Jorge Brea: Consistency Is Your Secret Weapon

[Jesse Brede]

Join us for a candid conversation with Jorge Brea, CEO of Symphonic Distribution, as we dive deep into what it really takes for independent artists to make waves in today’s music landscape. Jorge shares hard-earned insights on why consistency matters, how building your music catalog is like investing in real estate, and why treating your art as a business is non-negotiable. We get into the nuts and bolts of digital distribution, the evolving role of artist development, and what sets Symphonic apart from the pack.

From the explosive growth of Latin American music to the challenges posed by AI and streaming fraud, Jorge doesn’t hold back. We talk about the real risks of artificial streaming, how tools like StreamSafe are fighting back, and why authenticity will always win in the age of AI. Plus, Jorge opens up about the importance of mentorship, building a strong team, and finding the right partners to help you grow.

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to take your career to the next level, this episode is packed with practical advice, industry stories, and a whole lot of inspiration for independent artists ready to carve out their own path.


Timestamps:
00:00 The Importance of Consistency in Music Distribution
02:59 Building a Music Catalog as Real Estate
05:52 Understanding Digital Distribution and Its Role
09:14 The Unique Value of Symphonic Distribution
11:51 Artist Development and the Role of DSPs
15:11 Navigating the Evolving Landscape of Music Genres
17:58 Expanding into Latin American Markets
21:08 The Future of Music Distribution and Challenges Ahead
24:10 Addressing Fraud and AI in Music Distribution
32:02 The Impact of AI on Authentic Branding
35:52 Navigating the Challenges of Artificial Streaming
39:07 Leveraging Technology for Business Intelligence
41:55 The Importance of Mentorship and Team Dynamics
49:03 Funding Strategies and Business Growth
53:46 Staying True to the Mission of Supporting Artists



Jorge (00:00.27)

The thing that I tell people the most is to try to be as consistent as possible. Certainly have a unique sound, but really it’s kind of like about doing many things over and over, not flooding the market, but just being consistent of it because a DSP isn’t going to really want to push you as an artist if you don’t have something that comes next. And in a weird way, that’s kind of like a weird part of the industry. It’s almost like kind of like making a DSP sort of like a social media platform. But at the end of the day,


there’s such a hunger for content and there’s such an interest in content that I think it’s important for if an artist is looking to grow, get playlisted and also get that experience, get to the ability of maybe getting royalty advances and so forth. It’s building a catalog and a catalog is real estate, which one day you as an artist can actually own and part ways with it. That’s what your interest is to hopefully have a good outcome.


Jesse Brede

Welcome back to another episode of A Path Unfolding. I’m your host, Jesse Breda. My guest here today is George Brea. He is the CEO and founder of Symphonic Distribution. That is Gravitas’s distribution company, among many other fantastic labels and artists. George, welcome to the podcast. How are you?


Jorge

Good, man. Thank you for having me. It’s good to speak to you. I also never really thought about how much our last names kind of like rhyme with each other. Brayda, Braya. It’s really cool to hear them kind of like together for sure.


Jesse Brede

I think we’re brothers from another mother, man. Ever since I met you, I have just completely resonated with your energy and your purpose and your mission of supporting independent artists. You have been a fantastic, I mean, amazing, beyond amazing partner for Gravitas and so many other artists that are in my world, our world. And I just want to thank you to start. Thank you for all the work and effort, blood, sweat and tears that you’ve put into building a fantastic


Jesse Brede (01:59.394)

distribution platform for us and supporting us and, and, you know, as a fellow business owner, not quite at your level, but, know, sort of understanding what it takes to build something from nothing. you know, Bravo, great work. And, and yeah, I just wanted to dig into your story, man. You have a fantastic story. And, yeah. So for, for everyone listening, can you just give us kind of a, a little intro of, of who and what you are and what you’re up to?


Jorge

Yes, certainly. mean, well first, I also want to thank you for the many years of friendship and the many years of being a part of Symphonic and really helping us become the company that we are. I mean, you’ve seen the technology and the company evolve for many, many years. You were one of the first people that we met with at South by Southwest when we first went out there. So it’s been a heck of a journey with you. Yeah, so a little bit about me. So I was born in the Dominican Republic and I’ve been kind of like making music since my


teenage years really. know, and really always wanted to kind of like have a job in the industry somehow and I never thought about really working for anybody but thought okay well maybe I could at least create something that others can use as well as myself because I was looking to kind of get my music out there back then. So I would release music in the physical world like with many record labels around the state of Florida here where I’m based and then I wanted my own thing, my own record label but I just didn’t have the means to do so and


kind of like launched Symphonic in that regard to help get music out there to the masses, but mostly focused on digital distribution. And for those that might not know what digital distribution is, and a very quick way of explaining it is, in order to get your music on Spotify or Apple or any outlet that you might consume music, you have to go through a company like ourselves in order to actually get it out there because Spotify, Apple, and others…


Unfortunately, don’t work with artists directly and as you can imagine with as many artists that there are in the world, the standards just have to be very, very strict and the method of how to get delivery has to be very consistent. So that’s kind of like why a company like us really exists at the end of the day. Not only do we help the distribution, but we also ensure that the funds get to you in a timely manner and in an organized manner and so forth through our tech platform that Jesse and many others have seen for many years.


Jesse Brede (04:22.414)

Yeah, yeah, and there’s a lot to that. is no small feat, right? There’s all of these, like you said, of these different standards. Every DSP, like Spotify, digital service provider, Apple Music, or Amazon, has different ways of doing things. And so you have to do an integration. I get your newsletter, you know, often, and you’ll have a new integration or a new partnership. You know, speaking from the label,


You know, we have a label manager, you know, a relationship, you know, Lee, who helps us to also like plan out our release schedule and make sure that you guys know and have the information to pitch. so like not just on the mechanical side of getting the music up there, but you guys also help with marketing and artist development, label development, kind of keeping us abreast to all of the changes in the world.


