions per month by onboarding more musicians and creators. They are also launching a free online community with live workshops on music production topics.
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