How Music Superfans Are Cashing In on Kalshi w/ Luana Lopes Lara

23:28So that's where the line, we draw the line. Got it. And I've seen reports that prediction markets can often be better than polls. So why is that? Can you explain that? No, absolutely. It's because people are putting money where their mouth is. So people have an incentive to try to be correct, right? Like if I ask you, like if you ask me, I'm a big Taylor Swift fan. If you ask like, oh, is Taylor Swift gonna be number one? I'm always gonna say yes. But if you're saying - Honestly, probably. Honestly, yeah. I chose a bad example because she probably will. Or like Harry Styles. That was a big director.

23:57But if you actually ask someone to put money on it, they're going to take a step back and think about it. They're like, well, this album maybe is this new genre. I'm not so sure if that's going to do very well. It's fewer songs. It's all those things. And they can take a more calibrated view of it. And they're going to research. They're going to go online. They're going to look at Twitter. They're going to look at Billboard. They're going to try to figure out how to have a better forecast. and what the markets actually do is that they get all these people that are incentivized and summarize it in one number.

24:25So you actually, instead of getting one big, great forecaster saying, I think these will be the album sales for Olivier Rodrigo, you're actually aggregating all of those guys and bringing even like an incentive for new experts to show up and bring this mark. So for example, in the election market in 2024, Cauchy was forecasting Trump to win at around 64, 65 % chance the entire time, even though the polls were around 50-50. And that's really happening in every category. The Federal Reserve also put a paper of like how on the economics, like the macro economy and all of that, our markets are a lot better at forecasting than like big economists out there.

25:01And it's just the fact that if you're incentivizing people to bring good information to the market, you just get a better forecast. Well, OK, so I also wonder, though, if, you know, if it's actually telling the future or if it influences the future in a way. If someone sees on Kalshi that Trump is favored to win, are they more? Well, I don't know. Maybe that example doesn't make a ton of sense. But do you ever feel like it influences the future? You actually bring up a great example. It was the Mondani race in New York. It was where people were talking about this a lot. And I think he was around at, I think, 94 % chance of winning.

25:35And then one side, people were afraid that because he's so high up, maybe the odds are so good that maybe people won't show up to vote. Yes. Way better example than mine. Right. But then on the other side, people were concerned that like, well, because the odds are so low, it's going to motivate all the other side to go vote. And I think it's the same. It's the same thing as a poll, right? Like if you see a poll that it's like, you know, Mondani is definitely going to win. It impacts things the same way. And it's like in the end, what we believe is it's better to have accurate information than not accurate information.

26:04It's better to have a market that is we know at least a good source of information than a poll that we don't know who paid for it. We don't know. I think the same thing in the movie industry of who is actually trying to make Oscars campaigns and saying certain things. It's just better to have an accurate source of information. There's been a lot of research from a lot of these labs that I told you on universities looking into these markets that actually show there's actually no impact on the real outcome of things. If you compare races with markets, without markets, and all of that. And in general, it's just better to have.

26:37Nowadays, it's all clickbait on the internet. it's a lot better to have like some like accurate sorts of information. Yeah. That's super interesting. I've been thinking about that a lot when I was doing my research on prediction markets ahead of this interview, but also I recently had an episode of the show that ultimately ended up going

26:52Luana Lopes Lara:a little viral of I had on these viral marketers. They're called chaotic good. They're used by a lot of people in the music industry. And one of the things that they do are these narrative campaigns online. They have a bunch of different like kind of burner accounts that they make on social media. And so if you were to go on SNL, this was their example. If you go on SNL and you perform there, they could have essentially all their accounts comment. This is the best thing ever. I loved this. It was amazing. And it kind of influences other people because they're like, OK, other people like it. So clearly there's something here.

27:23Right.

