Polkadot’s DJ is finally online? Listen to Mubert’s founder talk about his “must do” journey

In an era where AI music and Web3 are accelerating their integration, Mubert is one of the few products that has truly gone from "creativity" to "protocol". Behind it is a founder, Alex, who not only understands low-frequency instruments but can also write code himself.

In this PolkaWorld interview, we talked with Alex, the founder of Mubert, about his original entrepreneurial intentions, his love for music, his thoughts on copyright and creator economy, and why he chose to build Mubert on Polkadot.

From an experience of listening to music while running, he came up with the idea of "generating music in real time" and quickly assembled a team to start his entrepreneurial journey. Alex said that Mubert was not an "idea that I chose by chance" but a "project that I had to do".

In this interview, you will see how a musician uses AI and blockchain to reshape the distribution and ownership of content; you will also understand why he said that Polkadot should have its own DJ - and Mubert is the one who can liven up the party .

Kristen : Hello everyone, welcome to PolkaWorld Live. Today is an interview with Mubert, and we are honored to have its founder, Alex. Welcome, Alex!

Alex : Thank you very much for the invitation. Hello everyone, I am a little excited to share my own story and entrepreneurial journey today. Thank you, Kristen.

Kristen : I first learned about Mubert through the Web3 Grant announcement. At that time, many community members were asking, "Who is Mubert? What are they doing?" So it is really meaningful for us to invite you here today to introduce Mubert to everyone.

I want to start by talking about your background. I understand that the idea for Mubert was born from a very personal situation in your life - you were running and wanted to find music with a steady beat, but you couldn't find the right one, so you decided to make your own.

Are you the kind of person who takes immediate action when you come up with an idea?

Alex : Yes, to be honest, I am like that. I get inspiration very quickly. Actually, I worked as a creative director for a long time before I started my own business. It was not until 2017 that I started my own entrepreneurial journey.

The idea for Mubert also came to me out of the blue. I was running with a friend at the time, and we had some problems playing music - the rhythm of the music couldn't keep up with the rhythm of running. Then we thought, why can't there be a kind of music that changes in real time according to the rhythm of running?

Then I suddenly realized that I had a lot of people around me who could help me do this. So we immediately started the first brainstorming session that night, and from that moment on, Mubert was born .

Kristen : Wow, are you someone who brainstorms a lot and comes up with new ideas? Or was Mubert something that you knew you had to make, rather than something that just happened to form in a bunch of ideas?

Alex : Actually, at that moment, I really wanted to start my own startup. At that time, the entrepreneurial culture in the United States and Europe deeply attracted me, and I decided to try this path.

The reason why this idea came to fruition is that I actually have a deep understanding of the composition of music. I have received music education since I was a child and used to play the double bass. At the same time, I also have a technical background. I have studied software development and web development, and I have been involved in both front-end and back-end development. So for me, to build such a product, I can imagine and know how to do it.

That’s why I decided to work on Mubert. I knew how it was “built” and how to communicate with my awesome team — the original founders of the product.

Kristen : It sounds like you’re really passionate about music! I’m curious, what role does music play in your daily life?

Alex : Everything. Music is everything in my life. Music makes everything better . Whether it's in the background, in an app, or when I'm working out in the gym. I mean, music is the same language for everyone. Like we talked about before we recorded the podcast, music is an international language that everyone can communicate through.

The structure and mood of music is similar for most people around the world. I think music is one of the most important advances in human history , the most important evolutionary achievement of human beings . Music really makes us different - it's amazing that humans can create music, play it together, listen to each other, and understand how someone feels just by listening to the music they like.

Kristen : When did you fall in love with music?

Alex : That was when I was a kid. It was because my dad, he was an artist, so he liked a lot of cool music.

My dad had a collection of LPs, and he would buy me CDs of different bands. That's how I started listening to quality music. Then I picked up a guitar and started playing songs from my favorite bands. Then I started to learn about them like I was there - how cool they were, what it was like to be a rock star. I also firmly decided that no matter what, I was going to follow this path.

During school, I decided to play guitar first and then bass. Bass is still my favorite instrument, such as double bass, double bass, bass synthesizer, and all different types of low-frequency instruments. Low-frequency instruments are my passion.

