Name: Brainstorm Tech 2024: From Music to Medical Breakthroughs
Uploaded: 2024-07-17
Duration: 15 min 54 s
Description: Aloe Blacc, Singer, Songwriter, Artivist; Co-founder and CEO, Major Inc. Interviewer: Andrew Nusca, FORTUNE

Aloe Blacc, Singer, Songwriter, Artivist; Co-founder and CEO, Major Inc. Interviewer: Andrew Nusca, FORTUNE

Brainstorm Tech 2024: From Music to Medical Breakthroughs

Conferences

So let's talk about this new, I mean, it's a pair of eps but what inspired this nineties alt rock thing, man. You know, I was really inspired by a lot of different styles of music growing up. Of course, in the nineties, I was listening to a lot of hip hop, but the rock of that era had an impression on me. And as I got older, I started realizing that some of my, my predecessors in soul music had covered, you know, some of the greatest rock songs you could imagine. And one that comes to mind is we can work it out by Stevie Wonder covering the Beatles. And I thought, man, is anybody doing that nowadays? So, um I called up a friend of mine, Otis mcdonald, a great musician and songwriter and producer. And we just went through a list of, of the, the best of the best classic nineties songs that you could imagine a classic rock song and you got it, you got Blur but song two and you got, what else was it? What else? Oh Come on. Don't speak, don't speak lithium lithium Wonder Wall under the bridge. Um I mean, everybody hurts. It was, it was an exercise in nostalgia. But also what we did was we took the songs and just transformed them, flipped them, made them, um, something brand new. And so when I play them for my kids and I play them back to back, they, they tend to prefer my version. But, uh, but they, they don't, they don't know the history. So one day they'll learn to understand. Amazing. Now, look, we've been talking a lot about artificial intelligence at this conference, inevitably that has affected music as well. There's a lot of hand wringing about how it's going to affect the arts. How do you think about it as it pertains to your artistry? Yeah. Well, a lot of friends have been hitting me up asking me if I'm planning to use A I for music or if I'm engaging with it. I've tried all of the uh the program to see if, if they can help. At this point. I feel like what I do is a lot better and maybe, but II, I say that with a, with a grain of salt because I can see that the um the tide will turn quickly. Um These, these programs are getting way smarter. And I think in music we've been using A A I for quite a while, but just not necessarily in like generative A I, we've been using a lot of algorithms in order to create drum loops or particular chord progression. Um So it's not new, but we weren't calling it A I, we were just calling it the application or the plug in within the, the daw, which is the total digital audio work face. So you see it as a tool, not so much as a, as a risk of, of, of replacing your creativity. It's a tool. I don't think it's a risk of replacing creativity. Ultimately, I think everybody's going to have an opportunity to use it to enhance and amplify what they do. So at the end of the day, whoever makes the best story is going to win. Yeah. Now I want to go right to the audience for questions in just a minute. But I want to ask you a little bit about stand together. This is an initiative you've been working with. Tell us about it. Stand together is an organization that works with change makers across the country to help them improve some of the country's worst issues from economy to education, to broken communities. And they're working in a way with me where they're sponsoring an album. I get to write songs inspired by their mission, inspired by the mission of making America better, inspired by the mission of amplifying nonprofit organizations that are doing the most amazing work on the ground. And I believe in what they're doing, they believe in what I'm doing. So we've, we've come together to try to make this country a place where division isn't the norm and try to get people to come together. Even the most unlikely adversaries, if you can find one thing that you agree upon, that's where we stand together. That's where we work. That's where we move forward. Yeah, we might divide about the best nineties, all rock sound. I mean, you know, let me come to the audience. Does anybody have a question about ao's music before we turn to biotech and totally change the subject? Yes, way over here. Wait for AAA Mic, please. And then your name and affiliation? Hello Alo. Hey, I'm Alex Gross. I'm uh with Silicon Slopes Park City also um founder of Easy Press dot A I, we make A I content um for small medium sized businesses, but you just said something that really resonated with me, which is that you talked about the power of telling the best story, right? The best story will win when you think about what the best story is. Is it an A B test to figure out what's performative or is it about really just self expression and how do you see that changing in the future? Ultimately, it depends on everyone's perspective and, and, and tension within the art that they're creating. I like to tell the best story that's going to offer people an opportunity