Gala Music is an innovative platform that seeks to empower artists and music fans to embrace a new era of creativity, ownership, and connection. Like all Web3 projects, the way Gala works is based on the principle of decentralization. But its impact transcends the limits of Web3. What they’re doing now is nothing short of a real cultural innovation with film and music at its epicenter. In this quick catch-up interview at the Veecon 2023, Sarah Buxton, the CEO for both Gala Music and Gala Film, treats us to a sneak peek of what’s about to go down in the months and years to come. Tune in and see all the incredible stuff they have in store for us!
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Gala Music - Outer Edge At Veecon 2023
Everyone, Josh Kriger here of Edge of NFT, live at VeeCon in a fun recording environment at the Gala Music Activation with the one and only Sarah Buxton, CEO of Gala Music And Film. It is great to have a chance to chat with you.
Thank you. For the benefit of the tape, we did have a full start. During that full start, he did say, “You saved the best for last.” Just so we got it on the record that you did say that in the first introduction. I would like that on the tape, but that is fine. It is lovely to be here.
I have been excited about this. I had Jason on the show a couple of months ago. We focused a little bit more on the gaming side, but he did talk a little bit about the film and music side. David Bianchi is a dear friend of ours. He is someone that has been in our orbit for a long time, and he has been talking about it. I personally have been a fanboy of what you guys have done in terms of trying to evolve this critical aspect of innovation. It is not really Web3. It is about cultural innovation. It starts with film and music. That is the epicenter of it.
I couldn't agree with you more. When we evolved out of games, people thought we were crazy. They were like, “What are you doing? You need to be focused. This is where your heartland is.” I was like, “Of course, it is.” It makes a ton of sense, but what is a game?
I have an answer for you because I just heard this recently. I think what you are going to say is a game is a story. A game is a film.
You are going to get top marks for that as an answer.
I'm supposed to ask the questions, not answer the questions, but you ask the question.
You have been interviewing all day. We could do it that way around. You are exactly right. From our point of view, it’s this trifecta of people who love to have fun and experiences. They love to escape for a little minute. They love to socialize, and all of these different things. I don't know that there is anybody on the planet that doesn't have a love of music. Maybe it’s a different type of music to someone else, but that immersive content and entertainment are incredibly important. It made a hell of a lot of sense.
We tackled games that take time to market much longer. The complexity is much more intricate in terms of all of the mechanics and stuff around it. The film is halfway in between in terms of timeline. You then got music that is quick to market in media format. Between all three, we got everything covered. The fact that they can all play together makes it exciting.
It takes a special type of person to sign up for the role that you have. I want to rewind a little bit. How did we get here? How did you get involved in Gala? What were some of the key moments of your career that led you to this journey?
I was tricked into joining Gala. That is an actual true story. I have had an eclectic career. I have never wanted to work for anyone. I got a big work ethic. I was always a gun for hire for big brands and large companies, launching products, marketing things, and moving people. I'm a storyteller, but I got some other skills tucked in there as well. I'm quite old. I gained a few things over time.
We were having a conversation one day. The Gala was sub-ten people when the conversation started, and sub-twenty when I joined. We were kicking around ideas about they needed a COO of Gala. I’m one of the guys that were working with Gala at the time. We were talking about all of the candidates they would want in a company that is as unhinged and as crazy as Gala. I have never met a team that was so ferocious. They didn't care. There was nothing that they thought was impossible. They were brave and bullish.
It sounds like they all went to Tony Robbins seminars.
They were unhinged. They didn't care. We were going through all these people, and COOs are generally quite practical people. You want to operationalize things, processes, and approaches. I was like, “That is not going to work in this company. If you try and take old-school corporate stuff and put it in here, it is just going to get rejected. You need to think a bit differently. You need someone that can go out and get you some studios in. You need someone that maybe pitches investors,” because that was still on the table then.
After I finished my summary, I said, “You probably want someone a bit like me.” They were like, “That is good. You got an interview in half an hour.” Here I am ten and a half years later. Games have grown a huge amount now. You know that from interviewing Jason. It’s huge. It’s fifty things in flight now. Products are now coming to market. We have restructured that team quite a lot. The game studios have a lot more independence. They are much more empowered to do things the way they want and have autonomy, which is good because it means they can keep up with the pace and the change they need within their team and market.
There are so many that I have learned through the process of interviewing people in that industry. There are so many different niches within the games. They all have their different approach to strategy and the visual side of it. It is sophisticated micro markets that are woven together.
The industry expertise that we got sitting in Gala is truly mind-blowing, and it is crazy. You don't want to bring in people that have that experience that has been associated with some of the biggest gaming titles you have ever heard of, and then put them into a process that feels weird because we are trying to be innovative.
