Transforming Electronic Music Discovery: Uniting DJs & Emerging Artists with Exibeat

How can DJs discover fresh tracks in a world dominated by algorithms that push the same music everyone else is playing?

Boris Parasochka, CEO and co-founder of Exibeat, is on a mission to fix the disjointed music discovery and distribution experience through a platform where DJs can easily find, purchase, and incorporate new tracks into their sets, with a spotlight on non-mainstream Electronic artists around the globe.

Say goodbye to the fragmented landscape of pinging between multiple platforms to find and download that perfect track for your next show. Boris shares his passion for building a platform and community that not only streamlines the process for DJs, but aims to create equitable opportunities for artists to generate revenue and gain recognition.

Journey with us into the vibrant and diverse world of music genres, where the boundary between global and hyperlocal sounds is beautifully blurred. From the sensory impact of iconic tracks like Monolake's "Index" to the inspiration of Durban's Gqom music and the significance of Ableton to music technology, Boris brings us into a realm where artistry and tech innovation go hand in hand. 

With a keen eye on the technological shifts and trends reshaping the industry, Boris envisions a platform that truly meets the demands of electronic music creators and enthusiasts alike.

If you're a music tech startup looking to tell your story in your market better, go to https://cold.inc to book a free, 20-minute call to discuss your go-to-market strategy.

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Transcript

Revolutionizing Electronic Music Discovery and Distribution

Tom 0:00

Buy new music , add it to your set , play it at your show . Everybody gets paid . That's the vision of Exibeat , a platform that brings electronic music DJs and artists together and make music discovery and distribution easier for everyone . This is S a show where you can learn all about the latest music tech through the music that inspired it .

Tom 0:27

Hi everyone , I'm joined here today by Boris Parasochka . He's the CEO and co-founder at Exibeat . Nice to have you , boris .

Boris 0:34

Nice to be here . Thank you for the invitation .

Tom 0:36

Awesome .

Tom 0:37

Can you tell us a bit more about what you're building ?

Tom 0:41

What is it and who is it for ?

Boris 0:42

So , as you mentioned , I am co-founder and CEO of Exibeat . I am a DJ since I'm 16 . I organized my own electronic music parties and events in the past , and we are building a community platform for discovery and distribution of electronic music . In the technical terms , it's a D2C marketplace . Creators and labels can upload their music and DJs can discover those electronic music and use it in their sets .

Tom 1:10

So I didn't ask you this before , but when I hear Exibeat , it sounds like an exhibition for beats , like a beat exhibition . Is that the idea behind it ?

Boris 1:18

Yeah , this was the idea . We spent a lot of time trying to find the right name and then I accidentally went to an exhibition and then it popped up in my mind and we wanted to have something connected to the beats and to the music itself .

Tom 1:35

I can imagine like an art gallery , the two- sided bit . Artists can go to kind of show their work , but then others can go to see their work and discover it . So I think that's a really good metaphor . For anyone who's not aware of how things typically work within the scene , can you give us an idea of what DJs go through to kind of find music and get it into their sets and what you think is wrong with that current process ?

Boris 1:58

I would like to start a bit from the different side . There are a lot of technological changes happening at the moment in the music industry , like blockchain with web3 , with AI and music production itself , and topics like creators' economy , how it works , how people get their music heard , how people distribute the music . The distribution part of the industry is staying kind of stable since probably the last 10 , 15 years and it feels like maybe a lot of people think there is nothing to change or to improve in the industry . So we have , for example , Spotify or Deezer or any other streaming platform and people think it's already enough and you can find all the music out there . But in fact it's not really the case , because musicians are struggling to get their music heard .

Boris 2:59

Especially in the electronic music , where I am active and where we are building our platform , the industry is pretty much fragmented . It's , in a lot of cases , diy . The pro rata streaming model and payments, they are not really fitting to the electronic music industry and not really bringing any income for the creators and , on the other , the consumers of the electronic music . Like the main consumers , the DJs , they are searching for music . They are still buying the music .