to um be inspired, be motivated and to seek to aspire to something great. Um Some folks just want money so if they can tell the best story for that. That's easy. You come up with a simple song with a repetitive hook with the same chord progression as everyone else and you probably make money. But what I'm looking at in terms of telling stories, I'm thinking about the greatest songwriters of all time according to my, my Ledger, which you know, Joni Mitchell's at the top, we're talking about Cat Stevens and James Taylor, Billy Joel and Paul Simon. Nina Simone Stevie Wonder, right. This is, this is the, the book of music that I'm listening to, to determine what is the best story, you know. Um And I've, I've kind of put a I up to the test to see if they can, if they can match a Joni Mitchell's both sides or a boxer or something like that. And it's, it's not there yet. It's a high bar. It's a high bar. Thank you for that question. All right, let's switch to the biotech side of your life. So major, you're trying to make this alternative to vaccines and involve something called pepto. So for the non scientists here, please explain to us what on earth is an alternative to vaccines as it pertains to transmit. It started as an alternative vaccines. But you know, with most companies, you pivot until you, until you make it I had, you know about with, with COVID and I had been vaccinated and boosted and I was looking for a host directed prophylactic solution and after reading paper, upon paper, upon paper, it happened upon this paper by Dr Goko Ga Maoria at the University of Houston School of Pharmacology where he's talking about blocking interface of the virus and the cell receptor. And I thought that's brilliant. Why can't we just keep the viruses from entering the cells? It stops replication and then it'll just either get excreted or it will degrade within your system. So I contacted him, sponsored some research and it turned out there was no money for COVID anymore. So we ended up building this, this business in order to advance his concept around drug discovery. And so beyond just vaccination, um it's a drug discovery platform that is addressing his 25 years of research in oncology and the patents that he holds addressing uh autoimmune dysfunction and immune dysregulation and addressing infectious disease like viruses. So, taking the model of his SARS COV two molecule and applying that to that concept to many other viruses. And so you looked at all that and you were, as you were, you were doing your beach reading transmissible disease, you know, and you were like, you know, my life isn't complicated enough. I'm going to start this whole other thing. How did this become an actual venture for you? So I wasn't, I wasn't trying to start a business. It was philanthropy at first. And so I reached out to the university and the professor, but then realized quickly that you know, universities are risk averse and they're not necessarily going to, to prop up a company, they have divisions that are, you know, incubation divisions and, and tech innovation divisions. But it really takes an outsider to come in and actually help push. And when I realized that, and I recognize the amazing technology that, that Gome has, I wanted to, I wanted to help and I felt like the only way to really help was to start a company and use the resources, the resources and relationships that I have, the access that I have to put him in the room. And so I'm able to get him in front of, you know, top vcs, top scientists and regulators, which is not so easy for a professor who's got class load a mortgage to pay to get put through college. And so we're going to build this together and hopefully we'll save a lot of lives. Tell me a little bit of these are very different walks, right? Tell me a little bit about the similarities between your music life and your biotech life. And forgive me if I'm drawing too hard a distinction here and tell me about the commonalities because, you know, I don't think your music has regulators, but you tell me, you know, music doesn't necessarily have regulators. I mean, I hope ultimately the audience is, is the regulator, you guys determine whether or not the song is viable. Um Actually, that's not true. I play the songs for my kids in the car on the way to school and they, they're the first the ultimate regulator. They are the first layer. Um But I, I would say in the terms of creativity, you know, Gomme is working with, he's a chemical biologist, so he's working with the Periodical Table and I'm working with 12 notes. And so we get to play in this world of creativity to see what we can do when you know, he's doing chemical synthesis. I'm in the studio doing musical synthesis and we're trying to see what's going to make somebody feel better. I think there's, there's some similarities there. Um But aside from that, it's pretty diverse, pretty different. Any surprises on the biotech side of things that, you know, that you just never would have imagined running a car, it's so hard. Go on business is hard. So I thought, I thought I was a businessman because I had a publishing company, a touring company, a record company. Um And then I started biotech and I