The mix we got with the blockchain, technology, and gamification aspects versus tokenization is always a delicate balance as well. When we launched music or we made our intention for music known in 2022, I started looking at it like this is interesting to me because it is something I can champion and own. I love the fact that you are subtly trying to move your microphone. You are such a pro.
I have moved over into the music and film side of the business. I'm leading that now. The one thing we always reassure the community is we are not compromising anything. We are adding people with the right skills to do these new businesses. We are not putting a game designer on something to do with music that would be nothing short of bizarre. It doesn't work like that. When there is no crossover with the team efforts or anything like that, it gives us the ability to scale quickly.
We are here at a music-centered booth that you guys did for VeeCon. What brought you here? What point in the evolution of the music side of the house are you at this moment?
We were here in 2022. We are not here because it is in a different city in 2023, but we were at VeeCon. We did a big game activation and a couple of panels. I spoke on a music panel in 2022. I always feel that when you come around for a year or two on something like this, it is always good for people to lean in and make sure it is a success like in 2022, particularly because the market dynamics are completely different.
You need to show up for each other. In 2023, we didn't want to show up for ourselves so much as show up for the artists. The thing we are sitting on right now has been used over the last couple of days. We had sixteen artists come and perform, and record their tracks here. Everybody got headphones outside. They could be part of the recording session and vote on their favorite. The winner who was announced earlier is now going to be on the VeeCon stage performing at the stadium.
This will be shown later. You can reveal the winner.
We got three people up there. We got our two previous open mic winners. We got Just Shockey from LA. We got Emily from NYC Open Mic, and then Raging Casuals from this activation today. We are pleased. They are groups. They are our first band to go up and perform. That is exciting.
I'm excited to check them out in a few hours. I met one of the performers. He was one of the first sold-out bronze artists on your platform. How many artists have a part of the platform at this point? What is going on behind the scenes there?
We got over 50 emerging artists on the platform. We got some big names. People like Snoop have been involved for a long time. I do lean on people like that quite a lot. My ignorance is sometimes a real benefit because it means you are not restricted by what the industry has created, but you need the expertise to navigate it, and we have fueled the team for that.
Snoop is a pioneer in many different forms of creativity, and he loves Web3. Cordell is a big fan.
Snoop is an entertainer and storyteller. When you have people like that involved in your business, it is very useful because you can dive into their networks. You can dive into thoughts and feelings about things and often see a perspective you can't. That is good. The platform is decentralized. It is hosted by a node network. We got 7,000 nodes active right now, pre-live tokens.
We got some music going.
We got some nice background going on here. We can dance to this. I think the sound is going to be okay. How loud is it do we think? We can hear it.
We will roll it. It is the Edge of NFT after hours now.
It is going to change the vibe a bit. The platform has had over a million streams in the first 30 days. It is still in its test phase. We are happy that it is doing what it should be. There are 25,000 nodes in the network. As the token goes live, we expect all those nodes to come online. This is amazing.
It is a first for me. I have done 250-something episodes of this show.
Don't ask me to start singing along. You’ll regret it.
You don't want me to do that either. Karaoke is not my friend. What is next on the music side of things? Where are things going?
We got some massive plans. I quote it today. I was like, “We need to get out of this space. It is not about bringing people in. It is about us going out and talking to the masses and the real people.” It is getting out of our own way and allowing people to come in, listen, interact, play, and grow the platform. To do that, we got some large well-known brand partnerships that aren't in Web3 or outside of Web3 to help bring listeners in, and to help give these emerging artists that visibility in the platform they need. There are lots of physical activations as well as digital, but getting those big brands on board is important for our credibility as well as our reach.
We can have another show about some of those partnerships in the future. Before we adjourn, since the party has started, let's talk a little bit about the film side. RZR is a cool project that is coming off. I had a chance to participate in the private reading of it. I got a little bit of alpha. What is next for that project? What is it about that project that inspired you to get involved?
It is lovely you brought this up because I met David Bianchi for the first time at VeeCon in 2022. We were at an after-event. We got talking, and he was raising money. I was like, “What are you raising money for?” He started talking about the film project. I said, “Don't do that. Don't give away your stuff. We are launching a platform for film. Maybe we could work on it together. Before you do that, come and talk to Gala.”
The rest is now history. We got eight productions in flight right now. RZR is about a dystopian world in the future. It delves into this dark, almost sci-fi world of neuro implants, and the ability of a specific individual called Grim, which is played by David Bianchi. There is almost cat and mouse-type chase he's got with Detective Thompson.
