Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to AV in the Wild, the podcast that dives deep into the heart of the pro AV industry, out in the field, on the move and in the moment.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Hey everyone.
[00:00:10] Speaker C: Welcome to AV in the Wild. I'm joined by IFA and Mike and we're going to be talking about some amazing updates in the world of signage and bringing that whole experience to life for customers. Ifa, how are you doing this morning?
[00:00:23] Speaker D: Doing absolutely great and I'm honored and humbled to have Mike Sponza as our guest. So, as you know, I work for mcube and Mike was one of the founding directors, is still a director, still very involved in the business.
Mike, can you introduce yourself?
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Yes, I'm Mike Sponza. I'm from Italy and I'm one of the founding partner of Mcube Group.
We started the company 25 years ago.
My role is the. I'm director of music and licensing.
And your question will be why after 25 years you not a sea level
[00:01:07] Speaker C: Mike? Why are you not a C level?
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Because I don't want responsibilities.
I already started the company. That's enough.
[00:01:14] Speaker C: There you go. You've kind of birthed this, this child into the wild and now you're letting
[00:01:18] Speaker D: it go smoking like a true creator.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: No, I'm taking care of all the project of Instore radio.
M Cube started in the beginning as instore radio provider, so both content and technical solutions. And after two years, two, three years from the beginning, we started developing digital signage project.
In the meantime, we had to face all the problems of connectivity to. So when we started, it was a miracle to transmit two songs per night, two MP3s in one hour of connection. And then after the development of connectivity, it made easier also for digital signage to grow up. So I'm still in charge of the music basically. Now 80% of the time it's not selecting music, but working on copyright and licensing, which is getting more and more complicated year after year and globally.
[00:02:15] Speaker D: Right. Because different regions, different countries have their own.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Even in Europe there is normalization of copyright. So every single country have regulations, tariffs, different approaches.
And so it's very. Yeah, it's a very complicated matter which. But in a previous life I was also a lawyer before starting.
[00:02:37] Speaker C: That's probably very useful in your lawyer,
[00:02:40] Speaker B: especially if you want to fight against collecting societies. Now I'm having conversation and we developed a lot of new models of copyright through the years and I'm having a constant conversation with all the collecting societies in Europe and also in America.
[00:02:56] Speaker C: Now what's changed with regards to the Delivery of content. I'm guessing back in the old days we were kind of shipping hard drives around and the music was probably on premise. What's changed with regards to the IP delivery and the cloud? Has that really kind of helped with regards to delivery collection.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: We started a model 25 years ago that is a so called store and forward.
So we distributed the music from a server to the players in the stores.
[00:03:22] Speaker C: And each player presumably stored their own music?
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Yes, yes. So you don't rely on connection to transmit and broadcast the music because it's located.
So we still use that because we still think that streaming music in the commercial areas, it's not really a good model because there are some strange to say, but a lot of connectivity troubles still today.
[00:03:45] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I think we all experience
[00:03:47] Speaker B: main brands around the world and also in countries where you suppose the connection was perfect. No.
So we cannot afford not to transmit music during the day. So we still use the Storm forward.
We developed our own players, so we engineer it and we industrialize it. In Italy, still built in Italy, not because Italy is something.
We have a small company, M Cube was born in Trieste, which is a small C town on the east part of Italy.
There's a small company who builds this. And so everything is made at 0 kilometer, as we used to say. And we are happy about that because we manage. It's a proprietary system. So if the client ask for something, we make the modifications and we develop new software, new hardware for the client.
We always been client oriented. So if the client asks something, we transform that request in a feature for
[00:04:52] Speaker C: all the old clients, personalized specifically, there's no kind of like, you know, and
[00:04:55] Speaker B: then we make it available to other clients.
[00:04:56] Speaker C: Okay, very good.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: So we have some brands that made us grow a lot, but with this
[00:05:02] Speaker C: recast and again, I guess there's so many different nuances and verticals, you know, like from, you know, car retail to fashion to again all the different, different brands and stuff. They presumably all want a different kind of style and different kind of output with regards to the content that they're pushing out.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Yes. Basically there is a normalization now on the features. So everybody wants possibly the same request. But sometimes a client asks for something.