27:23Luana Lopes Lara:And it might influence your thinking. And so I wondered if maybe prediction markets fell into that same category of kind of like online influence. Well, we almost see it as the antidote to that in a way, because I think that what prediction markets are very good at, is on Twitter, if you say some reasonable take, you're going to get two likes, right? If you say something insane, you're going to get like go viral and like whatever and all those things. Well, prediction markets, because you're not incentivizing virality, you're incentivizing being right. You get paid if you're right. Then you have a way more kind of like common sense, kind of like normal, like a better forecast of what's going to happen because the incentives are different.

28:03So we actually see a lot of it as like you go to Twitter and they're saying insane things about, you know, the economy or doing COVID that was everything about was all like COVID's over or COVID is going to kill everyone. It was awful. But the markets were very good at forecasting. It's almost an antidote to the kind of clickbaity social media side. Interesting. Okay. So I know sports have been a really popular category for you guys. I think at one point it was like over 90 % of trading on CalShift, but now it's down to about, what, 70? Yeah, it's going down. Yeah, it's going down, I think, very, very fast, actually.

28:35At the end of last year, it was around 93, and now it's already at 70. Oh, wow. Okay, things are changing super, super fast. Right, and it's just because they're, like, everything is growing so fast, but it's just, like, the other categories are growing even faster than sports. Yeah, yeah, well, I was going to ask, like, I mean, that doesn't leave that much space left over for

28:52Luana Lopes Lara:other categories, including music, so I'm wondering if you have any idea, ballpark, of how big music is in Cal sheet and the prediction markets that you offer. Yeah, I don't know the exact percentage, but music is growing a lot. I think that the example of like, just in like Q1, right? Q1 and like half of a month of Q2 is$500 million traded. Last year, all of it was$70 million. And I think that we're seeing a lot in like music, also movies is doing very well. We have the Rotten Tomato markets or what the scores are going to be. Those markets are very, very big as well. And yeah, And we're adding a lot more markets to, for example, like number of streams on Spotify and all those things that you can have kind of like more granular view of certain things and, you know, TV shows and all of that.

29:37I think that I don't know the exact percentage of the entertainment is, but it's actually I think our fastest or second growing category outside of crypto is number one and I think entertainment is number two. Interesting. Okay. Okay. Well, so are there any music markets in particular that you are interested in, things that you find to be particularly fascinating? A lot. A lot. I think that there was just a very recent flip that actually Olivia Rodrigo is going to have the top streamed album this year on Spotify. That I think is because of the new album, but I think that that is one that we were watching.

30:13obviously everything related to Coachella we were watching for the first weekend but some of our biggest markets are for example who's going to have a number one album this year so you have like Drake I think is at around 80 % and some of this is interesting because having a number one album might mean you need to release an album a lot of it's uncertain will this person release an album or not or you know Justin Bieber just because his odds are changing a lot just because of his Coachella performance so I think it's just there's a lot of very cool every year the Grammys are very big as well yeah I'm sure I'm sure.

30:43Kraft Mac and Cheese is better than 90s hip-hop. We'll remind you of your childhood without making you feel incredibly old. Kraft Mac and Cheese. Best thing ever.

30:58Pepsi Prebiotic Cola. An original and cherry vanilla. That Pepsi taste you love. With just 30 calories and no artificial sweeteners. Pepsi Prebiotic Cola. unbelievably Pepsi. Well with the Olivia Rodrigo thing I'm gonna say if I were betting I'm not for the record I'm not but if I was I would say that I don't think it's gonna be her not because I don't think she's well she's right there and not because she's not extremely popular and amazing I really do love Olivia Rodrigo but she releases really short albums right so she releases like 10 11 maybe 12 tracks per album and that's what she's done for the last two albums so I feel like

31:37Luana Lopes Lara:with this third one i i can't imagine her doing one of those like um scorpion by drake moments where she drops like 30 tracks or tortured poets department the anthology where it's like over 30 songs that's it and i think that that does influence like the overall number of streams and then it does ultimately influence her performance in the end um so that's that's my prediction for today there you go everyone the other one that we're looking at is i think lollapalooza like the headliner and i think lord is a favorite okay interesting well okay Okay, but prediction markets are super binary right now.

