Jacob Henry: Monstercat/Silk, ADE Memories, and Seattle Celebrations on the Virtual Sessions 3/30/23

Jacob Henry: Monstercat Silk, ADE Memories, and Seattle Celebrations

In this special Virtual Session, The DJ Sessions host Darran Bruce reconnects with Jacob Henry, label director and A&R at Monstercat Silk, for an inspiring conversation about music, label growth, and community. Speaking from Los Angeles, Jacob reflects on his journey from founding Silk Music in 2008 to its acquisition by Monstercat in 2021, a move that amplified its global reach while keeping its melodic and progressive spirit intact.

Jacob shares memorable moments from Amsterdam Dance Event, where Monstercat Silk hosted its first showcase featuring legends like BT and Shingo Nakamura. For Jacob, ADE is both a cultural and professional highlight – a chance to explore Amsterdam’s beauty while connecting with peers and discovering new talent. He offers practical advice for maximizing ADE, balancing pre-scheduled meetings with time for spontaneous encounters that often lead to the most rewarding connections.

The discussion turns to Silk’s milestone 700th radio show episode, celebrated with a special weekend at Seattle’s ORA Nightclub featuring BT, Shingo Nakamura, and local favorites Johnny Monsoon and Webb. Jacob emphasizes the emotional significance of having BT – a pioneer who inspired Silk’s sound – share the stage with Shingo, whose career-long relationship with Silk reflects the label’s ethos of loyalty and artistry.

Beyond events, Jacob explores the evolving challenges of today’s music industry, from streaming metrics and social media pressures to the growing role of AI and NFTs. He underscores Silk’s mission: to support artists with intention, authenticity, and meaningful promotion, while continuing to build a community rooted in love for melodic and progressive music.

Show Notes –

Host: Darran Bruce
Guest: Jacob Henry (Monstercat Silk)
Location: Virtual Studios, Seattle WA & Los Angeles, CA

Overview:
Darran Bruce reconnects with Jacob Henry to discuss the evolution of Silk, the Monstercat partnership, ADE highlights, Seattle’s 700th showcase celebration, and his perspectives on the future of the electronic music industry.

Topics Covered:

• Founding Silk Music in 2008 and transition to Monstercat Silk in 2021
• ADE memories, including showcases with BT, Shingo Nakamura, and Vinicius Moretti
• Advice for navigating ADE: scheduling vs. spontaneous networking
• Celebrating Silk Showcase episode 700 at Aura Nightclub in Seattle
• BT’s influence as a pioneer and his collaboration with Silk
• Shingo Nakamura’s Seattle debut and long career with Silk
• Local support from Johnny Monsoon and Webb at the event
• Label philosophy: supporting artists with intention and authentic promotion
• Reflections on streaming platforms, Spotify metrics, and social media pressures
• Thoughts on AI’s role in A&R, demo submissions, and music curation
• NFT experiences with Monstercat and ethical pricing strategies
• Perspectives on intimate venues vs. large festivals and fan connection
• Influences from BT, Chicane, Robert Miles, and Above & Beyond
• Future projects including a new album from AMR and upcoming Silk releases

Call to Action:
Follow Monstercat Silk at monstercat.com/silk and on Spotify for new releases every Tuesday.
Discover more exclusive interviews and live sessions at thedjsessions.com

[Darran]
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the DJ Sessions Presents the Virtual Sessions. I’m your host Darren and right now I’m sitting in the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington and coming in all the way from Arena del Rey, Los Angeles, we have Jacob Henry from Monster Cat Silk on the other end. How are you doing today Jacob?

[Jacob Henry]
Doing great, good to see you Darren.

[Darran]
Yeah, yeah it’s been a hot minute since ADE last October and being at Milk Week for my first time and my first ADE and had a great time backstage. I think I walked into that show with Shingo playing and was completely blown away hanging out in the green room with y’all back there doing interviews, meeting the team and that was just such a memorable time and I want to say thank you and a big shout out to the Monster Cat team for making that happen and it’s great to have you here today because we are going to be talking about you’re coming to Seattle.

[Jacob Henry]
Absolutely, yeah I want to thank you as well for that great experience in Amsterdam and getting to spend time with you there. That was a really big moment for us to have our first ADE showcase as Monster Cat Silk and for the viewers that aren’t already aware, we were Silk Music for 12 years and then in 2021 officially we launched as Monster Cat Silk after being acquired by Monster Cat. So that was our first showcase sort of post-pandemic and that in itself was exciting but also to have BT and Shingo Nakamura and Vinicia Morelli and Prof performing, four of our leaders and sort of four of my musical heroes as well.

It was a really special night and you came all the way from the States to be there for that and joined us backstage and had some great times there.

[Darran]
Yeah I remember when I first decided to go to ADE, I’d never been there before. I’d never been to Europe before and so I was really like ramping up. I wanted to become an ADE partner and get all involved with it and they said well what’s your proposal?

What’s your ideas? I was talking with people that had been before and they said you know what the best thing to do is just go and figure it out when you get there. So I went this big thing that I wanted to partner with ADE just to like okay I’m just gonna go play up a year.

I’ll schedule some interviews, schedule some backstage time you know and get some stuff, get some work done and press stuff during the day. But Amsterdam is such a beautiful city.

[Jacob Henry]
Extraordinary. I’ve been there maybe six or seven times now all for ADE. You know starting maybe first time was like 2015 or 2014.

I think I had gone every year up into you know the beginning of pandemic and then we took a few years off for that reason and then we kind of came back roaring back and so excited to finally return. But yeah it’s one of my favorite cities in the world architecturally. It’s just outrageously beautiful and kind of stuck in time, preserved in time.

They’ve done a great job keeping that sort of heritage and like you know link back to the history and there’s some amazing museums there. Some of the best art museums in the world. Most famous art museums in the world given there the many famous painters from that area.

Yeah and just like what a time to be you know around thousands of people in the music industry all in this concentrated place. You’re walking down the street and you in the span of five minutes you see like 10 people that you either know already or have wanted to meet and you know for those of you that haven’t been to ADE and are thinking about going, I really couldn’t recommend it more. It’s like a both a cultural experience that you’ll never forget but also just in terms of your you know networking and industry opportunities you’ll probably find and it’ll be an amazing opportunity for you.