For instance, a few years ago we developed a system where every 10,000 customers there was a prize and the prize was supported by an ad and the ad was launched by the receipt at the cash register. So we'd have to develop a system to make the player speak with the cashiers at the same time.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: And it was something Very interesting.
[00:06:00] Speaker C: Yeah, that's very cool.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: This is the first time when a client raised the value of the contract as a prize for us.
[00:06:09] Speaker D: So, yeah, everyone's a winner.
One of the things that drew me to M Cube in terms of the job, it's so much more than a digital signage company. And I know Neil, we started our current roles at a similar time.
So we had a lot of conversations about it and it was the music element and that piece that you talked about, the manufacturing in Italy.
It's really rare for companies these days to give back to the community where they're. They're starting and they're working. So, you know that you're employing people locally, you're. You're actually giving back to your local economy as well by, by working that way and having that model and maintaining that model. It would be easy. And we've seen so many businesses, you know, in our careers that have. They start local and then they think, but I can do it cheaper if I ship it out to, you know, the Far east or, you know, wherever else.
Sometimes it's about creating that and giving back to your local and building that foundation and that loyalty to your brand as well, which is really good.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: I think it has to do a lot with us three partner when we started because we, we come from the same town, we share the same experiences, childhood and. Etc, etc, etc, so the value is the same. It's a core value.
[00:07:43] Speaker D: And we started a band.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like a band, actually. It's like a band. I have a band.
[00:07:48] Speaker C: Oh, really?
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:49] Speaker D: Oh, wow.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: I still tour Europe performing and playing the guitar and singing, but. Yeah, exactly. It's like a band. No, and in a band you can argue, you can fight, you can laugh a lot, but at the same time you have to make the music and M Cube is making the product. But with this kind of approach, as you say, the human relation is extremely important.
[00:08:13] Speaker D: In Cube, it came through that very first meeting I had. It came through so strongly.
And, you know, over the last, you know, several months, I've met so many people from different countries, different cultures and everything, but we all feel the same.
There's a unique kind of feeling of it's about the human experience and that I think that with music, how do you think that's going and evolving with technology?
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Oh, well, being a musician since I was 12 years old.
So it's more than four. It's almost 45 years of music. Okay.
[00:08:56] Speaker C: You've just aged yourself. Yeah, you look good.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: I'll be 57 this year. So I started at 12. That's 45 years of music. I've seen a lot of changes in technology.
[00:09:08] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: And that's why I still play the guitar with the tube amp and touring. Because technology is one thing, but not always a. It's a good thing.
[00:09:19] Speaker D: Authenticity is.
[00:09:20] Speaker C: There's a big revival in vinyl, isn't there? A lot of people have been going
[00:09:23] Speaker B: back to vinyl records on one side. On one side. Yesterday I was here in Barcelona and I bought 10 vinyls in a jazz store. Beautiful. But on the other side, two days ago, I produced 150 songs with AI
[00:09:38] Speaker C: I was gonna come to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: So it's okay to do music the traditional way. It's. It's okay to study Bach and, and Segovia and touring, performing and playing rock and RO on one side. But it's also very and extremely important to know what's happening today.
And it's a stupid thing to say that AI is a big game changer in technology, etc. Etc. In the world. But in my field of music, it's a big game changer. When we're talking about functional music, background music, it's a big game changer because AI can answer to the client needs. And unfortunately, the client needs are cost saving.
[00:10:19] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: So when we're talking about music and when we talk about cost saving, the big problem is the cost of licensing.
So if this is a kind of, a little bit of. Can I say fight.
I'm a fighter sometimes.
If collecting societies would apply tariffs in a more viable way, there would be no need for AI music.
Absolutely.
[00:10:53] Speaker C: It's been developed out of a need to get a lower cost.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Because of the challenges, a few years ago, some companies started offering royalty free.