32:10Luana Lopes Lara:It's just like kind of one artist or another. Yes or no. So what is that market? Is it Lorde or someone else? Oh, I think it's, I don't know the details, but from what I understand, it's basically a list of artists and you can pick who you're going to be. And I think there's going to be three. Maybe like Coachella, for example, there are three. So if you select any of those, if you trade on any of the three, you can make money. But if you select anyone that was not a headliner. But you mentioned something very interesting that we're actually going soon, away from just the yes no and more into like linear type of thing so you can for example if you think um you can trade the album sales not as like a between like above this number or below this number but more like i think it's going to like go up or like be higher than this and just have like kind of a more linear payout of it so basically we're going out of just the binary yes no yeah that's probably the best way to explain it that's interesting okay so one thing that i've seen that seems very different to me than the stock market when you're thinking about prediction markets is that in the stock market, if you're a company that wants to become publicly traded, it's kind of like your choice that you decide to enter that market.

33:11Luana Lopes Lara:Whereas in prediction markets, we're kind of trading on everything. It's just publicly available information. And so is there a reality where you start moving towards partnerships where things are kind of like official partnered prediction markets, I guess? Yeah, that is a great question. And a lot of like these partnerships are something we're very excited about to explore and do also just not not just on like the data that we settle but like what we mentioned of what should we what's the best product here what's the most interesting thing and partnering with folks that understand these interests a lot better than we do to actually get the best um product out there the way that we think about prediction markets is almost like going like a for example if a tv show or the news are talking about an artist or talking about something it's kind of the same thing of like getting information about the future or letting people engage with it.

34:01So that's why I think it's, it's slightly different that we don't necessarily need these partnerships to be able to offer the market. But we would absolutely love to get a lot of these partnerships in place. We're working with a lot of folks like on sports, we're working with the leagues a lot in music and, and, and movies and all of that. We're working with, we're starting to work and have conversations on that. It's something we're very excited about. Yeah.

34:21Luana Lopes Lara:Cause I was thinking about how much value Taylor Swift probably brings to the platform just by having her name there and just by having people trade on, you know, what, chart position her next album will land at and that kind of stuff but yet she's not really part of it and i i wondered if there's any way for an artist or a music company to be part of yeah that is a great question i think we see it more as like like if you go to like a if the news is covering something right it's like if if you know uh i don't know fox news or cnn is talking about a taylor swift out uh concert they're also getting viewership on it and it's not necessarily that they have a partnership there.

34:55And we see a lot of the Kalshi kind of use case as news, as forecasts of bringing information to people. 70 % of our users just come to Kalshi to see the forecast more than actually trade, only 30 % trade. So it's like that side of it that's very interesting to us. But we really want to work with all industries and really just like build the best product that we can. And a lot of it can be a lot better if we are like with partnerships with people that, as you said, can really make the product a lot better and a crucial part of it.

35:22Luana Lopes Lara:Trading on Kalshi, your users are anonymized, right? There's no way to really know exactly who's trading on what, right? We know everyone that's trading. Okay. But other users don't know who they're trading against. Okay. So I don't even know if this is legal, but is it possible that you could sell that data to other companies? Like, for example, what I'm trying to get at with that is that record labels often spend a lot of money doing contracts with third parties that are really good with data analytics. This is a way that they get a competitive edge on signing artists that are bubbling up that the data reflects, but you might not have seen it unless you're just trolling the Internet all day, every day.