[Darran]
Yeah that’s I mean luckily I had gotten a schedule process down so people could sign up with me and I announced that we were going to be there on site doing interviews on the back end. There’s such a huge resource when you get into the back end of ADE and you get your pass and then you can start networking with people and setting up meetings beforehand. You know like let’s meet up, let’s talk, let’s you know.

[Jacob Henry]
Yeah and the secret is fill about half your calendar with you know meetings that you’ve scripted ahead of time and then leave half of your calendar open because you’re going to see so many folks you didn’t even anticipate seeing or you just want to have a little bit of an improvisational ability to like oh yeah let’s duck into this cafe or this bar and hang out for a few hours. Let’s make it happen while you’re there. So yeah it’s you know but it’s such a great use of your time as if you’re in the industry it couldn’t be a better use of your time to be there.

[Darran]
And speaking of traveling and coming we mentioned this a little earlier but you’re going to be coming to Seattle here in May to Aura Nightclub.

[Jacob Henry]
Yes.

[Darran]
And you’re going to be coming with a couple special guests that one of them it’s their first time ever playing here in Seattle.

[Jacob Henry]
Darren thank you for teeing this up. This is certainly the biggest news right now from Silk and couldn’t be more relevant to where you are and the history of the DJ sessions. But yeah basically to summarize we have a special weekender planned to celebrate the 700th episode of our radio show which is called Monster Cat Silk Showcase.

So if you do the math you know every week for 700 episodes we’re coming up on 15 years which is basically the age of our label. We founded Silk in 2008. So we I think launched the first episode of the radio show within a year after our first release.

So those timelines are pretty much consistent. Yeah and we’ve done milestone episodes before in various places around the world. We actually did an event in Tokyo that Shingo played at and we even were in Seattle five years ago for episode 450.

You were there for that Darren. We had an artist by the name of Marsh who I think now has become a household name in the space. Marsh was there.

Our friends Eleven who are still killing it and still playing shows around North America and beyond. And myself I played there as well. Now five years later it’s 700 and this time around we have none other than B.T. playing on Saturday night. B.T. is one of just a few artists that we always credit as inspiring Silk in terms of the aesthetic and sound of the label. B.T. Chicane and Robert Miles always come up in conversation whenever we get asked that question of like who are the forefathers who are the the trailblazers and the inspirations for this like sort of the progressive melodic and atmospheric style of music that we put out on Silk. So to have him there representing the show and you know it couldn’t be more meaningful to me but also kind of relevant to the history of the label.

He’s also B.T. is also doing work with Silk now on the music side and I’ll be able to share more about that soon but you may have already heard a remix that he did for us not too long ago of a Shingo Nakamura song called Darling Midnight and that was his first that was his debut on the label and he’s gonna have more music coming. Speaking of Shingo, Shingo is making his Seattle debut. You kind of hinted at this a second ago Darren and Shingo Nakamura has been one of our leaders on Silk for many years now.

He’s actually been releasing with us for nearly 15 years. I think our first release with him was in 2009. He put out his debut album with Silk called Sapporo which is named after literally the city that he’s from in Hokkaido, Japan.

He now lives in Tokyo, Japan but yeah he he’s gone on to release a second album with us called Glow and that was actually like a really big deal for the launch of Monstercat Silk because the first release we put out when we launched the label was the single Glow so like the title cut from the album and then we ended up putting out the full album later that year and we’ve had tons of singles and remixes by him over the years in between the albums and he’s putting out a record with us now almost every two or three months on average sometimes even more frequently than that and he’s I think I think he’s really at the pinnacle of his career and his craft so the fact that he’s going to be able to finally come out to Seattle play for the fans there and we expect fans coming in from out of town as well flying in and driving in for that too because the last time he played a show in the U.S. was almost 10 years ago so a really big deal for him to finally make it out to Seattle and yeah the timing is brilliant. He’s writing some of his best music of his career and he’ll hopefully have some songs to premiere at the show.

He’s going to be playing both nights so on Friday night I’m opening for him. I’ll play kind of a deeper and then maybe leading into some progressive and then kind of a set and then Shingo will play kind of a headliner set with more of his bigger more anthemic tracks and kind of similar astounding tracks for the remainder of the night closing out the night. Then on Saturday the following day he’s going to open for BT.

That’ll let him get that’ll give him the opportunity to play a deeper set where he can showcase some of his chiller tracks and you know sort of melodic house and deep house tracks.

[Darran]
And that’s a Friday May 12th and Saturday May 13th.

[Jacob Henry]
Yes thank you for getting the dates. It is that weekend the 12th and 13th. Both nights are 9 p.m. to at least 2 a.m. maybe later if you know things are still going off. You know so at least five hours of great music. Not to mention we have two local heroes local legends. We have my dear friend Eric Weber aka Webb as well as Johnny Monsoon playing a b2b set both nights to kick off the festivities.

So definitely come early. They’ll be starting off and not kicking things off at nine o’clock and then you know probably playing for about an hour and a half or so both nights to kick things off. They’re both wonderful DJs.

Darren you can speak to their careers and your friendship to them but they’ve been in the Seattle scene from what I understand for literally over 20 years playing shows.

[Darran]
Yeah yeah about that I think I started back in 97 98 at Last Supper Club and Johnny was just getting his kicks in then.

[Jacob Henry]
Yeah and they’re also super relevant to Silk’s music. They play a lot of well like I think historically they come from the trance and progressive world but they’ve they also are really skilled with playing deeper music as well and you know melodic house progressive house. So my guess is that their set will be on the chiller side as a sort of a warm-up but it’s going to be a really dope set on both nights from them because they’re great DJs.

[Darran]
What’s crazy is I was just looking at the history and looking at our website and we actually had BT on the show back in 2013. He was playing at Q nightclub here in Seattle and we had set up our live stream to stream live from the show and we were allowed to stream part of his set live but once it hit a certain there’s a certain track and he gave us a sign like okay turn the stream off now we were able to stream that show but funny enough I had all my gear set up backstage and I don’t think he’ll ever remember this but my laptop was open to my Facebook account and I’m sitting there by the DJ booth about 10 feet away from him he walks up to my computer and he goes he types into my Facebook account goes this is why you shouldn’t leave your laptop and Facebook open that stage because somebody’s going to come by and post this.