You know, even like, we’ll hopefully talk about later kind of like what’s going on with AI and the world there. Yeah. So yeah, you guys are incredibly helpful. You know, think, I think sometimes in the music industry, independent artists get this like, you know, there’s this like bad reputation for middleman both on the labels and the distributor side. And I got to say, let’s like, you know, not all labels, not all distributors are created equal. I would say someone like you, people might compare you guys to someone like Tunecore.


What would you say the key differences between Symphonic and someone like TuneCore is?



Jorge (05:52.386)

Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, I would say Toon Core and the likes of Distro Kid are really meant for the beginning artist, I would say. You know, it’s one, it’s kind like a platform to help you be introduced into the digital world. There’s obviously established artists as well that might be leaving the major record labels that want to have 100 % of the royalties and ownership of their material where it becomes useful. But effectively, they are a software platform and we are a software platform plus, right? So we have that kind of human


interaction, we’re really big on education, client management, client relations, kind of like personalizing what a software platform can do is probably the best way I can explain the difference. We have, however, at least also kind of like looked at that world with a lot of interest and we’ve launched a kind of like an additional plan on Symphonic that we call Starter. So effectively, if you wanted to kind of leave the world of Districate and TuneCore or at least have a similar kind of experience.


in terms of 100 % of royalties. We have a plan there. It is very limited, but again, it’s mostly meant for if you’re just starting out and if you’re the only primary artist, for example, you can kind of like work with us and then effectively graduate up into a plan that’s more kind of like traditional distribution, which is percentage-based. So we will keep a small royalty share.


where the label and or artist can then operate and do everything. The biggest other differences that I would say is some of our financial tech is actually included in a subscription versus any additional pricing. So if you’re a label or an artist and you’re looking to pay your collaborators,


you can actually use our tool that we call SplitShare to be able to pay a percentage of our royalties to any contributors that you want, even a graphic designer or a recording engineer, anything of that nature, you can actually set up within the system so that way your payments automatically flow out and all that is free effectively with every plan that we have as well.


Jesse Brede (07:49.518)

That’s amazing. Yeah, I just wanted to say like when I think, let’s see, I put a call out when we just, started Gravitas in 2011 and I put a call out to the internet. was like, I think I was working with CD Baby and I was like, look, I’m trying to get onto Beatport. I’m trying to take this thing seriously. Who should I work with as a distributor? And I believe it was both Reed Speed and Aaron Simpson. Reed Speed is the founder of


Play Me and Aaron Simpson is the founder of Simplify Recordings and they both said, hey, you should check out Symphonic. And so we applied, God accepted, that helped us get onto Beatport. I think that was within our first, like third or fourth release. And we moved over to you guys and have never looked back. I’ve had numerous, numerous offers from, think almost all of the sort of independent.


distributors and no one can hold a candle to what you guys have been able to do for us and I really have loved the loyalty and the relationship that we’ve had over the years and since then I’ve seen I believe Wacom recordings, Wacom has come to you guys, CloZee’’s new label Odyssey and I think maybe Lo-Kai which is a Manson Painter label and what I find really cool about that and I know that I’ve been a champion for you guys and just like look


we should all be over there because what my understanding is and what’s cool is like there is sort of this power in numbers and we have these little, you know, micro genres or genres of music and these pockets of artists. And that’s how I think Spotify and a lot of the other DSPs think of is you get these kind of groupings of artists and labels. And I think for you guys, it makes it easier to build your reputation and sort of.


the source for something likeCloZee like music. I see that CloZee record in the background. And so you start to get some credibility when you are pitching the music to Spotify or Amazon. And we often get these playlist pickups where if you’re going through Tunecore or DistroKid, you’re never gonna get that unless you’re already a very, very established artist. So I just wanted to kind of call that out and see. And I also just think it was like, it’s so cool to have like the family together.


Jesse Brede (10:11.182)

under your guy’s umbrella and under your steed. You know, I want to call out Oz McGuire, who’s somebody who you’ve grown with or kind of picked up and added to your roster, your team, who I think is a fantastic pickup. I mean, he was he’s super connected. He really understands the landscape of our music. You know, my world is this this musical world. So, yeah. Any thoughts on that? I mean, kind of the nucleus. I mean, how that works.


Jesse Brede

Well, first, you you mentioned the term family. I mean, I think folks that have been with us for a long time, they really kind of do become that. I mean, we end up having moments that transcend like the work that we do and really deep personal moments that we can share, which I think is a beautiful thing about kind of like growing together as well. So, you know, props to to read who obviously we’ve been working with for many years and Aaron, who actually also works with us now as a part of Symphonic as well. In addition to Oz,


Who has been in the game for a long time? So, you know, you’ve definitely mentioned the key members of our family with you Of course being a huge part of that as well I think you know, it’s interesting that you mentioned You know the like how kind of like all this sort of music being together in one place can can help opportunities I would say that is pretty


pretty correct you know i think obviously we become known for having a certain style of genre music where the gsp’s might look at us and say okay this is where the sources but i also attribute the fact that all these folks that you mentioned and anybody that’s really trying to get noticed number one they’re all pretty organized and they all take a very very seriously and


they really listen to the guidance and the direction that we ourselves are getting from the DSPs in order to get really recognized. And that, think, is the real reason why some success and notice occurs, is that kind of like organization, attention to detail, being able to listen to the feedback and actually apply it. Everything is changing a little bit in the DSP world. A lot of folks want to know.


