Sub Pop founder thinks he’s found the future of music

Orcas Island’s Bruce Pavitt is responsible for creating the grunge scene that spread from Seattle to cities around the world.

“I originally started the Sub Pop record label way back in Olympia … Went on to sign Soundgarden, Nirvana, and all sorts of awesome grunge bands,” he explains.

Now, Pavitt thinks he might have found the next big thing in music. Pavitt is creative director for 8Stem, a startup created by music producer Adam Farish.

“Throughout music history, the 130 years of music industry prior to this, the listener experience has been limited to pressing ‘play’ on a song,” Farish says. “What we’ve done is created an actual interactive format so that listeners can interact with music in a way they never have been able to before. Essentially, getting into the DNA of music.

“So that if you’re listening to a song and you would like to change the vocal, you can just press a button and take the vocal out. If the artist has determined that you can put your own vocal in there, that would be indicated and you can put your own vocal in there and then be able to share that on social media.”

When you download a song on 8Stem, you’re given all eight tracks so you can remix the song to your liking. You can remove the bass, add guitar, and manipulate the song to make it your own.

“It essentially takes what music producers have been able to do in the studio and distills it down to a very simple drag-and-drop button pushing process that users can easily identify with and use,” Farish says.

Pavitt says it’s time for a new format that appeals to today’s tech savvy kids.

“There hasn’t been anything on the market besides MP3s since the turn of the century,” he says. “I know that my son, who’s 17, hasn’t purchased music in two or three years. He’s never bought a CD. For a while he was buying music through iTunes, but now he’s just going through Spotify. He saw this prototype and said, ‘Oh, I get it, you’re turning music into a game. I’d pay for that.’ He buys apps all the time, but he doesn’t buy music. I think this is going to be a game changer.”

But do musicians really want people fiddling with their songs and posting their versions online?

“It’s a mixed bag,” Farish admits. “Artists who have established themselves historically, some are protective of that brand and they don’t want people messing around with it. Tom Petty is never going to go for this and that’s not our target.

“What’s happening in music right now, there are artists who are making huge waves in the music industry who have been living in the technological revolution for their entire lives. So file sharing is nothing new to them. This millennial generation that’s coming up, the cornerstone values are based upon the ability to personalize your media experience and recognition, which is the ability to share what you’ve created on social media.”

He says electronic and hip-hop artists are more open to the idea, because they’re used to sampling and mixing.

8Stem plans to pay the musicians fairly for their work.

“Bruce and I both come from an artistic background and we are an artist-centric company,” Farish says. “Streaming music services are Wall Street companies, run by business people who are designed to provide excellent returns for their shareholders. And they’re doing very well with that. At the same time, the artistic class that supplies the content for those companies is being starved out of existence.”

Pavitt says the app is a tool to get people more involved in making music, not just listening to it.

“My personal background comes out of indie rock,” he says. “The indie rock philosophy is anybody can make music, anybody can start a band and put out their own record. That’s what I’ve been championing for 35 years. This is one more example of how people in the general population can jump in, be creative and add to the creative discourse in our culture.”

The app is expected to launch in early 2016. 8Stem is still looking for beta testers, so send them an email if you’re interested in testing the product.