Episode #279 – Amazon Sells Counterfeit CDs, Mixing With Your Eyes, And Amuse CEO Diego Farias

My guest this week is Diego Farias, who's a digital music and tech expert with experience from some of the world’s most successful tech companies. He now serves as the CEO and co-founder of record label and music distributor Amuse. Amuse has a unique business model in that it provides free distribution to all the streaming services. The company then analyzes music consumption and listening habits in order to find promising songs and rising talent. It then signs the artists to licensing deals rather than traditional recording contracts. Amuse recently introduced a new product called Fast Forward that uses machine learning to predict and pay independent artists future royalties. With Fast Forward, independent artists can collect to up to six months of their future royalties while also retaining the rights to their music During the interview we spoke about what transformed the Swedish music scene to digital, the record label of the future, using machine learning to determine future royalty payouts, and much more. On the intro I’ll take a look at the RIAA claim that 25% of CDs bought on Amazon are counterfeit, and the phenomena of mixing with your eyes.