[00:11:02] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Catalogs, no.
The main problem, I, I know them all. The old company that are working in Europe, I know them all.
[00:11:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Look, this is something maybe I will be criticized for telling this. I never met, out of 10 companies, I never met one person who could speak about music.
[00:11:22] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Nobody.
[00:11:24] Speaker C: It is a minefield because again, I've done stuff on YouTube videos and thought, oh, I put a piece of audio over the top of it. Is it royalty free, copyright free? Again, what do I search for? Where do I get it and am I safe? Is someone going to come back and say to me, you know, you, you've used our audio, you owe us this money? Or you.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: The problem that they are selling these catalogs without considering the fact that they are destroying some values.
Because if you start offering low cost music, low cost Music, it means it's low quality music at the same time. Because if you want to do great music, you have to invest money.
And usually these catalogs, you have a surface which wow, that's great.
And after one month, two months, you realize that it's not so great.
You scratch the surface and after 100, 200 songs, what's left?
So two years ago I started thinking, how can I build a catalog with 25 years of experience in this field, 40 years of experience in real music. How can we build a catalog to answer the client needs in terms of cost saving and make it something that it's exactly what the market needs? Not from gothic metal to free jazz. I collect everything. Then I say I have 50,000 songs. Yes, but gothic metal in a fashion store, a bit hard. Free jazz in a supermarket, little bit hard. So let's build a catalog. How can we make it? We make it with AI music. Okay. How can we be ethical, responsible and sustainable in making a catalog with AI music? And that's what I've been working on on this for one year and a half now. We have a big catalog, which is exactly what the music that the client needs. Exactly.
[00:13:10] Speaker C: Okay. And obviously how do we. There's a lot of kind of users now. I mean, in the old days used to put big billboard posters up and you know, people were doing stuff in print. But now the attention is on the smartphone. People are glued to this small little device and they've got the white little airpods in their ears. And how do we kind of use that kind of personal attention when they go into a store or a shop to try and personalize the experience? Are you doing anything around delivering a personal experience to devices?
[00:13:40] Speaker B: We started doing something like this personal involvement during the COVID year because especially with supermarket, there were people waiting outside.
[00:13:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: So we started developing QR codes and you could access to audio content developed for that brand.
And it was music, it was a special playlist, but it was English lesson.
[00:14:09] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Wow.
So educational as well as psychological support from expert. How do you react with the COVID with this and that, etc. With all the problem we had, they don't want to speak about that anymore.
[00:14:23] Speaker C: No, no.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: So there is a way to create this personal experience through the music with watermarks that make you something happen on your phone. We're working on that. We're working on that. I believe that radio was born 125 years ago, something like that.
And it was always two channel.
Radio was born for every conversation then. It was not more A conversation. It was a transmission and a listener.
I think that in store, music in store radio can be a two way channel of speaking and listening at the same time. And that's what I would like to make happen. To make a conversation with the person who is making shopping experience through music. It can be done
[00:15:19] Speaker C: going on from there. Where do you see the future going in the world of both radio in store and audio in store and also video in store? If you look out five years, put your kind of future view. Where do you think the industry is going?
What are we going to be talking about in three or five years time?
[00:15:40] Speaker B: I think that in terms of music, we will be speaking about how easy it is to create a personal playlist in a store.
So a very adaptive playlist. We've been speaking about adaptive playlist for a couple of years now, but it's not happening.
But I think that in the next couple of years with AI we will be able to speak about adaptive playlist. Which doesn't mean that everybody will listen to different songs at the same time, one song in one store, because everybody will go crazy. But there will be a way to change the music according to some factors that today we know that we have this factor, but we don't know how to integrate them into the compilation and population of playlists that we will be speaking about that and I hope that we will be speaking about an AI generative model of music that will be more responsible and more ethical than today.
Something is happening.
It will be a medium term. It will take another couple of years to find a solution.
The problem is that collecting societies are facing AI music with the same approach of traditional music.
