Here at OutsiderGaming, we always enjoy exploring the fascinating worlds of entertainment, technology, and innovation. We recently had an insightful conversation with the accomplished Khalid Jones. Khalid has made an unforgettable impact in a wide range of fields, from securities legislation to investment groups and firms, thanks to his background in law and finance and his education from Stanford University.
We explore Khalid’s path discussing his varied skill set and career decisions that ultimately landed him in the gaming industry. Khalid explains how the revolutionary Ultimate Playlist came to be, bringing together music discovery with the opportunity to win cash. It becomes apparent as we go over the app’s features and mechanics that the Ultimate Playlist is more than just a game; it’s a gamified platform for discovering music that engages users in a unique way.
Join as we follow Khalid Jones’s story from start to finish, covering everything from the complex web of relationships between gaming, law, and finance, all leading up to the revolutionary Ultimate Playlist app. This interview is an insightful exploration into the realm of music and creativity, perfect for anyone interested in gaming, music, or the intersections of various industries.
The Interview with Khalid Jones
Paul:
Hello and welcome to Outsider Gaming. I’m joined today by the wonderful Khalid Jones. I’m your host, Paul. If I was to read Khalid’s resume, it would put me to shame. To be fair, it’s very full. He’s a busy man. From his early days, after finishing at Stanford University, he went into law and became an attorney. Looking at things like securities legislation, legislation. From there, he has been involved in investment groups and firms, looking at things like tech and sports and the media. He is also a co-founder of the Kolier Group. I’m probably mispronouncing that, but you can correct me in a sec. He is here today, hopefully to talk mostly about his new co-founder role, which is with the wonderful ultimate playlist app, which he co-founded with musician Shevy Smith.
Paul:
So, Khalid, can you tell me, how do you go from jumping from steppingstone to steppingstone, how do you end up where you are now with Ultimate Playlist?
Khalid:
Yeah, that’s a good question. You know, when I graduated from college and went straight to law school, I was 24 and went straight to being a lawyer in New York at, you know, big firms and working on really very interesting cutting-edge cases in the securities world. But I always took my institutions as a license to explore and to create and to take chances. Um, and that’s what I’ve done in my career. And I’ve been, you know, pretty happy with that. So, after I left the law firm practice, I was involved in politics. I ran a campaign and then started an asset management company with a friend of mine who was coming out of the hedge fund world. We started a hedge fund in a mutual fund, back then and went back into law firm practice. So took those securities, um, ethos with me back into this private company that we had. You know, we were 26 and 27 with a start-up mutual fund. We put a billboard up in Times Square. You know, we were doing it, right. We were. And then in 2008, that was the big market crash then. So, I went back to a law firm then, but the idea of creation, the idea of innovation, of invention, uh, that was always there, and it’s almost stamped into the very ethos of the institutions I came from. And certainly, when I look out at the world, the kind of questions that I want to be asking and answering.
Paul:
Yeah, I was really going to say it. It sounds like you’re really picking up skills as you go so you can be more creative and make new things.
Khalid:
That’s exactly right. And so, you know, from my perspective, it all draws a thorough line. So, when I left the firm for the last time in 2012, I founded an investment company with someone who I went to college with at Wake Forest, and another acquaintance of his. And we really had little Catholic interest. We were involved in asking the questions, how can we add to any number of fields? So, whether that was, you know, we had straight equity investments for sure, but whether that was in the real estate world. And then we also looked into the entertainment and gaming space. And that’s when I was truly introduced to games, outside of being a kid and, you know, playing that and playing games. But really introduced into the true business side, innovation side of what gaming could be. And we came together and we’re part of a larger group to make a professional investment in the esports space and into a team at the time. Partnering with Riot and working in those leagues and dealing with the players and the contracts, that was really a time to bring all those skills together to bear and was my first real foray, jumping in with two feet into the gaming space. That was how I was introduced to, at that point in time, the director of the Arizona State Lottery, Greg Edgar who was trying to think about what this new world meant for the lottery space.
