eMusic: You’ve been in the music industry for almost 20 years. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in that time?

Brandon Schmidt: I think the most encompassing change is access. Everything used to be fairly closed off or tightly controlled. Now fans have much greater access to and interaction with artists. Artists have more access to tools to help them launch and develop a career. Data is everywhere. Fans have access to more music than ever before along with a greater array of discovery vehicles.

eMusic: One cool thing you worked on was the original website for MTV.com, which had its own original programming apart from the channel. What were some cool projects you got to create?

Brandon: To put this into some context, this was a time when MTV was at the zenith of it’s pop-culture influence. TV ratings were high and on-air programming was the prime focus, so there was a bit of a wild-west approach to a lot of what we were doing in that there were few rules, nominal oversight, and a lot of opportunity to experiment. Artists and labels mainly cared about getting videos played on MTV, but there were a few artists (and label execs) who really saw the importance of creating unique online content and interacting with fans in ways that previously did not exist. One year for the VMA’s, we selected a few nominated artists (Björk, Moby, Busta Rhymes) and partnered them with traditional video directors (Floria Sigismondi, Tamra Davis, Michel Gondry) and Flash designers/animators to create the first-ever interactive “webeos” (exclusive web-only music videos). I also really enjoyed working on a fantasy record label game that we developed where users signed a roster of artists and then scored points based off of various MTV-related and real-world metrics.

Although Björk’s “webeo” for “I’ve Seen It All,” as directed by Floria Sigismondi, is no longer available in its interactive Flash version, video versions have surfaced online.

eMusic: I remember webeos. Such a promising idea that totally impacted the next wave of the Internet. These days, we take interactivity for granted. Looking back on that time, there was so much innovation available for artists. As you point out, the fan-artist connection suddenly became unblocked by a middleman. And now the whole system seems ripe for change in a different way: getting artists paid correctly. How do you see eMusic’s position now, along with our upcoming Blockchain project, in the grand schema of the industry?

Brandon: I think there is something exciting about being involved with building a new distribution model that addresses the complex and dynamic issues in today’s music industry, especially given eMusic’s history of championing independent artists/labels. There are a lot of models available to artists/labels but many of them are built on outdated vestiges of a bygone era.

eMusic: Have you ever been in a band?

Brandon: Yes — but it took a somewhat circuitous path to get there. I grew up in a classical musical family: my grandfather was a noted choral conductor; my father is a musicologist, conductor, and singer; my mother is a pianist; my brother is in the Richmond Symphony; and I am a trained oboist. After college, a violinist friend of mine was playing bass in a band and when he quit and moved away, I was recruited to take over despite having never played bass. The highlight of my band days was getting to open for Oasis at JC Dobbs in Philadelphia.

eMusic: So cool. OK, what are some of your favorite tracks on eMusic right now?

“Random Haiku Generator” Sin Fang, Sóley & Örvar Smárason

“Hammers” Nils Frahm

“SPRORGNSM” Superorganism

“OX4: The Best Of” Ride

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