Boris 3:35

Not a lot of people know that DJs , in fact , are still downloading music . They're searching for platforms where they can purchase music , and this is kind of still the unique thing about electronic music . DJs spend a lot of time searching for music on one hand , and it can be , for example , on SoundCloud or on Spotify , on Instagram , so the music discovery process itself, and then they still need to go to some other place to purchase music because you're not able to buy music on SoundCloud , for instance . So you can imagine the user journey is happening on several platforms . There are some DJs using one platform , now they're using another one , and what we are trying to do we want to fix the broken processes and DIY processes and also bring the whole user journey and the whole discovery process on one place and help the creators be more productive , have more personalized recommendations , and it's also putting focus not on making mainstream artists even bigger , but helping those who are really struggling , on the other hand , just to get the first listeners and basically give the stage to them .

Tom 4:56

So you kind of have discovery on one side and then distribution on the other , and these are split across lots of different platforms , not to mention algorithms are probably less friendly towards particular types of genre or particular types of artists , and you're trying to bring these together into a kind of unified experience exactly .

Boris 5:14

It's like a big vision .

Boris 5:15

We want to create an ecosystem for the electronic music community

Tom 5:20

So I'm curious about your thoughts on how you're approaching this , this concept of experience on the platform , specifically with regards to DJ culture and where you want to take things with Exibeat and just to kind of give some more context . You know , like you , I actually started DJing at 16 . I was kind of into turntablism and hip hop but I spent a lot of time at record shops and , you know , crate digging , looking for beats and samples and white labels and stuff like that , and that whole process is like a , you know , an experience in itself . There is joy in discovering something new and that kind of competitive aspect as well of you know , trying to get something that other people don't have . In your opinion and obviously this is not a question about , hey , the good old days versus today what does the future look like , or what does your version of that experience look like with Exibeat and with this platform ?

Boris 6:13

I think it should make just more fun searching for music and discovering something new that you never heard or could imagine existing .

Boris 6:24

For example , as a DJ , if I'm searching for electronic music , I'm happy like a kid if I found some track that was not seen by anybody before and I was like , wow , it's a treasure . And if you are able to find some music from a completely different continent and play this music and then hear or read the feedback from from the artists coming from some suburbs in brazil and like super excited that someone , some guy in Europe , played his or her track , it's , it's really empowering and it feels really cool . And we want to to create those experiences , to help some new genres to to be discovered , some new artists to be discovered , because the whole discovery process is just focused in the most of the cases on like on the platforms like Spotify or SoundCloud , to just pushing those already having hundreds of thousands views . And this is not the way how we see it , how we want to build our platform In terms of exhibit . We are really reflecting . How can we create discovery approaches that we showcase those people who don't have views at all , for example ?

Tom 7:47

It kind of becomes a secret weapon for DJs , because if you're going to the same places Spotify , SoundCloud , YouTube and stuff yes , you might discover something new , but if you're going to the same place as everyone else , you're probably getting the same track , so you can really find something very interesting and new .

Boris 8:04

Or helping you to discover music . If you're preparing for some specific occasion , some specific gig or some specific mix and you say , for example , I'm thinking of this artist , I want to go in this direction , the platform should help you to find those artists who are fitting to your request and again showcasing those who might not have been heard before . When we reflected what we want to change in the industry , for us the most important was to help the creators to generate revenue and make a living out of their music . Streaming is not working , so we want to implement user-centric streaming . Then the huge thing that is broken in the electronic music industry the live events , the whole royalties payments via royalty collecting societies . The whole system is not working and we have , for example , now an idea how we can fix this process . If we are able to fix it , it means we can generate revenue for the creators and that they are paid not just for sales itself , but also paid for the day music is used in the live events .

Tom 9:19

I love the ambition of the bigger vision towards as long almost democratization of music discoverability and revenue sharing . That's a really cool vision for the future .

Boris 9:29

Yeah , thank you .

Tom 9:30

All right , so let's move on to your track selection . The first one up is actually a really good opener . I can kind of see your DJ brain working with the first track here . This one is Let's Go by Unnticipated Soundz out of Durban , south Africa . Tell us why you chose this track .