Khalid:
They have certain restrictions, you know. There are certain states in America. Not a lot of people know this but in most states in America, the lotteries cannot sell lottery tickets online. Only a handful can. Arizona was one that couldn’t. And he asked me whether or not, you know, I had some ideas to deal with that. So, the ultimate playlist was really the outgrowth of some really creative thinking by me and a larger group of people that really met a need from an innovative thinker and an innovative group of thinkers at the Arizona State Lottery. And we were able to add all the years of combined experience. And it was like a joke when people ask about why, you know, certain fields, why this architect, why are they $800 an hour? You’re paying for all the years of experience that came before that. So, it felt like something like the ultimate playlist was really the culmination of a lot of people’s hard work, thinking, dedication, need and innovation and experience all coming together.
Paul:
Yeah. So, speaking of the ultimate playlist for anyone that’s watching today, I mean, outside of the United States, they might not know what it is. So. What is the Ultimate Playlist?
Khalid:
So, here’s the Ultimate Playlist in a nutshell. So, we’ll go with one sentence and then we’ll go deeper.
Paul:
The elevator pitch. Give me the elevator pitch. Pretend I’m investing in you!
Khalid:
Well, the ultimate playlist is the first ever gamified, music discovery app with the chance to win real money. So, in a sentence, that’s it. So, the mechanics of it though is essentially we put out a playlist of music every day. Right now, it’s a group of 40 songs that play every day, um, different songs every day. And the more you listen, the more tickets you accrue that go into a raffle at the end for real money prizes. Um, and so there’s sort of two games that get played. One is a daily raffle, so there’s 18 guaranteed prizes between $50 and $500 that people win every day. And then if you accrue enough entries, you have a chance at winning, which is now $65,000. It starts at $20,000 and grows.
Paul:
Yeah, that’s what I thought. 20 to start, yeah?
Khalid:
It grows $5,000 every month. And right now, it’s up to 55,000. So that grand prize that hangs out there, um, there’s a chance to win and that’s sort of a Powerball style game if you accrue enough entries for that. So, what we wanted to do, though, was give people a way that their listening can be rewarded, in a way that feels gamified but is free to play. And so that’s sort of a couple of the linchpins there is that it’s free to play, that you’re still discovering music, and there’s a lot of different ways to earn tickets. So, every 30s you listen to a song, you earn a ticket. If you listen for a minute, you earn another ticket. If you add the song to your Apple Music, you earn a ticket. If you rate the song, we don’t care what you rate it, just the act of rating it earns a ticket. So, we want people to be engaged in listening to the songs, but that their listenership can turn into something more than just ‘I like that song’.
Paul:
Absolutely. It sounds quite exciting. Like on our website, we have a full section dedicated to different kinds of sweepstakes and casinos and slot games and all these different, you know, kinds of gambling things you do. But this isn’t really that..this sounds like it’s more interactive. It’s more about getting engaged. And it sounds like it would appeal to the gamers, you know, the people who want to get on that leaderboard because they know you do have a leaderboard there. People love bragging rights, that I’m top of the leaderboard because I’m engaging more than anyone else.
Khalid:
That’s exactly right. Well, and when it came out, we had a very distinct question that came out of the Arizona Lottery when we were first starting : how do we connect with culture? How do we give people a gaming experience? How do we reach down to people who consider themselves gamers while still appealing to a broader audience? And so, we thought that this was a good way to connect with culture. And you’re absolutely right. Things like the leaderboard, which we’re even looking for ways to make it more robust right now, it really serves as a vehicle, kind of like, the Pac-Man leaderboard or any kind of leaderboards that we have in gaming now where it’s sort of bragging rights. But some of the evolutions in the game we have will make those not just bragging rights, but also sort of integral to the way that people earn within the game itself. So, we’re looking to take all the cues from what I consider traditional gaming and bring it into this sort of free to play space. And so that larger lottery space and sort of our first foray. I’ll add on top of that, you know what, what we have done with this, the technology that it sits under, we applied for this was however, many, several years ago, back in 2020 a patent. We’re actually having a patent issued for the tech that underlies it with this upcoming game. Yeah. So very exciting.
