Black people run the culture, but Isaac Hayes III wants to ensure that we’re getting paid what we’re worth in return.

“I think we get so caught up on giving our content away for free and that the value proposition is fame that we don’t understand that there’s a world of people out there who are making money,” said Hayes III during the latest episode of Black Tech Green Money.

As the son of legendary soul singer, Isaac Hayes, he is no stranger to the music industry, but he says his experiences in managing his father’s estate helped to shape his mindset more as a businessman than as a musician.

He used the music industry as an example of what he’s looking to prevent from happening to creatives through his startup Fanbase.

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Think of content as the music that was being pushed out in the start of the digital era with mixtapes.

“People were putting out so much free music, with no money in return,” he continued. “In building a technology platform, this kind of helped me to realize that this is where we are with content.”

Hayes explains that with so much amazing content out there, there’s no reason that the people creating it aren’t seeing a profit.

“I think we have a real metric to understand the value of Black culture,” said Hayes. “Like what Black culture converts to in dollars. We have to understand that Black culture is actually our vibranium, our asset. We are so creative and we shouldn’t just be giving it away for free.”

Through Fanbase, Hayes is allowing creatives to actually own their content even all the way down to having a stake in the business.

For more on why Hayes believes that owning the infrastructure is just as important as owning the actual content, listen to the full episode of Black Tech Green Money below:

Isaac Hayes III

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