How AI and TikTok Are Breaking the Music Industry - Rick Beato

I just saw this video of Beyonce the other night. She was up in the car and the car and the car started going. Dude, could you imagine if you were the guy that killed Beyonce? Oh, you could you was stood on top of a car. Beyonce dies in Eddie Guerrera style catastrophe. I was thinking I was wondering like what in the world is she thinking while she's up there? She's got to be scared. I mean, she was up really high. Is she harnessed in? I I think that she was got to have some sort of backup. Yeah. I mean, Could you imagine the [ __ ] insurance policy on Beyonce? Oh yeah. It would bankrupt. It would bankrupt a country. That was crazy to see that to imagine some type of a problem like that. You know that that's not going to happen again though. Uh Ronny Radkkey, one of his was it his drummer who got secondderee burns uh from flames that came uh somewhere and he just fired everybody. Everybody's fired except for the band. Everybody's fired. No one's allowed to do this again. Run it back. We'll get somebody new. you know, you're when you're when you're dealing with that kind of stuff, any type of pyro when when I was at the Metallica show, I was 30 feet from the stage, but but at the same level and when they and and I asked Kirk, I said, "How do you know that to what happens if you're somewhere you're not supposed to be?" He goes, "Oh, they're in our ears saying, "Okay, Pyro's coming. Pyro's coming near them." No, get to get to a mic. Oh, because all the mics are in safe areas, right? Okay. So, but it's it's hot from uh when you're 30 feet away. And I said, "How hot is it in stage?" He's like, "Oh, man. It's insanely hot on stage. These these things are going the flames are up going up 20." You seen the Ramstein build where they have that big set of exhausts that come out the top. Yeah. It's the those kind of setups are it's got to be a nightmare to do that really to um the liability with that. and um and to make sure that that's right every night where nobody gets nobody gets blown up. But it used to be have having accidents, you know, it was not an uncommon thing in the past with uh with those, you know, anytime anytime you're you're doing something that there's bound to bound to be some some issue. What do most people not understand about the process of making a pop song? Now I think everybody's got this allure of of music. It really is pop music is moving into pop culture. It's crossing over. People are seeing behind the scenes Instagram stories, relationships, tabloid journalism, whether it's from Tik Tok or, you know, citizen journalist or YouTube channels doing reactions. But I think that the process of getting to the stage of this song is now live seems to have changed quite a lot. So what is it that people don't necessarily get about what that process looks like now? So, I just made this video where I was talking about the people that are behind the scenes that help write the songs and in many cases write the songs. And people have the impression that because somebody sings a song that they are the writer on it or if they have co-writers that the co-writers are are a minor part of this, right? But the but in reality, most pop songwriters, not all, but most, have very little to do with their songs other than choosing them. They might come in and say, "Okay, I have an idea for a story of a song." They'll describe it and then these professional songwriters will help them realize that idea or the people might have the song completely done and they come in. hard to generalize, but does Taylor Swift write her write all of her lyrics? He probably writes most of her lyrics, I would think. But um but typically um it used to be that when when you in the 1980s, rock bands, there would there were very few people that were songwriters that worked with artists. Desmond Child was one. He worked with Bon Joy. He worked with Kiss. to and he would co-write. He was a specialist that would write with rock bands, but it was very rare. Rock bands wrote their own songs. And a lot of pop artists wrote their own songs, but you know, Madonna always had co-writers. This has been a thing since the 1950s. People have had songwriters. They've had co-writers. The thing now about pop music is that you have to be your own promotion department basically to be really successful. You have to be you kind of have to be an expert in social media. And I see people that um um one of the people is Tate McCrae is a huge pop star and she started on YouTube. She knows how to make her own videos for and she'll make 20 30 Tik Toks for a song for a single. You can't beat that for advertising. And and people that have that advantage, they can just put up their phone and they can lip- sync, they do a dance, they can cut the stuff themselves on their phone and upload it and you're a big pop star. If you can do that, that's a tremendous advantage. And it this is how songs become hits because if you don't have a viral moment with a song, that's you know the the days of the record labels creating your career are pretty much over. Yes, they can help, but um but it's very difficult if you don't have something that's on TikTok blowing up to uh to have a successful single. Before we continue, if you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like, getting your blood work done is the best place to start, which is why I partnered with Function because they run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. 