Paul:
Very, very good. And tell me, so obviously you are kind of the businessperson behind it all with that kind of knowledge. And then when you look at Chevy like she’s obviously the music side of things. And so how does that collaboration work? Or in fact, how did you even kind of meet and come up with this?
Khalid:
Yeah. So, I found you know, everybody at some point in time, whether or not they work in the creative space or not, has some sort of fledgling creativity in them. I’ve always been involved, not only as a lover of music or creator of music. And so when I met Chevy, this was, I mean, many, many, many years ago, that we met and she was obviously very, very, very talented musically, but it was very evident very early on that her focus was how does that talent translate into the broader context of the music industry? So, our conversations, yes, surrounded music and music itself. And how do you break artists and do all those other things? But when we started Elite Shout, the idea was, how do we use technology? How do we view trends, how do we look out with a lens of the future to understand where the industry is going, whether that was when I was in college, the shift from CDs to Napster and then on to Spotify. And, you know, people being sort of left behind in that process. And we saw a similar process taking shape on the music promotion side. Right. It’s no longer big posters um, and physical promotions with promotion trucks going around the city. It’s obviously evolved into a very sophisticated playlisting. Um, and how do we then insert certain pieces of technology and sort of future casting into that process? Um, so Chevy has been integral in understanding the mind of the musician as we move along through all of these parts. She’s been extraordinarily integral just in project managing the build of the app itself.
Paul:
Yeah. And so, it’s obvious with the players what they’re getting from it. You know, they have all these chances to be entered into this competition to win their cash prizes. And the more they put in, the more chances they have. The musician side of it. So, you know, you’re obviously picking up artists and you’re cherry-picking songs. What are those musicians getting out of it? I assume exposure is one thing. Is there anything else?
Khalid:
Yeah. Well, if you start with the premise that it’s music discovery on one side for the listeners, then there’s obviously got to be musicians who are being discovered. And so, what we’re trying to create is sort of a closed system. So, for example, right now if you’ve got us on right now, Paul, you and I, we make a song, we’ll come into my studio right here, you and I, we make a song, we put it out. First, Chevy always keeps up the updated numbers. Or there’s hundreds of thousands of songs a day being put out onto Spotify, and literally hundreds of thousands of 80 million something a year. So, I mean, if you think about it in those terms, it’s literally almost impossible for any one song to be discovered outside of the large system. So, we said, well, how do you create something that makes it a little bit more specific than that? So right now, if we try to go on a playlist, first of all, you have to know the playlist exists. Maybe the playlist is 100 songs, 100 songs long, and you’re 98th on it. And so even if someone discovers the playlist, maybe you never get played. So, we said, well, what if we created a limited playlist and give people a reason to listen to it? And so from the artist’s side, they can see that, well, first of all, they’re only going to be 40 songs. Second of all, algorithmically, if, let’s say, a million people are listening to the playlist simultaneously, we’ve got a million daily users. Let’s hope we get there.
Khalid:
Every playlist is going to come in a different order, so there’s no chance that if your song is on there and you’re 38th on the list, that you’re 38th on everyone’s list, you have a chance to be first on a number of lists. So, there’s that. And then also like you said, the exposure of what? Of what the algorithm does within the playlist. So, one of the things we say is we can make people listen to your song. We can’t make you Like it. So, because of what we’re doing, because of the incentives that we’re using. So in your 30s you get a ticket a minute, you get a ticket if you do this, if you listen to the whole song, you get a bonus. Yeah, we’re creating micro incentives along the way to continue listening. And we see our engagement is really large. Because of that, the time spent listening is very high. And the other thing that we see is if you take a small what we call relatively small artist, and you put their stats in the playlist up against, a better-known artist, and you make it blind, it’s virtually identical because we’ve created incentives for people to listen to your song and continue to listen to your song. So ultimately, what we want out of the ultimate playlist is for it to be a promotional vehicle for if you’re going to spend marketing dollars in, you know, one part of the music world, you should spend some of that here at The Ultimate Playlist, because we’ve created a system where the players win, you win, and we can tell you what your money is going towards in terms of statistics, listenership, etc.