[Jacob Henry]
Oh my god.

[Darran]
I took a picture of him doing it and I’m like that’s hilarious.

[Jacob Henry]
So he just kind of jumped on and then little did he know or maybe he did know that like we’re now in the era where you have to avoid hacks and like phishing scams like every minute and people constantly trying to you know send you links that you inadvertently click on and you end up getting your Facebook hacked or Instagram or Twitter or whatever. So yeah he was probably right on about that.

[Darran]
Yeah two-factor authentication I have it for all my major accounts. So definitely I have had yeah the people that get their Instagram hacked and they’re locked out and people start asking them can I borrow money can I borrow money like that’s not me.

[Jacob Henry]
Yeah right well yeah it’s it’s it’s it’s a crazy world out there navigating this and having to be aware of all these issues.

[Darran]
20 years ago I was in I was in broadcast television basically doing broadcasting there was no YouTube there was no Facebook there was no I mean Myspace I guess was there.

[Jacob Henry]
Yeah Silk started on Myspace I mean when we first started that sort of was the main web the main social media site that we would use to find artists besides like SoundCloud but SoundCloud wasn’t really social you know it was more just music centric and it still is more music like pretty much almost entirely music centric. So yeah like Myspace was it was it really helped us we would go on we would search for artists by genre and like we just kind of go I think we would filter by country as well and we just kind of go through Myspace profiles to see like who we could find. I want to say like SoundPrank we might have found on Myspace who later became a really successful and decorated artist on Silk and Anjuna Deep.

Maybe even believe it or not maybe even Yato because we worked with Yato before back when he was exclusively releasing music as something good. He has since gone back to release more music under that project with his one of his friends but yeah we had put out a bunch of records by Something Good and I think we found Something Good through his Myspace page or something.

[Darran]
If you could go back 25 years in music history or forward 50 years in music in future music future which way would you go and why?

[Jacob Henry]
Oh that’s tough. Well I won’t I won’t overthink it. I find that I’m very nostalgic in general when it comes to art and music and you know I mean just to start off this call I talked about how BT and Chicane and Robert Miles inspired us.

Well 25 years ago that was when those guys put out their seminal albums you know like when they put out those those albums in the late 90s that became like the defining albums of that space for you know to this day people look back at you know far from the maddening crowds by Chicane, Behind the Sun and BT had two albums also at the end of the 90s EMA and ECSM. Sometimes I get the letters confused but I think it’s ECSM. Those two were the ones with all those great hits like Remember Mercury and Solace by BT.

I mean there’s I can name a million songs by him just from those that period that are amongst my favorite songs of all time electronic music songs of all time. So there’s the nostalgic side of it for me is like well that was the golden era like that’s when the music really like created I think the melodic and emotional style electronic music they were writing in that time still just resonates for me. The other thing about that era was it was a little bit more innocent with piracy right so it was a time when people were purchasing music more frequently and you know both physical and digital and like you didn’t we weren’t as worried about you know just like all these trends kind of conspiring against the industry and making it harder and harder for artists to make a living.

So yeah it would be fun to go back to an era where like you could sell thousands of records you could sell thousands of CDs you could you know count on more you know or support digitally of music. Now we have to rely exclusively on streaming which is fine and I actually embrace the streaming revolution it’s been here for a while now it’s not like this is old news at this point and where Silk is all in on YouTube and Spotify Apple Music and Amazon and other DSPs but I do kind of miss that era of like fans supporting the songs more directly.

[Darran]
Yeah you know I mean I remember it was it was not it was a few years ago but I think they started counting YouTube plays towards your overall your overall like like to make you go platinum or gold or whatever I think they were they started counting YouTube plays and technology it kind of leads into my next question here is you know technology has moved really fast and changed over the years it wasn’t we were doing our show as a live streaming DJ show started in 2009 and it was ahead of its game I mean there were people out there that were streaming there were DJs that were streaming but the volume that we were doing that people weren’t doing it like that and it was so interesting that when 2020 hit and everybody jumped online and my phone was just blowing up off the hook because I was the guy that had been doing it for 10 years you know and now we’re getting into VR I’m talking people that are doing AR experiences just spoke with the guy who started up an app called Unity U-N-I-T-E-A check it out it’s definitely about that fan engagement I mean they got some big names on board some big activations they’ve done at major festivals but the whole thing is trying to bridge that gap between fan and artist rather than like social media I can go to somebody’s social media page and like something or like their posts but the Unity app will basically allow me to earn what’s called karma and I can cash that karma in for anything from merchandise to pre-releases to backstage passes and meet and greets cool for all this kind of stuff yeah so I think we’re gonna see a lot more that and they have like an augmented reality experience built in which I’m we do our silent disco silent concert events and so I’m waiting for the glasses to come out hopefully Apple or whoever even released it first so we can actually have an augmented reality experience with each of the different channels so if you have the red channel you have the red channel experience and the blue channel the blue channel experience and you can just switch the glasses up as you switch the channel in the headsets but technology moves very fast in DJ Land and if you could think of something that’s not on the market today but in your vision would be really amazing to be out there for DJs producers in the market what would that be

[Jacob Henry]
okay I have an idea for that one but first I have to fact check myself and and correct a mistake I made about the BT’s first two albums because it’s gonna haunt me if I don’t mention that his first two albums were EMA and I think I said ECSM it is ESCM which stands for Electric Sky Church Music that of course is the album that had Flaming June which is probably one of the most famous dance music rave anthems ever and it was such a big record for me actually Chicane remixed it so it was extra special for me because like two of my favorite artists on one song so forgive me BT for screwing that up but hopefully we set the record straight yeah let’s talk about innovations in tech that I would really welcome the first thought I had was a more direct way for fans to immediately follow artists once they hear a song on a streaming service so you might just think about your experience listening to Spotify or Pandora or wherever you listen to music usually it’s very passive usually you hear the song as a soundtrack to your day you’re working you’re you’re studying you’re driving home you’re very it’s the amount of conversions to like or the percent the percentage of time people actually to take that extra step of like who’s this artist I want to start following this artist from now on happens much more rarely than you might expect like the conversion rate is often very low but one of the reasons is that the DSPs themselves don’t have a convenient way or maybe don’t have an incentive to make it extremely obvious like where what are the social media pages of that artist or the websites of that artist in part because it might be viewed as competition and it takes it takes the the audience off platform if they then are linked to elsewhere so I guess I would love to see a way for artists just to get more recognition from streaming where like where if you fall in love with a song I wanted I want you to then have no friction to be following that artist for the rest of their