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I I get the sense that maybe some people when the veil gets revealed and they understand how the sausage is made go hang on 15 people wrote this coalplay song. It's vocals and the guitar and program drums. How? Why? What were the fifth? There's Chris Martin. Then there's the other one. I think there's two more. Who the [ __ ] Who are these 11 people in the room with them? Well, I always wonder that too. Like who are these people? Cold Play. The first to me, the first two Cold Play records are great records. Really, the second record to me is an absolutely brilliant record. Um, as people get older, I've made videos about this that uh that once people hit 30 or so, artists Mhm. they begin to um lose the spark, if you will. The Beatles broke up the year that Lennon and uh Ringo turned 30. Otherwise, Paul McCartney was 28 when they broke up. George Harrison was 27. These guys were young guys. They did 12 albums over the course of eight years. Uh some of the most important songs ever written. And they were they weren't even 30. They literally broke up. Lennon turned 30 on November 9th, 1970. They were already broken up by then. How much do you think that's due to the fact that they were 30? And how much of that do you think is due to the fact that they've released 12 albums in the space of eight years? Because it seems to me that the pace of release, I know you've talked about this, is now slower y that people are producing an album every 18 months, something like that. Maybe if you're cranking, right? And then to run it once, twice, come back, run it, run it again. Um, well, that would, you know, extend that. You're talking about a 20 year career off the back of the same pacing. So, how much of it do you think is, I don't know, some sort of wall that creatives hit at 30? And how much of it is I've just exhausted my my juice? I think I think it's both those things. So, one of the things if you think about writing songs is like working out, right? So, the Beatles in 1965, they released the the record Rubber Soul on August 6th, 1965. Then on December 3rd, they released or they released H help, I'm sorry. And then they released Rubber Soul on December 3rd, and they released Revolver on August 5th. So in 364 days, they released three 14 song albums. So they wrote, recorded, and released Yeah. And they toured three records in one calendar year. That's insane. But and and they had so many hit songs on it. But that's like working out, you know? It's the more you work out. Whereas nowadays, if you go most bands now, they do a record, they go out and tour for 18 months, they tour for two years, whatever. Then then it's you're kind of out of shape writing cuz when you're on the road, most people don't like to write on the road. So what do you have to do? You come back, you put down a bunch of ideas and h those aren't very good. That's the the starting to get back in shape again. You know, it takes a couple weeks to How did the Beatles do it? The Beatles were just they well first of all they were so famous that they couldn't do anything else. They were stuck in hotel rooms a lot I guess. Um and they had incredible competition between Lennon McCartney and George Harrison to to to write better and better songs. Plus they were competitive with bands like the Beach Boys as well. But um that Beatles are kind of a unique Yeah. It's it's like I don't know talking about Usain Bolt's ability to run fast or something. Uh so just explain how would you identify or categorize the difference between a producer driven song and an artist driven song? Is is there such a thing or does it just is it just meritocracy and whatever sounds best at the end of the day is is what matters. Producerdriven songs are songs like um would be something like Since You've Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson. That was Max Martin and Dr. Luke wrote this song. They recorded they wrote the song. They wrote the lyrics. They recorded everything. She came in and sang it. And that's a producer-driven song. uh literally written by the two guys that produced it including the lyrics. So um most music nowadays or a lot of music is producer driven whereas um people come up with a track whether it's country music whether it's uh pop music even rock music there's some bed track first. Now to be fair, historically almost every songwriter writes the music first. They sing a melody and then they write lyrics to the melody. Elton John being the exception. Bernie Toppen was Elton's lyricist. They co-wrote the stuff. Bernie would finish the lyrics, give them to Elton. Elton would sit at the piano, improvise the song, sing it, re record it on a half inch or on a DAT, and then uh and then they would cut the song. He would basically improvise it to the lyrics