Jorge (12:17.334)

what the release schedule is so kind of getting that awareness is there and I think that’s kind of what’s difficult to do if you are with just kind of like a software platform style plan of a distributor and really it sometimes takes a minute to kind of grow out of that to where then you you are able to then say here’s a client manager named Lee or Nathan etc to then kind of help take you to the next level but ultimately that starts to happen once you’ve kind of gotten your music out there I think for anybody that’s listening that is


kind of like wanting that kind of experience that you might have or that some of these folks might have or even that level of success. The thing that I tell people the most is to try to be as consistent as possible. Certainly have a unique sound, but really it’s kind of like about doing many things over and over, not flooding the market, but just being consistent of it because the DSP isn’t going to really want to push you as an artist if you don’t have something that comes next. And in a weird way, that’s kind of like a weird part of the industry. It’s almost like


kind of like making a DSP sort of like a social media platform. But at the end of the day, there’s such a hunger for content and there’s such an interest in content that I think it’s important for if an artist is looking to grow, get playlisted and also get that experience, get to the ability of maybe getting royalty advances and so forth, it’s building a catalog. And a catalog is real estate, which one day you as an artist can actually own and part ways with if that’s what your interest is to hopefully have a good outcome.


Jesse Brede

Wow. Yeah, I’ll echo the reps, right? When early artists come to me and they’re like, hey, I work with you and they’re not quite there yet, I will say something like, go and do a band camp or go work with DistroKit or TuneCore and get your, like see what it’s like to release some music. Do two or three singles and kind of get that under your belt. Learn some of the process, understand what it looks like to do this, just the mechanical part of releasing music, the mastering and the artwork.


and some of the terms and the rules, like you said, and then come back to us and we’ll have an easier time kind of working together and taking this next step. We always think about the artist development part of any relationship, looking at their socials, looking at what’s going on and sort of coaching people, hey, this is what the DSPs are looking for. A lot of that information comes from you, your guys’ newsletters. Of course, there’s lots of blogs and other information out there, but.


Jesse Brede (14:44.174)

Yeah, I can’t stress that enough. like, it is important to have a plan for the three, six months, a year. I remember bringing you guys a record with the band, Hello Yes. And we thought we were so ahead of the schedule. And you were like, yeah, we’ve already kind of like submitted our primary artists for this next year. And I was like, man, we’re still in the year before and we’re already late. yeah, things…


You know, I saw that in the touring world as well. Like you gotta be getting on holds six months, nine months ahead of the schedule, because it’s so competitive. There’s only so many slots if we’re talking about playlisting or venues or nights or dates or whatever. And yeah, wanna, the more organized and ahead of the curve you are, the better it is for your career.


Jorge

Totally, I mean I think I agree that that goes across all all layers and levels really at the end of the day and I mean it’s kind of like you know if you’re an artist you’re your own CEO really until the moment that you decide not to be and you kind of want to treat it as seriously as you can and there’s nothing wrong with that like you still have your art form you still have the ability of being creative but also you know you have to kind of


where the business had even if you don’t know it that’s okay like none of us connects kinda started into this like we’d i’d go to school for for business it just sort of happened and then i happened to be around great people great teams and great clients that really helped us shape and mold me that i think is important as an artist as well that you don’t you have to know everything but you just have to try so i agree with that advice and trying bandcamp and district into core it’s a great way to get yourself


really acclimated to the industry and so forth before you get to that next step.


Jesse Brede (16:26.69)

Yeah, you know a few years back, well it’s probably been like five or six or seven at this point, but I saw you guys make a push, a big push into Latin America. You’re from the Dominican Republic and your wife is from…


Jorge

Puerto Rico which by the way Puerto Rico which kind of sometimes it’s sort of like Montague and Capulet you know I mean like there’s always been a little bit of a rivalry but it’s a heck of a lot cooler now collaboratively because Ozuna and Bad Bunny have definitely like brought you know those two islands together more.


Jesse Brede

Yeah, yeah, so I mean one, you guys are first generation immigrants to the United States, right? Which I think is amazing. My father was a first generation immigrant from Germany. And I think that’s one of the things that makes America truly great is this melting pot of truly talented, amazing people that are coming to America and they have a vision, they have a plan, they have a hustle, they’re willing to work hard and put.


You know everything on the line for their family and for their ideas and I mean look what you’ve been able to create I just want to give a shout out to Jeanette like she is like your awesome counterpart working in the marketing and and communications of Symphonic and like I like you said when I see you guys It is not a business thing. I just feel like so much love and like yay like Jorge and Jeanette so I just want to say like you guys back


you guys made a shift, not a shift, but like an intentional focus to move into Latin American countries and work in these quote unquote developing markets. And when I say developing, the way I understood it was that, you know, obviously North America and streaming the technology and the, you know, the money in America, it kind of drives things. And so you have, you have regions, places in America, in the world where, where maybe there has not been a


focus on that specific music or helping those artists flourishes is that kind of what you guys were going for like what to tell me about that strategy


Jorge

Yeah, no for sure. And thank you, obviously, continuously for the kind words. And Janette will love that shout out. She loves you as well. I mean, I would say for us, was sort of like, you my background was in electronic music, but I am Dominican and I am Hispanic and so forth. And, you know, we always wanted to kind of like get into that genre. We just didn’t really obviously know how. So we just started to sort of market the business more.


To the Latin community into different countries, you know translating our website kind of really getting ourselves out there It started, you know about almost ten years ago now actually that we really kind of got into the space Mostly starting in Puerto Rico because that’s where Jeanette is from and we had more contacts there and really around 2016-17 is when Puerto Rico really started to unleash these Superstars and there were stars before that. I mean Daddy Yankee Nicky Jam


you know, there were just tons of different folks that were doing great things, but I would say superstars is the right term because that’s where Bad Bunny is and that’s where Ozuna, that’s where that was. And I think that helped to really spawn a whole new generation of artists and then…


We brought a team member on board who was kind of like dedicated towards a different part of the business at the time, mostly kind of like on a B2B building websites and so forth actually for a little while that we did, but he had deep ties in the Dominican Republic. So we shifted him into that and that sort of started getting us involved in the Dembeau scene and the Reggaeton scene and so forth. And then the business naturally expanded into Columbia and to other parts of Latin America. So now we have, you know, presence not only in the Caribbean,


Jorge (20:20.04)

But you know really strong presence in Colombia Mexico and I was actually just in Brazil last week also in Brazil with a team there which is a really totally different type of what many folks consider lab music, but it’s mostly like called by the funk and funk in general is Growing and that’s where the term funk comfort comes from the pho nk is really from the by the funk sort of genre So you’re starting to see all these genres really sort of transcend into different subgenres


genres and territories really, European, etc. So I think people just are kind of craving new sounds, much like even Afrobeats as well. Like that’s kind of like something where, you know, that sound was very heavy on influencing Latin sound, but now vice versa, it’s sort of like influencing each other, which is really, really great. And I think…


We really, I wish I had kind of like a better, more awesome answer, but we wanted to really just kind of be part of our culture more when we first were starting out and we thought, okay, let’s just really do the very basic thing, which is to start talking about our company to that world, which we weren’t really before because I was so focused on the electronic side.


