Interviewer: Welcome back to Bloom everybody COVID has inspired many actually positive advancements during the pandemic as well including this new technology that musicians like Metallica, Carrie Underwood and Santana are using to record music in their homes and joining us to discuss this exciting new technology is Colin Wiebe the CEO of Sessionwire and an award-winning musician himself he wants to bring technology to the music world allowing musicians from all over the world to collaborate without having to jump on a plane or leave their homes. Colin welcome to Bloom.

Colin: Thank you very much great to be here.

Interviewer: So how does the technology work?

Colin: Well this technology is peer-to-peer technology and what it does, is allow musicians to connect together similar to what you do on Zoom only it has an additional audio stream which is very very high-quality so you can actually record music at the same time from distant locations so you could be on one side of the world or you could be on the other side of town and you can connect together video conference similar to what we’re doing now but then also record high-quality audio and because it doesn’t go to the cloud it’s peer-to-peer it’s pristine high-quality audio just like you would get in a recording studio. And many recording studios have actually done A/B comparison tests between what they’re actually recording in their studios, and what they can stream using Sessionwire and they can’t tell the difference so it really is a professional tool but it’s open for everyone to use.

Interviewer: And how are you able to get such a pure sound out of this?

Colin: Well that’s kind of the special secret but it has to do with what’s called WebRTC but I think the most important thing for musicians, podcasters, teachers, and audio engineers to understand is that they can actually feel like they’re in the same room together while they’re creating music or mixing music. And this has been one of the big benefits that people have found using Sessionwire is the ability to be sitting, just like you and I are, kind of in the same room, but actually working together making music and actually recording it.

Interviewer: And you know we know that at this point music isn’t really just about CDs and radio play any more people can express themselves over Tik Tok on YouTube, Instagram and I understand that people who like to showcase their talents that way can also find some help with Sessionwire?

Colin: Yes as a matter of fact one of the producers that we know from Vancouver ironically he lives in the midwest now up in Winnipeg, he lost most of his gigs because of the COVID pandemic and he started using Sessionwire and sure enough, he discovered a band that’s actually a Tik-Tok sensation, and they used Sessionwire to record their whole album. They’ve got thousands and thousands of followers and its really opened up the minds of the young people a lot of them you know they’re used to using screens they’re used to using the computer to record music so Sessionwire is an extension for them and they can actually collaborate with people around the world so it’s it’s really opening up a lot of new creative and collaborative possibilities.

Interviewer: It does seem like since a lot of musical artists can’t tour that they are just instead turning inside and making more music for example Taylor Swift released two albums this year, so are you seeing this in the music industry that people, since they cannot perform are just choosing to make more music instead?

Colin: Absolutely! and i’ll use myself as an example I had a full slate for for 2020 that all my gigs were canceled and that forced me to kind of look back at my song catalog and I went back in the studio and I started recording a new album and or finishing what i had already started previously but because you tour a lot you kind of put things on the back burner while you’re out on the road so, in this case I actually use Sessionwire and I love to tell this story because I was at the NAMM show, which is a big music industry trade show, and I ran into a sax player who used to play for Prince and in our conversation nonchalantly he said to me he said well if you ever want sax on one of your songs hit me up so i did, and i did on Sessionwire and we connected through Sessionwire he played a solo on my new album and I was thrilled that’s probably something that we could have never done had we not done this remotely together using Sessionwire so, I finished the album because I couldn’t tour so I have a brand new record out and it’s it’s happening for a lot of artists a lot of people are finding their writing books creating doing all kinds of things it works.

Interviewer: Colin Wiebe thanks for your time we appreciate it

Colin: Thank you so much and everyone if you’d like to try it Sessionwire.com I’ll just throw the plug in.

Interviewer: Ah! he’s taking my job look at that I was about to say you can visit their website at Sessionwire.com all right it’s okay thank you Colin we appreciate it.