Boris 9:48

So when we started to work on Exibeat , we were trying , as I mentioned , to try to understand the problems and the pain points that different user groups are facing , like DJs , labels and producers , but also trying to understand if there is some differences between different regions and different countries . So we conducted 50 interviews with DJs , labels and producers . We focus mostly on Europe because this is the market we understand the most , but we also try to understand how the dynamics and pain points are changing . If you're going to different regions , if you take a look to my music collection , you'll discover that I have tracks probably from the whole world . I have tracks from Taiwan , Japan , Vietnam , Australia , Arabic countries . I have a lot of tracks coming from Africa , from South America , like Kuduro , like Afrobeats .

Boris 10:47

A few years ago , I discovered this music genre that is called Gqom . That is coming and originating from South Africa , specifically from the city Durban . The genre was created , I think , beginning of 2010, . Something like this created , I think , beginning of 2010 , something like this coming from a few bands and one of them is Unticipated Soundz , and when we were doing the interviews , I reached out to them and asked if they would love to do the interview and it was one of the most inspiring interviews we made , because I saw how broken is the industry there and how hardly these guys are trying to be heard and to be discovered and telling their stories , coming from the region . And they released at that point a new album and one of these tracks is coming from this album and this track is Let's Go , and this was kind of an anthem for us on the beginning of the Exibeat journey that motivated us like to to do what we are doing and to understand why it's such important thing

Tom 11:57

I'm curious how did you discover this band specifically in the first place ?

Tom 12:02

You know, what did you go through or how did it come to you , if you can remember ?

Boris 12:06

It's a good question . I mean , I love to go to different parties and to different events . I was traveling time to time to Berlin to go to different events and one of them was Einhundert party , organized by Nico Adamaka . Nico is a huge selector , he has some amazing music taste and those parties are focused on representing African music creators , and I think I just went to one of the parties and just discovered some of the guys and then just deep dive in this music genre .

Tom 12:46

One of the classic ways to hear new stuff is at the parties . You kind of have DJs as tastemakers , which I think is kind of an interesting thing to think of through the community itself . How does an artist like Unticipated Soundz or anyone else from , say , Durban or anyone on the scene ? How would their experience be different if they had Exibeat ? How would that

Exploring Music Genres and Discovering Talent

Tom 13:14

change how they were found ?

Boris 13:14

If you think in terms of representation of different genres , genre selection on the platform can influence a lot . What is coming on the end , like how the final product would look like or how the platform would look like and which people would use it and how they would use the platform . We created the list of the music genres we were focused on and we know that it's going to change with the time because the genres are changing . There are around I think there are 6,000 music genres existing and each time there are new ones coming .

Boris 13:47

New communities are creating their own music genre and I think if we focus on the calm and anticipated sounds , they would just have more chances to be discovered because we would not focus on representing and pushing mainstream . Like , if you take a look how the music discovery looks like on the existing platforms , you're not really able to jump in the different regions . You're not really able to say I would like to find some sound from South Africa , and this is something that you can directly do on our platform . This is kind of the new ways .

Tom 14:27

I think you just blew my mind , because you're talking global music , but also hyper local at the same time , and this kind of micro genres , but also the different mix of everything . I think that's a great way to discover new music and influence each other . I would bet that new genres would come from that itself . You know , when people say , oh , you mix these two things together and you get whatever the next thing is , that's really cool , yeah , yeah , okay . So thanks for that . We're going to move on to the second track , which is Monolake Index from 1997 . Tell us more about this .

Boris 15:02

A few months after , when we were working on exhibits with my co-founder , Alicia , we decided to move for a couple of months to Morocco . We are living in Germany but we decided to go to Morocco first of all because of the weather obviously to spend winters in Germany is not the most pleasant thing you could have . But the second thing also , to be able to really focus on the platform , to cut off the social connections , cut off the like everything the noise of media and news and friends and so on . And some of the artists are really practicing this kind of thing . When they want to focus on the album or some release , they just like cut off everything , go in some village or in some uh in nowhere and just spend to to be able to focus on on the uh product or music . And um , I was like I'm listening to electronic music all the time , like Like it helps me to focus .