Jesse Brede

I love that. mean, it seems, you know, maybe not full circle, but it’s like authentic to who and what you are. seems like a really intelligent business decision because as those markets continue to come online and spawn these stars, it does help to further integrate the music into, you know, being a global music that everyone has access to and is represented.


Jorge

So it kind of takes, know, sort of you guys can be the bridge and you’re pitching to, you know, Spotify and,

in Brazil or Spotify in Mexico, cetera. That’s really helpful whenever there’s an artist that has good traction in different markets. mean, what’s interesting is that, for example, Brazil actually really craves localized content. So really it’s music that is Brazilian that’s going to traditionally get more attention than anything that’s not Brazilian. It’s almost kind of like the world exists for Brazil and so forth, but the music that consumes the most is


the one from its own country, which is beautiful to see that there’s a lot of love and culture for it. And last thing I’ll say about this kind of thing in terms of genres and kind of just like the evolution of the company is we’ve definitely been fortunate to see different parts of genres grow. When the business first started was in 2006, electronic music was kind of quiet at that point. And then around 2010, this explosion really happened in electronic music, all these sub genres like minimal.


Techno becoming much more mainstream and so forth. And then we were able to see the Latin kind of explosion. And then now we’re seeing kind of like all these different sub genres. Obviously everybody knows about lo fi and just kind of like every different type of sub genre has really kind of just exploded onto the scene. And I think that’s because people now just like listen to everything and are able to then discover music in different ways, like Tik Tok and so forth, which kind of has helped to create these sort of movements as well.


Jesse Brede

Wow, that’s really interesting. Where do you think the future of distribution is going and what are maybe some of the challenges that you guys are going to face in the coming years?


Jorge

Yeah, so I think over the past few years we’ve seen kind of like distribution in general become more financially focused. You know, we’re talking a lot about royalty advances, marketing budgets, things like that, that before the focus was more so on, you know, platforms that we would distribute to or marketing reach. All those things are still important, of course, but it’s become much more around, you know, what kind of deal we can craft if once an artist reaches a certain level. So the real ecosystem that we have is



You start off as a DIY, you grow.


to where it’s a percentage based deal because we’re kind of helping you marketed and so forth. And then there’s opportunities now that are more so about us fueling your growth once you’re at that level and or even possibly IP purchases. I think distribution as a whole has become that ecosystem where you can start with it. But also if you’re an artist and you want to exit with a distributor, so to speak, in terms of you have your songs and assets, you could. You don’t actually have to go the route of a major at all, which


think is a really interesting thing and why major record labels are really looking at our industry more so than before in our ecosystem because we sort of perfected the kind of like major record label model without having to do all the different things that they were doing and really kind of helping to you know like fuel an artist with advances and or like I mentioned you know


I think the biggest challenge that we’re seeing the most is, and I think every distributor will probably agree, there’s a lot of fraud that we all deal with. That we feel we’ve got a pretty strong handle in, but it will continue to evolve. We’ve added like identity verification. if you’re…


If you’re coming to us and I don’t know you like I know you, Jesse, then you have to then kind of like provide us your driver’s license or passport before you upload a track. And that may seem extreme, but it’s really because we are part of this movement, much like some of our competitors as well, of really enhancing KYC, the whole Know Your Customer movement. And when you think about it, it is kind of nuts that anybody would just be able to go on any platform and upload an actual copyright of music without ever telling that


company who they are and we wanted to kind of change that and ensure that we were asking for that and that right there has really helped to not only know our customer but really prevent fraud from happening in the first place because we know that we’re creating friction points that fraudsters can’t use. So that’s one area where distributors have had to evolve and we have challenges and then the other one which is rapidly evolving is really AI. So right now every distributor is kind of


Seeing a big flood of music being created with AI For the record. I’m actually not against you know any production being AI assisted and and so forth I think that that can really be helpful and honestly you can’t really if you’re making music using AI has to have enough


Human creativity in order to actually be a copyright So if you’re only using like a su no to create a hundred percent AI song and you’re wanting to upload that That’s not copyrightable right now. You can’t actually get that for publishing either and so forth So I think that’s been a big challenge because it’s created a flood of music So I what I believe will happen the next few years is that the monetization Will change to kind of like combat this volume of content that’s kind of coming in


and possibly even some of that content is valued differently than human created music which i would support as well because i think at the end of the day you know some people might want to consume AI music if it’s delivered in a way that’s authentic and interesting but obviously if you’re not really doing anything as an artist that doesn’t necessarily mean you should get the same royalty as an artist right so those are the things that we’re seeing those are the kind of like


evolution points that we think are going to potentially happen in the next few years.


Jesse Brede (27:33.154)

Yeah, I don’t want to pick on them too much, you know, I think about like ChillHop records or even like the chill, the lo-fi, YouTubes, like most people don’t even know one artist from the next. It’s just a vibe, right? And so I think that’s like where like, like AI is just going to decimate that type of sound. I think of someone like CloZee or you know,


Ahee or some of the you know like Rezz like there or even like dead mouse or whoever right or whatever you want to call it there is I don’t think you can just AI them I mean we may get there in a couple years or as crazy as things are going but there is this heart human element to it that that is what I think people are concerned about and threatened


It’s really cool to hear you guys be on top of this. Yeah. And I did want to hit on like, when you talk about fraud, what is, what do you mean by that? What is, what does fraud look like to you?