Kristen : That's amazing. You studied software engineering and music at the same time. Was your decision driven by your passion for music, or did that connection come later?

Alex : No, music is just a hobby for me. I understand that music is not an industry that can make a lot of money unless you are a superstar or a world-famous music producer.

So I chose the software engineering and design path. I was actually more of a front-end and design person, and I built a lot of great content, apps, and user experiences. That was my job. I started doing software development when I was about 16 or 17 years old, right after I graduated from high school . I already had experience in web development, which was my first job. So I decided to focus more on the technical side.

Of course, because I understand that the future direction of human development is technology.

Kristen : You know, Gavin has a PhD in music programming.

Alex : Yes, he is one of the founders of Ethereum.

As far as I know, one of his ideas at the time was to create something similar to what we are doing now - a system related to intellectual property, so that the works of different artists can be contributed and integrated together to form a new economic model and make data a new economic entity.

I think now is the best time to do this because we see that the development of artificial intelligence has brought many challenges, and it is difficult for original copyright owners to obtain reasonable compensation, and they are almost excluded from the game.

So now is the best time to seize this opportunity.

Kristen : I noticed that Mubert was actually founded a few years ago. Who are your main users? What are the most common ways they use Mubert?

Alex : Yes, we started this idea in 2016. In 2017, I came to the United States and completed the first round of financing in Silicon Valley. At that time, I achieved my initial goal.

Initially we started from the "listening experience", but then we realized that generative music actually belongs to the category of creative economy and creative economy , which is the process of people creating things . Because you can listen to any type of music, but to create music, you need a lot of experience.

So we found our business model - making Mubert a creative tool used by creators .

Right now, our users are mainly YouTubers, Twitch streamers, advertising companies, basically those groups that need music right now.

Kristen : This is cool. I usually take videos of my dog and it takes me a long time to find the right music to go with them. The first time I used Mubert, I typed in "happy puppy" and it generated music that I liked.

Alex : This is how I think about music creation and the future. Because now, creating music requires a lot of experience. But in the future, music will be more related to emotions, and you can express what you want to describe through music.

At the same time, you can also talk to AI, which will be our next development direction. In other words, music creation will become a conversational process.

You can communicate with the chatbot and say, "No, this music is not for big dogs, I need music for small dogs, and I want music that has more of a cafe vibe."

I need this music to be a little bit softer, I need this music to sound younger. These are all expressions outside of music theory. There is no such thing as "young music" or "soft music". All music is made up of notes, frequencies and instruments. Music itself is data. But now we have the opportunity to let people describe music in different ways, to create music with their imagination and fantasy world.

Kristen : Absolutely. It’s really cool that for a normal person like me who doesn’t have any musical background, I can also create my own music, thanks to AI.

How much music is currently generated by AI? I want to ask you this question because I saw a news report that a very famous AI company actually has 2,000 people working behind it.

Alex : Regarding music, we have 10,000 music producers, and I lock them all in the basement of my house, and they work 24 hours a day - of course I'm kidding.

Our music is influenced by humans, inspired by humans, and generated by AI . All the music provided by our platform is generative. We have technology that can generate music in real time and support the generation of live music. So the music you hear is actually generated one second before you.

So the music is generated in real time . But at the same time, humans still have a large part in the technology because they provide us with the datasets. We know that every track and the datasets that we have were created specifically for us. So the human input is actually very large, and we hope to continue to use this approach in the future.

Through the "human + AI" co-creation of music, humans first create raw materials, which can be used for training, generation or various remixes. At present, I have created music for you based on your prompts, emotions, feelings, running rhythm, etc.

Kristen ：Okay, let's talk about Web3. This is an important decision for you. What prompted you to decide to bring Mubert into the Web3 field?

Alex : There are two points I want to make here. The first point is that for the past eight years, I have always dreamed of building a Web3 product. I love this industry, and I have a wide network of contacts in the Web3 field and know many great people. But before that, it was not a good time. Now is the best time to make Web3 products . Because now we see many challenges in copyright.

The second point is that we see that creators want new sources of income, that is, the creator economy, especially music creators . They are not yet too involved in the creator economy. At the same time, I also see that making Web3 products today requires more software development experience and cooperation with many excellent products, because data has become the new currency.

