Dan Lilienthal

1. Key Themes

The "Tools to Medium" Transition as a Product North Star

Untitled has consciously framed its ambition not as building a better set of tools, but as creating an entirely new medium — music in progress as its own form of communication. This framing shapes every product decision.

"The deeper bet is that we're building a new medium, not just a better set of tools. Music in progress is its own form of communication, and it has never had a place built for it." [00:28:16]

The Artist-at-Top-of-Pyramid Go-to-Market Strategy

Rather than targeting labels, managers, or A&Rs, Untitled deliberately focused on the artist as their customer. This created a bottom-up forcing function where artists compel the rest of the industry ecosystem to use the product.

"If music is a pyramid, artists are at the top of that pyramid and everyone else serves whatever the artist wants. So if the artist loves your platform and they love your tool and they're putting all their music on there, then everyone else... one producer told me that this huge artist forces him to use the app. And he doesn't actually like using it." [00:49:30]

Privacy-First Architecture as the Foundation of Trust

Unlike SoundCloud or other music platforms, Untitled deliberately has no internal social network or feed. Sharing happens through external channels like iMessage and WhatsApp. This design choice mirrors how artists actually relate to their unreleased work — with extreme sensitivity.

"You have to start from a place of privacy. Like, you're on a slower sharing kind of, like, I'm gonna share it with one person and then two people and then five, not my whole time." [00:37:00]

The Museum Analogy as Product Vision

The founders draw heavily on the analogy of a visual art museum — where you see all drafts, notes, and iterations before arriving at the finished work — as the model for what music has never had. Lorde's organic use of the platform to drop 49 demos on the anniversary of her album was the living proof of this vision.

"She dropped the museum exactly behind her album. Like what Dan was saying about like, are you walking into a museum and you get to see all the notes, all the drafts, all the context? Like she used our product in the way that we dreamed about using it." [00:43:00] — José Chayet

"Getting all the context of an album or a project makes you then want to go listen to that project more. So for example, watching the Get Back documentary was what led him to want to go actually listen to the Beatles album." [01:13:58]

Outsider Advantage: No Engineers, No Musicians, No Industry Insiders

Dan and José are neither musicians, engineers, nor designers in the traditional sense — and they argue this was a strategic asset, not a liability. Their pure product instinct and empathy, uncorrupted by insider assumptions, allowed them to see what was missing.

"What we had was just, you know, basically an intuition around what type of product we wanted for ourselves... our product intuition was like Snapchat and Instagram, you know? And obviously everything Apple." [00:32:04]

"We were talking to a big musician the other day and they're like, it's like as if you're in our brains, you know exactly what we want. And to your point, like why didn't a big musician successfully build a product like this? Because some have tried and the reason is because the product sense wasn't quite there." [00:57:09]

The Creation Layer of Music Was Entirely Neglected for 25 Years

The entire music tech industry spent two and a half decades focused on consumption and distribution. Creation — and specifically the workflow around work-in-progress music — was an enormous white space hiding in plain sight.

"Consumption is like 99% optimized, right? Like Spotify and streaming figured it out. So like, let's not do that... creation felt like the area that was the most fertile for innovation because the last 25 years no one was really thinking about it too much." [00:53:41]

Method Acting as the Core Product Development Philosophy

Rather than conducting user research in the traditional sense, Dan and José became musicians themselves — making music on GarageBand, storing it in Untitled, living in it — to develop the empathy needed to build for their user.

"Dan and I, when we started the company, we were like, we're going to be method actors. So we were building something for ourselves. And even if it's not great music, like, we were still like, we are, we're going to, you know." [00:56:09]

Vertically Integrated Music Company as the Long-Term Vision

The physical studio in Williamsburg — with retail, a recording studio, a rooftop performance space, and the software team all under one roof — is the early manifestation of a full-stack music company spanning creation through consumption.

"Part of us wanting to build the biggest music company in the world is for the artist right and to be able to build the best ecosystem we think because it hasn't existed yet is that you have to build a vertically integrated music company across creation to consumption." [01:25:06]

Subscription Revenue from Artists as the Cleanest Alignment Possible

The business model — artists paying Untitled directly — creates total alignment. No label deals, no advertising, no intermediary. Artists can sense this intuitively.