[Darran]
career and we’re not quite there yet yeah I think you’re definitely right that was one of the the difficult things that I’m going to explain to people about you know getting into like live streaming is that they use a platform like twitch or youtube you know you’re basically saying come watch me on twitch come watch my youtube but at the end of that video it might pop up nine other videos that aren’t related to you and it takes them off your page right most if you create the branding experience and get your own domain name your own website and embed those videos on the website then that traffic’s going to your website to watch that content even though you might be hosting it with youtube or twitch but they’re still having that you’re controlling the environment on your website and they’re staying there which helps your google and it helps your search engine yeah yeah things like that and you know it’s it’s um yeah I would yeah I can totally understand how there’d be how there wouldn’t be an incentive for apple to do that like if they’re leaving

[Jacob Henry]
or yeah if you have to leave that the platform to go on a competitor’s platform then they’re typically not going to necessarily want to make that that convenient for you but it’s it’s I just I would love to see artists just get more support and like long-term fan conversion from these platforms than they are currently now if um who’s been your biggest

[Darran]
influence I know you’ve dropped bt and then chicane and yeah what’s been your biggest influence

[Jacob Henry]
I have not exact I’m not exaggerating when I say that those are our heroes that we that I still listen to to this day all the time like I I can I can pull up those albums even their more recent work and always feel at home musically and aesthetically with my taste and it’s funny because like the fact that we’re working with bt now it’s definitely you know it’s surreal for me but in a way I kind of feel like we put out the bat signal for you know 15 years and that signal was like listen to all the echoes of your work in our new releases do you hear it do you hear your influence do you hear the inspiration and then eventually you know the hope is that the the inspiration does encounter it somehow you know and it’s it’s not that big of a scene that it’s like a crazy thought that that you know a promo would would find their way onto bt’s desk or chicane’s desk um tragically robert miles passed away I believe in his late 40s so he’s no longer with us um so I never had an opportunity to meet him but I’ve had the pleasure of meeting chicane’s manager and spending time with him even as recently as this year uh this past year in london and it was just a beautiful moment for me to you know to to share that sort of camaraderie of how important he was for for silk and for me personally and um yeah so with electronic music those are the guys I think I also need to give a huge shout out to above and beyond because above and beyond have been heroes of mine musically but also kind of like entrepreneurially like their their business savvy their ability to grow a label and a community so organically has been a massive inspiration for me and for silk as an extension of me um I’m I’m so amazed by what they’ve accomplished as artists but also like as label owners and and the direction they’ve gone I think has been very like ethical and um they’ve done it the right way they’ve built they’ve built

[Darran]
a community the right way totally you know what what what is the most important thing that a label should be doing for their artists and are most labels doing a good job

[Jacob Henry]
yeah well um we talk about this all the time internally but it’s something that we can just as easily share externally which is that you know we consider it the primary we consider the primary role of a label you know providing promotional lift to an artist’s career and to their music if we’re if as a label partner we can’t provide extra support for a release then it doesn’t really behoove an artist to work to collaborate with us and to work with us they can just as easily release themselves either direct to dsps or work with a different partner a different label so labels really have to um commit to finding as many relevant promotional opportunities for releases as possible that will bring additional listeners and in turn additional revenue for the

[Darran]
releases yeah it’s funny we’re getting ready to it’s been in talks for a while but kind of a dream of mine of one of the arms or extensions of the dj sessions is to create our own label and and have our own have our own label and then we’re still deciding which direction we’re going we have everything lined up i have somebody that’s coaching me through the whole process and has the connections that’s what they they help artists development they do this and when when i started working it was uh with um luke from the futuristic polar bears um and uh you know they they do artist development artist management and so we were talking on and off for a long time but then he came in and started doing some additional outreach work for us over here by opening that rolodex of his and knocking on some doors and and getting some interviews for us and and stuff but we’re super excited to start a label over here and you know just when you look at it all that stuff that goes into it that people don’t know what goes on in the background to make a label happen they go i got a label and i put songs out there’s a lot more that goes on in the back very

[Jacob Henry]
true you have to it really has to be a labor of love um yeah you really have to have grit which is sort of the latest buzzword in entrepreneurial circles um you have to meaning like you have to have the ability to persevere but because you’re like ideologically committed to it like you really believe that you know it’s it’s your hobby it’s your passion and you really believe that this is what you’re supposed to be doing and so that you can kind of weather the storms and deal with the low you know the highs and the lows um and and if you have that much passion for it you you can persevere you can survive uh the kind of vicissitudes of the industry and the highs and lows um but you’re right it’s a really um difficult endeavor start a label even though it’s also a lot of fun and um there’s a lot of competition um i haven’t looked recently but i think don’t quote me but i think there’s over 70 000 labels that are registered on beatport alone just on beatport so these are just like electronic music labels that are independent labels you know all fighting for bandwidth on that particular platform but you know in general spotify is getting you know something like 20 000 or more new new songs a day on their platform i mean it’s it’s outrageously competitive um so as long as you’re willing to fight the good fight and recognize that it’s gonna be it’s gonna be a struggle and it’s even a it’s even a challenge for major independent labels like mastercat to continue to get this get the support we have to fight for it um if if this is what if if this is you know your calling if you feel drawn to it on every level emotionally spiritually not just like something that you see as being like a you know something to make money you know or or like a little outlet um for your time i think you have a shot you have a shot of you know really making the splash well and that’s you know we