he had. I mean, this is very rare. I think in the Beatles catalog, from what I know, there was one song across the universe where John Lennon had the lyrics first. So So I mean, it's like the Juice World of the Pop Yeah. era. Yeah. So this is this is when when I went to Nashville to do some songwriting, I told you I had a a I had one number one song, the only country song I ever wrote. But then I I went to Nashville and I they if you have a number one song they put you in with all the A-list songwriters. So I went there and I uh in for probably three months in 2014 and I wrote with all the top songwriters in Nashville. So the first session I went in and it was always three people and I was like why is it three people? Well that's the way that we do it here. And I was like why? Well because we want to involve you know at the time as many publishing companies as possible different publishing companies. So, I was signed to Sony ATV. There was a guy from there would be a writer from Warner Chapel or maybe two writers from Warner Chapel. And you get in a room. I was a track guy. So, I came in with my laptop and I would have five tracks that I programmed drums, I played guitar, I played banjo, I played whatever on and I had a full track. What do you think of this? Oh, that's interesting. Um, what else you got? Playing the next song. Oh, I like that. I think I might have a chorus line. Everybody opens their lap laptops. What do you think of this? And then they're looking through typing through. Oh, I got this line from someone else. And then they would have to be included in on the songwriting too or whatever. So that would be uh that was in Nashville and but at that time period that's when track guys started. The track guys are basically the producers that would come in and and um uh that would be a producer driven song. And almost everything you hear on country radio now is producer dramet. I don't I don't think people and I certainly didn't I don't think people understand just how much of a music factory Nashville is. It is a always has been. It is the Chinese sweat shop of music production. People go in and write, you know, they write five songs a week. It's amazing. It's really amazing. I have I have a friend who produces at least five songs every single week. Yeah. Yeah, I went into to back then in 20 2014, I have a lot of friends in Nashville. I know all the I friends at publishing companies, at record labels, everything and I know a lot of session players and um when I first started going to Nashville back, you know, 10 years ago, I sat in on some songwriting demo sessions. They don't do them as much anymore. And what they do is they have these session players, about five or six of them. They'd have an engineer that w was also the producer and they would produce demos and they'd have a song they'd had songwriters come in and do three songs. So, a songwriter would come in or two two or three songwriters would come in. They'd stand in the control room. They'd hand out sheets with the with the tracks or or or the the the guy that was running the session. They'd listen to it once and they would write down the their parts and then they cut it. These guys would just cut it there and then that was it. Yeah. I've heard that these session musicians are like the Navy Seals. Oh my god, they're amazing. Yeah. One. Yep. Got it. And then that's it. One take, two takes, and then they [ __ ] They're in the next room. It's so They play so well. So, I did a video where I I I have a good friend, Tom Bukavak. He's one of the top guys, like the top guitar session guy in Nashville. So, I was going up there and I said, "Hey, Tom, I want to do a video where I want to get can get a few of your players and we'll we'll sit in the room and we'll just talk and everything." He's like, "Why don't we do a song? Why don't you just produce a track and I'll get my guys to come in and play on it?" He's like, "Okay." So he's he he had a um this guy Daniel Tashian who's a great songwriter did uh and had produced Casey Musgraves um her he's had many many hits uh with Casey Musgraves and other people. So Daniel sent me a couple songs and we decided on the song. So I go up there and I knew a couple of the guys in the band and he introduced me to everyone. So I'm making the video. We're we're going around talking to each individual person. and Chris McHugh is the drummer. And yeah, so they go in, they get their sounds, I go in the control room, the engineer has everything dialed in, and they they play it, they play it down, and they play their parts perfectly. They did a couple takes, but it was perfect. Singing the vocals at the same time, too. harmonies, two microphones in the same room. Daniel and this uh Cecilia Castleman was was a singer and they um they were singing the harmonies in the same room and that was the video basically a live recording essentially a live recording with studio studio quality kit. Yeah. So so Tom uh Bukavac he's like I think that uh he overdubbed the solo then he's then he's like what do you think about me doubling it an octave down? And I was like, "Yeah, it sounds great." Like there's no producing to