Jorge

Yeah, for sure. there’s really a couple of main areas that we kind of consider fraud. So the first is artificial streaming. So let’s say you upload a song and you use a bot to purposely stream that song 1,000 times, 2,000 times, even a million times. That’s definitely one aspect that the industry and ourselves look at.


as fraudulent because it’s not authentic plays. Some folks are putting songs in playlists and then botting the entire playlist, for example. So that’s definitely one big aspect of fraud that we and other distributors are continuously getting more sophisticated on and so are our DSP partners. And none of that leads to the right place. And unfortunately artists might go to a website and see, hey, you can get a thousand plays for X dollars. Every artist that’s listening, that is not an authentic way. And those are usually


you know some of the scams that are out there so I think be wary there. So the second most troublesome type of fraud is really copyright infringement and sometimes people put that at the top I kind of put that one at the top but I wanted to start an unofficial streaming copyright infringement is really the traditional means of stealing either an entire song and redistributing it or using a trademark that you don’t have permission on or a sample that you don’t have permission on and uploading it and


That one is still quite common, unfortunately, and when you think about the fact that, you know, younger folks are starting to make music, the knowledge and the understanding of what copyright is isn’t really there. It’s kind of surprising that people think that sometimes taking a sample and distributing it is so okay, but that’s kind of like the culture that we’re in in terms of…


unlimited distribution, unlimited music consumption and so forth. So that one we combat really by using fingerprinting and kind of like matching audio to other audio that’s actually live right now to try to do our best to prevent that music from actually going live in the first place. Sometimes it’s perfect, sometimes it’s not. So it’s a very, very tricky thing that all distributors are kind of facing right now. But one of which is, I would say, the most damaging type of fraud.


Jesse Brede

Yes, it sounds like whack-a-mole.


Jorge

We use the term whackable quite a bit, that’s for sure. I mean, another, one last thing that I wanted to mention is around AI is that, you know, there are some really awesome potential future use cases. When I mentioned earlier about content in Brazil being streamed because it’s localized, like it could be a thing where CloZee has a song that’s in English, but then she uses AI to translate it into Portuguese and then distributes that and


kinda like focuses on marketing that song there. think that’s a heck of an exciting aspect of it. mean, even when you’re watching Netflix, to be able to then one day hear the dubbing and see the voice match the dubbing, I think is another exciting thing. Not to mention all the medicinal benefits that we’ll all see. So I think AI’s got a lot of bad concerns, which it rightfully should, but then there’s gonna be some amazing things that we’re gonna see that are really gonna change the game. And I think…


creatively going to be great for folks that are our names and really at the end of the day You know you might be able to train something to sound like dead mouse But it’s not dead mouse and you still have to do your best to promote that song so You know at the end of the day like you’re gonna have to put eyes on it and AI won’t be able to do that


Yeah.


Jesse Brede (32:07.576)

Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah, I don’t think AI can build a brand and an authentic brand that people resonate with. I I’m hoping that as younger generations are coming up with this state, their defenses get a little bit better. mean, I feel like our parents believe anything they read on Facebook. We’re like, no, can’t you tell this is fake? And it’s like, for us, we’ll be like, yeah, that sounds good. And then our kids will be like, can’t you tell this is


So yeah, it is it is exciting. It’s an exciting time. It is also scary like AI is such a game changer in so many ways It’s interesting which you’re talking about about fraud. I will say like we got a notice that one particular song for gravitas had like 10,000 plays that were not correct and I was like I have not ever knownly done anything like that. It turns out the artist specifically had


kind of gone that cheap and easy. If it’s too good to be true, it’s not real. If it sounds like a shortcut, it’s not. It’s gonna get you in trouble. And I wanna speak to, and I’m sure you can elaborate on this, like what I’ve seen is if you engage in fake plays, bodied plays, bodied playlists, you’re gonna end up in a bucket of other related artists that are also bodied and fake. And then that is not where you wanna be. The related artists.


of specifically Spotify is really important. That should be a really clear signal to you of what’s happening with your music and who’s engaging in it, what directions you could go, smart different remixes that you could work with. And when I say that, I’m always a fan of going totally outside of your box and doing a collab with somebody that’s not in your world. That’s a great growth strategy. But if you look at your related artists in Spotify, like


that should be true to you. And if you go and look at an artist, and we do see this, people will come to grab it to us and be like, I wanna work with you. And then I go look at their numbers and their play counts and their SoundClouds and they’re kind of, and then like, if things don’t really make sense, it’s pretty clear. It’s really easy for us as a label. And I know it’s crazy easy for you guys to see at a high level when someone’s not making sense.


Jorge (34:25.525)

Yeah, no for sure. I mean we constantly look at the territories. We have all these public available Data sources. I mean that’s another piece of advice It’s like you know if anybody’s using something to try to kind of like play the game and try to surpass Authentic organic growth people are gonna know because they can look up chart metric. They can look up song stats They can look up even just the territory consumption within Spotify as a means of saying wait. This is fishy or not. So those types of things are of like public and kind of like public for a reason really at the end of day.


Jesse Brede

ton of fans in the Philippines. Good job. should go tour there. wait, there’s…


Jorge

Exactly.


It’s like if you do, you better be from the Philippines because that’s usually where the conception will come from. You know what I mean? So I’ve actually had my music like bought it as well. I mean, I think one thing that I would say is we personally try to over communicate about artificial streaming if it happens, not as a means of saying you’re in trouble, but trying to educate as much as we can. We even also built like a tool that we call StreamSafe. So you actually see from each DSP, you know what they are considering artificial


streams as a means of saying, you know, talk to your artists or see what companies are out there, what they’re doing, because like we will protect legitimate clients, you know, but we also can tell which ones are not legitimate by just looking at the data and having a lot of triggers to say, okay, this feels


Often times those folks that we know are fraudsters are the ones that are going to go on Trustpilot or all these different sources to talk smack and so forth. But at end of the day, we don’t care. We know we caught you and we know we can prevent you from coming back in because obviously we’ve got your identity to prevent you from creating an account and so forth. So those are those different things that we’ve done to do our best at mitigating fraud, which


is just our one sort of slice of the cake. We really need everybody to kind of do their part in the distribution game, which I think is happening. I we’re part of the Music Fights for All Alliance. It’s great to be able to be with other CEOs of these companies and really talk strategies and be able to even work with the DSPs on what’s happening, best practices and so forth. So more is definitely to come there in terms of what the industry is doing to be able to combat this.