Paul:
Very good. And so again if I’m a player you’ve mentioned like listening for 30s, listening for longer. Um, so what is breaking it down? What are the different ways to get more tickets?
Khalid:
So listening is the number one way to get more tickets. So, you earn at the 32nd mark, the minute mark and then a bonus at the full song mark. You also earn bonus tickets if you listen to three songs in a row without skipping. And so, everything we’re doing is really incentivizing people to actually listen to the songs. At the core, it’s a music discovery app, and we’ve created all these gamified incentives around actually taking that core action. And then also rating a song earns you a ticket. We’ve also got Apple Music that you can actually add a song from the ultimate playlist into your Apple Music.
Khalid:
We don’t have Spotify yet. We’re working on it. But we do have Apple Music and that’s important. That’s an important note for us because we don’t consider ourselves competitors with Spotify, Apple, Deezer, you know, etc. we’re actually feeders to them. We’re saying listen to these songs here and then go enjoy it on your favorite music provider. It’s truly a discovery platform. And then so from the artist perspective, because you noted that there’s that duality. We’re not trying to take away your Spotify listeners, we’re trying to promote them. So, where you get where you’re streaming numbers are, you know, really matter, where those royalties really matter. We’re trying to push listeners to start on our platform to discover and win some money. Then when they want to relisten that they’ve discovered you here to listen to you over there.
Paul:
Yeah. And so, if I’m a musician, how do I get involved? How do I get my song onto a playlist?
Khalid:
That’s a great question. So right now, we’re in beta. So, we are picking the songs and we’re essentially curating the playlist right now. Very specifically where there’s the legacy songs and new songs and a mix of genres because we want to create, uh, something that we think is reflective of where music is today. If you listen to even a top 40 station, it’s not what it was 25 years ago, basically all pop songs. You hear everything. And so, this is reflective of that as of now. And we’re also exploring some genre specific stations as well but when we come out of beta, we’ll be doing direct outreach to artists, to management, to labels, to hopefully get them to patronize being on the playlist and experience some of the benefits that we’re accruing right now.
Paul:
The gamer in me is really kind of and this will sound wrong, but I’d nearly be more interested in the leaderboard than the money. You know, I would want bragging rights. It’s like, when you’re playing PlayStation and you’re trying to get the platinum trophy for a game, it’s not a real trophy, but it feels like it is. You know what I mean? So, are there plans to kind of put more things or more rewards in place for that leaderboard?
Khalid:
That’s the very next place we’re going to, you know from our perspective we want it to be able to nail the core. This is a music streaming discovery app that was gamified to win real money and then add on all the things we know. Some of the more core gamers will enjoy it. So that’s something that’s really important to me. But not only just that, you mentioned it, most of the leaderboards are bragging rights. That’s sort of a psychic benefit. We want it to be both. So, you know, we’re looking to attach not only that psychic benefit, but if you’re at the top of the leaderboard and maybe there’s one that resets on a monthly or, you know, a quarterly basis and this is on my mind. Don’t quote me on any of this, because nobody other than me has agreed to this right now. But these are the ideas that we have floating around, which is, for example, you have one that resets at the end of a set period of time, whether that’s weekly or monthly. Um, and then there is a very specific raffle that happens within the group that’s in the top 10%, 5% or whatever. So not only do you get the trophy, not only do you get the badge, um, that remains permanent on your record, but there is an actual tangible competition. That’s exactly right. Um, which is in the spirit of mini games. Right. Um, I know you like Red Dead.
Paul:
Um, yeah.
Khalid:
And Red Dead is, you know, some of the mini games in Red Dead are just as fun as the core story, you know, like, I tried the finger knife game or, you know, you’re sitting in there playing, poker. And obviously this is going to be like a It Takes Two level mini game, but it’s something that you can think about as adding on top of the core game.
Paul:
Yeah, I could literally play poker in Red Dead like I was playing poker in real life. That’s what it feels like.