be, you know, uh and and then he plays it perfectly and that's it. They literally Oh, the the guitar player Todd Lombardo is he said, "My fingernail touched the string on one of the chords." There's a Can we just punch that one note? And it was ridiculous. That's the level of Yes. My fingernail accidentally touched the string. Okay. So, we've got this big engine going on. Nashville is kind of maybe patient zero for it. Uh but it's it's happening all over the place. Is there should people feel differently about Sabrina Carpenters's new song knowing that maybe she just changed a couple of words in it, but it's you know it's all about oh it's meaningful. Who's it about? Like what's what's like what's going on in her life that that this is something to do with it? And I think you can read into the lyrics the the uh deeper sentiment when the song has been written by the artist that's performing it. I think that that adds uh allure and uh cannon as the kids say, you know, um there's law attached to this, but there isn't. If we we think that if Sabrina the people are wondering who she's dating and what her dating life is like and if we do this song and she can come in and oh, why don't we make it seem a little bit more open-ended and vague in this regard. Oh, I wouldn't quite say that. There's two things. You get your songwriting credit and then you do it. Is this gaslighting the audience into thinking that their favorite artist is a more of a creative than they are? Or is this just kind of the way that music is evolving now? Should people be bothered? I think it's it's the audience is the one that thinks that the artist has more to do with it. That's the problem. It's not like the artist is going out there saying, "Oh, I wrote this song." And you know, it's like uh the Nashville when Nashville songs are written, most the artists do not write their own songs in Nashville or many times they don't, right? So, but they don't go on and and get interviewed about the songs that they wrote. They they you don't see those kind of things. It'd be like um there's a famous song, one of the most famous songs of all time, Witchita Lineman. It's Glenn Campbell did this song in 1968. It's one of my favorite songs. And this guy Jimmy Webb wrote the song. And I interviewed Jimmy. He's he's in his 70s now. And um and Bob Dylan said, "One of the greatest songs ever written." I mean, a lot a lot of people think this is the greatest song ever written, Witch Doll. Well, Glenn Campbell sang it. Nobody interviewed Glenn Campbell about how did you write? Tell me about Witchita Alignment. It's like, well, I asked Jimmy about it. He's the one that wrote it. You know, they're not going to ask him what do the lyrics mean? What were you thinking when you said this in the second verse? So that's the same kind of thing with the Sabrina Carpenter thing. Do you think that the audience is that aware? Do you think that they they know this? Because I I get the sense that they really don't. I think that the the entire story arc from the music video to the shoot to the single artwork on Spotify to the cutdowns that go onto social media. I think it very much is playing into this arc that this is a a genuine outgrowth of something that the artist is is feeling or going through. And I suppose maybe somebody else can write a song that you then perform and own that is resonating with what it is that you're doing. That can be the case. Yes. But the level of prefabrication does seem to make it feel a bit more kind of perverted. I think when people see the videos of these songs, like this, the Sabrina Carpenter song, when people saw the video, they connect it with her writing it because of the way that she performs it in in the video. Whereas, if you take a song like hurt, that's a Trent Resner song that Johnny that Johnny Cash did. Y and Trent said that that son is song is owned by Johnny. It's his now. It's his now. Right. So, so that's traveling should be about the journey, not the chaos of packing, which is why I'm such a huge fan of Nomatic. This backpack has genuinely made the process of traveling so much more enjoyable. They've got compartments for everything. 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It's just I saw a really lovely cut down of of someone explaining kind of where he was at with his life and and what happened and I thought it was just such a beautiful story. Um so that song Rick Rubin produced and uh with the song hurt, right? So Rick I was right at the end of his life and Rick uh had uh he told me the story when I interviewed him. He said that he had put this song as the first song on this CD that he give Johnny. Multiple CDs. It' be the first song. And Johnny never said anything about it. He keep listening to it. And then so Rick Rick said, "How come you never say anything about that song?" He goes, "Oh, I don't know. It's just kind of has a couple weird chords in it and everything." And and Rick's like, "Let me just do a version where I I think you can really I think this song would be amazing." So Rick had a somebody come in and play guitars and and do a a rough demo and then Johnny heard it and sang over it