35:59Luana Lopes Lara:And so that's like a really big part of their strategy is partnering with kind of data companies that can show them what the hottest new artist is. So could you ever imagine a record label, you know, seeking information, doing a partnership with CalShe to figure out where their biggest super fans are, what's bubbling up, that kind of stuff? Absolutely. and actually like they don't even need a partnership with us for this all of this data obviously anonymized is available in public so they can come to kaoshi and they can sign up as like just a data user and they'll be able to download and and like really look at the data of the forecast the trades how many people are trading how fast these trades are moving because one interesting thing for example is like when you look at the terry styles having a number one album right like when he dropped his single the market reacts to that to be like well i don't think this type of song or this type of album would be very popular so it maybe goes down a little.

36:51I actually don't know the specifics about the hair styles market. But you see this kind of like real-time component of forecasts that are actually very, very valuable and we, our goal of the data is like obviously we're a for-profit company we need to make money but the data really, we want as many people as possible to use this data because we really see this as a social good that people should have better forecasts and should have access to a better way to see the future and decrease uncertainty. So if anyone wants our data, they can actually just email us and they'll be able to get the data no problem whatsoever.

37:22It's something we're very, very excited about. Interesting. Yeah. So one of the biggest buzzwords in the music industry right now is superfans. Everyone wants to capture value from superfans. This is kind of loosely defined as a music fan that goes to a lot of concerts, buys merch, maybe even buys a vinyl record,

37:40Luana Lopes Lara:you know all that stuff they're very engaged that's basically what the shorthand of superfan means and I know that there have been a lot of attempts in the music industry to try to capture that value so there are a few startups that have tried different ideas like one startup called even has tried the idea of like exclusive windows before an album comes out on streaming services that you could consume an album if you pay extra money you know Robert Kinzel who's the Warner music group CEO has expressed interest in creating a super fan app of some kind it still hasn't launched we'll see if it ever launches but like he's expressed that um that's an interest of his do you see Kalshi as a super fan platform I guess absolutely I think that actually the way you described it is is there's a side of like how do you actually monetize the fact that super pen is there like how do you sell merchandise and all those things but there's the side of the the superfan himself or herself of like how do i actually monetize the infinite hours i put into this right that i'm like reading every single gossip and and analyzing every easter egg on a song and all of that and kaoshi is a very good platform for the superfans to actually turn a lot of like their their time and their hobby and their expertise into real money and um we talked about the ariana grande superfan that was able to do that there's another guy that's like he is like an it professional has two twin sons and that that's uh is and he's made over 380 000 just on music markets because he's extremely passionate about music and it's funny because if you look at his profit on sports it's three dollars three dollars on sports and 380 000 on on just music and i think it's like kaoshi is a great way to for them to make money and also to engage and meet other super fans so we're seeing a lot of like we have the social part of the platform that all of them are engaging with each other so it's like the Ariana Grande versus Taylor Swift they're becoming friends it's like have you seen this um this way or like this poll or this whatever and they're able to do it that way and I think that as Kaushik grows and we have more and more of these people that are experts in music and want to make money on it there will also be a lot of like opportunities for partnerships that we can also um you know connect these superfans with with other platforms that are they want to monetize from them and and offer them certain things and all of that.

39:58I do have to say I wonder like how it's going to affect the fan experience that now you can you can monetize and make so much money that you're paying off your student loans. Right. I think that that's what I heard about the Ariana Grande superfan. When you monetize fandom I just wonder like how that changes the fan experience. I don't know as a fan yourself how do you think it will impact the fan experience it's a great question and i think that honestly the the sports industry had a very similar kind of if they allowed sports betting how would that and i think that all the the leagues the nfl the nba all of them have seen just a lot more engagement because now it's like you have even more incentive to research every single part of of what you could make money or it just adds to like you can just get more engaged them more excited about things.

40:47For me, personally, I'm a very anxious person. So it's actually good for me when I'm like, I really care about this album being number one. Taylor Swift, every new album that she releases, we have a market on where she has the top 10 Billboard, like the Billboard top 10. And just watching that market is just like so exciting to me to just watch it in real time. And I like the fact that I have a source of information on it. And it's not like just me going on Twitter and trying to see who is not a bot saying things and I can actually see a market. So to me, it's been it's been great. Obviously, I can't trade, so I don't have the full experience.

