Eurythmics co-founder Dave Stewart and serial entrepreneur Dominic Joseph

0:00Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishkondorea. What you're about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM. However, the music has been cut due to rights issues. The world's greatest jazz, soul and blues. From the world's greatest artists. This is Jazz FM. Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss in partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with a musician shaping jazz soul and blues. My guests today for this very special extended Jazz Shapers are legendary musician, producer and Eurythmics co-founder Dave Stewart and serial entrepreneur and investor Dominic Joseph, co-founders of Rare Entity, a venture builder dedicated to creating game-changing ventures that shape culture and protect artists and creators.

0:53With an acclaimed career spanning more than four decades and over 100 million album sales worldwide, Dave Stewart's work as half of the 80s synth pop duo Eurythmics was followed by solo albums and collaborations with musical royalties such as, here we go, Tom Petty, Mick Jagger, Stevie Nicks, Gwen Stefani and Quincy Jones to name but a few, while also working across musical theatre and film and building production studio Dave Stewart Entertainment and Members Club, the Hospital Club, a haunt of mine in a constant drive to create. Dominic Joseph, a former professional drummer, signed to Polydor Universal and touring internationally with artists including Blondie, Aha and Fatboy Slim, is a former Jazz Shapers guest, that's the best bit of his CV, in 2015, and the co-founder and former CEO of Captify, a global search intelligence platform serving brands including Apple, Disney, Adidas and Microsoft before being sold in a nine-figure deal back in 2021.

1:46Together with co-founder Richard Britton, Dave and Dominic launched Rare in 2025. aiming to, as they say, take rare ideas and intellectual property and the people who carry them and give these ventures the structures they need to live and endure. The right collaborators, the right technology, the right way to reach an audience. So it's unusual for me to have a famous musician, quite a famous musician in the house, Mr. Dave Stewart and Dominic Joseph, famous entrepreneur from way back who got in touch with me recently. It's fabulous to have you here. Thank you. Thanks. Music and business. Talk to me about that, Dave.

2:24Well, I remember Damien, I think one of his first huge books, he had about three pages called Art and Commerce. Damien Hirst we're talking about. Yeah, Damien Hirst, yeah. And the pictures were, one was a hammer and a peach. The other one, well, I don't want to say what it was, but it basically involved Vaseline and a cucumber in somebody's butt. It's like art and commerce colliding. It's always been a problem. I mean, music's been selling everything since the dawn of advertising. The first sort of record that was ever put down on a 78-player, the first sort of music or song was Algernon's Simply Awfully Good at Algebra.

3:06It was a musical song. I re-recorded it with Malcolm McLaren years later. That's a whole other story. because he wanted to be like a dance beat, but it was in three, four time. And like, I can't explain. Even the line, Algernon's simply awfully good at algebra. But anyway, yeah, they only recorded that because they realized, they had some speeches on 78 records, you know. But then they realized, well, maybe music might sell more of our things we've invented. So they were just trying to sell the grammar form. And, you know, then Steve Jobs came along, you know, 60, 70 years later, whatever. same thing hey I can solve your problem here with all of the because the internet has created this you know file swapping sharing he said yeah I've got this thing you see the iPod and then Apple music you know then the record companies were like oh my god you've saved us thanks and then I'll take 30 % of everything off the top but he didn't want to sell music he wanted to sell iPods then iPhones and you know what I mean so as I said it's always been used in a way to sell other things but for you dave stewart what's interesting i find and why we're chatting here is because you to me are agnostic about what ideas are about whether it's an idea and and it's for the creation of something called a piece of music or whether it's a venture called the hospital club or dave stewart entertainment or whatever it might be and so it feels like you don't make the distinction between the act of creation well whether whether the one thing is the pure, and I've read, you know, there is no distinction between Dave Stewart and music, I'm the same thing.

4:47But actually, Dave Stewart does other things, and does it with Dom, and does it with a number of collaborators. But you see, in a way, music is the intel inside. So, as I said earlier, now it's been used to sell everything. But within the world that we're creating with thisisrare.com, most things somewhere in it have music in it. but we are really about flipping everything upside down. So the IP creator or the person with a fantastic concept idea that's just not quite sure how to get it off the ground, but we don't then go and say, okay, well, we'll sort of take that IP. I mean, they're still the owners of their thing.