Jesse Brede

Yeah, it reminds me when I graduated college, I worked for an email marketing company and you know, my job as an account manager was to coach some of our less great clients on like.


Hey, don’t be a dirty spammer. Like, let’s get permission. And it was this whack-a-mole thing where it’s like the real spammers were always inventing new ways to get around the new things that the email service providers were putting in place. And I think nowadays, like Google and Yahoo and others have kind of won. There’s a lot of tools in place. But it took a while for that to all kind of get shaken out. One of the things that you can do in email is…


is kind of have these verified DNS records to say like, own this domain. I wonder if you guys have looked at things like blockchain or whatnot, like how are these crazy technologies like blockchain or even AI, how are they coming into play to sort of stop the people using AI to beat the system?


Jorge

Yeah, mean, for sure from an AI perspective, we’ve just used it from a business intelligence view. And then obviously we have our vendors that do the identity verification, which is biometric scanning. And then they have their own machine learning behind that. What we’ve been fortunate in, and I think what’s great for anybody that’s starting a company or running a company now, is that there are already so many tools off the shelf that you can use and just kind of integrate where you don’t have to build the actual complex aspect of.


large language models and AI and so forth to be able to make an impact. I think we’re actually seeing a lot of impersonation websites happening right now on Symphonic and another Distros, which is yet another new scam that we are working against in addition to what our competitors are working with. The DNS records piece in particular is helping out with that. And we just, I would say, have started really


kind of like scratching the surface of AI. I think that there’s a tremendous amount we can do. It’s more so in terms of trying to integrate it in a way that is going to be authentic for us. Like what we don’t want is someone to have an experience that just like pretty obviously feels like AI, but really kind of tries to at least.


enhance what they’re doing. we have thoughts about how much it can really help to explain your consumption and at least give you feedback on what you can do. Kind of like an extension of our human oriented touch is like the direction we’re interested in going hopefully if we’re able to achieve that.


Jesse Brede (39:24.898)

Yeah, I I always said that about you guys, like…


You’re the real people on the other side of emails. And I think that’s a huge deal and will only only get more important. mean, obviously it’s a very expensive endeavor to have human beings work for you. And it learns a lot. Like, again, it almost feels like the same thing as the bots. It’s like, if you get all your bots like working, you feel like you can shortcut, but that shortcut ends up costing you in the long run because people like they don’t want to they don’t want that. Right. We all think of like the horror stories of calling like


you know, American Airlines and you just can’t get a human being on the phone or a bank and you’re like, Operator! Please!


Jorge

I can talk to someone. Help me. It’s weird because one way that we’re actually using AI that has been interesting is whenever we launch a job posting, we’ve actually leveraged a tool that actually does interview you as an AI tool. Wow. That might seem weird, but it’s actually quite good. Okay. The reason we did that is whenever anybody is applying,


you can naturally have a bit of a bias whether you want to or not right now you’re reviewing their linkedin you’re viewing the answers you’re doing the resume we want to kind of like remove that and basically give everybody a chance to be interviewed because that sometimes surpasses anything that you’re seeing on a screen in terms of how somebody answers something or the resume or linkedin and that’s actually helped us really to get better candidates because we we want to consider


the human and it just so happens that in order to consider the human we’ve used an AI tool to kind of like begin that process. So that’s probably one of the coolest uses. It’s actually a platform that I’ll give a shout out to. It’s called Claset. So C-L-A-S-S-E-T dot org. So if anybody wants to be interviewed by an AI and to kind of like see a human experience with that AI, it’s actually quite fascinating.


Jesse Brede

That’s amazing. I just had my project manager for LionShare move on. And so we just went through a hiring phase. And one, I got 500 applications. Holy cow. And then from that, I was unable to go through all of them. And I was trying. And I was like, this is un-


sustainable, so we did eventually use some AI to review the applications. yeah, it was a lot, man. That’s really intense. Well, that’s cool. It’s really good to know that that exists. That’s such a funny turn of events.


Jorge

Yeah, it’s sort of like our we tell everybody before that we’re we’re doing this so that they don’t They don’t get freaked out but also that they realize the the value and why we do it and it’s kind of fun listening these interviews and Kind of like seeing people interact in a natural way. So that’s been a positive I would say


Jesse Brede

Wow, crazy. So yeah, all right. Well, I’m curious as a fellow business owner leader, like, did you have a, have you had a business mentor? Have you done any sort of business development, like learning all that? What has been some of your like best ways that you’ve developed yourself as a leader?


Jorge (42:52.716)

Yeah, no, I mean, great question. I mean, I think everybody’s path is totally different, but I think for me, so I bootstrapped the business from like 2006 to 2017. So I had the benefit of having close family in the business, which I think is important to have that sort of supersedes HR at certain aspects. But, know, really kind of like learning as you go is the first path, but we did raise a couple of rounds of.


know, private equity dollars to be able to help kind of fuel the company, which is really, it’s done that for sure. So would say the mentorship has really come from the team that we built. You know, I’ve got a great CFO, great CTO, just great professionals around me that had seen things and also experienced things that I never had been able to experience.