Detective Thompson is Mena Suvari. It is weird because you know her from things like American Pie and American Beauty. She plays a certain character. I interviewed her. She was like, “I love this character. I love the depth and the darkness.” What attracted her to the script was when she was talking about it, she was like, “It is far from reality, but it is close to things that could and might be happening soon. It terrified me a bit. That is why I wanted to dive in and get involved.”
The film will be launching soon. I don't want to put it live until after the token for music goes live, but the film has a platform ready to roll. We can put that live. It should be in the summer of 2023. We got a nice big launch for that one because we are working with Seven Bucks, which is Dwayne Johnson's company. We are working with Unrealistic Ideas, which is Mark Wahlberg’s company. We got animation and reality. We are doing a reality thing with Snoop. That is a leak. People don't know that. We got comedy. We are running at that one as well.
I would be honored to be one of your immediate partners for that event. That will be a lot of fun. I have followed his journey since I met him when we were starting this show. We have grown in this space together. I know how hard he is working to put this together and how dedicated he is to intersecting blockchain in his career in film. That is what you guys are focused on. Before we head out and get to the party, it is the end of VeeCon, just a little bit more about the roadmap. Maybe you can touch on where things are going next. What is top of your mind going into the summer and beyond?
For entertainment, it is crazy. With games, there are lots of stuff coming online. We did a vision paper. I'm keen that the company starts to stick to some of those corporate processes. It is important for the community. We want to break out of the Web3 community. A couple of years ago, it was forgiving because it was brand new, but now everybody needs to grow up a little bit and be a bit more responsible.
Music, we will have the all-access store going live. That is the utility for the token. Those are experiences, merchandise, and content that you cannot buy anywhere else. We got some major partnerships coming online for festival season. The token and going live on exchanges is a big one. The film will launch with several titles ready to be streamed. We are excited about the fact that when we launched that one, we are going all guns blazing.
When you say streaming, what are the distribution channels we are talking about?
For film specifically, all of the titles will be streamed on Gala Film. We got partners that we can push out to afterward. There is a couple of different ways of doing it. Sometimes we keep an element of exclusive content on Gala Film to keep people coming back. At other times, there is an exclusive window that you can only see on Gala Film. It depends on the title and the reach of that title as to which strategy we are running with. We are running with a couple.
They got their pros and cons. Music is more challenging in some ways because you are not going to go somewhere else to listen to a two-minute song to dive back into a normal playlist. You have to be able to create a continuity of experience for people or a reason that the effort is worth the value they got from it. With film, it is a little bit easier because if you got a fifteen-minute episode, I don't mind a click to go somewhere to watch it and click off again. It is an interesting dynamic between the two. Music will go in the film. Anybody that owns that track in that film will also benefit from the listen-and-earn aspect there. Film, unsurprisingly, is hosted by nodes, and it is going to be watch-and-earn.
There is a little bit of launching a film or music production to launching a podcast or doing an event. That is overwhelming for me. You are doing many different projects at once. I feel like you are using all possible parts of your brain, and I'm getting overwhelmed just hearing it all.
There is so much I haven't mentioned. The good news is Gala has an amazing team. I do believe that a championship team will be a team of champions any day of the week. I definitely have a championship team. We will be good.
We will trade supplement recommendations after.
Maybe some sleep patterns. People keep asking me how I'm doing with the time zones. I'm like, “What time zone?”
We got to check in with Arianna Huffington, who was here earlier, to give some tips on that. We have to keep our phones outside of our bedrooms. That is key.
How can you look at it first thing at 5:00 AM if it is not there? I have to get out of bed to do it. That would not be a pleasant thing. It is cold at that time in the morning.
This was great to finally have a chance to catch up with you. There is a lot more to unpack at a future date, but thanks for spending a little time with us.
Thank you. We should dance now.
Let's do it.
That is what the world is telling us.
For folks tuning in to this and not quite ready to dance, where do they go to learn more about what you guys are up to?
The best place to go is Gala.com. From there, you can dive into Games, Film, or Music, but everything is there. We do have the friendliest Discord. I'm in there a lot. I'm friendly. I hang out a lot in the Music Discord, and Film. We got the Vox Discord and the Games. People are always welcome to come in and ask questions. We know when we are winning and we know when we are doing something right when there are no questions. You don't need to be emotionally invested in the company. You can just go and enjoy the content. That is what we are working toward.
I dig it. You have a big vision and big goals. I’m excited about everything to come.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
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Important Links
- Gala Music And Film
- Jason Brink – Past Episode
- Seven Bucks
- Unrealistic Ideas
- iTunes – Edge Of NFT
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