5:33And then it's discussed amongst a lot of us that rare, how do we actually help make this happen and then there's layers beneath but at the top it's the creator and the IP and then the layers that are all okay well let's look at this practically like if it has to be a building with a theatre in it or maybe we can make a theatre inside a building all of that stuff and then underneath that there's all the technology which obviously in today's day and age if you don't have all of that sorted out you're screwed anyway so yeah i'm looking at dominic now because i'm with dave stewart and dominic joseph they're the founders of this is rare entity we're talking about where you are seeing the world in a different way upside down thinking about artists and creators actually having some agency having some control of the future but also picking things that are inherently interesting and different in this mad world that we live in dave was talking earlier about the kind of the idea of rare and then we started to allude to the the bits that make it work just talk to me a little bit about the mechanics of so we've got you know if you go onto the site and it is where it's really cool talk to me about one or two of the examples of planet fans and sonic spheres and a couple others to just explain how this machine is going to work going forward yeah well i mean when we met dave for the first time we really kind of we were struck by dave's sense of purpose of his view on on the music industry and the creative industry and really had been a long-running mission of his to, I think, reset the value chain.

7:09And that was something that we also were particularly interested in. So we have one of our rare entities is a company called Planet Fans, which is a business that enables music artists to directly have a relationship with their fans without it going through the never-ending chain of intermediary companies. and of course those intermediary companies all they do is create inflation of pricing there's bots that go in ticket prices go crazy and actually that's a great example this particular entity because the artist itself is also not in control of its own fans which is a very typical thing from the music industry where almost that music artists have been kind of because they are so creatively involved in what they do they've always never seen themselves as a business or a brand like in any other industry.

7:58And actually many of these companies have just taken advantage of that. So that's led to this, you know, how can a music artist and one of the biggest bands in the world, for example, not have any clue who his customers are when the brand equity between a music artist and his fans is way stronger than a typical brand, for example. Can I ask, just jumping back to my childhood, Dave, and the Eurythmics, did you have a sense of who was listening and who loved you? No, of course, that's always been kept under wraps because when he's talking about Planet Fans, for instance, Muffin and Sons, they might have sold$100 million worth of tickets on a tour, and then they had no idea who bought the tickets, right?

8:41With Planet Fans, now they know everybody who bought the tickets, so they can actually, oh, these are the people that like us. So back way before the internet and everything and way before. When we were young. I'm old, so I'm 73. So I'm staying in a hotel right now in Soho where when I was like 16 or 17, I slept in the car park that it was built on, on a blanket. So, you know, as Dom says, you know, signing a record deal or whatever, you're just like, yeah, whatever, I'll sign this, you know. But back then, you know, it was all paper. And then you only find out like years later, what, hang on, that means that?

9:21Yeah, that means that. So this puts, from Take the Planet Fans, this puts the artist back with some sense of control and connection. Yeah, they're able to now engage with those fans outside of just a show. They're able to have many different ways that they can have that relationship. And I think that's just a good example of the disruption that's happening across the industry now. Even if you think about a young social media-driven music artist, they're pretty business savvy now. They know the detail behind the mechanism to get themselves out there and understand who their fans and audiences are.

9:55So it's definitely a paradigm shift, but the industry is still quite resistant to change because there's a lot of jobs. Well, it's vested interest, right? Labels have got massive reasons why you don't want that to happen. And we're going to pause there for a moment, and when we come back, I want to ask you about another of the rare entities, the creations that you're supporting. Sonic Sphere, the immersive experience, which looks absolutely fantastic. Much more from Dave Stewart and Don Joseph in a couple of minutes. This is Just Shapers with Elliot Moss in partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal.