[Darran]
work with a number of djs we have our own internal resident djs and some of them are producers as well that they release their own stuff and you know just we wanted to our thought is to become kind of a one-stop shop for an artist they wanted to be signed on with a prominent live streaming show they want to release tracks we could help them that whole process the artist development yeah that was one of the original concepts and of the foundations of the dj sessions was to get i mean we started in seattle johnny monsoon is one of our first djs that came over and played in my bedroom and the idea was is that i was the tv video guy they were djs they wouldn’t in a million years ever think about getting webcams and setting it up in their home living room or studio or whatever until 2020 but um you know i wanted to show the world what i saw who i partied with who i hung out with you know and i got the alarm or that podcasting arm that would say here come on my platform we’ll show you to the world we’re featured partner here and this and that and the other and um that was always a joyous thing but yeah i just want to make sure that that that my team has an accessible outlet so i say oh go shop your go shop your album go shop your shop this and the problem we run into here in seattle is that there isn’t really any middle management you know nobody’s you couldn’t you couldn’t make a living managing the artists you have to do it as a labor of love um you know and and even getting those artists out there with all the competition and getting the tour booked or something like that it’s like why are we booking you from seattle when we already got 500 local people here that we know are going to bring people the club and the big one now is you know they look at your socials on your booking and saying oh you don’t even have over 10 000 people following you on instagram or yeah or or the latest is sort

[Jacob Henry]
of like monthly listeners on spotify yeah it’s a quick metric that people can look at very on their phones very quickly they can open up an artist spotify and be like oh he only has 10 000 spotify month listeners versus hundreds of thousands or millions and that can unfortunately be a difference maker for some artists even though that particular metric doesn’t maybe to state the obvious doesn’t paint a full picture necessarily of an artist’s following or listenership it just kind of gives a sense of how well the music is suited for the goals of that specific platform for their for their curation you know as they define what’s relevant and what’s important and what’s meaningful and what’s the best and what’s you know so um that’s kind of like a psa more of anything of like if you know for any artists that are listening please don’t be discouraged if you don’t have as many month listeners as other artists you don’t feel like are at your same level artistically it’s really not objectively a metric of like the quality of or how exceptional you are it says something culturally maybe about like what’s relevant to those platforms but i don’t i really don’t believe it’s a benchmark for like how good you are how skilled you are how beautiful or moving or memorable your music is you kind of just answered

[Darran]
my next question i was going to ask you which is is there something you’d like to say to new and upcoming producers to watch out for when it comes to making their careers successful i think what you just said kind of sums that up yeah that’s i mean that’s sort of like a little bit of a

[Jacob Henry]
disclaimer but um maybe i would add to that in terms of like if you’re specifically in response to what you just asked me um i think i would say that like you the big an important word that we talk about a lot at monster cat is intention like what is the intention of a release what is it is the gold just to put out whatever you think is a beautiful song is it is the goal just to accommodate a particular artist who has you know has a vision for a single or an ep or an album or are you approaching it from okay we have a very specific promotional goal in mind or a playlisting goal in mind or a radio goal in mind that’s the intention of this record is to unlock that particular goal um so a lot of artists especially starting out will write music that they love they’ll sign it or self-release it and then inevitably they’ll get really disappointed if the songs don’t blow up like it’s not like a spotify hit or a youtube hit and it leads to a lot of dark energy and a lot of resentment i to kind of preempt that type of an emotional reaction i would encourage artists to really think about before they put out a release what are the realistic promotional opportunities for this for the song have a conversation with your man if you don’t you might not have a manager but if you do have that conversation have the conversation with the label in advance like what are our targets for this what do we realistically think is possible it doesn’t mean that it’s a guarantee you’ll get them or even like a extremely high likelihood but least you’ll be aligned on what’s possible and that it’ll it’ll prevent potentially major discouragement or resentment if you’re not if your song doesn’t have quite the the shelf life

[Darran]
or visibility or recognition that you were hoping for and how do you now you you are head of anr for monstercat so correct that’s right and to our audience members who do not know what anr is

[Jacob Henry]
what is anr yeah so it stands for artists and repertoire it’s basically the liaison of a label that works most closely with an artist from the from the earliest stages of a release so we’re talking about the stages where an artist is ready to send a demo they need a music person to really evaluate the demo carefully and critically and decide if it’s the right fit for whichever entity they’re representing so in my case i’m representing monstercat the company monstercat and specifically the the silk label within monstercat um so i’m you you have a role of being very close to the artists in that capacity in terms of like giving them direct feedback giving them encouragement and and support just you know in general of like you know kind of helping them navigate the industry and um yeah in my opinion a very critical role for an anr is to try to develop a really strong rapport with art the artists that you’re working with and not so that it’s not just all business not just like all right what have you done for me lately what you haven’t written a song in two months i’m waiting for you to send me a song like no it’s it’s a much deeper relationship than that um i’m very lucky that i consider all of our leading artists on silk to be friends they’re all friends of mine but these are individuals that or groups that i would genuinely go out of my way to hang out with and spend time with and we’re kind of a reflection of one another in some ways in terms of our values and like obviously we have a similar taste in music and for my money there’s that’s one of the best things in life for compatibility to if you’re looking for someone out there that you’re compatible with that they have a similar taste in music that’s as good a start as anything to like make new friends right and and so i think there’s something about having similar tastes symbolically representing a lot of other areas where you’re compatible and so yeah i’ve developed some wonderful friendships i’ve known shingo for example for almost 15 years we’ve spent time together in various cities around the world most recently in amsterdam and london um the guys that were there that that weekend that you met um you know prof i’ve worked with for 14 15 years he also had his first release like shingo in 2009 with silk um you know he’s he’s a buddy of mine vinicius morelli i think you know marco uh marco kubrick he played in seattle at aura several years ago on our 500th episode tour um he’s a dear friend of mine he’s based in serbia so we don’t get to see each other that much but we will connect in ade or you know various events that we’re putting on and um yeah he’s he’s a dear friend so i just think like as an anr it’s just sort of those are examples of how you build these wonderful relationships over time and the labels that i looked up to when i was first starting out including anjuna because anjuna started about 21 or 22 years ago and silk is only 15 years old so they’re a little bit older than us i looked up to them and still do in terms of the relationships that they were building with their core artists and you can see there are artists that are still working with them matter of fact perfect example this weekend oliver smith i know i saw was playing in seattle i think oliver smith had one of their first releases on anjuna like 20 some years ago he was releasing as smith and pledger with mark pledger and i think he was friends with jono at university in the uk and they’ve so they’ve been friends for like 20-25 years and they’re still working together to this day so those friendships are so valuable and so

