the uh there's been some Personnel changes in you too as you may have noticed um I'm going to be playing guitar you got drums right yeah what are you going to do I'll manage the operation okay we're here to talk about um uh making music and movies into the next century and the centuries Beyond and things have been disrupted sort of by file size we started with text which is what I work in and we got blown up starting 10 15 years ago cuz our files were small and then we then music was nexted because
their files were sharable and then we came to now we're here to film and video what I'm wondering about is is as business after business disrupts do you think that the the later you are in the order like the fact that film and uh video are now now coming to grips with this revolution they've had time to see the rest of us get run over hello is that a question are are you saying size is everything Size Matters Bono of course it does do you think these changes are good for the artist or bad for
the artist I personally think that they're they're great for creators um for so as a producer and a cont a filmmaker um and for a musician a writer they're a a great Avenue and a great opportunity for people to to get access they may not never have if you take all the friction out of the distribution system people can get almost anything they want at any time what about the people live in the middle you know the studios the the newspapers the television stations you know for us I think you know like the the people
in the middle they matter and they're super important we you know we as as a platform we've always worked with them you know from the very start we worked with labels you know big and small we just recently signed Warner uh Warner Music Group um Warner chapel and you know um we think they're super important honestly um I think there you know there's a there's a business side to music music and we we understand that and you know we're building a platform that tries to help these people you know and their business partners to to
to get out and to do what they do best Boo as somebody um issues an occasional album you've got more routes to the Ocean than you ever did you can get to the audience all number of ways so so is a great time to be you it's always a great time to be you but as I don't know there's certain parts of of town um that would disagree with you um I I would be very excited about being in you to um yes but I'd also be very excited where I starting a band right um
I would I would be as excited as I was when we formed you two when I was whatever 17 or 18 years old and and though it is clear that there are some traumas as we move from um physical to digital and 20th Century to the 21st century and the people who are paying the highest price for those traumas are songwriters rather than performers I still think forming a band is so exciting and I still think there are incredible things to play with SoundCloud Eric's uh uh uh and Alex's SoundCloud is is just it's like
a playground for artists who who want to make music and and I I see um streaming services and and uh uh as quite exciting ways to get to people because in the end that's what you want from from your your songs and people sometimes ask you know how do you feel about your songs and I and I think like like your children but actually I don't see songs as like our children I sing see songs like our parents so they tell you how to dress they tell you how to behave what time to be home
at and the only thing they don't like is being ignored right so anything that gets your songs out there I think anything that helps you um is a good thing I think the remunerative you know bit of this has yet to be figured out I think we're in a an early stage the Internet it's like 20 years after mankind discovered fire you know it's an experimental period and you know let's experiment let's see what works for each of us were you were you surprised that that some songs you wrote and did with uh with your
bandmates you give you put them out in the world uh uh free to like half a billion people and you became like the worst person on the internet for about 3 days there the spanking machine picked up well you know um I was saying to somebody you know we got a lot of people who are uninterested in you two to be mad with you two and I would call that an improvement in the relationship um and um and I think you know we were paid no one values music more than me or members of you
to to us music like it's a Sacrament it's it's a sacred thing I think artists should be paid and paid way more than they are but the greatest uh uh uh way uh the greatest way to serve your songs is to get them heard right and I'm ready um uh I'm already paid too much I'm a spoiled rotten overp paid over under overnourished um Rockstar this is not about my problem and one of the reasons I haven't been vocal about music is I just know I'm the wrong spokesperson for this um but um I have
to tell you that I am if I was starting a band now age 17 or age 18 I would be very excited well you you talked earlier about this being a a little bit Punk rocked and sort of the distance between the audience and and and the performer is is sort of sort of shrinking with you talk Netflix I get to program my own Universe SoundCloud I can make content I can distribute it I can get it out there um YouTube I might be a performer I might be a watcher bill is this a um
the shrinking of the Gap the people formerly known as the audience becoming producers and programming of their own world is that is that going to result in a whole explosion of creativity I mean I you know so like we've seen the guitar we've seen you know now more recently we've seen the laptop kind of taking over from you know big studios that used to cost a lot of money now we have the iPad there was an app called orxy that just came out it's an amazing app to make music the one that just came out