"We're not doing anything that's like raising eyebrows so from that perspective they come in here and they just get it, they get that we care about them and we're charging them... yeah, you know, but they feel good about that." [01:26:33]

The 10,000 Songs Insight: Music's Invisible Creative Iceberg

For every album released, an enormous and previously invisible body of work exists. This is the market Untitled is serving — the 10,000 songs that never had a home.

"If an artist is releasing maybe let's say 10 albums over the course of their career, which is maybe like 100 to 200 songs, then they definitely made over 10,000 songs. A lot of that music gets sent to just a few people, whether it's your mom, your significant other, whatever." [00:43:00]

2. Contrarian Perspectives

The Desensitization Paradox: More Music Everywhere Means Less Connection with Any Music

Counterintuitively, the explosion of music availability — 200,000 songs per day released — has made genuine musical connection harder, not easier, to find. The most meaningful musical experiences now come from intimate, personal sharing rather than discovery algorithms.

"It's been kind of a weird time in music where on the one hand, there's a lot of music coming out obviously every day, right? There's what, 200,000 songs coming out every day. Yet at the same time, on the other hand, it's like so hard to find things that are so fresh and like give us that feeling." [00:10:14]

"The shit that makes me feel closest to divine is the stuff that my friend is making, you know? And when José sends me music, when I listen to José's music, like, I'm like, that's the stuff that makes me tap into the divine the most." [00:11:40]

AI Music Is Too Good to Be Interesting

Most people argue AI-generated music will democratize creativity. Dan and José argue the opposite — early AI music was more interesting when it was weirder and less capable. The better AI music gets, the less surprising it becomes, and surprise is central to what makes music feel transcendent.

"Something that we hear, we've heard a few times already from artists that we hang out with is like, they actually liked music AI more in the earlier days when like it just like spit out the randomest, like weirdest shit. And it's like, you had no idea that that's what was going to come out of it. Whereas like now it's like, you ask for anything, it's like so specific. It's too good." [00:27:27]

Don't Build the Social Network — Embrace External Distribution Instead

Every music platform tries to build an internal social layer. Untitled deliberately didn't, and considers that a strategic strength, not a missing feature.

"It's been six years we haven't built a feed or any sort of like social network on Untitled. The way that people connect on Untitled is implicitly using other platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, et cetera. There's no way to like send someone something on Untitled inside of Untitled... all the apps that had sort of internal networks for music just got really cringe really, really quickly." [00:36:01]

Artists Don't Want to Share Their Work in Progress — The Museum Is Niche

Despite building a product around the museum concept, Dan and José candidly admit most artists don't want fans seeing their demos, and most fans don't actually care. The vision had to be set aside in order to get out of the way and let the product be used however people wanted.

"Many artists don't want you to see the demos right... back in the day Dan and I would personally onboard every single artist and we'd be like you can share your demos, you can tell the whole story, the museum. And they'd be like I don't care about any of that, why would I want to share my demos with anyone?" [01:20:50]

Non-Technical Founders Become the Best Recruiters

The conventional wisdom is that technical co-founders are essential for product companies. Dan and José argue the opposite — being non-technical forced them to develop elite recruiting instincts out of sheer necessity.

"Non-technical people end up being the best recruiters because they literally can't do something by themselves so they need other people, so they become social and you find the best people because of that, because you feel out of necessity, for lack of a better word, just desperate." [01:08:07]

3. Companies Identified

Untitled

A sacred place for unreleased and work-in-progress music. Artists store, listen to, share, and organize their music privately or with collaborators. Now expanding to include stem splitting, EQ tools, the ability to sell unreleased music directly to fans, and a full physical studio ecosystem in Williamsburg.

"We're the best place to store, listen, share, and organize your work-in-progress music." [00:39:27]

"We have over 50,000 paying customers. We're about to hit 5 million in annual recurring revenue." [00:42:56]

Notion

Presenting sponsor. Used as the analogy for what Untitled aims to be for musicians — the operating system for a domain, with simplicity and flexibility baked in.