[Darran]
integral to the anr process yeah that’s i mean how many demos do you get submitted that i mean your name prominently out there and people are constantly like sliding your usb drives for

[Jacob Henry]
sending you links it used to be usb drives more than it is now i think now it’s pretty like 99 percent of time we’re getting demos through our official demo submission portal uh we use label radar at the moment um we have as you go to monstercat.com and click contact us you can literally see their buttons for each of the labels silk instinct and uncaged you can click which label you you think your music is best suited for and then submit the demo through those portals so we get a lot of music through there we also get a lot of music directly from our veteran artists because they know us we have a rapport we have a relationship they know how to find us and they can send us their music very easily and you know our emails kind of inevitably get passed around and so we you know we get a lot of random demos from people that we don’t know or never met before but someone’s shared our email with them and that’s fine that’s 100 cool we we generally will then just steer them to the label radar page and be like thanks for contacting us but we would you to actually submit this more officially here so that we can keep track of everything and um i can’t vouch for every label in the industry but i can honestly say that silk listens to every single demo that is sent to us that does not mean that we respond to every demo because we absolutely do not have the bandwidth to respond to 50 to 100 demos a week it’s just too much for our team to handle um and i think that’s kind of the industry standard but obviously if it if it is something that resonates for us of course we will then you know reply back and say yeah

[Darran]
this really caught our ear and we’d like to pursue this do you think that with the advent of chat gpt 4 coming out and how it’s supposed to be a huge increase in powerfulness over chat version 3 or 3.5 do you think there could be a way that the a and r process could be done by ai if you said

[Jacob Henry]
well looking for yeah that’s a really interesting question i i think certain aspects of the process maybe could be automated a bit better um like the funneling of the music to us but um i don’t know yet if it’s sophisticated i don’t know if it’s sophisticated enough yet to like have the ear of silk like i i don’t how how would you code i well i guess that’s that’s there’s an obvious answer the chappy gpt would listen to all the past silk releases and they would it would recognize certain patterns and would would then have a real algorithm for like what our taste is and then could decide if a certain song is suitable for silk so maybe that could be automated and it could be a filter but at the very end of that funnel i think we would still need the human element of us determining like not just if it musically is on point for silk but does it fit certain goals that we have for the label does it fit the promotional opportunities that we have available there’s a wide range of considerations

[Darran]
that go into those decisions absolutely and it’s going to be interesting to see because i know we think we were talking a little pre-show um before that before the interview um about you know an ai dj you know and how you could program that dj and say it’s these songs these tracks are what i want to play in the club and then yeah a virtual dj and exactly like the exact example that i gave we

[Jacob Henry]
were talking about this before the before we got started officially today um what if you the script was like it’s got to be top 40 songs by these 20 artists or these 30 artists and then the ai could generate a continuous seamless mix of music by those artists and maybe you create some kind of visual experience as well where it’s an avatar you know we’ve already seen holograms being used right there’s i mean paul mccartney did a performance with john lennon recently no i don’t know glaston i think was glastonbury or something where you know he he had john lennon behind him singing with him you know it’s like tupac was generated through a hologram like there’s been so many sort of baby steps or or even big steps towards this conversation that we’re having now

[Darran]
and i don’t think we’re that far away from it yeah and you know you look at like we were talking a little bit earlier i mentioned augmented reality and and virtual reality um we’re super excited that we have our virtuality nightclubs going up but you know to have a dj come in and play via live stream but then also have them be a participant in a virtual world they have to have another separate laptop up and their avatars in there but you’re seeing djs now that are wearing the gloves and everything and they’re yeah totally fully immersed into that virtual reality experience um you know i don’t want to give away about all the ideas that we’re doing but i told you a couple ideas that we had before the show about virtual djs um we want to kind of be the first to see if can crack that nut and and do something interesting virtually um but yeah it’s it’s going to be interesting to see what happens i actually did my first chat gpt like last week i typed in tell me about darren bruce the executive producer of the dj sessions and it was like 99 correct like spot on i don’t know where the only thing it said is that i’ve released cds like cds or something like no we’ve never released any music right threw that in there and i was like

[Jacob Henry]
it’s kind of crazy yeah it’s a strange new world right now i i mean i’m not i can’t honestly say that i’m the best i’m an authority on this topic but i’m generally excited about it i think it’s just really neat to have like access to knowledge in ways you never did before in general like i just at your fingertips i think like i’m obviously very scared about any technology being used unethically but um just just specifically addressing the point of like having knowledge available to the world in a way that could could be constructive or just like more facile and accessible could be really cool not posting pictures of cats and memes yeah yeah well there’s i think as long as you have internet culture we’re gonna have a lot we’re gonna have meme culture meme culture internet culture like synonymous but um yeah so did you have has has the discussion

[Darran]
come up or are you in discussions or are you staying away from this three-letter word nfts