Boris 16:10

And I was saying I don't remember like how exactly I came to Monolake at this point of time .

Boris 16:19

I think I was listening to there is the artist called Identified Patient , coming from Netherlands , and I got probably suggested Mono Lake based on Identified Patient , and I was doing a break , like in one of the days in Marrakesh we were living close to the Medina and I went out for a walk to just go through the market and I put this , this track , and it felt like in the film , because this is this track is so amazing , it's super trippy , it's minimalistic and having this experience walking like through the stands and markets and people are moving around , it felt really like in the film .

Boris 17:07

There is not like some specific motivational moment that it brings me , but it connected me to this experience that we had in Morocco and to the whole journey that we are kind of going through . And probably not a lot of people know about Mono Lake , but Mono Lake is actually a super important figure in the music itself , because Mono Lake in the past it was two guys , Gerhard Bales and Robert Henke , and they actually founded Ableton so basically the most important music creation tool out there and they were actually doing the music , electronic music production . Then Gerhard gave up working on this musical project , Robert Henke continued to work on this musical project how about having to continue to work on this ? And Gerhard focused then on building up Ableton .

Tom 18:13

So when I was listening to this track , I can see what you mean about it feeling like a film , because I had such a vivid image of the juxtaposition of just how busy Marrakesh is , especially around the Medina , just like all that bustle . But then that track in the background is totally like a scene from a movie . So I can see where you're coming from . And then the poetic parallels between Monolake , as you said , being artists and producers but then also founding music technology business , a very influential one . I think everyone listening has heard of Ableton Live , even if they haven't heard of Monolake . Because this was such a pivotal moment , or at least a memorable moment during this time of focus . Do you think you kind of came out of that with any different thinking . Do you think it shaped anything in you , or is it just like a moment in time ?

Boris 19:07

I think it's a moment in time and you know it's not something like that changed my perception on things but it's a moment in time that you are saving for like for all your life .

Boris 19:22

There is a artist called DVS1 , one of the most influential techno producers and DJs out there . He once , in one of the podcasts , described the magic of electronic music events when he was telling this is such a beautiful and such an amazing moment when the light is perfect , when the sound system is working really well , when the dj is playing super trippy music , when the bar keepers are working nice and smiling and happy , when it's dark , when the fog machine is full . And you know , this is such a beautiful and special moment . It and it's not happening every time . It can happen once in a year or once in your life , or maybe several times in your life , but but if you have this moment , you remember this moment maybe for life , maybe for several years , and this , this was kind of this moment that I'm coming each time back when I'm listening to this track . So when I have these tracks , I directly have those pictures of Marrakech market . So just a beautiful moment .

Tom 20:33

Pure serendipity . I was kind of wondering in my mind , given the background of Mono Lake , if you were like you know what , I'm going to go out for a walk and I'm going to listen , I'm going to get inspiration from the founders of Ableton to see if I can get something . But I guess it just was luck or serendipity it came to you , which is amazing yeah .

Tom 20:54

Okay , so let's move on to the third and final track . So we have Disruptor by Fraxinus from 2022 . I think he's an artist from the UK . Tell us more about this track . I think he's an artist from the UK . Tell us more about this track .

Boris 21:06

I rediscovered the whole album just recently because I'm preparing for a mix and I'm kind of trying to find the music that is fitting for this one . It came to my mind because I was sad and I was a bit disappointed because the whole album it's five tracks , I think . Each single one it's just like a piece of art and you feel how much work is put in the whole album . I saw there are like just 10 , 20 people bought this track and this makes me sad but also reminds me like again , you know , it's happening several times , maybe in the months when I just see like oh , this artist is doing such a great work but people are just not able to find this artist or they're not seeing how great the artists are . And like I had once a talk with an investor and he told me he was not coming from electronic music and he said like yeah , yeah , if the artists are not discovered , then they're doing a shit job and then they're they're not deserving to be discovered , kind of .

