Introducing UTR Labs 🤖

Hi.

You’re in the right spot.

We’re always hunting for the most interesting people to work with on fun side projects. Here are a few we’re currently chewing on. Any of them sound like something you’d like to kick around? Or come across any interesting readings on the topic below?

Shoot me some thoughts - or even better a prototype or design - I’d love to hear from you.

📽️ Projects

Indie Worker Pass. Imagine a perk system where indie labels and service businesses pay a monthly fee to a central system that in turn provided meaningful discounts to their staff across indie businesses? A non-profit model that smoothens the flow of indie professionals across gigs, industry events etc., instead of relying on favors or guestlists.

Agnostic Superlisteners. Forget superfans. Superlisteners (agnostic to artistic fandom but bullish on music listening) to engage with music culture (as opposed to superfans who have the ability to pay) in meaningful ways will effect a new economic engine for culture. While everyone is harvesting fandom, someone has got to nurture them.

Fantasy A&R League. Think fantasy football but for independent music. We simulate a real marketplace for talent and their management in a game that opens up non-industry talent to learn the ropes and reduce barriers to enter the industry.

Indian Indie Hall of Fame. Tech companies offering accolades to artists to hit views/plays milestones is passe. Why not have our own independent jury that recognizes homegrown artists for pushing our music culture forward.

Fractional investing in early-stage artist businesses or indie artist catalogues. Think crowdfunding with a deeper economic/ownership relationship of the supporters with the artist.

Jukeboxes. Let’s bring them back. Form and function come together beautifully to revive a social listening experience.

FairTrade GenAI licensing. Building the pipes that enable indie artists to license and monetize their unreleased libraries to GenAI companies.

SEO-equivalent for LLM. Machines are the new internet scrapers, machine responses are the new search results. For a machine to recommend or surface new artists in search, artists need to move beyond first-order TG descriptions - what about a listeners emotional lives brings them to vibe with certain artists - artists must leverage that understanding to develop their SEO equivalent strategy for the new search paradigm.

Invisible Seamless Commerce at Live Events. I’ve never been to Disney Land, but there’s one thing I know is that they have made commerce invisible so that no kid has to ever feel the friction of payments when you are there to witness magic.

Human Certified Art. A non-profit entity that certifies human authenticity in music and art in the age of AI slop.

Alcohol-free Live Business Models. These are not sober events. They’re events where its viability is not dependent on bar sales. There’s also no moral judgement on whether surrogate advertising is good or bad, I’m just curious to see what futures we can imagine when a brand doesn’t bankroll a live event. The business model is the innovation.

Bank for creators. As an individual, you can take a home loan, a car loan, an education loan, a business loan; so as a music artist, why can’t you take out an equipment loan, a touring loan, a digital marketing loan? Financial services for creators is non-existent or abysmal, and there are good reasons for it. But there’s a creator economy version of the future in which there will be a bank.

Multi-generation Rave Culture. This sounds almost silly to even articulate this, but I’m thinking, when I’m older, going to the same places for gigs that I go today would exhaust me. It speaks to the larger concern about how does one continue to participate in that culture as one gets older without feeling out of place or overstimulated. This also extends to live music discovery for an [older] audience that might be small but has deeper pockets.

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🔭 About UTR Labs

UTR Labs is UnderTheRadar’s creative playground bringing in the best talent across domains to articulate the future of music entertainment and bring new ideas to market. Our mission is to optimize for analog behaviors in a streaming world, reenergizing the relationship between artists and fans once again.

✍🏽 Contact

Ping me (us) at rohit[at]undertheradar[dot]in. Feel free to include a paragraph or two about why you’d be interested in one project or another.

IG: UTR Labs | UnderTheRadar