it's called oxy and I mean what happens there is just a democratization and you're going to have orders of magnetude more people you know creating so like your biggest fan is now a Creator and they will help you you know they will remix remix content and they will be part of part of the creation so that's the reality that's that's the world today right that sounds very much like punk rock when we started the you know the thing about punk rock was that you know you didn't have to be a virtuoso musician to be in
a band and we we listen to The Clash and the Ramones and they four chords great Melodies and a clear idea and you just well you could get away with it and we went to see The Clash here in Dublin and in Trinity College and The Clash were all about you can make your own music we're a garage band we come from garage land and the four members of of you two were in that crowd we were then called the hype at that and but we we felt like we climbed out of the audience onto
that stage the difference is now it's not a garage band from garage land it's it's it's it's the bedroom it's like the bedroom is the studio and I remember going into Studios it was like visiting you know the set of star Star Trek and now it's your bedroom and you have control over it the the Paul McCartney would say you know when we arrives you know the Beatles they used to have to come in the back entrance of ABY Road Studios they came in the tradesman's entrance and the people were up there in the white
coats the the scientists and they were saying now make your music over there and the beetle said no no we'll make our music where we want and and they'd go up the stairs and they took charge of the Studio process they were the Beatles they had the muscle to do it now it turns out just by virtue of the Mastery of a simple laptop you are in charge of that creative process and that's so exciting you can even take it one step further too though with an iPhone anybody seven eight years ago if you had
an idea you can actually you can write it now on your iPhone if you wanted to you can shoot it edit it and post it and get it to an audience right from your phone and that access and that ability to reach an audience and tell a story wasn't there 10 years ago but if you take um sort of the barriers to entry out of producing content and the friction out of producing content content's going to double right bill I mean it's the content is going up and up and up so necessarily isn't the value
of content going to drop as it goes down I I would take the other side of that argument which is when you have a a ubiquity of of devices this is the first year where there are more connected devices than there are human beings on planet Earth so that that content is accessible in a dramatic way um it's sort of the great democratizer which means the content itself is the value uh the the the pipes if you will are of less value which which doesn't translate to content being less valuable it means there's a bigger
Market opportunity and a chance for those who are creative and can create to distribute whether it's through SoundCloud or through other uh mediums distribute that content Dina were you surprised when you put I mean You' you've had some producing experience you got social network one of my favorite movies of all time out there um you did house the cards and it was build as this bold experiment right when it happened it was like this is how it's going to be now it's sort of changed it's like people now expect everything all at once did that
surprise you or that was always the plan it was always my plan I mean from when Kevin and I we launched a website early on actually at Bono participated in they gave filmmakers a place to get their material out there I always saw the advantages of digital distribution and knew that's where it ultimately was going to go and when this opportunity was presented to us Kevin didn't fully understand it initially but I told him I go look what we've been trying to do for the last 10 years we now have the opportunity to do it
now it's going to happen in five or 10 years but we can make that shift happen now and if it works it'll be a game changer um and it worked way better than we could have ever imagined it's funny Dan Dana and in this city uh was talking about this 15 years ago something like that I mean I I was around when he and Kevin first were talking about this stuff and he he he's had this in the back of his head from day one um if you think about it um well like you and
Kevin are Kevin spy your partner are doing a partnership with Jameson so I think there Jam there was a lot of Jameson involved 15 years ago as well okay always leads to clearheaded thinking um it's one of our it's one of our most proud Technologies here the Jamison it's a uh take one Irishman at brown liquor you've suddenly got we solved a lot of problems we don't remember what the answers were but we solved a lot of problems um but it does it does point to the role of uh of Brands direct uh directly uh
supporting content in the instance of your record you you and iTunes uh cut a big deal so maybe what's going to happen is brands are going to get more directly involved in as creative forces yeah they are what Jameson is doing though they're they're involved in a a a non-creative way they basically they provide the platform and the the financing to give filmmakers that we then choose and bring under our wing to then uh basically see their vision through so they get involved in that aspect there's no product placement or anything like that but we're
