Latest / ninetyfive / In Conversation with Josh Scott, Etched co-founder | A new offering to protect artists & creatives

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In Conversation with Josh Scott, Etched co-founder | A new offering to protect artists & creatives · ninetyfive

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: We've come to Grind Studio in Old Street partnering with Etched.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Etched is a new tech for the music industry and we've come to talk with one of the co-founders, Josh, about what it is, why it's valuable to the industry and how you can give it a go as well.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: So Josh, great to be chatting with you.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's great to be here, man.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Etched.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us all about it.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: What is it?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Give us a summary of it and the inspiration behind it.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so Etched is a platform that captures evidence and proves authorship of creation, basically.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um the inspiration behind it.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: So there's three of us that are co-founders.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: One of our co-founders, Victor, he's an intellectual property attorney, and he's had countless situations throughout his career where people have been copied and copyright is there, but actually proving and having the evidence that's needed to show that they are truly the author of that work, um, hasn't been there, hasn't been available to them.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: So Etch basically was born out of that conversation, um, and yeah, working with musicians and artists and creators and kind of across the board with how people create and how we can help them, you know, capture that process uh and really have the evidence that they need should they ever need it.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: So why is it such a unique prospect and um what is it gonna do for the industry?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so like uh one of the things that we we use the blockchain, which basically um anchors each piece of creative work with a timestamp that cannot be altered.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: So it's immutable, um, basically meaning that it cannot be changed or altered, and that's what the value in the in the con in in what we're trying to do.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that's what separates it from you know using other kind of systems that log and record things that you do.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um also having a home where all of your intellectual property can be managed under one roof.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: As we know, like today's age, you're really just a musician, you know, you're probably creating artwork for your albums, you're you know, coming up with podcast ideas, you're coming up with story ideas, and the platform enables you to capture everything uh in one place.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so you know you can like bring it all in and then you can collaborate in that place, and then you can share your work and actually track and have control how how your IP is shared and managed.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um so it goes beyond just storing it and timestamping it, it's then now I have that anchoring, I can now use the IP and use the creative works a lot easier.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: So music creation is typically a really collaborative process for writers, session musicians, producers.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: How does it etched accommodate for such a wide group of people that are contributing to the art?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: No, I don't know.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, no.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: So um basically we have collaborative workspaces, um, and within those workspaces, different people can be invited and they can upload work that they're involved in.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if there's stuff that you do together, obviously you can upload it to that workspace.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and you basically have something to fall back upon.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, should discussions around splits and uh you know who did what fall down, you at least have that record to say, well, look, you know, these were my lyric ideas, or this was my melody line idea.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: So you you kind of got something to fall back on.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, it it's a trust in the background.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: If the trust breaks down here, you've got something to fall back on.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, hopefully people can work things out themselves, but you know, we know that it happens all the time, disputes happen all the time.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: So having this is best practice.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we still sign contracts when we do peak with things with people that we that we know and love and our friends and our family, because you know, we have those things in case just in things for case things break down.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, uh in in that sense, it you can have everyone under one house kind of doing the same thing and working together.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, got it.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: You've mentioned you mentioned a few like musical jargon terms there, like maybe there's a melody line and stuff.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder, Josh, do you have a relationship with music like yourself?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, so I I grew up um I I started learning piano when I was like seven years old.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: I've played music throughout my life.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I did GCSE music, I did A-level music.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: I used to want to go into music tech when I was a kid.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um and this is kind of my roundabout way of getting into tech and music, but kind of a much like more different path than maybe what I expected.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: But I lead worship at church.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, no, music's part of my life, my sister's a musician, you know, people in my family, musicians, a lot of my friends and family are musicians.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: So music is certainly close to my heart, which is one of the reasons why I believe what we're building is actually really valuable to the music industry specifically.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sick, amazing.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's that perfect like Venn diagram of what you're good at and what you love, and you're buying it together into this beautiful startup space, yeah, which is very interesting.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, exactly.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, startup space at the moment, but what is your kind of vision fetched?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like what does the future tell you?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh I I see um a world where people are able to create more freely with the threats of AI, with creativity being pulled left, right, and centre, who owns what, who does what, where has it come from?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think just being able to prove that you are truly the creator of something is gonna have tremendous value going forwards uh in this world, and I want Etch to be able to do that for people.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, so we've made the transition downstairs, which was a bit of admin, which got me thinking about Etch.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm interested, I'm creative, we're creative.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: But the admin side of it, is that a blocker, or do you feel like that's something that's really easy to use functionality-wise?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's a good question.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think you know, there is admin in life that we have to do, things that we don't enjoy, but that are a necessity, and you know, if you really care about something enough, then you'll put in the work that needs to be done to protect that or to look after that.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: Having said that, we are very aware that creatives do not want to come out of their workflow, uh, and we are building things within the application that will enable people to etch basically without having to do it themselves.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: So automated processes, integrations into software that people use, uh, Dropbox style kind of like syncing mechanisms within the app.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we're making it even easier, but already it's just a simple drag and drop.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: So managing and uh and moving those things into the platform, I believe, are really easy to do.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think there might be a little bit of a learning curve for people, but I believe it's a learning curve that's really worth taking because it's really going to support and protect people in the future.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I feel appeased, appeased by that.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds good to me.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: Let's admin them moving from downstairs to upstairs.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, quicker downstairs.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: You can itch something quicker than that transition.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: Alright, cool, cool, cool.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it sounds good.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, we actually etched our whole code base, so it was like nearly 2,000 etches a week a whole GitHub repository.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we did it in like less than 20 minutes uh with a with actually a direct integration into GitHub.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: So that was like a first bit of testing on how the integrations can work.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it's got a proof of concept within your own company, that's got a proof of concept within our own company, exactly.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we've got etch.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: If we weren't gonna use it ourselves, then we wouldn't we wouldn't.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right, right, exactly.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: We wouldn't be right.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, we use it for everything we do ourselves as well.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we're here with etch, we're here with the creatives.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of creatives, your tagline is imagine more, worry less.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: How can Etch empower like greater levels of creativity?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it's just giving people the confidence to collaborate and understand that the things they're creating are tracked, there's an audit trail behind it, there's something to show that they were the creator of that.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, as I mentioned before, with AI infringing on creativity, there's one thing that AI can't do, and that's have a creative process.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: And creators have a creative process, that's what separates us as human beings from machines.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: So the platform allows you to show that process, which gives you that confidence that no one can claim that this was done by AI or someone else or copied.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: I have my creative process, it's there, it's it's in stone, so I can keep creating and worry less about the things that I'm creating.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: And that's kind of how the tagline came about.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Sick.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Very cool.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, obviously, we're here at Grind and they have a studio upstairs, which is obviously perfect for musicians.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: But have you found use cases for this tech in like other industries, or have you been surprised by like anyone who's interested in adopting it in their industry?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, that's a really good question.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like I said mentioned before, like our we're a tech startup, we've used it to secure all of our code base, our marketing materials, we use it for everything.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: Our uh company documentation, um, data rooms, all of that kind of stuff.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: So the platform's super valuable for startups, for people that are creating in any industry is fashion.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: We've been speaking with law firms and basically big use cases in fashions.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: Industries where a lot of intellectual property falls through the cracks, things that you don't necessarily register, um, like copyright and unregistered designs and trade secrets, and there are so many industries that tackle those things every day.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: So it really does have a broad appeal in terms of what it can do and what the platform can do.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that also ranges from you know, the individual guy that's making beats at home all the way through to the massive, you know, high IP generating music industry company or film company, etc., that creating loads of stuff, and they can track the IP across the whole company, so there's value from the little guy all the way through to the big guy.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, so yeah, I think it is it's very broad in what it can do.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but obviously, we're looking at the moment into the music industry because we believe it's ripe and ready for something like this with a lot of the stuff that we're hearing coming from the industry, so that's why we're here doing things with musicians to start off with.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, we'll be doing stuff with other industries for sure.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So when you talk about kind of tracking IP, I guess etched gives this greater level of transparency, right?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we're in like an era of music where everything is kind of so short-lived that swipe, you swipe and see things in a few moments.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I guess now with etched, you'll be able to kind of almost swipe and see the history of a song being developed.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how does that transparency kind of shape how music happens, well, music's value, I guess.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think like you said, we're called etched, and the idea of etching something in stone is like when you create something, it's there, yeah, and it's there forever.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and no one can take that away from you.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: And you might create things that are a bit of a flash in the pan, and you might create things that have longevity, but whatever it is, you at least you know that your process is always there and always there to stay.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: And if you want to share that process with people, you can.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to keep that process private, you can keep that process private, but people will still know that you have a process, and that's the most important thing behind proving that you are an author of something.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I hope that answers your question.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's for I don't know about you, but it all sounds all sounds great to me.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I guess in closing, just wanted to ask you the final question for any creatives that are sort of watching this and say, oh well, the concept of it sounds keen, but in the whole concept of value, people obviously have to split their split their finances in different in different ways.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so just wondering how like people could maybe give it a go, or if someone has like they really like the idea of it, but might want to give a tweak.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do they is there scope to like liaise with itched to how do people like get give it give it a demo?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we do have a free version of the platform that people can sign, sign in, sign up, and they can give it a go and give it a try.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, obviously, as we're launching and moving into this specific industry, we are gonna be looking to run different schemes and uh things that we'll do with creators to try and help build around them.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we want to build around what people need and what people want, not just what we think people need.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: So there'll be opportunity for people to collaborate on those things as well.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: And we'll there'll be more things that are coming out about that over the coming weeks and months.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, obviously, follow our socials, you'll be able to see all that stuff coming forward.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and then, yeah, I think you can test it right now, like with that free version and see how you get on.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and if it's something you like, then yeah, you can you can go further than that.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: So hopefully there's an opportunity for everyone to at least see how it might fit into their workflows.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I think this week alone has shown like that you are giving value to creators in both the studio time and in the service that you guys are offering.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we'd definitely be interested to see how people adopt the platform.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, it's something that happens uh swiftly, and it can be something in the ideal world that is like industry standard in not too distant future.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for sure.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think for us it's just you know, we're we're we're providing technology to people, but we don't want to be like every other tech company that comes along and says, hey, we've got this tech solution that works for you, you should use it.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: We want to be human-focused, human-centric.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: The whole reason why what we're doing is to champion human creativity in whatever industry that might be.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why we want to build the platform with people.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's why we want to be with people that we're building it with.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want to just be some tech company in the sky trying to solve an issue.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, I think this this week has been a good example of that and meeting with people like yourselves and and some of the artists that we've had in there.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: Hopefully, people kind of get the essence of what we're trying to do.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it's a whole new world of music, is what it sounds like to me.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a great new offering.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I'm looking to see, looking forward to see how it like shapes how we listen to music, but also how we see like the development of music as well.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Being music nerds like we are, looking at the breakdowns of songs and stuff, it'll like might be into a case where we get to see breakdowns of songs of how each step in the history of their process.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, looking forward to it, man.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think some of the best art is definitely made in collaboration, right?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: So to be able to share that process and journey with people without the fear or the worry of it being like dangerous ground is definitely super valuable.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: So well done, massive respect to you and the guys for coming up with the idea.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, man.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and if this is something that sounds of interest to you, do check out uh the bio.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: We'll have all of the etched socials and the website where you can go and find out.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: You can use the free trial, and hopefully, you see enough value in it to sign up properly and make sure you're etching all of your work so that you can imagine more and worry less.