Khalid:
Yeah, exactly.
Paul:
Um, so, I mean, it sounds great. You know, you’re going to have bragging rights and stuff like that. Another thing I kind of wanted to talk about was a little side tangent. So, we’re a gaming website as I’ve mentioned. Oh, I don’t know if you play, or you still play or what. What was your favorite game in the past? Or if you still play, what games are you playing?
Khalid:
Okay. So, this is a far-ranging question because there is sort of a gaming life before I was introduced to esports and then sort of after, okay, you know, I’m a 1996 graduate of high school, right? So that sort of dates me where I mean, you know, I’m PlayStation two. I was Sega Genesis when I was early. I think I might have even dabbled in Neo-Geo. I’ve had all the consoles. So, when I was young, I remember, if you can indulge me, the very first memory of having, like, the moment of, oh my goodness, I don’t think that gaming is going to get beyond this. I think I was in I think maybe the sixth or seventh grade, I had Sega Genesis and Joe Montana Sports Talk football came out. It was the first pre Madden. It was the first game that had live commentary in it. And I said, oh, that’s it. We’ve hit our outer edge limit of technology right now. It’s not going to get better.
Khalid:
So, throughout that time, I was really into the sports game. So, I was really into Madden. I was really into the live series and basketball, college football when all that came out. But as an adult, when we were involved in EA sports and really learning League of Legends and understanding that, oh, this is not just kids pressing buttons, it’s highly specialized. Everyone has a role within that role. People have a champion pool within that champion pool. Their situational, I mean, understanding the intricacies that they had to learn, the movement strategies, the rotations, the timing. So, I learned league. And then obviously since then, other games have cropped up to try to challenge that thrown in and even obviously riot with, you know, things like Legends of Runeterra and some of the other games that they had. Apex Legends on the other side. So, I try to play as much as possible, as much as my schedule allows. Now try to keep abreast of everything that’s out. Because at least now for me playing even, you know, um, I remember I tried to play Rocket League for a little bit. That game was not for me, right? I couldn’t do it. But it was important for me to understand, you know, what the trends are, because it’s not just now. That should be said, now that it’s been a long time before the invested marketplace recognizes it. But because esports are in the place that it’s in today and gaming overall, whether that be casual to Triple-A titles, you know, things like, skill sports, like games with skills or the new casinos are out or the bingos. The gaming industry has such diversified tendrils. Now, it’s really important for me to not only understand what’s out there, but actually put my hands on it.
Paul:
No, absolutely. And when you were involved with esports, like, did it, did it put you off, you know, gaming. Thinking, well, I could never be on that level. Or did you say, wow, this is so impressive. I want to kind of dip my toe at least and see what it’s like.
Khalid:
Well, listen, it is important to know the short answer is no. And the analogy is, I’ve been fortunate enough to have friends who played in the NBA, and I played basketball, but not on that level. So, you actually have a greater appreciation for it. It’s not off putting at all. And so when I looked at these kids, you know, we had someone like a Huni on our team, who was, at the time well renowned to be like, one of, if not the best top laner in the entire world at that time. Only in North America. When I knew of him and others who are really impressive. And you watched the time that they put in, you watched the practice, the film study. And you look like someone who has a background in stick and ball sports, and you go, oh, this is not different. This is not different at all. Um, and, and in many ways, um, it’s, it’s greater because they’re making decisions that are millisecond frame rate level decisions. That could be the difference between winning and losing. And it’s much more impressive than it is off putting. It does let you know that you can never do that. Yeah. There is a threshold.
Paul:
Yeah. Yeah. They’re in a special category.
Khalid:
And then when you look at, you know, we even had someone like Sonicfox on the fighting game side, where they’re also making these extraordinary, frame rate level decisions. And you just know so much time, dedication and skill has gone into it.
Paul:
Very good. We’re almost done for time. So, I have a couple more questions just to wrap up. Before I do, I just want to tell anyone who’s watching right now. If you like this content, please hit the notifications, hit subscribe and leave us some comments. Let us know what we’re doing well. Let us know what we’re not doing well and absolutely, we can do more of this. So, I want to bring it back to the playlist because obviously that’s, you know we’re here to try and promote it today. So first, where can I get it? It’s an app. I’m guessing Android apps?