was like, that's not, that's not business. This is, this is much different and, and the stakes are much higher. Um And it takes so many more people, you know, at the end of a movie, when you watch a film and you see the credits rolling and you're like, when are these credits going to end? There's a million people on this film that's starting a business that's, that's biotech and making a song I could wake up in the morning come up with an idea and by the end of the night, distribute it to 8 billion people in the world. That's amazing. It doesn't require the laundry list of everyone else to help. And those two, those two are like, really diametrically opposed. Like I love the freedom I have in making music by myself and I love collaborating as well, but it's really impossible to do, you know, business and biotech really by yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. It does. Let's go to the audience for another question. I saw one back here. Yes, please. Name and affiliation, please. Yeah. Thank Bar. Then co founder and CEO of Nano Health Care Remote Diagnostics Company. Um A first of all, thank you for everything you've given all of us with your songs throughout the career. You've been at this in seeing a lot of the economics of music and songwriting change over the years. I'm curious as to your anticipation of how it's gonna continue to evolve in the future for the next gen of songwriters. Like we used to buy C DS and full albums and then we would just buy one song that we wanted from Apple Music and now teenagers are getting their parents to shell out 10 grand for a Taylor Swift concert, right? So like, what's the next step there? And how do you think that's going to impact the next gen of songwriters if I had, if I had the crystal ball, I would not be sitting here with you right now. But I would say, you know, things have changed dramatically because of streaming. I think Pandora's Box is open and we won't ever be able to go back. I was hopeful that DSPS or service providers would be the, the, the conduit to the, the, the, the friction in the pay line. So rather than Spotify, charging you $10 a month or whatever it is, it potentially could be uh Verizon um AT&T or sprint charging at the tap, like when you use your faucet or your light light switch. Um That's hopeful for me because I think uh pay for play becomes a lot more easier for, for artists right now. We're in a, in a pool where the income that we get is dependent on the amount of streams that we, we make pro rata. So the biggest artists in the world are getting the lion's share. Everybody else kind of gets their prata share based on all of the money that goes into the pool from, from subscribers. I'd much rather live or die by the value of my song at the top. Um which is kind of the way it was in the past. I don't know if we're going back there. Where is it going in the future? Like I said, hard to say, um probably probably a lot more regional than, than like massive global artists. Um and uh a lot more live and local live. Yeah. Good stuff. All right, let's do one more question if you don't mind. One more anything. Amazing. All right. Well, I've got a question right there. Oh, is there one? Oh, fantastic. Thank you very much. Hey, thank you for your um mu music and, and the gift of listening to it for the past couple, for the past decade. Um My name is Nate. Um a question, you know, we've seen a lot of A I um that can emulate how artists sound. And so it seems like, you know, an A I track will come out and it sounds like something that the Drake or, or the Drake or the weekend or somebody else might have written or, and actually sung. Um Do you kinda see that as well? What role do you see that playing in the future of music? Like, do you see a future in A I where perhaps you like uh a artist licenses their voice or their likeness uh to a song and then licenses uh a A I contract out for generating songs that sound like they sung it. Um Or do you feel like that industry is something that um might, is just kind of like a fad or might fade away at some point? I think what you're, what you're touching on is possibility. Um I had a conversation early on with a company called Metaphysic A I and a company called Reech. Um They helped me to translate songs and sing them in Italian and Mandarin and Spanish and French. And it's, I look like I'm actually singing the song in those languages and, and speaking with perfect dialect. Um I think that personally, I would, I would get involved in that kind of thing. I think as I get older, um there's going to be an era of Aloe Black that ultimately is bankable. And that era I think I could probably continue to make money on for time in memorial. I was friends with Bill Withers before he passed and he stopped singing as he aged. And I always thought to myself, like, I'd love to hear what he's up, what he would want to say as an older, as an older person. But I think for him, he just realized like this younger generation is not interested in what I have to say. My voice doesn't sound the same. So if I can, you know, put that in a time capsule and then distribute that, that would be I think the best, the best use of, of A I, I'm all over it.