just basically pulling somebody from obscurity and putting them with a film star and a produ a production team that can make it happen and then bring an audience to them so while they're involved and it's it's all their project they're very uh hands off on the creative and as far as the the production aspect of it can I say just one thing on that which is musicians uh historically um were true but doors they travel from town to town they sang and played for their supper for the lord of the manner he' let them in
he would he would feed them perhaps from his table I don't like that and I preferred it and I prefer it when musicians are their own Brands and I prefer it when we are in charge of Our Own Destiny and what I would like to see is a situation where tech companies um cross fertilized with with cultural companies right and and and I think then our voices will be naturally more understood more heard and then more valuable I I think one of the things I will say is I I'm just what what makes me nervous
about the present moment is that we are slightly slipping back musicians are losing that power that Firepower that they had and and and and and I think that we we must be careful that it is the n of the music business of old and the beginning of the music business that's coming just to be very careful that we don't underestimate our value we we we we we don't have to play for the lord of the manner the lord of the manner can come see us and pay in like everybody else I can remember it South
by Southwest people ended up playing inside a Doritos vending machine a giant one so sometimes when you get Brands involved it leads to somewhat significant creative conflict the Eric the um when you when you think about uh SoundCloud I think about this gorilla that came down from the hills seven years ago and and and and really coming at music from a new a new Direction um a somewhat different than Pandora somewhat different than than Spotify but there you are cutting a deal with Warner Brothers so maybe maybe The Lion and the lamb are going to
lay down together and it's going to end really sweetly with the lion cuddling with the lamb not eating it it's so F fascinating analogy of a gorilla I I never thought about SoundCloud as a as a gorilla maybe more like a you know small monkey baby or something like that um uh you know running around excited and I think you know we started out building tools for creators for artists you know I you know made music and I wanted to express myself online you know I was frustrated with what was out there right and so
we started there you know and then we realized artist wants us to you know wants us to help them to reach a new audience to build communities you know to gain a following so we did that we built a better listening experience so we're now 175 million listeners on the network every month right and now two two months ago we launched our own SoundCloud program which is essentially our Revenue sharing program so we work with we work with Brands and the reason we work with Brands by the way is because that's really the only one
of the few models that you can scale to a billion people that's really that's really a way to open up and make sure that music is available to everyone and yet revenue is coming through to the creators right and so we're also layering a subscription service and I think you know there are other layers that you can think about I think you know you know things like Kickstarter are amazing and like you know there's patreon there bunch of other things go going on right now which I think is very exciting uh for digital music and
I think we're literally just in the beginning I mean we are two months in and we're super excited about the future in in the music business it's funny because each time you think there's a new ledge so we had the album business and then Along Came uh file sharing and Steve Jobs came up with the price point for songs at 9 the only problem with that for artists is uh the other 11 songs they usually bought with that didn't didn't didn't go with so it it it unbundled the album but then we think okay we're
going to sell songs for 99 but then Along Comes streaming it's hard to just settle on any single business model right now you just got to keep running to stay in place well there's one thing we should settle on and the Real Enemy is is not between uh you know digital downloads and streaming the real enemy is between real fight is between opacity and transparency and the music business has historically um involved itself in quite considerable deceit no and and I think we just should accept I'm stunned by that B that that if we could
change that bit and people could actually see how many times they're being played where they're being played get access to the kind of information about the people who are listening to them get paid direct debit I think even those micro payments will add up to something as the world becomes more transparent as China and India sign up to those transparency agreements on int intellectual copyright which will happen I would be I would be excited about the future but that's the real thing that's going on and when people pick on Spotify they the Spotify are giving
up 70% of their all their revenues to rights owners um it's just that people don't know where the money is because the the record labels haven't be been transparent that must be the demand that will be the demand I've spoken to somebody in Universal at our label there David Joseph he accepts that that is coming that it's it's on its way but that's the thing to look for transparency or AAC and when it comes to transparency it sort of all depends on Whose skirts are getting lifted up I mean I'm not sure you'd want people