10:28My guests today are musician, producer and Eurythmiq's co-founder Dave Stewart and serial entrepreneur and investor Dom Joseph. Dave and Dom are co-founders of Rare Entity, a venture builder dedicated to creating game-changing ventures that shape culture and protect artists and creators. Let's jump to Sonic Sphere, another of the projects you're supporting, because I looked at that and Stu, the producer, and I were noodling about the listening rooms in Japan and I had the founder of Spiritland on, Paul Noble, you may know him last year. And I'm fascinated by the notion of almost reinventing what sound experience can be.

11:01So just tell me a little bit more about that one. Well, Sonic Sphere, so Rare, we're not just doing technologies that help rebalance the system, we're also building amazing projects. And there is a trend at the moment for immersive experiences. is people want to be part of something, go to something that gives a different type of experience. And there's obviously a huge amount of visual stimulation going on in the world. You've obviously got the new sphere in Vegas that people all talk about. So this is almost a slightly different concept where actually there is a visual side to it, but it is primarily about just how this amazing 360 audio spatial experience.

11:38And it's quite a magical thing. The sonic sphere has been a centerpiece at Burning Man, which is where it really got a lot of attention. Then it's been a huge build in New York in the shed. And this piece of architecture, when you walk into it, it really expands your consciousness. And there's something about not only hearing sound coming from hundreds of speakers from all angles, which is typically none of us have ever experienced this before. It's quite an unusual feeling. But also doing that in a space with a couple of hundred people who are feeling that at the same time. It's that collective experience, like watching a great movie in a cinema rather than being on your own.

12:16And that's actually what everything we're doing is about the collective experience, you know. So the other original things that are in our folder. Okay, so the world is like people in their bedroom on screens or bombarded with information. They don't know whether it's real or not or whatever. And we're like, when people come together and have a shared experience, experience. And I'm mad about football as well. So you're in the crowd, you think, okay, somebody's about to score a goal. Either side, it doesn't matter. The whole crowd goes, oh. Yeah, it's that energy you see. There's no chatter going on about, oh, did I lock the back door or this or that?

12:56It's just like, oh. And you can feel that energy. And all of a sudden, everybody's mind has opened up slightly, you know, like a space happens, and everybody knows that's an amazing feeling, you know, and same thing when you're playing in a concert, and you just start, boom, beginning of Sweet Dreams or whatever, you just see the whole audience go, oh, like, so that's really usually the two things, sport and music, that create that experience, and And the audience, they love being there because everything else is so complicated, on purpose a lot of the time. And for a second, things are simplified to a musical experience or a sport that you're obsessed with.

13:51And the brain has all these words ready to answer things. your brain is like this machine that is like since you were a kid at school stock answers are put in your brain da da da da da da da and not many people have the chance to just hang on a minute lie on the back in sonic sphere or whatever it is and your brain goes oh hang on a minute I'm going to hold it there because that is I mean it literally we're talking about being human and what it means to be human which I absolutely love stay with me for much more and I had goosebumps by the way you're talking about that. I'm thinking, I want to be back at the football match.

14:29I'm an Arsenal fan, just for the record. Yeah, well... I know, I know. We won't have a fight. I was at the stadium when I'd have it, but... But we will come back to my Business Shapers today. It's Dave Stewart and Dom Joseph, and we are talking about the rare entity, rare entity, and all the things that are happening for them. Much more from them in a few minutes. This is Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. My guests today are musician, producer, and Eurythmics co-founder Dave Stewart. As I'm saying it, I've got a smile on my face.

15:06Nice things happen today. And serial entrepreneur and investor Dom Joseph. Very happy to see you as well, Dom, just to be clear. Dave and Dom are co-founders of Rare Entity, a venture builder dedicated to creating game-changing ventures that shape culture and protect artists and creators. The key word in that for me, Dave, is creating and the art of creation, which all of us, when we've done it in our own ways, and I think everything is creative in its own sense, you touch something magical and you feel differently. Your brain relaxes, the receptors are open, and it feels different, life feels different.