"The way that Notion exists for the workplace or GitHub exists for engineering or Figma exists for design... let's bring that level of focus and craft to a medium that we genuinely love." [00:30:40]

Snapchat

Referenced repeatedly as a primary product inspiration — specifically for its principled approach to simplicity, its camera-first architecture, and the creative flexibility it gave users within a simple system.

"It really felt like Evan Spiegel and whoever was around him were doing things in a very principled, very intentional way where a product like the camera could be just as good for texting as it could be for broadcasting." [00:33:02]

SoundCloud

The closest historical comp for Untitled's market, but cited as a cautionary tale of bad product design — the feed greets you with random music instead of your own, requiring three to four steps to reach your own songs.

"If you wanna get to your own music, it takes like three to four steps just to get to your own music. And when you're in the mindset of like, hey, I wanna go listen to my own song... the last thing you want is to enter this place that is all noisy." [00:38:29]

Frame.io

Cited as the successful analog of Untitled's model in video — an unbundling of Dropbox into a medium-specific, purpose-built tool.

"There's like an unbundling of a lot of things and Dropbox was being unbundled into different verticalized solutions. So you had Frame.io for video. We were unbundling Dropbox into this audio-centric cloud service." [00:40:57]

Spotify

Referenced extensively — as the company that solved consumption and unlocked the music creation opportunity, and as a cautionary tale of algorithmic discovery that starts compelling but eventually alienates users.

"Consumption basically is what most of music tech innovation has been the last 25 years... Spotify figured it out. And obviously a bunch of companies followed after that to build streaming like Apple. But consumption had to get figured out before you could think about everything else." [00:53:11]

BandLab

Mentioned as the entry-level music creation platform from which some of Untitled's youngest users come, illustrating the breadth of the user base.

"The platform is being used by people who literally know how to use this like the back of their hand... to literally a 16-year-old kid who just started making music on BandLab on their iPhone." [00:39:58]

Ableton

The incumbent creation tool, used as the high-complexity counterpoint to Untitled's simplicity-first philosophy. Analogized to Photoshop versus the iPhone camera.

"Ableton would be Photoshop. And then Instagram, Snapchat, or the camera app or the photos app on iPhone. That's sort of what we're aiming to be for audio." [00:35:30]

Tidal

Mentioned briefly as an example of a company that runs heavy marketing campaigns claiming to care about artists while Untitled's business model demonstrates alignment more credibly.

"I see so many companies, for example like Tidal, or you know other people that are doing so many campaigns and marketing, saying how much they care about artists... and yet with us it's... the business model is so clean and so aligned." [01:26:04]

Andante

A music app built by Miles, Untitled's founding iOS engineer, as a solo side project — cited as evidence of his product instincts and builder mentality that made him a perfect early hire.

"Miles our founding iOS engineer had his own music app called Andante." [01:10:34]

Forgreen Engineering

Ryan's (Untitled's founding engineer) own agency — cited alongside Andante as evidence that both founding engineers were builders with high agency before joining.

"Ryan had had his own agency called Forgreen Engineering, had both built a lot of things." [01:10:34]

4. People Identified

Co-founder and CEO of Untitled. Grew up in San Diego. Older brothers were musicians in the pop-punk scene. Previously involved in music management. Deeply product-obsessed, not a traditional engineer or designer. Frames the company's core discipline as QA.

"QA has always been the most important function Dan and I have ever done at this company. We literally say that is our job." [01:06:10]

José Chayet

Co-founder of Untitled. Grew up in San Diego alongside Dan, families connected in Mexico City. Previously at Facebook, frustrated that music wasn't front and center at large tech companies. The product and empathy driver of the pair.

"At Facebook, I would just be like, I can't stop thinking about music. I need to work on music... I was just waiting for the moment. Dan calls me one day and he's like, what if we start a music company together? I was like, 100%, let's go." [01:00:38]

Lorde

One of the biggest artists in the world. Organically used Untitled to drop 49 demos from her album Virgin on its one-year anniversary — the living embodiment of the museum vision the founders had been pushing for six years.