[Jacob Henry]
what’s your thoughts on nfts yeah um i i’m having a deja vu like maybe you and i spoke about this at one last year or the year before um but if not monster cat was one of the first electronic music labels that launched uh several consecutive drops nft drops um most of which were on one of the leading curation platforms for nfts called nifty gateway um so it’s like a site that kind of filters based on brands and artists that are already have a level of recognition and credibility so that you’re not like just free for all kind of like you know who’s this what’s this do you know do you know if it’s real authentic and has some merit behind it but um yeah we we we kind of dove head first into that uh into the nft uh revolution in recent years and yeah it’s been a it’s been a roller coaster i think you know if we’re talking about it at this moment um the market has been has been a little bit shaky to put it mildly uh i think it’s like most probably you know there’s always like a the risk of it becoming a bubble and i think there was a justifiable concern around prices not specifically with monster cap but in general prices being way above what they should be to be sustainable um so i mean it probably this probably sounds like giving my own company lip service but i generally believe that like we were very ethical in making sure the price points were not crazy for the nfts that we were selling we even had ones that were sold for 50 cents just to allow our our fans to have an opportunity to dabble in nft culture without feeling like they were taking a huge financial risk um so yeah i think our price points for the nfts we’ve sold have been very fair um i think in general we just have to be very careful about all the speculators and all of the bad actors the bad actors in the space that are looking to cash grab and kind of ruthlessly exploit human tendencies which include our tendency to want to gamble our tendency to you know look for high risk high reward type opportunities it can be very addictive in that way and very dangerous in that way um and yeah i think my take on nfts is like i think it’s an extraordinary moment for art because it gives artists another legitimate avenue for for exposure and revenue and i believe that the blockchain lends legitimate authenticity to art like i’m one of the people on the side of like i i believe that the blockchain is is a real thing that legitimizes the that it is an artist piece that has like that’s one of a hundred or one of ten or one of a thousand just like a physical print you might have one of a hundred prints of a photograph i don’t i i do not differentiate personally between digital and physical in that regard if both are equally authentic to me as long as it’s verifiable on the blockchain in the case of nfts so i personally am a collector i own pieces of art that are very personal to me by artists who frankly i wouldn’t be able to afford if i would if it meant buying their sculptures or buying their photographs or digital art piece or sorry physical art pieces like paintings or whatever so it’s really special to me that i get to own a work by an artist that i love that is that is inspiring to me and i get to have it on my you know available on uh you know through an internet connection and i can share that with my my friends and my family and i can curate my collection digitally just like you would at your house but ironically more more people that i’m close to would be more likely to pay attention to what i’m doing digitally than they would actually be coming to my house and checking out my physical art art or my apartment and checking out my physical art collection you know so it’s it’s i think it’s a it’s a phenomenal opportunity for artists um it’s an opportunity for collectors also to to engage with our with art in a new way and um

[Darran]
overall i’m i’m very excited about nft culture yeah there’s a i saw this one guy um but probably sometime last year i think what he did he made a series of paintings like seven or eight paintings and he went took pictures of all of them made nfts of pictures and then destroyed the paintings so if you wanted that art collection you didn’t know the physical wasn’t there anymore

[Jacob Henry]
yeah i’ve seen variations of that with the the goal of keeping supply low because the general principle is the less supply the more rare and they’re the more rare the more valuable you know that’s been an age-old principle with art and just it’s kind of wired into our psychology that we perceive rarity as having value we perceive you know endangered species in the animal kingdom have more value to us than animals that we consider to be overpopulated it’s just it’s just hardwired that that’s the you know so you know it’s it’s it’s it’s a similar concept i think yeah we’re rarity drives value in the marketplace consistently

[Darran]
um speaking of rarity or scarcity or um it kind of falls into this next question you mentioned um you know this uh being um oh what’s the word you just used rarity value all that um do you prefer djing at larger scale festivals or would you rather dj a more intimate night clubs i know you’re coming up here to do aura seattle with shingo and bt and that’s that’s not a big festival i mean i think the place might 500 maybe i’m not sure i know

[Jacob Henry]
they just well i think has about six it has i think there’s like 600 or 700 cap in the main in the main room i know they’ve they’ve expanded the club recently so i haven’t been there since the expansion but um yeah let’s just say 650 700 cap uh which means you know 700 700 people could fit in the club um at least in the main room um but yeah to answer your question i just heard an interview and it’s not i don’t think it’s a new interview i think it’s at least a few years old of um rick rubin the famous legendary producer who i’m sure you know and andre 3000 of outcast i love outcast i went to an outcast show like 20 some years ago when i was in high school and always been a big fan of them and i don’t know how it came up exactly but i think i think it was rick rubin that said that like the bigger the crowd the further away the fans are as like as not necessarily literally almost like figuratively where like you start to lose that intimate attachment to the audience and of like who is actually appreciating this and can we like almost like lock eyes and like connect over these songs you get to the big stages and then you know on a more literal level like the blinding lights of a big stage and it’s almost like you’re performing for some nebulous crowd but you lose touch with who they are and what your music means to them and why they’re there and there’s something to be said for like those smaller shows just feeling like you you can almost like reach out and and and hug and high five your fans literally or figuratively um yeah we i know boiler room has become a phenomenon in the industry and i think one of the reasons is that the boiler room aesthetic or or vibe not aesthetic but the vibe of a boiler room show where you’re like literally shoulder to shoulder with your fans and they’re jumping up and down with you and they’re they’re they’re sweating next to you to other dancing like it feels so raw and visceral and it feels like you couldn’t be more connected to your audience in that moment and everyone is on the same level it’s not like god is a dj you’re up on this 20 foot whatever pedestal podium you’re not you’re not on this like elevated stage where you’re being essentially represented as a larger than life figure where you no longer are on the same plane as your fans and i personally don’t dig that like i would rather feel like my audience is right there

[Darran]
by my side i was talking with um did an interview with dj colette and she tours frequently with another camera with a gentleman she tours with but they were both in the interview because they were both on tour together and we’re talking and they said we specifically like playing clubs like the monkey loft or these smaller intimate venues so we can connect with the fans we don’t take on those two thousand five thousand ten thousand people shows because we like to connect with fans i could totally see that we used to have a club up here in seattle that i saw a number of artists at it was called c sound lounge back in the day and c sound i mean there was like 150 people i think maybe 200 they packed it packed but you were no more than 10 feet away from the dj that was playing very cool very intimate vibe loungey kind of kick back and you’re you’re sitting on well i mean one night i was there and there was a song i was listening to that i got off a my friend had a compilation cd and i listened to the song um but from chuck love and uh i was sitting in the lounge one night and all of a sudden he drops the the song um the jimster remix version of it which is the one i listened to over and over again i get on my phone and i pull up the song on my phone i go to the dj booth and i’m like is this him is this this guy made this song and she’s like yes i’m like no way and i didn’t know chuck love like played seven different instruments and sang on over his tracks and all this crazy stuff and i went out to win a music conference actually that was 2008 now i think about because i went to winter music conference in 2009 and went and checked out one of his shows there too and he’s the guy who’s just like chilling on the bench with his horns like polishing it up like okay what’s up yeah man i um that really speaks to me that

