Tarik Moody On AI, Music Discovery, And How Milwaukee Undervalues Tech Builders.
Plus, what the AI conversation is missing and why Milwaukee's tech ecosystem still has too much talk and not enough action.
» NOTE: The full audio interview with Tarik is at the end of this article. «
Tarik’s quick bio:
Currently Tarik is Director of Strategy and Innovation at Radio Milwaukee.
Tarik has been a Milwaukeean for 20 years and has had a significant, positive impact on our community.
If you know Tarik, you know how much he loves music and helping other people understand things around them, which is driving his work in AI.
AI’s summary of my interview with Tarik:
Btw, don’t get pissed about me using AI. My personal write up is below.
Tarik is building Crate, a music research and discovery platform he describes as if Claude, Spotify, Pitchfork, and Wikipedia had a baby. Crate is designed to help people go deeper than passive listening and understand influence, context, and connection across artists.
Tarik sees AI less as hype and more as a creative and civic tool, pointing to projects he’s building around music, public budgets, elections, and policy accessibility, with a strong belief that the same ambition coming out of Silicon Valley could be redirected toward helping people and communities.
Tarik believes too much of the current AI conversation is stuck between hype and doom, while missing the more nuanced middle: what the technology actually is right now, what it can and can’t do, and how real people might use it in practical ways.
He’s energized by building again, but also blunt that Milwaukee still has a lot of talk and not enough support for actual builders and that unless the city gets better at recognizing and backing people doing real work, many of them will keep finding that support somewhere else.
Real quick: I’m super stoked to be sponsored by Concurrency and Secure Compliance Solutions. They help to keep the Experience Milwaukee machine running so I can bring stories like this to life.
Tarik Moody and I have been Milwaukee fans and friends for a long time.
Over the last 20 years, Tarik and I, sometimes together and sometimes just both in the same city, have been building community.
In large part, that’s why it was important to get a gauge from him on the tech temperature in Milwaukee.
When you want a healthy dose of what’s up, where honesty meets reality, Tarik is your guy.
In addition to community, Tarik is now building digital platforms at scale. For the latter, he’s using all kinds of AI tools.
One of the platforms he’s built that he really loves is called Crate. He describes it as a music research and discovery platform that you’d likely expect if Claude, Spotify, Pitchfork, and Wikipedia had a baby.
What Tarik is doing provides a glimpse into what’s currently inspiring people to act on problems by building AI-powered apps, whether they have a technical background or not.
Thought I don’t always know the reference points Tarik uses, here’s what I do know: he moves with a high level passion, purpose, and integrity. Even when, no, especially when he builds something to just see it exist.
This is what people invest in? Betting on war?
“With all this brain power to solve things and build things to make lives better and help people and they’re not doing that? I’m like, I wanna use that same ambition and creativity in Silicon Valley, but flip it on its head and help society.”
Like anything else, when you ask Tarik what he thinks about what’s getting media attention in the AI space, you’re going to get the unfiltered truth.
He thinks that, in the media, all that’s being covered are big dollar investments or doom in gloom points of view about AI.
Nothing in the middle, where Tarik operates, under the radar here in Milwaukee.
“I'm very fascinated by how to make policy and politics more accessible using AI. I think that's a power that people don't have. We don't really know what our Congress people are doing. We don't know what our Mayor is doing. The data is there. It's just figuring out how we get this data in a way that makes it easy and accessible for people to understand what's going on.”
AI, along with people like Tarik, can democratize data like never before. That’s something that inspires Tarik at a level he’s not felt in a while.
With an education in architecture (yes, designing buildings), Tarik loves the building aspect of technology.
From researching and designing the vision that solves a problem to building and launching the platform to the world. Every step is important to Tarik.
And he’s gotten quite good at it. Especially at the various hackathons he’s not only participated in, but has won.
However, is Milwaukee the city he needs it to be to support him as he continues to build?
There are great people doing stuff, but they're just not getting the love. The people in charge probably need to step aside and let people who are building be put in charge.
I worry about Tarik.
Not in the “will Tarik be ok?” kind of way. He will be just fine.
More in the “will he stay in Milwaukee?” kind of way.
Because I continue to see our brightest builders leaving the city they love.
Those who stay, and maybe this is worse, do so and our leaders don’t seem to care.
Both of which inform Tarik’s point of view about Milwaukee’s tech hub aspirations.
Listen, I know Tarik’s words might hit some people hard.
I also know it’s the truth.
I wish we had more builders, too.
I wish we could better showcase and support the ones we have, especially those off the beaten path who really are building something with high potential.
I wish we weren’t recycling the same ol’ outdated thinking with those in key Milwaukee leadership roles.
But I’m not just wishing. I’m fucking doing something about it, Milwaukee.
I have been for two decades.
Today, I’m writing and speaking about this anywhere I can to whoever will pay attention.
For Milwaukee’s future, I wish for things to change before it’s too late. We need all the Tarik’s we can get right now.
Here’s my full interview with him: