Revolutionizing the Creative Industry: Adrien Stern Shares the Reveel Journey and Vision
In a candid conversation, we sat down with Adrien Stern, the dynamic CEO of Reveel, a groundbreaking startup leveraging blockchain technology to create a paradigm shift in the creative industry. By introducing a pioneering solution to a longstanding problem, Reveel aims to expedite and streamline the process through which creators receive their due.
What inspired you to start this particular venture?
I devoted nearly a decade to the music industry's creative side before transitioning to tech. My journey began as a guitarist in a Swiss reggae band, Najavibes, which started out small but gradually grew to tour across Europe and play in major festivals like the Montreux Jazz Festival, Eurockeennes of Belfort, or Colors of Ostrava. As our band's stature rose, so did my role as a manager in the industry.
Throughout this journey, I was made aware of the industry's challenges, particularly how creators get paid and the difficulties in collecting revenue. The payment process is ridden with intermediaries, which, coupled with geographical expansion, leads to insane delays. I also got a firsthand view of the music industry's accounting overhead after starting our record label.
Reflecting on these experiences and learning about blockchain technology, I recognized an opportunity to address these issues. This realization led to the formation of Reveel. Our goal was to leverage blockchain to expedite payments for creators. We devised a protocol allowing anyone to input their revenue share agreement into a smart contract on the blockchain, automating accounting around creative collaboration.
What milestones has your startup achieved since its inception?
Building a company around blockchain is complex due to its relative novelty. Despite the challenges, we're thrilled to be live and preparing to launch the second version of our protocol.
The milestone we're most proud of is having distributed funds to nearly 900 different brands and creators in a transparent, trustless, and fair way. One of our recent exciting partnerships is with Pixelynx by Animoca Brands, a music AI platform that enables fans to engage with artists' music and create their own NFTs. Our role in this partnership is to ensure that when these fan-created NFTs are sold, the revenue is automatically split between the fan and the original music's artist.
What is your long-term vision for the company?
At Reveel, we're building the payout infrastructure for the collaboration economy. We've noticed a shift from flat fee compensation to revenue sharing. Whether it's a record label deal or co-writing songs with other artists, the music industry has long engaged in revenue sharing. Yet, we see more opportunities for revenue sharing from ticketing, merch, brand opportunities, and more.
We believe that the shift to shared ownership needs an infrastructure layer to automate these types of agreements. Reveel is building that solution with our revenue share protocol and payout infrastructure. We envision enabling creators to share the upside on the content they create and are not capped at a certain amount of earnings.
In conclusion, Adrien Stern's visionary approach is empowering creators in a new way. Through Reveel, Adrien is not just transforming the payment process in the music industry but also redefining how revenue is shared and distributed. With a focus on harnessing blockchain technology, he's addressing long-standing problems, improving efficiency, and promoting fair practices. This could very well be the dawn of a new era in the creative industry.