Boris 22:31

And I was like , um , I didn't want it to to like to start this question about this topic . We , we , uh , I left the call and we didn't continue exchange . But this is , I think like the perspective from people who are coming not from the industry seeing electronic music industry and thinking like if if you are not discovered , then you're not deserving to be discovered or you're not doing great job . And this album is like the best example for me when artists are doing like such a great job but they're really struggling to be found , to be heard , to get the money , to get the appreciation for their work . And it motivates me even more to do like what we are doing and to work even harder .

Tom 23:23

I think it's a fallacy to believe that the music industry is like a meritocracy , that the best tracks are the ones that are the most popular and if you know they don't succeed , then they suck right . I think that's kind of a false perception that people have , and listening to this it kind of got me thinking about labels as well . So I think we've kind of talked a lot about artists and DJs , but the third kind of piece of that triangle are the labels , and especially in electronic music . You know , labels can have like a big draw like you were talking about genre or city sometimes like hey , I just like everything that comes out of this label . Can you tell us a bit more about how that would play into your platform ?

Boris 24:06

yeah .

Boris 24:06

So a label is definitely a big and important part of the of the whole construction . Because the role of the labels first , it's taste creators , because label owners and label creators they are music lovers and , like , if you listen to some specific label , you directly can understand what this table about . What is the taste of the label , like , what they're trying to achieve . There are labels that focus on mainstream music , there are labels focusing on specific genres or labels who are trying to push creatives from specific regions or specific cities , and this is a super important work . So it's basically what we are trying to do with exhibit , but on the smaller scale . In this case , we we just need to give the labels the tool that helping them to discover new talents , because this is the community part of what we are trying to achieve to create this collaboration and create this interaction , connections between different user groups and helping them to to be discovered , help to discover others and help to succeed , like using the different promotional tools and so on . From this perspective , it's kind of Exibeat on a smaller scale .

Tom 25:26

So I guess to that point , how much is Exibeat kind of a curation platform ? What level is your taste involved in this ? Is it a pure hey , anyone can just upload stuff and people can discover it or is there some layer of curation to this ?

Boris 25:44

I mean curation happens . It starts in the genres , based on the genres . This is first layer of curation To create a space where everyone is getting equal opportunities . This is the most important step in terms of creation . Most important step in terms of creation , so that it's not getting to the platform where having more money helps you to get bigger reach . And this is the curational part . Like you can do a lot of things wrong when you're starting a platform , like with go to market , you can do also a lot of things wrong and getting the wrong people on the platform and that people can abuse the platform . And this is the recreational part of the things from my perspective . I don't want to be Be a 2.0 with creating all this 50 best charts , 100-base charts and so on If you're going to create them , trying to push those who deserve it the most because they're struggling the most .

Tom 26:52

Because I don't think there is a right answer , especially when you're trying to improve access and trying to get lots of people in and improve discoverability . There are kind of mechanisms that help to do that and to accelerate that , but at the same time , those same mechanisms can be the things that either create bad quality and lots of volume or are favorable to particular artists . So , yeah , it's a very tough challenge to solve . So , yeah , hats off for trying to solve it . Thank , you .

Tom 27:20

Thanks , boris . It's been really great chatting with you . For anyone who wants to find out more about Exibeat or even sign up , where can they go ?

Boris 27:28

thank you for this opportunity . It made a lot of fun to share my thoughts and telling more what we are doing . People can find us online so they can sign up on exhibitco or they can find me on Instagram . Ostblock is my artist name . They can approach me on LinkedIn , Boris Parasochka . I'm happy to talk and happy to work together with labels artists . So if you think there is a way we can collaborate together , or if you want to support us on our journey , I'm always open to talk , receive feedback .

Boris 28:04

If you have some critics or other thoughts , happy to talk

Tom 28:09

Thank you , Boris , been great to have you , and thanks again for the time

Boris 28:12

Yeah , thank you for this opportunity .