And it's impossible. It's impossible when you're asking a client to pay the tariffs for artists and performers. And in AI music there is no artist, non performer.
[00:17:15] Speaker C: Yeah, there's frictionism a lot less in that space, isn't it?
[00:17:18] Speaker B: You're asking money for somebody that doesn't exist.
[00:17:22] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: So how can we change this model? And I'm pushing, I'm pushing, but they don't want to change because of course it's not only because they don't want. Because many times, mainly in Europe, collective societies are working on rules determined by laws.
So you have to change the law.
So it's something that you have to speak with the government at the same time. So it's a very complicated matter.
[00:17:50] Speaker D: Moving away from music. I've heard of another interest that you have done a bit.
[00:18:00] Speaker C: I don't know where this is going.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Cars, Cars okay, tell me about, tell me about your British vintage cars, actually.
Okay.
[00:18:12] Speaker D: Where did that start? How did it.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: This is something.
[00:18:14] Speaker C: No, it started Italian as well. British. That's gonna be.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: No, there's a reason the, the most beautiful Italian cars are unaffordable.
[00:18:23] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: That's my main problem.
British cars are also unaffordable, but you can have something in between. Very classic design and a great engine that you can still, after many years, you can enjoy it.
[00:18:36] Speaker C: I'm fascinated.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Yes. I drive.
My oldest car is 73 years old.
It's an Austin Hille car.
It's a beautiful, beautiful car. Beautiful. I started when I was a little boy.
My father, he was, he's still alive, but he was an officer on ships, so it was all over the world and anytime he was coming back home, he asked me, what do you want me to bring you? And I say, oh, you used to say a vintage model car.
[00:19:09] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:19:09] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: Like always, it had to be vintage one. So I don't know why. Maybe the design, the colors. No, I have beautiful colors. My cars have strange colors.
So it's a nice thing to do.
Of course I'm burning a lot of petrol, but anyway, I don't do it every day.
[00:19:28] Speaker C: No, no, no, no, no. Healey's a great hill climbing car. I mean, they do a hill climbing test with the, the Healey. What else have you got? The Austin Healey is the oldest.
[00:19:38] Speaker D: Is that your favorite?
[00:19:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a one and it's not my favorite. I've been chasing a Jaguari type for a few years.
[00:19:45] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: And I found an abandoned one in Italy and I made a three years restoration and that's my main car.
[00:19:53] Speaker C: Okay.
Which mark is that?
[00:19:56] Speaker B: It's a one.
[00:19:57] Speaker C: Oh, my Series one. Okay. Goodness. Okay.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: Late serious one.
[00:20:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:01] Speaker B: Now she's under, under surgery.
[00:20:04] Speaker C: They don't make cars as beautiful as that these days.
One of the, the quintessential.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely.
[00:20:13] Speaker C: Jaguar brand has gone. That, that recent thing they've done. I mean, they've. I don't want to say they've ruined it, but I mean, rebranding exercise was so.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: But the quality, I'm sorry to say that, but I had two modern Jaguars and I had to sell them both. So. Yeah, unfortunately.
And I had the old Jaguars still extremely reliable.
[00:20:33] Speaker C: Where do you sit on electric cars, then? Again, it's a bit of a petrol head. I mean, again, we talked about AI with the audio. I mean, electric, electric is taking over from internal combustion now.
How do you feel about that?
[00:20:47] Speaker B: I feel that there Is something not very clear to me at the moment.
The answer to pollution.
I think it's hydrogen, it's not electric.
[00:21:01] Speaker C: You're backing off, you're saying, okay, they're less polluting, but you're backing off the pollution to the making of the batteries, lithium and the mining. So whilst the front end product is not creating things, the, the back end, the back end manufacturing is, is used. So it's just offsetting it to somewhere else.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: You know, vintage cars, you don't use them every day, but all behind that. Sorry, not beside this.
I'm a member of a vintage car club and we plant about 500 trees every year.
[00:21:33] Speaker C: Oh, you're offsetting, that's fantastic.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: So also in Cuba we planted 15,000 trees in the last five years.