Khalid:
Yeah, the Apple Store and Android as well. And it’s available nationwide. There are no state restrictions on it. There’s an age restriction of 18. So hopefully everyone is over 18 and it’s very strict about that. Because of whom our partner is with this. But we just want for everyone to listen to songs, have fun, and get the numbers up. The more people download, the larger our prize pools can eventually be. And we really do want this to be the home for listeners and artists. And I think the biggest takeaway is that we are really, truly pioneering a new way of giving back to listeners that the artist listener relationship can be more fluid and symbiotic even than it already is. And, I really stress that we really view our partners. We view those big DSPs, whether it’s Apple or Spotify or the others. We view those as partners and what we’re doing and us being conduits to them and for artists, a place where they can test new music. I saw something just yesterday where an artist, Joyner Lucas as a matter of fact, wrote this long Instagram post about how he put out an album of experimental music. He got feedback that people didn’t like it. He scrapped the whole album he went back to. So, he’s doing this. People are doing this kind of real time feedback in an ad hoc fashion. Yeah, hopefully we can be a conduit to that. And we didn’t even talk about, you know, sort of the concepts surrounding the origins of Twitch and how that’s kind of part of what we’re doing here, too.
Paul:
Well, I’m hoping that ties into my last question, because I did read that, you know, you are looking at maybe doing live events. So, I’m hoping to see live draws. So, you know, you can see the winners. And would that be a kind of Twitch based streaming or would it be its own thing or what would it be?
Khalid:
So, two things I certainly have an idea to be something that’s a live streaming basis. You know, we have got a lot of regulations about how the random number generator is, and we’re very serious about that and how the drawings are drawn. So, we want to make sure that that was completely locked down before we went to live streaming. Plus, I don’t know if you know this, but sometimes people don’t like to play fair online, when things happen.
Khalid:
The other thing is that we do want this to be sort of a live events thing too. So, you can imagine a world where you can take a live version of the ultimate playlist. You can have people sort of in a concert venue playing. Those are the songs that people are listening to. They’re occurring live in real time, and then winners are chosen and a live venue. So, we do see this as living and breathing in multiple different phases. We want to absolutely nail the app version and get, and no pun intended, install a base of adherence to people who love it. And we also just ran some surveys as well. We really do appreciate feedback and what people like and what they don’t like and hopefully conserve more of the latter and less of the former.
Paul:
Yep. Yeah. So, I know I said it was the last question, but one cheeky last question. So, you’ve dipped your toes in everything. You’ve such a history of investing in different things. You’ve tech, esports, would you consider making your own game or even your own kind of interactive, more interactive, mobile game even?
Khalid:
That’s an interesting question. Yeah. Well, the shortest way I can answer that is we have plans to do things past the ultimate playlist. The ultimate, especially with the patent that we’ve gotten allows us to do more than just what we’ve shown in the ultimate playlist, which is great. It’s tricky. The game, the straight game side, is tricky. We’ve seen triple A titles fall on their faces that we thought were going to be absolute smashes. And then you see, you know, something from an independent studio coming out on mobile as a silly little, you know, kind of one button game kill. I remember I played this game; I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s essentially just this skier skiing around and jumping up and down, an endless runner. Like when the endless runner genre came out, I go, who’s going to play the endless runner? Everybody! Everybody is the answer. Yeah. So, I don’t know. That’s a good question. I do have this one idea. I’ll just, I’ll tease. It’s called the Tournament of Luck. But that would be sort of the game format, but the short answer to your question is maybe the long answer to your question is we want to get the ultimate playlist absolutely right and get it to a place where people love it. And we got a lot, a lot of people playing every day. Then we can think about that next step. I’ll come back here.
Paul:
And yeah. Part two, to be continued, I think is absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much for today, Khalid. That was absolutely amazing. Thank you so much.
Khalid:
I appreciate you.
