What's up, party people? My name is Sunny Ray. Today, I'm joined by Cigardo. He's the founder of Overtune. It's an AI music creator with a strong point of view on where the industry is heading. We'll dig into his clash with AI music boss, the power dynamics behind it, and what it means for artists. Hey, Sigy, what's up, man? Hi. How are you?
How you doing?
I'm good, thank you.
Good. So, where in the world are you calling in from today?
I'm in office space in Iceland.
Cool. Oh, Iceland. Wow. That's that's interesting. So, I guess how do I pronounce your name right? Is this Sigur or Sigi? I guess you prefer.
Sig. Only my parents and the tax authorities call me my full name when I'm in trouble, you know. Sigy. It's fine.
Sigy. Siggy. Okay. Got like that. That's easy. Hey Siggy, take us into the deep end. What are you building? What's Overtune? I guess like what problem are you solving? Why should people care,.
Right? it's not really an AI music platform. It's a music platform for sure. So if you think of it more like Cat or Canva for music, you're kind of there. So building it mainly for music creators and vocalists.
Got it. particular that want to sync over beats. So, it's kind of the.
So, it's more like a cap cut you said, right? Like an easy to use music maker.
Yeah. But I assume you're using AI to build some of it or not really.
Why? No.
You're not. Oh, wow. Okay. That's interesting to know. So, I guess take Okay, so let's just slow it down a little bit. I want to ask you a couple questions. So I Iceland has an outsized musical output for a country its size, right? Like what does like working inside that scene do to your ear as a builder?
As a builder, I don't know really. I mean it's maybe because we are isolated so much. I mean we are an island.
Like a tiny rock in the North Atlantic Sea. So that makes everyone kind of weird at this part of the world. So, I don't know if it's the music that influences everything or if it's an interconnection between music and technology, but you know, I don't know.
Yeah. Interesting. So, I guess before Overtune, what were you making and like what about it made you think that an app could do a better job.
Making? I mean, I wasn't making anything.
What were you working on? What were you doing? I was in branding and marketing for like energy companies, but I'm an ex-musician and.
I'm perhaps the youngest husband in Icelantic history. I used to be a like a teenage pop star in the Nordics.
No way. Okay.
So I So but I am a I am more of a singer/ songwriter. So I've always had to use a music producer or working with music producers that used like platforms like Buntlap or like ProTools, Logic, Ableton. So.
That's really hard to use.
And you know plenty of people can play something but like far fewer can arrange like when did closing that gap become kind of like the thing that you wanted to do? You would be amazed how like many people want to play something but they can't play something it but a lot of people have you know ideas in their heads like the melodies or something like that and you're right it's a there is a sizable portion of people that download whatever you know being it from Audacity to FL Studio or whatever and they just drop off by the installation wizard really. So I it's the same problem as people had before Cupcot and Canva essentially where they have to be a like a specialist in Premier Pro or what have you. Adobe suite it's a similar problem.
Yeah, I haven't used Cap, but my my wife's getting into it now and she's getting way more views than I do. That's for sure. It's pretty impressive how fast people can pick it up and you know just start producing nice content.
So I guess you started Overtune with two co-founders in 2020. Like how did the three of you guys split a problem that size?
Sorry, can you repeat?
How did the three of you guys split up the problem? Like in terms of the pro the company that you're building.
You guys was it three co-founders or is it just the just you by yourself? No, it was initially three co-founders. I think that every company should have a combination of hipster hack hacker and a hustler. Sometimes it's in one person once, sometimes it's in three, sometimes is in two people. So,.
Can you say that again? You think every company should have a what?
Hipster, a hacker, and a hustler. So, it's kind of the magic.
I have never heard that, but I love that. Okay, that's that's super cool. Okay. Yeah. Okay. But hipster, where does the hipster part come in? Like the artist, I guess that's the marketing guy.
Yeah. Marketing, graphic design, the soft skills. Often.
Someone that got it often that's in the hustler part as well, you know, that's often sales as well, but the hacker is often technology.
Got it. Yeah. That one I gathered. Cool. I like I want to remember that one. So, I guess like which record or producer taught you the most about how a song actually gets built.
In my personal experience or just what I like?
Yeah, in your personal experience.
I mean, I'm a jazz pianist by trade. So, I think jazz arrangements are something that I've been a lot into since I was a kid. So everything from Chad Baker to Miles Davis more of a kind of a cool jazz kind of I think that's my original and I used to work with a music producer for 10 years called Guin who kind of got me into electronic music and arrangements when he was using something called Fruity Loops that's now called Def Studio and I kind of fell in love with that like fun gamified user interface before it became fully flat star company.
I definitely remember FL Studio like it was yesterday. That was I think my first download as well for creating music. So that's really interesting. I guess like within a day of the global launch you were the number one app in Iceland. like what did that week teach you? Sige.
Nothing really nothing. Yeah, maybe it taught us the it's very hard to scale a product that's more of a platform. When you think of something as a platform, you have to scale like social media marketing and stuff like that. When you But when you think about something as a tool that integrates into platforms, it's easier to scale and you find your value and kind of purpose. So maybe it taught me that, but initially it taught me nothing. It just derailed us. It looked like a nice number. It seems that you're reading articles from the past as well, you know. So, like that's nice to get some plus from the past for sure. But.
Yeah, think about it as a platform, not as a platform, but as a tool for sure.
And how did the first wave of users find Overtune and like which of those routes kind of still work today?
I can't remember to be honest. We just took over Iceland by using Icelandic artists and Icelandic PR. It's a very small country. Iceland is like a block in New York just in terms of size and number of people and just imagine a block in New York if they had their own culture and language. So it's not that hard to take over the country.
You mean population wise, right? Iceland isn't Iceland big like land mass wise?
Land mass? No, I mean I think it's like smaller.
Oh, really? It's that's.
I mean we are bigger than Denmark as an example, but we are very small but we live on the coast essentially. You can't live in a metal. So there are very few people that.
But you guys raised $2 million from people deep inside music and games. Like what did they see that others missed?
But we happen to be the best music creation tool on the planet. So we just got the best investors to invest in that. Pretty simple.
That's simple enough. And and you called, you know, the idea that most people dislike making music infuriating, right? Wrong and arrogant. Can you say more about that?
Yeah. By Mikey Zuman, the CEO of Sununo. Yeah. I think that I'm nothing against like a music platform. I think the technology is quite interesting. I just thought that when you generalize something over a whole cohort of people saying no one likes making music, it's like I am an atheist and if I will be saying I'm an atheist and so there's no God, you can't be Buddhist, you can't be Christian, you can't be Muslim or whatever Jew is, that's a pretty arrogant statement. So what you started generalizing over the whole thing felt like a rush thing to do and no one was kind of commenting on it for a long time and kind of built up. But I'm not I don't mind at this moment in time.
You called. that's crazy. So I guess what what's the most expensive thing you believed about creators that turned out to be wrong.
That you have to use social media marketing and pay for social media marketing to get users. That's a very expensive kind of thing to do and you shouldn't really do it unless you're a big corporation of course and maybe you should do it.
Makes sense. So 6 years in like who are you building for now and like how has that person changed since 2020?
Well, we are look at this company more like a pipeline than a standalone platform or product. So we built this virtual music studio for Roblox.
And have for the past 90 days got 3 million users now.
Okay.
So that's from that end and then we're also integrating it into SoundCloud on the other end. So look at it as this like creator to artist fun. You get this a lot of people with very much of a creative intent as Roblox. They get converted into tune and then into the SoundCloud fun and back. So that's kind of the use case.
Whoa, that's huge, dude. That's huge. Can you describe overtune to somebody who's never made a music made a piece of music before? Like what do they do in the first, let's say, minute?
They arrange beats.
They are in speech.
They arrange beats. So they get beats from beat pack. So they import their own beats and they arrange those beats. That will be in the first arrange beats. Got it. Interesting. Cool. I got it. So, I guess what are you pushing hard hardest on over the next like 90 days and like what has to be true at the end of it.
Continuing what we're doing essentially. So we are working on two what we call swim lanes. One is integration with Roblox and the other is integration with SoundCloud. Those are very big projects that's hard to manage alongside each other because we are a very small team. So make sure we don't drown. I think that's something that's summarizes it well is pretty big two projects.
And I guess the last round brought industry money in like what did it teach you about I guess whose money you want next?
Are you guys planning to raise or are you guys like just thinking of kind of hitting escape velocity from here or what's your thinking?
We already are. growing quite fast, you know, it's a lot. It's almost from no growth to all of the growth in months.
That's through the robust partnership at the moment.
And you score that like was it just a relationship you had or like did you meet them at a conference or you guys did outreach or.
We had an interesting conversation about this investor founder kind of dynamic and I think that opportunist is a story of good people coming together and turns out investors are people too. to people with hopes and dreams like me and fears and and good qualities and bad qualities, you know, just.
And we kind of took a really interesting like path to like because every music creation platform fails essentially or in the past I mean will fail. It's just a matter of time. So I don't like kicking a lying man on the ground, you know. I don't like to comment on the future CEO of, you know, that like, you know, pets.com. It's just mean. So there's that. So we took this path of what's the product? What's the market? Who wants to use it? and you spend time building a product for the right audience before scaling with the right people,.
You know, as opposed to many music platforms that just raise money and spend it on marketing and then f.
You said overtune is more like Canva or Cap Cut from music. So I guess what does that unlock for people with like ideas but like no production skills?
Everything. basically you can get your idea out. you can sync over it and you just like unleash your creativity everything. Just like with Cupcut, we use templates and we use key frames and all of the same design and like product philosophies to get yourself on paper.
And you see overtune as like a as a tool inside of a bigger platform, right? So not a standalone platform. Why is that distinction so important? because we are a very good music creation tool. We are not a social platform. We are not a music distribution platform. But what they do very well is to allow people to create.
But distribution is like kind of the biggest problem with many startups,.
The product itself as opposed to it like almost never does anymore at least. So it's vital to the company that we continue working with Roblox and so.
And you said becoming number one in Icelandic initially derailed the company like what did you have to kind of like unlearn during that phase.
I wouldn't say derailed it's just it's all messy and you know the status space is just up and down and sideways and nothing derails we just we are still here.
You know I think I it's a misunderstanding ing. I feel that people think that founders should be with a lot of money or a lot of tal to be a lot super smart. I'm not smart. I'm sure we do not have a lot of money, but we have a high pain threshold.
And I think you have a high pain threshold. You can really do stuff that other people can't do. So, that I think is the key for people that want to build in the music space. At least it's pretty brutal.
Wow. That hits, dude. So, 10 years out, man, if you're right about all this, who's making the music people listen to?
I don't know. People,.
That's the point.
Maybe you,.
Maybe my mom. I don't know who. Some young folks that are making music like always.
Love it. Sigy, where do people learn more about it? Where do they learn about you?
Mr. Okay.
I think you know just to end this conversation because you're talking about like people making music is that like people will always make music. It's like people will always go to the cinema to watch movies, right? But we just feel that music needs a new language as opposed to you know it was the there was a time where like video editors were all trying to hone into Hollywood. they were trying to like distribute DVDs or work with like movie stars or movie studios or whatever and then came along a platform called YouTube that was basically a cat video platform.
For a long time before becoming the format for.
You know what we're doing now as an example so we feel the music needs to have.
Something similar you know just a new language essentially so it's not that.
You know people will not make music for I mean we love where people are making music with AI and just dos we just offering something different. So,.
You know, you you've called the idea that people dislike making music arrogant. what do AI music companies get wrong about creators? I think everything because I say that because they treat music like disposable sound and not the language of emotions. And that's why I think people are mad about something that's so dear to them coming forth. Even if I would be using AI, I would have been telling you or anyone because there's a lot of pullback or push back from the creative community of AI. So what do they get wrong about the creators? hate it. So that's what they're getting wrong. But the technology is interesting and I think it opens up a conversation.
So you said that you don't oppose AI and by the way I use a lot, right? I mean my mom was in the hospital. I took a voice note of her singing a song to my dad and I made it into something that like maybe made her feel better. I don't know, maybe not. I also create music that takes the kind of sound that I like, you know, like Toronto like has a kind of a dark like Drake and Weekend, all these people, but I don't like their words because they're talking about them and all these things that I can't relate with. So, I create music that's got to do with my goals and my vision. So there's definitely a place, right, for this stuff. I can see it. But I also can recognize that there's a disconnection between what you said, right? Like the emotion and the creation process cuz it kind of just comes to be. But I guess my question is like where do you draw the line between helpful AI and replacing the creative act?
I think that's not the issue here. I think the issue why people are mad about this situation is not AI. is just here and it's just scaling really fast. I think what people are mad about is that people have been scrolling on their phones for the past 15 years as internet went on the phones been socially conditioned to do that and then you have some technology that pumps up content like trillion black content pieces, music, videos, images a minute or something. And of course the algorithm picks it up because it's so much content just by statistically it should pick it up. So people are watching this and something attacks their social media feed and they say okay th this is enough. So I think AI where do you draw the line? I think this speeds up something that was inevitable. I think it speeds up something that people were getting mad for a long time. music was even being adapted to social media like Tik Tok to get some views like a platform that doesn't necessarily reward sincerity and creativity but more like repetition and familiarity and emotional spikes. Something that AI does very well. So I think there's no problems with AI. It's just getting faster to the inevitable. You know, you describe overtune as a pipeline, right? From Roblox to overtune to SoundCloud. What does success look like across that journey,.
A new format of making music.
Basically waiting it out? It's a if people think this is distribution play, I would have made a music platform like a trillion songs a second. It is to rob as an assemble is closer to theater than Tuk. It's so authentic and people are doing it in real time. People are not uploading content to see how it performs. It more like how does this place feel to exist in it's very strange but very powerful and I think when you combine this together it becomes an atomic bomb. It's like what are we doing now? We are doing a podcast and people are saying who would listen to two guys randomly on a podcast. You don't have a radio station. You don't have a license like to like put sound to the airwaves. But this small kind of media format blew up and became the media format because it is authentic and because it is personal. So my answer basically is just to wait it out. You have the best answers man. and I do a lot of these interviews, but your answers are always like I love them. So, I guess what And by the way, I my questions technically ended like 10 minutes ago, so now I'm just like kind of going off the top of my head. And I'm just so curious about what you're building and I you know, secretly love music. Not secretly. we have dance parties at our the Ray residence every Friday, the five of us here. Yeah. We got two-year-olds, we got eight-year-olds, 11 year olds. and I always felt like after a certain point I would like music would be the final frontier, right? but again, I think the tools for people like me are just missing, right? Because I never excelled at anyways. So that's why pseudo and things like that excite me because I have this ability to create music that I know sounds good, but there's also this disconnect where I don't I like I want to be more part of that creation process, right? It's just like put in a bunch of text, hit enter, and it like comes out. So I like what you're doing. I have a question. What makes managing the Roblox and SoundCloud integration hard at the same time?
Everything. It's so much work. You can just imagine getting so many people in being on. Yeah. Everything. But I understand your take on because it works and it is powerful to hear the music that you make. I understand it. So it does work. But you see that you said that I look I'm very vain about my hair for some reason. I'm a very vain person. I always go to the same partner. No one else can touch my hair but this part.
Thank you. There was this invention called the floppy that was like it hit back in the co but it was like an 80s invention got viral in the 80s where you would basically vacuum your hair it works it's fine would I use it no but it you can cut your hair and I often describe a music platforms like floppy for music you know it works it's very quick it's very usable.
But something is missing you want to be people to come to her and like do stuff in the same cosmo music.
Love it. Cool, dude. Let's bring this one to an end. yeah, I think you already shared overtune.com. So, thank you so much, Sigy. I know this one was.
Yeah, it was in the making here for a while, but really glad we got this interview in. This is maybe one of my favorite ones this week. So, hang out for one minute. I'm going to bring the stream to an end. And everyone listening live, thank you.