We always say that there is more and more data. A few years ago, data was almost worthless. Music data, listening preferences, user types and other related information were all free and available. This data is of great significance to our product architecture, user behavior, creator economy and other aspects.

Now we see that many copyright holders, data providers, music labels, independent musicians and digital artists want to participate in the upcoming AI boom, and they want to be compensated 100%, so they need to see how their data is used.

And blockchain technology is a great tool to show them how this process works. So we are building a rollup. The goal is to build one of the first creator chains in the world .

Kristen : Great! You said you had the idea of joining Web3 eight years ago, but the market was not mature at that time. I think you had the idea of joining at the same time as the market was gradually educated about new technologies, AI and Web3 concepts.

After all, eight years ago, people hadn't even heard of the term "Web3". So now is the right time to do this. Now, Polkadot's infrastructure is more mature and suitable for building the products you want to develop.

So why choose Polkadot? Why not choose other chains? In 2025, everyone is migrating their projects to Solana. What do you think about this?

Alex ：I think each blockchain is designed for a specific purpose. Some are more suitable for decentralized finance (DeFi), and some are more suitable for consumer-oriented applications.

We chose Polkadot mainly because its architecture is suitable for the consumer-facing applications we are currently working on . Our strategy is to build a rollup first and then import existing Mubert users into this rollup. In this way, we can test the performance of consumer-facing applications on this chain.

Secondly, we really like the idea of rollups and how they can interconnect with each other to support the development of things we all own in the future. That is, by building new middle layers.

The third reason we chose Polkadot is because of the support from the Web3 Foundation . They were very responsive and gave us a lot of advice. They opened the door to the Polkadot community for us and provided us with access to the biggest projects on Polkadot. That's why we are enjoying our collaboration with them now.

We recently completed our first milestone. We have four milestones in the grant, and you can read about our strategy on Medium. We also expect to hear good news from the Web3 Foundation soon.

So, yes, now we are part of the community. We are invited to various podcasts and conferences, and we are also building new friendships and ecosystems. They are all happy to work with us.

So, Polkadot is a very promising blockchain for us.

Kristen : Regarding the milestone plans of the Web3 Foundation, can you tell us about Mubert’s current progress?

Alex : We are now at the second milestone. Our entire product is actually a parallel chain, which will carry the new content protocol we provide, that is, a protocol for managing any intellectual property content, which will be used for generative content creation .

Imagine that every time we generate content on the platform, it might be music at first, but in the future we want to expand to videos, pictures, emoticons, all types of content, because these contents are essentially the same.

Therefore, the content generated will have a tracking record that can be traced back to the original copyright owner. These copyright owners have their own wallets on the platform, so they can earn passive income from the chain because their content is being used . Through the data transmission on the chain, we can accurately show how the content is used and when the content was minted.

We will implement this protocol and realize our product - a platform similar to muber.com. We will deploy this product as the first use case on this chain. This is the final step of our milestone plan.

Kristen: I understand that existing Mubert users will migrate to Polkadot rollup?

Alex ：I would say it is the usage of existing users, because users will have their own wallets. They can claim their own wallets and come to the platform to claim them. We will not force users to use Web3, but we want to let them join in the right way. If they want, they can claim their own wallet. In this wallet, we will store their intellectual property (IP), archetype, music preferences, and the data they generate on the existing platform.

On the other hand, we have all the copyrighted content on our platform, including 3 million sounds, 3 million samples and tracks, which we will also tokenize. We will operate it on the test network first. We need to test how it works, how much it costs, and how to integrate it into other applications.

Let's wait and see.

Kristen : As we all know, blockchain is very expensive. Our audience is mostly non-technical people. Can you explain to us which part of the process of AI music generation, or when people use robots, involves blockchain?

Alex : Actually, blockchain is mainly responsible for the background work of data distribution and fund allocation . The AI itself and the music library are run off-chain to ensure that everything is smooth. We can't let users wait too long. For example, when he needs music, he should get it within 3 seconds. The blockchain part is the underlying background, which is responsible for collecting data and distributing it among all wallets on the platform.

Some wallets belong to data set providers, which may contain a lot of content. Some wallets belong to individuals, which store their copyrighted content, such as music content, bass lines, music clips, etc. They will receive a portion of the revenue. I would not call it a copyright fee directly, but for the sake of understanding, you can think of it as a mechanism similar to a copyright fee that is executed in real time.