And likewise, vice versa, I’ve given them sort of like a taste of like the different life of an entrepreneur that they might have not seen before as well. So it’s been a really great compliment. And you know, we have a great board as well that I can lean on in terms of mentorship and feedback in terms of the stage that we’re in today as a company. really kind of like.


development through collaboration has been what’s happened to me at least. I’m still constantly learning. I never say I’m perfect whatsoever. I can still make mistakes much like everybody can. But I think I’m a bit of a sponge in terms of talking to other entrepreneurs. But even also I like talking to folks that aren’t necessarily like the business heads or the leaders. it’s, you know, I started off as an admin in my previous job. And then from that job, I moved on into Symphonic.


And admins do quite a bit for business leaders and they’re kind of like touching all these different aspects of the day to day of a leader and so forth. kind of like also learning from the bottom up has been really interesting. And I love interviewing our employees that are kind of like, you know, have their ear to the ground because I was there at one point kind of doing maybe that job or something similar to that job. So it does kind of keep you fresh and kind of like helps you to also evolve as well to kind of talk to any employee at any level really.


to kind of like help develop. So I would say that’s kind of like how it’s shaped me in terms of doing the business.


Jesse Brede

That’s great. Yeah. And it sounds like you, yeah, I mean, it sounds like you just have that always learning mentality, always like, you know, looking at it. I find it’s, it’s crazy because you might go do something or learn something that’s totally not business related or just any, you you might go travel somewhere and then like,


that experience will totally shift my thought on some aspect of business or marketing. So I think it’s just that, I think that it sounds like it’s that mentality of like, I’ll always be open to learning new and trying new things. And I love the idea of too, talking to people that are down in the trenches working. Cause as I’ve grown as a leader, you start to lose touch with like, what does it actually look like to do that work?


And then you kind of forget, you kind of forget and it’s good to kind of get yourself back into that, that sort of the real work of the job and the business and kind of remind yourself what was all this about in the first place.


Jorge

Absolutely, no, it’s like, you we do our annual meeting where we get to see a bunch of the company together and one of things I say is never forget who we’re doing this for which is, you know, the creator, the artist and so forth, but also those sessions are really helpful for me because it reminds me why we’re doing what we’re doing, you know what I mean? Because the folks are in those trenches and then it just gives me ideas to say, okay, what can we do top down?


to be able to help facilitate anything that can help anybody from bottom up as well as the artist. So it’s quite exciting. mean, it’s really about enjoying what you do at the end of the day and being able to surround yourself with people that are good and that mean well and that obviously want to contribute as well.


Jesse Brede

Yeah, and you mentioned the funding too. Like I don’t want to, I don’t want to like blaze by that. Like that is no small fee. One, you got to like go through a lot. You got to have your books and your business and your all the whole thing in order to even be considered for someone to start to open their pocketbook. It’s very intensive process. And for the fact that you got, you know, not one, but two rounds and kind of what you’ve been able to do with it. It shows that there is a plan that there’s leadership.


there’s execution on the other side of it, right? It’s one thing to have a plan, but then you gotta actually execute. So clearly, like you had your first round, you had some ideas, you put those into play, and then they set you up, they’re like, okay, great, now we’ve shown that Jorge and his team and the business model is thriving, is growing, now we will put some more money in. Do you have, like, when I say all that, like what comes up for you, do you have any more to share on that?


Jorge

Yeah, I mean, I think like the word that really kind of resonates in my head, which is sounds like a cliche, almost cheesy as I say it is like team really. I mean, you’d be surprised how often and how important it is that when you’re going up for funding that the team is solid, foundational, strong, and that actually can be good operators. Like that matters just as much as the business performance and or the innovation that you’re looking to do.


So that’s like when you’re when you were speaking like I’m like, yeah I couldn’t do it without you know, the folks that I have around me and that’s a very very true true statement And I think that that will continue to be be the way that it is But yeah, know it’s it’s a definitely it’s an interesting challenge, you know, you’re kind of ending up taking something that you’ve started on your own and Effectively. Yes, you’re giving pieces of it to others and and strangers. So it is kind of like trying to detach yourself


from this sort of like baby that you have, but it’s really just the baby growing up ultimately. you know, it’s been, I wanna keep doing this for as long as I can and I will hopefully. And it’s kind of just great to get other perspectives on how, you know, we can maybe add value to artists really. Like that’s been the greatest thing that I would say I’ve gotten out of it.


Jesse Brede

I want to be clear, you guys are still you can still say that you’re 100 % independent right you did take funding that’s different from being like a publicly traded company or having you know you know a controlling interest by a venture capital company that’s really kind of like we’re just gonna extract the value from this company and then sell you off the parts which is right right so very very different things if that didn’t land for anybody but I just want to say like


This is the right way, in my opinion, this is the right way to grow a company that you care about. At some point, you can only go so far with your own boots and your own team. And then like you said, you start to use, you find the right partner who may have money and they also have a lot of knowledge on the other side around markets, trends, you know, who can be the best CTO, CFO, whatever. And then they have connections all around the world. They are also probably like we have.


another portfolio of companies that could potentially assist you or be part of like a compliment or your company ties into their company and kind of builds on it. So that to me is the right way versus like the venture capital world is really intense. it’s just about short-tuned value extraction.


Jorge

Yeah, I mean I think, know, obviously there’s different paths to building a company. You know, if you’re building it in a way that you’re not necessarily getting seed funding or anything like that, you have a bit more rows that you can go down. Nothing wrong with building a company and getting seed capital either. The expectation is different. you know, a lot of people have a lot of horror stories of investors and obviously everybody’s familiar with like Steve Jobs and what happened with him and so forth at Apple in the early days. But ultimately,


Jorge (50:49.616)

You know you do kind of get to pick who you want to work with and you as a business owner can do the same diligence that they are doing on you You know you can talk to other companies that they’ve worked with and and so forth and really like try to be in moments with them where you can kind of like see who they really are


those things really I think help make the decision. So we’ve been fortunate, we’ve picked really great partners, ones that really help us do what we’re doing and are trying to build value for the business, but at the same time help us build value for the client, really the artists and who we’re really serving. And that’s been just a great happy marriage so far. And I would agree, I mean, think there is a point where it’s difficult to like…


do business and get a certain level of growth that you want without taking some share of capital, right? So like whether it’s raising debt, whether it’s credit lines, whether it’s liquidity or so forth for investors, like you have to kind of go down a path that you feel is best to be able to get to that certain point that you’re trying to get to.