41:21But yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it'll be really fascinating to see how it impacts fandom long term. I do think one thing that I've experienced as a music journalist, I know all music journalists experience, is that fans are very like rabidly, you know, passionate, protective of their artists. I wonder if it's going to increase that passion even more. And that can be a good thing or a bad thing, honestly, because I think there's like this increasing parasocial relationship between fans and their favorite artists.

41:55Luana Lopes Lara:I'll be curious to see if fans are, you know, betting it all on, you know, an album's trajectory, like how that will impact the fan experience. But I think that's something we have to wait and see over time. Yeah. One thing that it's kind of a parallel from another industry, but in politics, what we've noticed, and we've talked to a lot of the users and surveyed them, is that actually the polarization somewhat decreases because of that. The user or the trader, they're taking a step back and thinking, well, if I am going to make money, do I actually think this? and in some ways it's like even though they he loves Ariana Grande like our the user as an example that I gave even though he loves Ariana Grande he has you know he is reasonable about it and see like well maybe she's not going to get the Oscar for best supporting actress because these other you know these other actresses have all these things and I'm reading all of that and in a way I think that when what we've noticed like time and time again with markets is that when people are putting money where their mouth is they take a kind of a step back and think more rationally about things when they're engaging on the trading side.

43:00So you get more engaged, they're excited about it, but they kind of act in a slightly more rational way, which in politics, we're seeing the decrease of polarization. So we talk to people before they trade and after they trade, and you see their engagement of like, well, I thought Trump, I'm a big supporter of Trump. I think Trump's going to win. But, you know, like voter turnout is probably going to be a lot higher in these states that are very liberal and blah, blah, blah. And they kind of just calibrate themselves more. And that calibration is very interesting. Yeah. Well, I would love to see the stands be a little bit more rational sometimes.

43:31That'll be interesting if that's the outcome in the end. That's fascinating. That is fascinating. So, yeah, one of the things that the music industry has dealt with, like, historically for decades now is there's a long history of stuff like payola.

43:46Luana Lopes Lara:Nowadays, kind of the version of payola in 2026 is streaming fraud, people trying to juice their numbers. I do wonder if adding a monetization and like a betting element to music performance could encourage further streaming fraud. I'm wondering what your take is on that. Yeah, that is a great question. I'm glad you asked that. So one of the reasons we kind of only like we have a lot of requests from users using kind of like smaller and smaller platforms for like not just Spotify and Apple Music and all of that. and a lot of our analysis always goes in like how susceptible to manipulation is this we don't want it to be very susceptible to manipulation so with Spotify we know we kind of studied how they come up with these numbers and how they actually stop the bots and do all of that and I think in some ways we trust Spotify's incentive because they have to pay for stream that they're going to try to make sure the numbers are correct but we really take we only offer markets that we think are very like hard to manipulate obviously like when we're thinking about um you know you're adding you are adding a monetary incentive for for you know for these things but i think that the most important thing when we work with with these markets is making sure that we're picking the markets that we don't think are susceptible to manipulation in a lot of ways it's like a lot of these um kind of things it's like also objectively a no it is a crime it is a federal crime to manipulate markets uh it is very similar to inside of trading like our market integrity and surveillance teams like they are looking if they notice anything like that if they notice uh you know we get reports all the time of like there's something sketching this market there's something sketching this market and we have actually a whistleblower program that if you report something that ends up being an issue you get part of the of the fine and all these things they are financial crimes and federal crimes so if you do any of that so in some ways you you're correct that it's adding the incentive but it's also adding the punishment that is significantly higher because you can end up in jail if you do that.

45:43Yeah. Yeah. It's I think my fascination with all the downstream effects of prediction markets are just that I do feel like this.