As for the business model, the applications and businesses built on our products mainly get their revenue from the market. They can generate revenue through YouTube, Instagram, or sell subscription services, or even want to build AI agents that can be integrated into games.

When they have this initial idea of building an AI-driven app that creates content for them, they can choose to buy other people's datasets, which are expensive. They can also build their own neural network or pay for using different example models. So there are multiple ways for them to do it. We provide the dataset and the model, and they can use the model and the data that we provide.

They pay the corresponding fees, so it's easier for them to start developing such apps, try to make money from the app, and focus on optimizing the revenue model . This is how we think about the current market. Because there is a huge gap between the initial idea of "I want to make a creator app" and actually developing it - it is very expensive and difficult to develop apps now.

I mean, writing code is not the biggest problem, the biggest problem is finding the right data set and training the neural network. This involves the exploration of copyright, as well as revenue sharing or similar mechanisms. It can be said that this is a new way to monetize content and a new way to build applications that can reasonably use content in a transparent and compliant manner. In the future, every piece of copyrighted content will be protected by the legal team and the artist himself. They need a suitable way to publish content, ensure that the content is legally purchased, and circulate in the right way. And we are building such a system.

Kristen : For music creators, Mubert can ensure that they can earn revenue from their copyrights and their copyrights will be protected.

Alex : Exactly. We’re starting with our own app, which will be a showcase platform.

At the same time, we already have multiple cooperation projects, including some music copyright holders, who will publish their data sets on the Mubert protocol. Anyone who wants to build a product can access these data sets, access the model, and adjust the data sets.

This is a simple way for them. It can be said that this brings added value to the chain, which is transparent and fast, and the content also brings additional value.

Kristen : Are there any particularly prominent competitors in the Web3 field?

Alex : For example, Story Protocol is also based on on-chain intellectual property management, but it focuses on other markets. There are some music platforms that focus on the distribution of music copyrights, such as Grow Island or Sound Exchange, who focus on the music itself, which is very different from us. They focus more on the listening experience and ensure transparency to the original artists.

We focus on content creation, and we are in a different market, currently called the sync music market . This is the third largest market in the music industry and the fastest growing market in the world.

Kristen : I heard that you have proposed a cooperation proposal to cooperate with Fat Penguin for marketing, but it seems that the progress is not smooth and the support is not strong. I would like to know more. Are you cooperating with other intellectual property parties or big brands to promote Mubert in the Web3 field?

Alex ：Yes, we recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Fat Penguin and plan to hold a series of cooperation-related activities, which will be promoted under the brand of "Powered by Polkadot". However, as you mentioned before, the cooperation is not going smoothly, and we don't know the specific reasons. We applied for the event reward program, but were rejected; we applied for treasury support, but were also rejected. So we think that the Polkadot community needs to improve the way to invite outstanding communities around the world.

Speaking of Fat Penguin, for example, they are the largest NFT community and a very active Web3 community. They have a great technical team and a huge audience. We bring their technology and audience into our cooperation, so that we can attract more people to Polkadot and let more people know about our products. This is not just about technical things such as software development, blockchain development or rollups. It's also about entertainment and user participation. This is not a hackathon or a decentralized financial project, but it focuses more on entertainment and interaction with real users. In this way, we can attract more people to help us establish our brand in the market in an immersive way.

I mean, this is more about marketing than just hosting a hackathon.

Kristen : I saw that Fat Penguin of China held some events in China last year and the results were very good.

People like the brand and the IP, and that really helps a lot, but proposals are always very complex because the public has different perspectives and backgrounds, and they interpret proposals differently and have different standards.

Therefore, not every proposal can be passed smoothly. And because PolkaWorld is one of the DVs, we know that there will be many tricky problems in the process.

I think we should always be open to new ideas. So I think communication between DVs or DAOs is very important during the proposal process, but sometimes it depends on luck. I hope you can pass this proposal.

Alex : We will. I know it's hard because we are all in the beginning stages of this industry. It's like being rejected, pitching again, and being rejected again. But after every failure, we will make progress.

This may be the way forward.

Kristen ：Yes, that’s the reality of Polkadot OpenGov. But I’ve also talked to friends in other ecosystems and it’s also difficult for them to get funding, and there’s not enough transparency.