15:40Just talk to me about how over the years you've worked with different people and when that magic has happened. Yeah, well, very early on. Oh, God. I'm so old, so very early on. You're not. You're in the beginning of time. My mind exploded when I was 14. Before that, I never listened to music at all. I just wanted to play for Sunderland, not Arsenal. I'm sorry, everybody, but Sunderland, Sunderland, Sunderland. And I played for three teams on a Saturday and played under the streetlights, and then some kid broke my knee in three places, and I thought it was the end of the world. I'll cut the story short, but basically this record arrived.

16:24through the post, and I was stuck in the house. My mom had left my dad. My brother had gone to college, and my dad was depressed. And, you know, it's like gray sky, horizontal rain hitting the window. And the postman brought in a box, and my cousin had somehow got to Memphis. He was like nine years older. He's still there. But in that box was a pair of Levi corduroy jeans. Never seen them before in my life. under that there was two records my dad had made a homemade record player I put on this blues album Robert Johnson and I went into a kind of trance and when I woke up I said that might be music I don't know and I went in the kitchen and put on the radio boom 1966 Kings, Beatles, Rolling Stones everything came out and I realised the connection between that blues record and what the Stones were doing and all.

17:25And, you know, so my head exploded. So cutting, you know, jumping forward 20 years or whatever, I'd really been obsessed with blues and R &B and stax and soul music and everything. You know, I was even learning sort of gavots and pavans that you play on a lute, you know. All music, classical music, didn't matter what. So when Annie and I met, obviously, she'd study at the Royal Academy of Music. between us it was like we could do anything basically you were just introduced by a friend is that is that yeah yeah i'd only got too down that because each story is like some mad episode yeah yeah i was going to talk about jamming actually yeah let's do that so people i've played with and jammed with everybody i've written songs with all sorts of different kinds of people in the pop music world, but I've never reached out to anybody to write a song with them.

18:20It just all happened in some natural sort of vortex. I don't know how. Do you not, though, if you had a theory on it about why people have just sort of gravitated towards you, lots of really diverse artists, you're not talking about, oh, yeah, he's the fellow that only plays with the blues music. It's not like that. If you had to be not you for a minute, looking and going, well, objectively, why do people like jamming with Dave Stewart? I think I'm not sort of judgmental or I'm kind of open. I don't care if something works out or it doesn't work out. I'm just into the experiment, whatever it is.

18:58And is that true from a business point of view, Dom? I mean, it's incredible working with Dave because we were talking earlier about that feeling, that creative feeling which is often suppressed in the world of business because creativity and capital and the way that business, that corporations see creativity is almost at the bottom of the food chain. Creativity is more common than people think, but they're suppressed by the system. And it's incredible to work with someone like Dave because this is one of the true tastemakers of our lives, the soundtrack of our lives, but also many other things as well, not just music.

19:32And Dave's got himself into a position in life where he can be a proper creative 24-7. This week alone, the last two weeks, he's been here in London with us doing meetings every day. And Hannah and Dave have written six songs, I think, whilst they've been here. So just constantly being creative. And, you know, that's liberating to be around because most people don't realize that's what you can do. But can I ask you that, because this is obviously a tastemaker, and I think that's exactly right. The distinction between what's good and what's not, when someone is so open to pretty much everything.

20:03How do you, when you watch Dave in action going, well, yeah, there are 12 ideas. Well, I mean. How do you know, how does he know it's that one without being rude about it? You'll know when it's not one because Dave will just sort of subtly walk off. Right. Yeah, yeah. So you do, because obviously, you know, in the world of being open, you still have to at some point go, no, it's that. It's sweet dreams. It's not banana bubbles. Yeah, yeah. You just have to know. But how do you know, Dave? Well, let's go back to jamming. And so there's a business book written by John Keo, Harvard business guy called Jamming.

20:37He's actually talking about jamming and how important it is in business as well to allow people to join in and talk. And in jamming, I've jammed with, well, I'm great friends with Bootsy Collins. So Bootsy Collins, me, Jerome Bigfoot, Bailey, Bernie Worrell. This is Parliament for Good Alec, basically, in Jimi Hendrix's studio, you know, you don't say anything. You know, when you're jamming, you can't stop everybody. I'm going to play F-sharp now. You know? Yeah, it doesn't work like that. Everybody's going on. So I always look at it like a shoulder fish, right? So in business, if you have, like, luckily I found with Dom and Richard and the rare team, we're like a shoulder fish going along like that.