Jesse Brede

Yeah, yeah, you know, I’ve heard like when you’re trying to grow every time you like double your head count you basically have to reinvent your business and your process and your systems and I think about like when you took that first round of money and some of the strategic hires that you made and I mean pretty immediately I saw like just the difference in the company obviously it freed you hopefully freed you up at least it seemed it to like go back to big picture thinking right you get so big that you’re almost like


you those are the growing pains. You’re almost burgeoning, you know, you’re buckling under all the pressure of like, we’re so big, but we don’t have enough to support this level that we’re at. And so you kind of like break through to the next level and you sort of need some fertilizer money to make it happen.


Jorge(52:35.63)

No, you said it right. mean, it’s been very much our journey in that regard.


Jesse Brede

I love it, man. Well, again, once again, thank you for staying true to the mission of supporting independent artists. And that’s no small feat there. You know, I’m sure you had lots of offers down the way to exit or we’ll buy you out. And, you know, people that looked maybe on the surface like good partners or good, you know, you know, people you could sell the business and just go retire, you know, back in Puerto Rico or Dominican Republic and just enjoy.


but you’re committed to your mission. And that to me speaks volumes about who you are and what you’re up to. So yeah, thank you.


Jorge

I appreciate that man. mean and and really like I said, I know it sounds again like a cliche or cheesy but we’re only really here and because of the folks that we work with and you know, everybody has helped us get here and that that we don’t take lightly. That’s why we we try to be as independent as we possibly can. It’s a tribute to the folks that we work with and whatever path we go on that’s something that I think is always important for me and also why like it’s never, you know,


like venture capital or private equity capital hasn’t really changed like the hunger that we have. mean, I think I actually work harder now than I did even then, which is really odd, but I think that, you know, if you’re enjoying what you’re doing as, as, you know, cliche as it might sound, it’s really not work at the end of the day. And you kind of just, get up every day because you, you want to, and you, you want to do something rather than you having to do something. So that’s very, very much the feeling.


But you know, I’m definitely not on vacation or on chats all the time. I’m definitely doing the actual work and that’s actually where I enjoy it as well.


Jesse Brede

I have seen that from day one. I mean, even a couple of years ago, remember just one-on-one emails with you still. That’s, to me, rare and unusual that a founder at a level of what you’re doing in terms of money and number of clients and all that would still, I think, somewhat of a special relationship, but man, it means a lot.


Yeah, and I think one thing that you had mentioned is you’re back to making music and DJing some more, kind of back to that. So where are you at with that?


Jorge

Yeah, mean first this kind of started around COVID. As everybody, were all.


kind of like locked up and so forth so I started kind of like tinkering around again making tunes and now I’m kind of in the stage where I’m like working with some of our clients like remixing them like anybody that has like vocals I generally it’s easier for me now to make music around that so it’s been fun I mean I actually did a couple of DMB style tunes which has been genres that I never really played with before my history so I’m doing it strictly for the love of it for the


of it. It’s kind of like helpful to sort of have a distraction even though it’s still within the thing that started in the first place. And again, really also to sort of experience what clients are feeling nowadays and how difficult it is to get noticed and it’s difficult. So I want to make sure that I’m at least like saying, well listen, know, I know how it is because here’s how I know how it is. I think that’s an important thing to be able to say to anybody that’s actually out there doing it as well.


Jorge (56:06.24)

I’m a very small member. I’m definitely not one of the top artists, that’s for sure, but it’s for fun for me.


Jesse Brede

Yeah, let’s let’s shout out who are some of the artists that I may not be aware of that we should go check out or people that are on the roster that have have made some waves lately.


Jorge

I mean, definitely one that we’re super, I mean, this is not necessarily one that people would be surprised about because we talk about her often, but we work with Image and Heap. So we have all of her former major record label stuff now with us as well. So that’s really, really, really cool. DJ Muggs as well is a really, really key client of ours. We also have this artist named The Orion Experience, one that I actually remixed as well.


really solid there. Sixpence, None the Richer, obviously everybody might remember that band from She’s All That and so forth. we have some of the records. OK Go, Mad Child, Citizen Cope. So it’s a diverse roster of a lot of different music. Stick Figure on the reggae side. definitely a lot of folks that way. We actually just signed Lettuce as well, which I know you might be a fan of as


Jesse Brede

Yeah, jam bands and streaming are interesting because I don’t think that people just always go to stream jam bands music, but it’s that’s awesome. They’re dope. They’re they put on an awesome show.


Jorge (57:39.33)

Yeah, think it’s like, you know, that’s a great sort of like call to action. It’s like show to stream. They have such a loyal fan base. And I mean, a lot of these jam bands too, which is really, really great to see.


Jesse Brede

Yeah. All right, man. Well, thank you for joining me today. been, as always, always a pleasure to drop in with you, Anything else you want to share or talk about?


Now, mean, just, you know, I want to give you the shout out. Obviously what you’ve done, you know, for many years with Gravitas has been incredible. We love you. You’re, you are family to us. And I think what, what you’ve done for many different artists as well as important. So everyone should recognize how great Jesse and the team is there. Also what you’re doing in lion’s is really awesome. So I’m just wanting to give you the shout out to close it out because I’m appreciative and thankful. And I’ll be there in Austin for South by. So we should definitely coordinate to.


Jesse Brede

Yeah, my buddy Ja Karma’s gonna play. I’m gonna drop in and play some tunes as well and we’re gonna make sure that everything is at number one ace this year again. So I can’t wait to see you brothers. So much love and just tell the whole team, Jeanette, Julio, Oz and the crew, Lee, thank you and we love them and we’ll see you soon.



Jorge(59:00.192)

Absolutely, man. Good to talk to you. Thank you.


Jesse Brede

Thanks. Alright, brother.

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