and and he's like, "Oh yeah, this is this is amazing." But when he first heard it, because it has a couple dissonant chords in it on Trent's version, the 9-in nails version, and he didn't hear it at first, he said he was like, I I don't know, that sounds kind of strange. And uh it was uh it was really interesting to to hear about the the backstory of these things. And he he was uh you know there would be days where he didn't he couldn't sing cuz he was very ill when he did that when he was uh singing singing the vocals on that. And um and so Rick had to be available whenever Johnny was feeling good enough. Yeah. But um amazing. What what is it then that a modern pop star brings to the table? Like primarily what is their value ad now? Depends on who it is. To me, somebody like Billy Isish, her and her brother, that's a rarity really where they create all the music on their own. Phineas plays a lot of the, you know, they they co-write all the songs and they're a self-contained band, unit, whatever you want to call them. Uh, and it's hard to think of other of other artists that are pop artists that um that can function like that without outside songwriters. Okay. So, if you're not Billy Eyish, if you're not Billyish, what are you bringing to the table? Well, it's it's gotten to the point where you need to be famous in order to be a big pop star. You need to be famous prior to being a big pop star. So, think of all the Disney people from Demi Lovado, Hillary Duff, who Selena Gomez, Jake Paul. Yeah. There you go. Um and Sabrina Carpenter. So, the Jake Paul that's funny. uh this the the these Disney stars that were already famous and then you put them together with songwriters and well Addison what's Addison Ray is a Tik Tok tick tocker uh which is same she's famous already she's got 80 million followers on Tik Tok I'm waiting for Charlie D'Amelio I don't know if she can sing or not but she would you know someone must be eyeing her up to get sing Charlie De'ilio to me is kind of like a pop star too these people that can And this is the this is interesting to me. Athleticism is has been part of pop music forever. James Brown, people that could really dance. Michael Jackson, uh Prince, then the modern pop stars like Tate McCrae. Her mom is a dance teacher. She's a professional dancer. I mean, I saw Benson Boon do a back flip off a stage. Most people are are are athletes and you have to be dancing is a massive part of pop music. There's there are routines that you have to be from Lady Gaga to Beyonce to whoever MGK now. Yes. There you go. So, it's uh um and I really respect the athleticism of these people, right? But we're still not at at no point here have we said you know the tonality the ability to understand form and musical function and deep knowledge of where this comes from and the control of the voice the VA you know like as of yet I haven't heard you talk about anything to do with songwriting capacity creativity vocal like knowhow well there's there's plenty of people that are Ed Sheeran Ed Sheeran's is a real songwriter. He can write his own songs and he's a pro. Not only can he write his own songs, but Ed can go out and play them with an acoustic guitar. He can move [ __ ] loop pedal. Yeah, exactly. Amazing. Yeah. Ed is a I mean there So there are people there there's there are people that can that can do that that are great songwriters that are really talented that can perform, put on a show themselves. Chris Martin can go out just with a piano without even the rest of Coldplay can go out there and entertain the audience. All the 11 other people. Yeah, I I was I just had it in my head that I wonder why we haven't seen Or maybe we have and we just don't know about it. I wonder why we haven't seen prefabricated DJs yet. It's coming. You think? Probably. I just get the sense you have somewhat Charlie Dio. Let's assume that let's say that she was a dude and she couldn't and he couldn't sing. You're like, "Oh, we've got the platform. Ah, this [ __ ] just cannot hit a note. Make him a DJ. Make him a DJ. Get Where's Skrillex? He must Sunny Mo must be around. Get him in. Get him to Where's Fred again? Speak to Fred. Fred will do us a track or whatever. Right. Get that in. Okay. Put him up there and then you've got the platform and you have somebody that is creating tracks in that way. Well, for in Charlie's case, it's not cost effective. She's already doing okay. She doesn't need to be a She doesn't need to be a musician at this point unless they've unless they discontinue Tik Tok or something. That nearly happened. Yeah. What are the trends music? It's interesting just just to to make a point of that. My son Dylan is and all his friends are on Tik Tok. The one day they they stopped Tik Tok for one day. All of his friends went back to Instagram and they don't use Tik Tok anymore. You're kidding. From that one day. From that one day. Now, it's not that nobody's on TikTok, but he said he noticed that all of his friends stopped using Tik Tok. That's just I mean, it was literally down I don't even think it was down 24 hours. It was like 8 hours or something. Yeah. Well, I mean, it keeps getting extended. That