We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful John Gaenzler. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with John below.

Hi John, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on was my recording project WILLN’T. As a life-long musician and recording artist, there were always certain things I didn’t believe I would be good at. Things like engineering and mixing as well as keyboards and drum programming. I was the singer-songwriter/guitar guy. In 2017, when my daughter started school, I had some new free time. My father had recently passed away and I had a real need to express some of the feelings that followed. I had always dabbled in recording and had software, but I wanted to do more. Over the course of 2 years, I learned so much of what I had always wanted to learn. I was a huge 80’s synth pop fan and loved playing around on synthesizers in the music stores. With the ability to access all of the iconic synths of that period as software now, I was able to really get proficient. I decided WILLN’T would be a synth-pop artist. No guitars. Many of the songs on the record were cathartic for me to express my feeling of loss and also fatherhood. I wrote, recorded, produced and mix the whole record myself. “Time Holds Me Down” was released in 2019 and it has received over 500k streams in over 90 countries to date. I continue to use WILLN’T as a means of creative expression and will always view it as a personal success.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My life has always been about music. Playing it and consuming it since I was a toddler. After college, I spent most of my 20’s pursuing a career as a musician and I recorded and toured extensively. To this day, I still write and perform. When I was in my early 30’s, I decided to use my education and passion for music to help other talented young musicians develop their craft and learn to monetize it. My business career path started in ticketing at Ticketmaster and blossomed at Artist Arena, the first true Artist-Services company where I was the first hire and ran all Operations and Biz Dev initiatives. I hired a great team and together, we all helped develop the careers of many then-young artists including Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Selena Gomez, Mumford & Sons, Kings of Leon and Shawn Mendes among many others. Artist Arena was acquired by Warner Music Group in 2012 and is now Warner Artist Services. Many of the team I hired are still there running the show.

After leaving WMG shortly after the acquisition, I started my own Artist Management and Consulting company InfiniteDecibel. At Idb, I have managed indie and major-label artists and contracted with numerous music startups as a strategy advisor. Three of my clients were subsequently fully-acquired by larger companies. My focus with IDb has always been about artist growth first and foremost.

After the year that was 2020, I decided that I needed to do something on my own from scratch to really help grow the industry in a way that was a culmination of my philosophy on music and my 20-year career helping artists advance their careers. I did a true deep dive into the industry and where it was headed and I discovered that there was a great disconnect between artists and fans. The main reason for this disconnect is that artists are almost complete dependent on Web2 partner-platforms where they possess no ownership of the fan relationship, data or lines of communication. Labels, Social Media Platforms, Streaming Services all monetizing their ownership of the artist-fan relationship.

Now, here comes the Blockchain and Web3. A groundbreaking new iteration of the internet as we know it. Based on decentralized data storage and an immutable digital ledger. Truly, the future of artist-independence. However, with new tech brings new problems. IP theft, AI impersonation, security data breaches are just a few of them. I realized that there needs to be a third-party platform partly built on Web2 and partly on Web3 that will bridge the 2 internets by establishing verified digital identity for both artists and fans,

I started ArtistVerified in 2022 with my co-Founder Baden Hughes, a brilliant tech mind with an expansive background across full-stack programming, architecture and platform development. He provides all of the tech expertise that I lack and more. Baden resides in Brisbane, AU and the fact that one of us is awake and working on AV makes our partnership exceptionally productive. We have an amazing team of advisors and contracted developers. We are building a platform that will change the way music artists and fans engage for good. AV will provide a solution to the problems artists and fans are facing with new technology by utilizing new technology. Blockchain provides a unique solution that we are really perfecting for the purpose of making the music recording and performance industry more sustainable and profitable for music artists and more rewarding and enjoyable for fans.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I believe that art is critically undervalued in terms of financial support at least here in the US. People love art and music passionately but there is an underlying perception that it should be free. Technology has given us the ability to experience more visual and audio art at little to no cost and it’s been catastrophic for artists in terms of career options. In earlier times, supporting the arts was considered a duty of those with the means to do so for the benefit of society as a whole. What I would like to see today is more of that ethos. More general support for young artists beyond streaming a song or attending a show. If music and art is important to you, make it a priority to support it’s continuity.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In 2o12, I was a casualty of a corporate re-structure at Warner Music Group. The company I helped build by being lean and creative was becoming part of the machine. I was OK with it spiritually, but it triggered a change in my overall life goals. At the time, my daughter was 3. We had a full-time nanny as both my wife and I were “climbing the ladder”. My wife and I discussed the idea of one of us being a primary care-giver and she had the higher income at the time. The decision was made that I would become a work-from-home Dad. I started my own LLC so I could do contract work and consulting on my own schedule. While it took some adjustment initially, it eventually became the most fulfilling and joyful time of my life. Being there around my daughter watching her learn and grow is the greatest gift I have ever received and I am forever grateful to my wife for letting me be the one to take on that role. Eventually, my business grew, but I still thrive with a more flexible work-day structure.       

Contact Info:

• Website: https://artistverified.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johngaenzler/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/johngaenzler
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@willntmusic2025
• Other: https://willntmusic.com https://infinitedecibel.com https://johngaenzler.com

Image Credits
Alan Rand Deborah Lowery