45:52Luana Lopes Lara:I mean, you telling me the figures of just how much it's grown, even from 2025 to the first quarter in slightly into the second quarter of 2026 proves to me that prediction markets are going to play a very big role in our society moving forward. And, you know, I think there's going to be a lot of downstream effects and And whether or not Calci has anything to do with that remains to be seen. But it's just going to be really interesting to see how this impacts all facets of society. Not to overstate it. I think that's completely right. One of the main reasons when we talked about how hard it was to keep the regulated path for us was that it is so important that there are the correct guardrails in place and the safeguards.

46:37And we know who's trading. And we can investigate these things. Like you mentioned Polymarket and a lot of, there are a lot of offshore competitors, actually. Polymarket is one of them, but there's like honestly over 50. And when you don't have any information on who the people are, how are you actually going to be able to conduct an investigation of like, are they trying to, you know, break something on Spotify? Are they someone's friend? You're not able to do that. And I think that we have a lot of responsibility bringing this industry to the U.S. to make sure that it's growing in a correct and good way for the country and for everyone.

47:07And the markets are safe and have a lot of integrity. and we take that very seriously. And I think that obviously it's an iterative process. We're going to get a lot better as the markets grow and we learn from everything that we're doing and improve and work more with different industries. But that's why it's so important. There's a federal regulator looking over all these, working with us on all of these aspects so that we can grow a lot, but grow a lot in a safe way.

47:32Luana Lopes Lara:Yeah. And one of the partnerships that you guys do have already is CNN and Fox. Right. As a journalist, I find this to be really fascinating. So can you talk a little bit about what that partnership means and how you see prediction markets impacting media and journalism? Right. The main reason for that partnership is because of the forecast and the value of the forecast that we're getting from the markets. I think that a lot of these news platforms after the 2024 election, they started looking at prediction markets and seeing it a lot more as, wait, we were only reporting the polls. the polls were telling the story.

48:07If we were reporting prediction markets, it would have been significantly better coverage and information for our audience. So they're seeing it a lot as a way of augmenting what they're reporting on and also engaging the audience a lot more. So one example is, I think, I don't know if it was with CNN or Fox, there was something about the Epstein files, right? And it was like, will Congress vote to get the Epstein files released or not? And the news were reporting that it was a lot of chaos. They weren't sure. And the marks were 99 % chance the entire time. So it's pretty clear that Congress is going to vote that way.

48:37Now, whether the DOJ was going to whatever, that's a separate problem. But it was pretty clear that Congress is going to vote that way. And when we were talking to them, they were like, well, if we had that in our reporting, it would have made such a big difference because it's about people still want to hear the experts like opinion and comments and on what's happening in the world. But it's just an extra data point that they're seeing adds a lot to the reporting. So that's kind of what they're seeing is a way of like augmenting and engaging the audience a lot more. Got it. So it's more you see it as complementary rather than like a replacement.

49:09Oh, absolutely. I don't think it's going to replace news at all. I think it's more about having an extra data point that we think is a way better data point to engage the audience. I mean, I'd love to see more people engage with journalism.

49:20Luana Lopes Lara:I know that one of the one of the kind of strongholds for us on our music business reporting are investors who because there are quite a few music companies that are publicly traded at this point. And so we have kind of Wall Street type investors who are paying attention to our coverage all the time and are always looking for more information so they can make, you know, smarter trades. And so I would love to see prediction markets have that effect where people are doing more research and looking for more vetted information. But yeah, I just I thought that that partnership was really fascinating.

49:52Luana Lopes Lara:And at first I have to say, like, I was not knowing at the time very much about prediction markets. I was a little scared by seeing it. And then I, you know, your explanation is really interesting. The goal of these partnerships is just to get them the data for reporting. It's not like we're not thinking about it as like a conversion that we're going to get more people to trade any of that. We actually, it adds to the part that for us, it's extremely important to get the data from these markets to as many people as we can because we think this data is so good. And it's about like connecting to CNN, connecting to Fox.