[00:21:40] Speaker C: That's amazing.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Every time we install a device, we plant a tree.
It could be a small device, it could be a large screen, we plant trees. So 15,000, I think it's a good contribution.
[00:21:54] Speaker C: It's a great sustainability story that you're providing out there.
I wanted to ask, I mean, for companies obviously looking and going down this route, what would be your three tips? Again, it is a minefield. When you're saying about royalties and copyrights and how to get into this, what would be your top 3? To any customer looking to deploy the kind of solution, what would be the three things they need to look at and think about when they're putting this in there?
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Well, if you talk about in store music and in store video, the main thing, in my opinion that we as a company, we have to develop instruments to help the client to express the brand identity. That's what I do. So the main thing is to find a way to express the brand identity.
In the case of music, you have to express the brand identity so as to find a way to translate a marketing language into a creativity language made of music and images.
[00:23:00] Speaker C: Bring the brand to life through music and images.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Then you have to find a way to make it make all this a customer experience, no, a shopping experience.
But at the same time you have to find a way to respect the people who work in the stores.
[00:23:18] Speaker C: So my Christmas time, they're just listening to Christmas music over in Mariah Carey over and over. Slade.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: So satisfaction is also passing through employees. Satisfaction.
So when we speak it to a client, the main thing is to find a way to combine all these three needs all together to make the most interesting, creative and product possible.
In terms of video.
We developed some beautiful project in the last year and a half. One in Milano is one of the largest outdoor screens.
And Stazione Garibaldi, it's a big corner. It's almost 900 square meters.
And then we built the longest immersive gallery in Europe.
In Italy. It's 300 meters long, gallery, pedestrian. And we build a system of screens all over the gallery with the contribution of the beautiful artwork of Refikanadol, which is the master of immersive reality.
[00:24:30] Speaker D: And actually the. There are more pixels in that than there are in the Las Vegas sphere, which I know you've seen.
[00:24:35] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's kind of like port. A landscape rather than spherical. And I guess you stretched it out.
[00:24:41] Speaker D: Yeah. But the challenge and how quickly our team put it together was just mind blowing.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:47] Speaker D: So that. That opened in December, but yeah, they did it in a matter of days because the groundwork, the planning, the design work was so strong and meticulous when it came to implementing it. They were able to.
They knew how to.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: In one month and a half, we had 150,000 visitors.
[00:25:08] Speaker C: Fascinating. I mean, we could go on all day.
We definitely need to get you up. A, we need to talk more about classic cars and B, your passion for audio. But to round this up, where can people. Obviously we kind of tease some of the things that mcube can deliver. And again, some of the great steps we can do. Where can people find out more information if they want to go deeper on this?
[00:25:29] Speaker B: Well, I suggest to visit our website, which is mcubedigital.com one single word, mcubedigital. And then we have, of course, LinkedIn and Instagram pages with the same name.
And we have a very.
[00:25:44] Speaker D: You should also follow Mike Sponza on YouTube and see some of his performances.
[00:25:48] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:25:49] Speaker D: Add them to your playlist.
[00:25:51] Speaker C: Yeah, I will be doing that.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: I have. I have this. This.
The. The English word. I don't know the English word.
This. It's not. It's a guilty pleasure of recording my album at Abbey Road Studios. That's what I do.
[00:26:04] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: So AI one side. But then my albums, I go to a. To Abbey Road. Absolutely.
[00:26:10] Speaker C: Very cool. Make sure you follow us here for loads more updates from us on AV in the World. Keep it wild and we'll catch you on the next episode. Episode.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: That's a wrap on this episode of AV in the Wild. Big thanks to our guests and to you, our listeners, for joining us on this journey through the AV landscape. If you liked what you heard, don't forget to subscribe. Share Leave a Review it helps us keep the conversation going. Catch us next time as we hit the road again with more voices, more stories, and more of what makes AV wild. Until then, stay curious, stay connected, and stay wild.