to know exactly how much money you make right well they it would probably be a lot less than people think so might maybe I should pull my skirts up we spend a lot of the cash that we make for instance on a U2 show we we spend it on the people who come to the show and it it's shocking uh that we decide but that's why our shows are so popular cuz people understand that we put a lot of effort into it and we don't just turn up and play but I have heard people coming
out of another artist show and said they didn't need any of those production tricks and they're paying the same ticket price so so I think you know I I think I think transparency is um uh has to happen for this new model to be successful and to take rote there has to be some kind of fairness and I believe there's a new the uh I think it's called the featured artist Coalition has has just started its its rounds and trying to ask about this more fair fair fair models of distribution and I think when that
happens I think the music business will be at a rising tide that lifs all boats I think I mean you you said it earlier right like you you talked about um you know it's information technology and like the web is extremely good at that it's it's an open place you know it's real time it's read right and like there's a lot of data flowing in I think the value of analytics you know just you know for artists like we have you know we have a phenomenal stats product that you know all of our artists use
and it's available for free and like that's that is the transparency that I think will you know will also sort of force some some of the other players to be more transparent right they don't want to they don't want to hide Spotify would love to throw open um their skirts if you want to put it like that but they're not L at the moment that must change your skirts are already wide open I saw it it's it's a shocking SL actually but um it's a little monkey in very very Swedish little Mony going again so
you know that that that's an important thing what one of the things I wonder if this just cuz I'm old or um or or didn't see it coming but the rate of change the flywheel of change seems to be going more rapid if you had told me um as someone did you know a year and a half ago oh Jeff Bezos just bought at the Washington Post I was like get out of here what if you told me that CBS and HBO two fairly traditional media companies we going to we we're going to um we're
going to start streaming over the web I said well that'll be a couple years from now I wonder if what's happening is things are changing fasters or Legacy companies are now more willing to kind of meet change where it stands I think they're being forced to to to an extent that they're they're having to adapt uh to keep up with the newer technologies that are coming out and the the competing Technologies Netflix and uh Amazon Prime and Amazon Studios Hulu and we're in we're just in the infancy of where that's going to go and allak
Kart is really going to start to open up as far as paying for 150 channels when you only watch four that's going to start to go away and they starting to realize that so they're going to have to figure out how to monetize that and so that's I think what's driving them that way to uh to streaming because I've already cut my cord I don't I took my satellite dish down and I'll receive everything over Over The Air HD or through my Roku box or Apple TV or Playstation um Bill you you know the valley
pretty well and one one of the things I was out in Los Angeles not long ago and I was talking to a studio head about the implications of the Comcast merger which is a huge deal in the US you have a the number one cable company buying the number two cable company and it's like why aren't you guys speaking up why aren't you guys screaming bloody murder about this and they said we know Comcast we do deals with Comcast your friends up in the valley Google Facebook Apple they want to turn this whole city into
a parking lot that they don't understand content or the value of content what do you think about that well we we recently helped to incubate and create what is the First new studio um in a generation stdx um so I'm I'm actively investing in media and content in Hollywood and at the end of the day Dana is part of that same world uh so I think what what the reality is the studios haven't figured out this new model they're stuck in a the traditional Studios into a sort of traditional model of development production distribution marketing
and the landscape has changed dramatically the fact is our studio was was created in Partnership with the Chinese Shanghai Media Group Hony Capital along with tpg uh and others and uh China is soon to be the largest film Market in the world that in itself is a dramatic change the fact that you have a billion Indians uh who will have access to broadband for the first time in 2015 the whole landscape has changed so outside of just the digital dimension of it which is clearly transformative in the way we all consume media and who would
have thought 5 years ago we binge on iPad you know house of cards I watched the entire Series in like two days entire entire season um wasn't pretty um so so who would have thought it it's to your point it's completely changed rarely do Legacy institutions either participate in or lead transformational change It's usually the rebels today a lot of those Rebels are Silicon Valley that are finding New Paths and new ways to do it so to the extent that we can introduce some of that change and that dynamism and transform model to Hollywood ultimately