50:23It's just a way to get this data. like how many people watch these two channels. So just how many, just getting this data to more market. Yeah, and as we wrap up, I just want to understand how you see the future

50:34Luana Lopes Lara:of music prediction markets. What are some things you would like to add to Calci in the future in terms of music prediction markets? One of the things I'm very excited about is this, when we go out of just the direct, like the yes, no, the binary yes, no, is having ways that you can kind of invest long-term on specific, for example, Chapel Roan, when she was starting, if you knew she was going to be big, how can you actually get exposure to that and kind of like grow with her? So it's kind of like going more in that direction as we go less on the binary side and looking at some of my more traditional futures styles markets.

51:11It's something that we're excited about. We're also very excited about just listing more and more markets because now we have more music fans and they're suggesting so many amazing markets and it's about kind of us just taking the time to build a good experience for all these markets and getting them out. I think in the next, this quarter, we're going to be releasing way better music markets and also ways to interact, like hubs to interact with the music markets. So hopefully that's going to make it easier to onboard and trade them. Well, one more thing that I wanted to get to that I haven't yet is that I've noticed that prediction markets skew pretty male still.

51:43There's still a lot of men who are on prediction markets.

51:45Luana Lopes Lara:And in music, some of the best, most diehard fans are young women. Yeah. So I'm wondering, what is this the split between men and women on CalShe right now? And how do you see music being part of the strategy to bring in more women to the platform? So women are about, I think, 30 % of the platform now, which is actually significantly higher than if you look at traditional finance and brokerages and all of that. And it's growing a lot. It's 6x their percentage over the past year. And a lot of it is because of entertainment markets. We're seeing mainly entertainment and politics to engage a lot of women.

52:21Come in, actually, one of our very big entertainment traders, her name is Gigi, actually. She's pretty much only trades music and she's been growing a lot with the platform and starting to make some money and all of that. And it's very important for us to get more women in the platform. And it's at the end of the day, like what we do is we expand what people can trade on from just stocks and, you know, crypto to almost everything. And what you do is that you actually increase the access to all financial markets to a lot more people. So when you have things that new people, different people are interested in, you can grow it in different categories.

52:59So it's important for us to have diversity because there's the only way we can actually grow the number of markets and have the markets flourish is to get people that are interested in all these different things. So that's why we see this kind of growth in that. I think entertainment markets are going to play an even bigger role in bringing more and more women into the space and younger people and all of that, which we're very excited. But in the end of the day, if you give people an opportunity to make money while they know and engage with what they know, and it's not like this scary alienating thing of like, I don't know anything about, you know, earnings and what am I going to do with that?

53:33You're just going to see a lot more people come in. And it's a, you know, a fair playing field in a way that they can come in and actually start making money and engaging and trading and receiving that already. This has been so interesting. Thank you so much for coming. I do have before I let you go a couple of games that we like to play at the end of every episode. So we'll lighten it up at the end. Nice. Okay, so this is my beautiful wheel that I made myself.

53:56Luana Lopes Lara:Amazing. This is a game we called Spin the Record. So I'm just going to have you spin it twice. Whatever question it lands on, you got to give us an answer. All right. So.

54:09It says, name a key win at your company. What was a big moment for you guys? I think winning the election lawsuit, we had to sue the government to legalize election markets. and that lawsuit was like a day and night situation for the company. After that, we kind of reset our relationship with the regulators and you have to follow the law, which is actually kind of basic when you think about it that way, but they weren't following the law. And after that, we started seeing the growth in the number of markets, number of users, volume, and all of that. It was a very hallmark case for prediction markets in the US.

54:43Interesting. Okay, spin it one more time. See, you know what is DIY, guys? Okay.