"We see Lorde, obviously one of the biggest artists in the world, do this out of her own volition... she dropped the museum exactly behind her album." [01:11:02]

Mo Koifman

Investor in Untitled. Referenced as giving tough but caring feedback, and credited with the observation that music is the primary way most humans connect with the divine.

"One of our investors yesterday, Mo Koifman... was just talking to us yesterday about how music is for the majority of humans, the way that they connect with the divine." [00:10:43]

Rick Rubin

Legendary music producer. Referenced for his writings and talks about the relationship between magic and music, which the founders found newly resonant after encountering a mentalist.

"Something that Rick Rubin actually talks a lot about is around the similarities between like magic and music." [01:03:04]

Marcel Duchamp

Visual artist and conceptual art pioneer. Central to the founders' thesis that art gets democratized when it's reduced to a series of choices — they draw a direct line from Duchamp's readymades to sampling in hip-hop to AI-generated music.

"Marcel Duchamp primarily was really, really just curious and like trying to poke holes and figure out what's next. And he's like, holy shit, it's just really like my choices, you know, like it's, that's all." [00:21:43]

Jimmy Eastack (Jim Eastack)

Lorde's producer on the album Virgin. Named in Lorde's liner notes on Untitled when she dropped her demo archive, providing a window into the intimate creative communication behind a major album.

"She had liner notes saying like, this is the beat, like I texted when I heard this beat originally I told Jimmy, do not send it to anyone, this one's mine. Jimmy is for context Jim Eastack, her producer who worked on the entire album with her." [01:13:29]

Evan Spiegel

Co-founder of Snapchat. Cited as the model of principled, intentional product design — building a system (camera-first) that is flexible enough to serve creation, sharing, and broadcasting within a simple, unified framework.

"It really felt like Evan Spiegel and whoever was around him were doing things in a very principled, very intentional way where a product like the camera could be just as good for texting as it could be for broadcasting." [00:33:02]

Ryan (founding engineer)

Untitled's founding engineer. Founder of Forgreen Engineering. Cited for having both strong design sensibility and high builder agency — the two qualities Dan and José prize most in collaborators.

"Ryan had had his own agency called Forgreen Engineering, had both built a lot of things." [01:10:34]

Miles (founding iOS engineer)

Untitled's founding iOS engineer. Built his own music app called Andante. Strong design sense combined with builder instincts.

"Miles our founding iOS engineer had his own music app called Andante." [01:10:34]

Jerry Seinfeld

Referenced for his maxim that "all art is disguising work" — the idea that the best artists, like magicians, conceal their process to create the impression of effortlessness.

"There's a line I come back to often from Jerry Seinfeld and he says all art is disguising work. His point is that artists are a bit like the magician who hide something behind the curtain." [01:19:23]

Henrik Carlson

Writer. Referenced for the insight that some art — specifically paintings — actively sends the viewer back into themselves, prompting self-reflection rather than passive consumption, analogous to the best music.

"He was talking about how certain forms of media or certain forms of art, they sort of suck you in. But when you come out of them... he was talking about a painting. He's like, when you look at a painting for 10 minutes... it almost sort of spits you back out and you are almost prompted to have your own experience." [00:19:37]

Zay

A 16-year-old artist who started making music with Untitled at age 13, recently signed a record deal out of a bidding war. Cited as the proof-of-concept for what it means to have your entire creative archive from the beginning of your career in one place.

"He's 16 years old now, he started making music with Untitled at 13. This kid just got a record deal... now imagine a world where Zay is like 28, 29, he's a big artist, and now he gets to go into Untitled and see the shit that he was making when he was 13." [01:15:27]

5. Operating Insights

The Claude Product Assistant for Async Decision Hygiene

As Untitled scaled, their founders' instinct-based product debate process stopped scaling. Rather than abandon it, they built a Claude agent that reads all Slack discussions daily, categorizes them into decisions made versus decisions still outstanding, and surfaces a 5pm digest. This preserves judgment-driven culture while adding visibility.