content wins and the point we made earlier about music it's the musician that creates the song we all love who ultimately wins in this whole exercise it's just that we're going through a period of business transformation where the models are completely changed and the way we all get paid and the way it all works out is is dangerous but out of danger comes opportunity and we've been able in that context to create a new studio boo I watched with some amusement as people uh people acted like your relation ship was with apple was new but
in fact 10 years ago they were un unveiling this goofy new thing called the iPod whatever that was I thought that is the dumbest sounding thing I ever heard who's ever going to buy one of those now that's what my phone looks like and every time I hit the artist button uh on on my iTunes I I I literally put my thumb on your head feels good by way um there's other places you could put it I prefer that I'll see you off stage um the uh the you guys knew you've always been an ambitious
band big sound big ambition and when when you conceived of this most recent deal with with iTunes you're obly you're obviously um uh you know Distributing your music to a a massive slice of the planet you knew there'd be some push back but all in knowing what you know are you happy you did it oh yes yes yes it's one of the proudest things um for us ever we we always wanted our music to be heard and and and and the idea that we could have worked for years and years on what we think are
are our most personal songs that we've ever written and that makes you vulnerable in the making of them actually you you you have to become very raw to write like that and then the idea that they may not be heard is terrifying and so we were just thrilled that we got this chance just to introduce ourselves to people who perhaps never listen to rock music or people are you know in who listen to bangra and India you listen to wherever you all over the world and we heard you know the figures are out now about
100 million people checked us out one or two or three tracks but but about 30 million people actually like the whole album that took us 30 years with the Joshua tree so we did in three weeks with Songs of Innocence what took us 30 years for the Joshua Tree this is an incredible thing now they're a very creative company we got involved and Tim Cook said to me so you really you want you want to make a free gift of your music and I said no no no no we we don't believe in in in
the free model actually he said so what do you mean then I said you buy it from us and then you give it as a gift it is and it is and um so he said wow okay uh all right then um so we'll do that if we can strike a deal but is there more and I said oh there is more and there's a lot more we we we we want to work with the creative people in your company to develop new formats for music and I you know 10 years ago maybe longer with
um Steve Jobs hanging out with them we were in a house in France and I pointed to a flat screen television where the iTunes was up and I said Steve you care a lot about the way things look you know you're an aesthete it's important to you design he says yes it is I said why does that look like a spreadsheet and he said it does doesn't it and it just had one picture in the in the corner at that time of of of the album and I said why isn't this like the whole album
cover and then why is it why isn't it moving so why isn't the future of you know YouTu album cover like the Joshua Tree where there's four Stony Irish men looking at you know scans why aren't they turning slowly what isn't there a new art form here can't we engage lyrics can't we engage photography can't we be listening to Miles Davis you know you know in a silent way and see those Herman Leonard shots of him playing it you know is can we watch it on our phone they didn't have iPads or phones at this
point and he was going we don't have the operating system for that right now but one day we will that's happening that's a new format and and people may think of that as more valuable than just a simple MP3 file and so I'm happy to be working with the company you know we get there we get there but they're letting us in to the lab well given that you helped them concept their future maybe they owe you a couple more bucks I don't know if they'll ever do something like that again um that they did
it's not I know understand it's not it's not something you can repeat but I thought it was a beautiful thing to do and it's strange one of the things I love about being at the summit and being around is all these people all of you they remind me so much of being in a band the same kind of people that would be in bands are now forming startups same kind of staying up at night I've realized by the way the secret of the web Summit and the whole Founders thing why people come it's that a
lot of people come from the west coast of America they're jet lag so they just stay up all night and they're just wandering around in the days through Dublin drinking Guinness and all this mad comes out of your head but it's jet lag you're surfing the jet lag but but I think I think that you remind me of bands You Remind Me of bands you remind me of being in a band and I get off on that excitement that that thrill of of making up and you know apple is a giant company but you know
Johnny I looks like a person I'd be in a band with I mean you know like a big Edge and um and and and you as well although I wouldn't have anyone your height in a band but um you know I just think it's he could play on his knees the only the only person in a band on his knees should be the singer oh I can be the singer all right there you go um Eric Bill uh boo uh the uh uh it's been a pleasure to speak with you you guys have been enormously
patient I want to coign what uh Patty said and given the fact that you struggled your way through one two three days of this on a fair amount of yes jet leg Guinness and rhetoric from the stage uh we really appreciate it thanks a million wow