54:52Luana Lopes Lara:Best advice you've ever gotten as a founder? Ooh, that's a good one. I think it was actually when we were in Y Combinator and we had talked to some experts on kind of like futures industry and they told us 0 % chance that this is going to work. Like you're not going to be able to legalize this. The government's never going to let you do it. And then Michael Saibo, who was the CEO of YC at the time, he founder of Twitch, he told us like, you know, is like these are just normal people like you are there's no reason you should just listen to what they're saying like just you know think first principles do what you believe is right and you know it's it's this concept of just everyone that achieved big things or small things are just normal people and you have the right and the capacity to do and achieve as much as they have and that made us kind of like build the confidence early on to be like yeah maybe we can take on the federal government maybe we can try to legalize this thing and grow it uh so that was great advice I love that.

55:49Luana Lopes Lara:Okay, we are going to end things off with something I do every single week. It's called What Would You Cue? You're picking one song per prompt. First prompt is, what would you cue to represent your favorite era of music? Ooh, probably Leila. Just big 70s music fan type of thing. Love it. Yeah, just there's something, even in Brazilian music, I'm from Brazil, that's pretty obvious. Even in Brazil, the music in the 70s was absolutely insane. So probably Leila is one of my favorite songs. Whenever my fiance and I go to any road trip, it's only like Leila cued back to back. I love it. I love it. Okay.

56:25What would you cue to represent the best concert you've ever been to? Probably like Don't You Worry Child, Swedish Child's Mafia, probably.

56:34Luana Lopes Lara:Ooh. Okay, wait, what was the concert? When was this? It was a Madison Square Garden concert that they did. But I've been to multiple Swedish Child's Mafia concerts. I really, really, like that era of EDM was like fantastic. Did you see Swedish Child's Mafia when they performed at Coachella? It was a couple years ago. I did not. I did not. That's when I had already stopped going, but I did not. But I saw them at Medicine River Garden, and I saw the Brooklyn Mirage in New York, and then a couple other times. They were just great. What would you cue to take you back to your childhood? So I was a massive One Direction fan.

57:07So it probably would be like, What Makes You Beautiful? Or like maybe Fireproof. Like any One Direction song, honestly. Okay, picking the big hits. I like that. Yeah, yeah. I like that. Okay, well, who's your favorite? Hair size. Yeah. Fair enough, fair enough. Very basic. Yeah, no, it's fair. I tried to like come up with a different one. So I wasn't, you know, picking the one that everyone wanted. It was Liam. And then I respect, rest in peace, Liam. But his solo career didn't end up panning out the way that I had really hoped. So now I've transferred over to Harry Styles. And then finally, we always try to throw in just like one custom one based on the guest.

57:44And so I want you to cue me up something, a song that kind of represents a song you would listen to to get yourself started in a day at Kalshi. Probably like Don't Stop Me Now. And I'll explain why. Before we raised our Series A, we were meeting so many investors back like before we even launched. And before I was so nervous all the time. And before going to any one of them, any meetings, even like remember from Alfred from Sequoia was on our board. I would just play Don't Stop Me Now and I'll get excited. and then I would just go. And it was kind of like taking a shot of Red Bull. It was just very good.

58:19And to today, if I have to go somewhere big and they're scared for some meeting or afraid of something, I just listen to it and it pumps me up. That's great. Works out. Okay, perfect way to end it off. Luana, thank you so much for coming to On The Record. Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun.

58:32Luana Lopes Lara:All right. Thank you so much to Luana Lopez Lara for joining me to talk about the impact that Kalshi is having on the music industry. And thank you for listening to this week's episode of On The Record. If you liked today's show, give us a follow on Instagram or on our brand new TikTok page, at Billboard on the Record, where you can find new clips of this show every single week. We'd also appreciate it if you rated our show on your favorite podcast platform, because all these things help On the Record grow bigger and better than ever. Again, I'm your host, Kristen Robinson, and tune in next week for another peek behind the curtain of the music business.

59:02Luana Lopes Lara:I'll see you then.

59:12Thank you.