Ani Sanyal

I had no money when I started the company.

So, uh, I think it's, it stems from, you know, uh, my parents are from India.

And so I'm growing up, you know, as a first generation, you know, Brown kid in this country and, um, identity, you know, was a huge issue.

And hip hop to me was, um,

it was a funnel, you know, it was a vehicle for me to tell my story and find a way to, you know, reach people who are going through similar things.

And so when I was in high school, I wanna say around 16, 17 years old, this is 2005, 2006, you know, MySpace is exploding.

Um, music is becoming a direct to customer business and, you know, we're seeing the digital revolution, so to speak, um, for recorded music.

And I just knew that there was, you know, I could tell there was something and I knew that there was an opportunity here that needed to be leveraged.

Um, and so it started with, you know, kind of hacking around and figuring out how to leverage digital, whether it was with my space, connecting the dots with other artists, um,

selling your music on iTunes, you know, kind of in high school was a big thing at that time.

And so those are the kind of humble beginnings.

Wow.

In high school, we were making probably a couple thousand dollars a month.

And that, you know, that kind of increased throughout that time.

And the funny thing was, you know, once the market shifted to streaming,

This is obviously, you know, five, six, seven years later.

It was significant impact on, you know, an artist, our artist's income.

Absolutely hurt the income when it came to just raw digital sales.

Obviously, there were more opportunities since we were further, you know, in our careers.

But in terms of, you know, raw digital sales, it was definitely a downturn.