"We just created a Claude agent thing called Product Assistant that basically summarizes all the discussions in Slack and it basically divides them into two categories, like decisions that are left outstanding and decisions that were made. And every day at 5pm we get this sort of like digest just to like review like what decisions is everyone collectively making." [01:05:10]

Iron Sharpens Iron Product Reviews: Quantity of Options as a Design Input

Rather than designers presenting a single polished solution, Untitled solicits 30 different versions of an experience and then has the team debate aggressively until they find the truth. The volume of options is itself a tool.

"We love when our designers bring like 30 different versions of an experience and then we get to discuss aggressively together as a team, iron sharpens iron and then we finally like find the truth, like the thing that just feels right." [01:03:42]

Read Receipt Mechanics to Normalize and Reinforce Sharing Behavior

Untitled sends a notification when someone listens to a shared track. This creates a social norm — the sender knows you'll see whether or not they listened — that increases follow-through on actually consuming shared music and deepens the intimacy of the exchange.

"We send a notification when someone listens to it. So if José sends something to me, he's basically waiting for my red receipt right... I know that he'll see if I listen to it or not so I want to make sure he knows that I received his music and I listen to it." [01:36:20]

Hiring Litmus: Ping-Pong Intuition Over Credentials

Dan and José describe their recruiting test as whether collaboration feels like ping-pong — an instant, back-and-forth resonance with their product instincts. They prize strong design eye and side project history (evidence of builder agency) above formal qualifications.

"Collaborating with them feels like ping-pong. It's magic. It's honestly... there's something they have before they've even joined... strong design sense and then just builders at heart." [01:07:09]

Rename Your Go-to-Market Team "Brand" to Change the Mental Model

Untitled calls its go-to-market function the brand team — not sales, not growth — because the framing of storytelling and universe-building changes how the team operates and how artists experience the company's outreach.

"We're temporarily calling the entire go-to-market team the brand team. It's like everything is brand and everything is a story and it's just how we get the thing that we're making here out to customers." [01:27:58]

6. Overlooked Insights

The iPod Was the Last Time Listening to Your Own Work Was Easy — and Nobody Noticed the Gap

This observation is mentioned almost in passing but is one of the most striking market-sizing and framing insights in the episode. For 25 years — from the death of the iPod to the launch of Untitled — there was no purpose-built, beautiful, easy experience for listening to your own music. Artists were using Dropbox, Notes app, Google Drive. Untitled's initial product was, at its core, just restoring something that existed in 2003 and had quietly disappeared.

"The last time that it was easy to listen to your own work and music as easy as it was with the iPod. Yeah, right? Because the iPod obviously had the beautiful connection between iTunes and the iPod. It was easy to upload the files from your computer to iTunes and sync it to your phone... whereas, you know, the last 25 years during the iPod and after the iPod, people were using Dropbox and Google Drive and all these tools that were built for everything and for nothing at the same time." [00:41:57]

This is a category-creation insight disguised as nostalgia. The implication is that Untitled's TAM isn't just "music tools" — it is the entire population of music makers who have been navigating a 25-year ergonomic regression in personal music listening. The product doesn't need to convince anyone to change their behavior; it's restoring a behavior that already existed and was simply taken away.

Getting Context First Makes You Love the Art More — and This Is a Flywheel Nobody Has Monetized

The Get Back / Lorde observation is mentioned and then passed over: exposure to the process behind a piece of art makes you consume the finished art more. This is a significant and underappreciated insight with implications far beyond Untitled. If context-first exposure to creative work drives consumption, then the logical next move is a content or media business layered on top of the tool — not unlike how Genius annotation of lyrics deepens song engagement. Untitled is sitting on a potential discovery and media flywheel that neither they nor the podcast dwell on.

"Getting all the context of an album or a project makes you then want to go listen to that project more... watching the Get Back documentary was what led him to want to go actually listen to the Beatles album — not the other way around." [01:13:58]

"Now I actually listen to the album more whereas before I, to be frank, I didn't really listen to it. So that's what's so beautiful about seeing — getting these experiences is you just develop a deeper relationship with the music." [01:14:57]