At least in OpenGov, it's transparent, you know who the opponents are, and you can get some form of feedback. So, good luck with the proposal.

Let's continue the interview. Music has always been used to connect people's souls. Do you believe that AI will one day be able to create music that truly has soul?

Alex : I believe so. The way to achieve this goal is to invite top artists to collaborate . For example, they will not only provide tracks that have been released on distribution platforms, but also provide source materials, that is, unreleased songs. Some unfinished music, because these music contains a lot of interesting fragments and crazy ideas, which they may never release publicly.

Once we have access to this library, we can start putting together these specific tracks. I believe more in generative model-based music creation because it uses real samples from real artists. I don't like synthesizer-generated music because it all sounds the same. All the songs sound, vibe, mix and master almost exactly the same, there is no difference at all. But in the generative model approach, you can say, "Mubert, help me make a new song with Hans Zimmer's strings, Taylor Swift's lead vocals, and it sounds like Gorillaz."

We take exact samples and loops and mix them together to make something unique without the sameness that synthesizers bring. In short, we need to invite top artists to participate and get more of their content.

I would also like to mention that we are preparing for a big launch event for our DApp. To demonstrate how the protocol works, we will develop a small DApp based on the AI technology, including collaborations with top artists. This will show how the system works when big artists participate in AI music.

Kristen : Great! I think the music industry is very different from the tech industry and other products.

I hope the community can be more open to Mubert. For example, there is a company in China called Pop Mart, and their product is called Labubu. I'm not sure if you know it.

Their founder said that Labubu is popular because it has no practical use. It is purely an entertainment product. If you plug a USB into this Labubu toy, few people will buy it because they already have a USB.

For entertainment and music, these are different industries and products. I hope the community can be more open and try different marketing methods and other methods. This is not pure development, and I don't think it can be thought of as development.

Alex : It's an agreement, we have to hit various milestones, and that's really it. I think, as you said, the product is more important from a marketing and user engagement perspective. Imagine you go to a party and there's no music. You're standing there and you're like, "Can someone play some music?" And you say, "Yes, I can." You play your playlist. At that moment, you become the most popular person at the party. You're the DJ of the party, you're the life of the party because you play music, you have speakers, and you have big speakers. You can throw a big party. Imagine you have big speakers and a DJ booth, and everyone will gather around you.

There are no DJs on Polkadot, we can be the DJ at the Polkadot party . We can be the DJ who is better than everyone else. Polkadot can have the most impressive startup in the world focused on AI music, and it will be built on Polkadot.

With the support of OpenGov, Gavin Wood, and the help of various venture capitals around Polkadot, we can build a product that is listened to by everyone in the world. Why not? This is the question I want to ask.

Music is always the best way to get everyone's attention. This is not just another DeFi project. There are many DeFi projects, maybe 20 or even 200 on each chain. This is not a question, it's not a game. This is a music platform. Just like the speakers at home. Gavin can come to any party and say we have the Mubert platform.

We plan to raise about 10 million to build this platform . We already have artists like Gorillaz, Baseman Jax and Maldon on the platform. They create music for everyone, and the platform has 28 million users and provides API access services, of which about 2 million are active creator users on the platform. They are all great and we support them. This is exactly what I see and should be the focus of the entire Polkadot community.

Yes, we should focus on this direction. This will be an important link connecting the various resources of Polkadot . It is not limited to Polkadot itself, because it can be a product based on Polkadot. The backend is based on Polkadot, but the product can be connected to other ecosystems through bridges and SDKs. We recently launched a plug-in for Canva and an Adobe plug-in. Our next plan is to cooperate with some actual engines, such as Unity, Webflow, Framer, and Figma website, because they have also recently released new technologies.

Therefore, every creator will have a Mubert account, which now contains music, and in the future will also include videos, pictures and other content. Everyone will use it because it is easy to operate.

This protocol will include your IP or more precisely, your digital ID. No matter which of these tools you log into, you will have the same settings. This is what we call digital identity. In this way, you can collect a lot of content.

Whenever we bring new technology online, new identities, or new artists, that gets integrated into the system.

And this system is now based on Polkadot. Yes, the backend and the chain are based on Polkadot, but the market size is very large.

Kristen : How big is the market you just described to us?