21:22And that becomes very powerful, you know, for the audience or a business you're creating or whatever, if everybody's on the same page, but everybody's allowed to say. So within Ray, you see, we have people who can come in and sort of critique what we're suggesting. Yeah, I really like that. There's clearly a rather fruitful connection between you and a shoal of fish, well, I like that too. Fame, Dave, funny old thing. Great song. what you get is in the limo. There is that, but the actual concept for you, you being pretty famous in most places in the world, is it a curse? Does it matter? Do you just deal with it?

22:04What's your relationship like with that thing called people actually knowing who you are versus the purity of just being you and doing your thing? Well, I don't wander around and think, oh, I'm famous, you know. I never even think about it. I don't, like, we come out of the hotels every morning and somebody goes, Can you sign this and take a picture of this? You know, okay, fine. But I tend to communicate all the time with everybody. If I've got a cab driver, I switch to talk. Hey, how you doing? Where you from? Blah, blah, blah. You know, no matter where I am, I just don't think about that. I'm just like so.

22:43See, it's like nothing has changed really, you know. As I said earlier, I was sleeping in the car park of the hotel I'm now sleeping at. But when I go out to the coffee shop at Bar Italia, which from the early 80s, I was there every day and now I'm there nearly every day. And it hasn't changed. The floor is the same. Tiramisu is still brilliant. Exactly. Panini. And me and Hannah go there and have like perfect Cortado. And so they, again, you know, have known all the people for ages. Hi, Dave, how are you doing? It's only sometimes, there's some places you go in. That's why I avoid invited to a dinner with lots of people I don't know because I'll get cornered.

23:29So, yeah, here comes the rain again. Yeah, okay. That was like 40 years ago, whatever it was. And also big fancy swanky do's. I never go to them. you know, even the Grammys, you know, I think the only time Annie and I went was quite good, because, you know, Annie was like hiding, she was dressing us, a bit like an Elvis kind of guy, came on, I'll never forget, John Denver was the sort of MC or whatever, we weren't big yet, you know, but we were going up the charts with Sweet Dreams, and he'd seen us in rehearsals, Nanny was, you know, normal, not dressed as a man. And then we had, you know, our backing singers were the B-52s and we had Brothers Johnson on.

24:19It was like amazing. And we came on, we did Sweet Dreams, Nanny came swaggering out with her suit. And the whole audience were just like, in fact, they had to turn up canned applause at the end. When we actually finished doing it, there wasn't like people going hooray. People were just, what's happened? Gobsmacked. Yeah, because there's somebody coming out singing, like Annie, but it's like, it was perfectly done, you know, tiny bits of hair blown onto glue, so it looked absolutely perfect. And afterwards, we came backstage, and we were falling about laughing. And of course, there was lots of press about it, but we're in this little reception after with our manager, Gary Carr, first who managed the B-52s, Talking Heads.

25:04and this guy comes up, a big guy, we didn't know who he was, and he goes, hey, you guys got a manager? And we were about to say, yeah, he says, get rid of him. And we're like, what? And then he says, I can get you like six months in Vegas, da-da-da. And it was Colonel Tom Parker who managed Elvis Presley and ripped him off blind. Now, the manager was like, oh, my God. And we say, who was that? And he goes, he had no idea. He couldn't believe it. can i ask you a question about so so dom from your point of view with these the talent you've got coming through much of which is young is fame part of the i mean you managing people that go from obscurity to fame and it's obviously early days now but is that something you're thinking about or do you leave that to somebody else honestly it doesn't ever even cross our our minds i mean um it's only actually being walking sometimes walking the streets with dave for example that that it even reminds me of the fact that he's because we don't yeah of course we're not in that environment for the artists you've got and the acts that are going to come through in terms of helping them as they develop yeah we we it's business at the end of the day everybody that is on that path they have a purpose they have a thing that they're creating and that's what we're tapping into really we're not uh we're not sort of engaged in you know to us things like fame is much more to do with fan engagement for example like how how does that artist engage its fans in the right way that adds value to both sides of that equation so we're we're looking at it in a totally different lens to you know i guess the the average you know the average listener or fan um because for us it's all part of the it's all part of the business mechanism that we're creating yeah i think when we're talking about artists we're not talking about like oh managing a singer and trying to make them big famous singer no we're talking about entities and creative people who've got like a concept for maybe making some shakespearean work in a different way or whatever and you know i mean all sorts of things i won't even go into it because but how do we make it so that people would love to come and be part of that experience and witness and see that now it had a music in it could have film in it could have all sorts of it and there might be out of somewhere a kid in Liverpool in his bedroom, saying, hey, I write songs and this and that.