[Jacob Henry]
that anecdote you shared and we we actually had an experience not long ago in la it was this year um where we played we did a show at catch one in la and there’s a few rooms at that venue and the one that we chose for the first la event um was i think maybe like 150 or 200 capacity so very so very small for especially by monstercat standards monstercat often does kind of big blowout events and cultural you know like tomorrowland and and like major festival events where we could have i think we had 13 000 people at compound this year which is our festival in vancouver so it was a little bit of a new thing for us to do something that was that intimate but everyone loved it because there were people like hanging off the balcony there was like this stairwell the spiral staircase in the middle of the club people were like dancing on that and there was like this kind of overhang balcony thing and there was like 40 people behind the djs just hanging out and dancing and just felt really raw and like authentic to dj culture

[Darran]
totally i i always like you know i went to edc for my first time in 2021 and granted my friend said that i’m surprised you can see the pavement because that’s how many people are usually there but you can actually see the pavement like it was sparse it was right after still kind of pandy pandy coming out of it you know a lot of fun stuff and um i remember you are looking at this d you’ve seen this dj and they’re like this big even the prettiest one is uh shaq’s tagline under his diesel name is i’m the world’s biggest dj but even shaq’s set he’s big huge guy but he’s like up on the stage and you’re looking at him it’s like okay you’re not really that big shaq but you know being able to connect with the fans is huge and uh we’re looking forward to being back out there on the road again we have a great working relationship with the team out of um out of arizona they’re based out of arizona they’re a relentless beats prt and media team and they do a lot of events every year so we’re super excited to get back out on the road go nationally internationally now over to places like ade and i’ve never been and then there was escape well i think we even checked that club out cool which is amazing but if you could put one producer up and coming producer in the spotlight who would that be and

[Jacob Henry]
why i haven’t mentioned his name yet today so i want to mention him now he’s based out of qatar so he’s a middle eastern artist he’s worked with us since 2018 ish maybe 2017 he goes by the name amr a period m period r and um he’s he’s easily one of the leaders of the label at this point in time in terms of his his listenership the response to his music being so positive um he’s he’s worked now with some of our friendly competitors as well like he did a remix for um above and beyond i think it was i guess technically maybe an ocean lab track but you know above and beyond presents ocean lab um he recently appeared on a record with robby east on this never happened so he’s worked with this with lane 8’s label recently as well um but yeah he is one of our leaders he’s he released his debut album on mastercat silk in 2020 and very excited to tell you that he will be releasing his second album this year with us so um he’s put a lot of music out with us already and now he has a whole other album um about to about to drop with you know this year it’ll come we’ll put out the singles starting in june and through the summer and then i think we’re looking at a november album release date we’ll have to get him on the show yeah it sounds great um he he’s a brilliant guy uh artistically and just like a very thoughtful person as well um musically he brings this sort of organic house meets melodic house meets progressive and then the x factor is like he brings world music textures into his songs so a lot of his songs have these beautiful sometimes middle eastern motifs sometimes african motifs um he’s he’s went on vacation to bought went in bali and then he brought back some like some influences from bali and like that that kind of informed his music so i i tend to really love in general like new age world music and when i hear those textures and those types of vocal motifs of of sort of like you know indigenous and native cultures to those other areas being incorporated into melodic house and organic house it really speaks to me and he does that really well and he has some he has some vocal tracks this on this album that i think are really extraordinary um not quite ready to reveal the collaborators but some really beautiful vocal collaborations that will be most of which will be singles on the album nice i got him queued

[Darran]
up i’m gonna go go listen to some yeah he’s awesome um obviously you can find him everywhere spotify and he’s on socials as well so other than the big news that you’re coming to seattle in may for the double header weekend with shingo and bt is there anything else you’d like to let our dj

[Jacob Henry]
sessions fans know about um well just to kind of highlight that point um definitely head over to or a seattle.com or is just ora and then seattle.com you can see both tickets for both nights the friday and the saturday may 12 and 13th are on sale they do have some kind of special pass where you can get a discounted price if you buy the pass for the whole weekend so consider that option um i can’t you know i’m very biased but i can’t speak loudly enough about how amazing the for that weekend i mean shingo and bt are legends legends and they are amongst the best artists in progressive in trance and and now more recently melodic house especially for shingo in the world they are they are acknowledged as being leaders in the space and um if you’re a fan of really beautiful emotional melodic electronic music come out and join us even if you’re not familiar with shindo and bt i promise you that you will really be inspired by the records that they’ll be performing and mixing um other than that stay tuned for a big project with bt that we’ll be announcing soon i’ve already kind of teased the amr album so definitely keep keep posted on that and yeah i would just say you know make sure you follow monstercat silk wherever you listen to music you know we have a new releases playlist on spotify just type in monstercat silk new releases you know come right up um you find us on youtube if you’re a youtuber we have um new releases coming out every week tuesday is our new release day so every tuesday we have a new release could be a single could be an ep could be an album and um yeah wherever you wherever you enjoy music go there

[Darran]
and you can find monstercat so that’s awesome jacob thank you so much for coming on the show today we’re definitely going to stay in touch with you we’ll see you in seattle in person again here soon um might even have to bust out the uh mobile studio for you guys to take a tour around the city and uh thanks man i don’t know if you’ve ever seen our mobile studio truck the big glass box

[Jacob Henry]
truck and i haven’t but i was at i was at your apartment or your old which was your apartment or your old studio or both but when we were doing the 450th episode marsh 11 and i had a chance to record the uh do a set there before the uh the show at club contour so that was really cool yeah

[Darran]
so we have a glass box truck with a concert grade sound system on the back cool that mackie supplied to us uh it’s one of our sponsors and it’s loud and it gets a lot of heads turning it’s fun um but yeah looking forward to having you here in seattle in may congratulations on all the success especially the partnership with silk and monstercat i’m sure that’s just something that

[Jacob Henry]
it’s been an absolute dream thank you thank you for that acknowledgement absolutely well we’ll

[Darran]
see you soon thanks buddy great to see you thank you everybody yeah on that note don’t forget to go to our website thedjsessions.com find us on tiktok twitter twitch instagram out there you can find all that out though at our website thedjsessions.com i’m your host darren coming to you from the virtual studios in seattle washington and that’s Jacob Henry on the other side from monstercat.com forward slash silk check them out more music more hits more stuff coming your way on the dj sessions and remember on the dj sessions the music never stops