Alex : This market is worth trillions of dollars , and content creators, big labels, large content production studios, stock libraries, and streaming platforms certainly make a lot of money. This market is huge and growing. Now everyone is a creator, you are a creator, I am a creator, and we are all artists. Our "canvas" today is no longer the canvas of Photoshop, but the world around us. You may be a creator by expressing yourself by wearing designer clothes; I may be a creator by speaking out some cool ideas; I may be a creator by creating music. Everyone wants to stand out and have their own vision and identity. You want to be recognized, and content is the most important part of it all. These contents will be increasingly based on our existing heritage, such as previous music and artwork. But to copy them, we need a very transparent mechanism. Only in this way will those big names and copyright holders be willing to work with us.

We need a new, completely transparent creator economy where everyone can participate and start at zero cost . I think in previous cycles, the NFT copyright issue confused everyone. And I think it's time to face and solve the problem of music copyright. Of course, you can put the copyright address on the blockchain, but it will eventually have to be resolved through legal agreements. Because in the music industry, copyright is both the main means of protection and the biggest pain point. Copyright protects many excellent musicians, but it also makes the industry lack the vitality of innovation. The two need to be balanced through agreements, the right partnerships, reasonable education and API integration. The backend data system should also include these technical implementations, such as how to reasonably allocate the proportion of copyright income, how to vote to decide the proportion of sharing, etc.

If I want to invest in an up-and-coming musician right now, how do I get involved? How can I become part of something like a major record company? How can I get involved in this genre of music? You can think of music and data as an economic system, it's actually an economic tool.

Because at the end of the day, this content will ultimately generate revenue for you.

Kristen : NFTs are very popular now. They are popular not only because they look good, but because they represent a spirit, something cool or unique. I think maybe one day a certain style of music will also become popular in the Web3 ecosystem. This is just an idea that suddenly popped up in my mind.

Alex : I totally agree. First of all, there is no such thing as bad taste. Everyone has their own unique preferences, which are much more personal than what we feel when we meet face to face. Because you can sense how a person feels by looking at him, but music is completely personal. I emphasize again that there is no bad taste. However, some music genres may suddenly appear and may be very niche. They will have a small number of fans at the beginning, and everyone will think that this music is very trendy and special. Fans will slowly join this subculture or sub-genre culture.

That's what I love about music, it's always about interacting with like-minded people and finding new possibilities. You're always thinking, what's the next step in music.

What's next for content? We want to make it more gamified . In future development (not right now), we'll have the opportunity to focus on different genres of music, or different types of text. That way, you can think about what the next big genre will be, what the next big thing will be, whether it's music or art. You can also vote for these contents and promote their development. In other words, it's like a small startup in the music ecosystem.

We're designing documentation for that right now, and we think it'd be really cool to be able to bring some genres to the forefront, some emerging artists, or people who might be popular in the future, so you can kind of invest in that.

Kristen : To end the interview, if listeners today want to try Mubert, where is the best place to start?

Alex: The best way is to start from our Web3 website, https://mubert.com/. Because we now have a Web3 user base. On the website you can read our light white paper, vision and manifesto, and you can also try out our API and the products that are launched today. We currently have about 1.5 million users of our products, and the API also connects to some great tools.

For example, you can experience our service through Canva. Through this API, we have generated more than 100 million music tracks.

"These tracks are used primarily by professional users, on YouTube and other platforms. Now we are starting to track the use of this music, to understand where it is used, for what purposes, and how it is licensed, which is an important step for us."

Of course, the easiest way is to just visit the website, click a button, and generate music for your party.

Kristen : There is a lot more we can discuss about the music industry, but time is always limited. We can invite you to the next podcast to discuss it in more depth.

Thank you for taking the time to do this interview and share so many insights, so that we can better understand the knowledge of AI, Web3 and copyright. Thank you very much! I recommend all listeners to follow Mubert and Alex for more updates in time, and we will continue to pay attention.

Alex : Thank you so much for inviting me to this wonderful podcast. It was a pleasure to talk to you because your questions touched on my past experiences and reminded me of many great moments. I like that this discussion is not just about technology or blockchain, but also about me, my team, and our users, so we can show ourselves from different perspectives, which is great. Really a great conversation, thank you!

Kristen : OK, I hope we can meet again next time. Thank you!