27:25I work with unknown people all the time, right? So young artists, I know as I've done. You know, if I'd sort of heard, say, Jake Bug, when he first came out or whatever, and he's got his whole thing going on and he's singing and he's determined, there might be an artist where you go, actually, we could help build a world around this to allow them, because, you know, it's pointless for them just like throwing their music up on DSPs. Yeah. You know, it's like, for a start, you're not going to make a living. And two, how is anybody going to hear it amongst the noise of everything and the AI artists and the fact that the DSPs are slightly manipulated by labels and everything.

28:06So, yeah, it's a tricky world for those new young artists. And, well, everybody really, what I always thought, and I've been banging on about this since 2001, on, all the artists should have their own world and their own streaming. Why are they using someone else's platform? Yeah, I mean, you can make it work now, and you can have your own streaming platform and play locally and, you know, slowly build up a following, but then be able to earn from your own stream without all this food chain of nonsense, you know? Yeah. Dave, over the years, you've obviously worked with a lot of people. and I imagine musicians, credit people, trust more credit people, not easily, but there's a trust that's built.

28:52With business people over the years that you've worked with who are, whether they're your managers, their label, whatever it might be, accountants, lawyers, is it harder to trust them because you think they might have an agenda which is different to yours, or do you just go on what you see and what you experience? Well, it depends what kind of business, You see, I don't want to confuse people, but you see, I do talks, public speaking to huge businesses, you know, about creativity. But I also spent two years working with Visa in 2006. Not for Visa, I mean, understanding why artists, you know, get these, like, non-transparent, like, don't understand their payment system.

29:38and Janice Vandenbrink who helped build VisaNet could make it all work in like, you know, she spent ages doing it from 1.7 seconds to 1.4 seconds where you go in the shop with a card, the guy gives you the sweater you bought in Milan even though your bank account's in New York or London or whatever, it doesn't matter. Boom, okay, have the sweater, trust, you know? And I'm like, whoa, how did you do that? and I showed them how we got paid in music industry, for instance. It looks like a London tube map, you know. It's all jumbled up. And I remember the CEO, Christopher Rodriguez, he looked at it for a while and he said, that could have only been done on purpose.

30:22Now, nobody in their right mind would make something so complicated. Complicated, yes. So, see, so when I'm in a room, in a boardroom with people like that or boardrooms with various people, there's no difference. They don't think, what does he know? He's a musician. No. If they're open, they're like jamming as well. Yeah. And obviously some companies would like to help, but then there's this block because you see the giant corporate. Yeah, obviously, like you said, they've obviously done that on purpose. Yes. So anybody who comes and goes, well, that'd be easy to fix that. Like we've, you know, we can pay with systems all over the world.

31:00Yeah. Yeah, thanks very much. Goodbye. And so, right, so there's obviously this spectrum. There's a spectrum where you can and you can't necessarily trust. Just on the jamming thing, Dom, from your point of view, just talk to me a little bit about what it's like to work with someone who is experienced, let's say, has a little bit of, has a few miles on the clock when it comes to an incredibly prodigious creative output. How is it working with someone like that? Because sometimes people go, oh, famous musician must be a prima donna, right? Not so. It's the exact opposite. I think when you work with somebody like Dave, firstly, we work incredibly closely together, so we spend every day talking through everything.