ban keeps getting just another extension, second or third extension. Yeah. Uh, I have to say I I think in the interests of national security, the collective aggregate IQ of the entire West and uh my social media presence given that I kind of suck on Tik Tok. Uh, I'm very pro at Tik Tok being taken down because I I I'm [ __ ] allergic to that platform and everyone hates me on there. Um, so we've sort of I guess explained at least part of the process of what's going on which pretty interesting. When I watch your videos, which everyone should go and check out, it kind of feels to me like seeing a translator who understands a language that you enjoy, but actually have no idea what's going on, right? I can't break a song into its constituent parts. I can't tell you what's, oh, that goes a full step down here. This is, oh, that's interesting. That's sort of a disco. You'll notice that there's some swing in the beat or whatever. And I'm like, h nice, good vibe. You know, that's my muggle level interpretation. What are the trends musically that are dominating right now? People can have this sense that they understand where the scenes are at, but what are you seeing? What are the sort of dominant oral themes that are going on? I don't know if there is a dominant genre or dominant trend right now. Um, everybody is is algorithmically siloed at this point and I don't see that that uh there's very few shared experiences that people have as far as with music nowadays. You might have got with radio. Yes. Once radio stopped being something that was uh stopped being dominant then people just didn't have any shared narratives. it go back to to you know up until 2000 or so or we'll go back to Nirvana cuz Nirvana was a a change a band that really changed radio formats changed everything so Nirvana comes out um glam metal hair metal whatever people want to call it was huge in the 80s all of a sudden MTV comes out and I remember it 1991 First time I saw the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit, what is that? I didn't understand what he was saying, but I knew it was something gamechanging. And it um it spawned a alternative music. I mean, it it literally overnight changed music, killed pretty much all the hair bands except for Guns and Roses. Um, and maybe a couple others. Um, but that was a that was still part of the music business where you make a record, put out a single 3 months before the record comes out. You go to radio uh with your with the record labels um radio promotion team. They go out to their p, you know, to their regions that they uh, you know, that they are uh, in charge of. Somebody comes to the south, they go to Atlanta, they go to 99X, whatever. They try and get their program director. Here's a new single from the this band. We're trying to get on the radio and then you start getting traction. Then you then if if it's doing well, you hire independent promoters. There was a whole system of things that happened and and there were budgets to do these things. Okay, so you're going to get it. You know, we have a budget to hire indies to go and promote the record and if we can get it on K-Rock, it's going to put it over the top. So, we're going to pay extra money to get the person this person can get in on K-Rock. It's just, you know, that's the old music business basically run like the mob. I was going to say it sounds very sort of nepotistic. Yeah, it's uh you know to have a hit single back in the day, you know, it's going to cost $500,000 or so of promotion money to to get it where to pay the people what they need to get paid. Usually, it's the independent people. They they put people when they made Poliola illegal, they put people in uh in the middle of these things to uh these independent promoters. So you didn't the record labels wouldn't directly be paying the radio stations. They pay the independent promoter that would interface and and get the songs played. But um but as far as dominant trends nowadays, I don't I don't know how how it will ever return from that. Everything is controlled algorithmically by massive platforms. Spotify, uh, you know, YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, Teaser. Does that suggest that we're going to see more entrenched subcultures? If people get siloed off into algorithmic echo chambers, you'd think that people would listen to more of the same kind of music, but it feels like more of a homogenization than an individuation when it comes to subcultures. So, how do you square that circle? Do you understand what I mean? Does that make sense? If you think about how the Spotify how Spotify works, you put in a band, Bad Omens. If you like this, then you're going to like Sleep Token. You're going to like you, you go through the list of bands, whatever whatever they are. We could look it up right now. We could pick any band, and then you're going to see other bands that are similar cross referenced underneath. Um, and that's how these platforms work. Period. And and uh, uh, the make your playlist for you once they know what you like. You get your daily playlist on Spotify if you use that. You get your recommended videos on YouTube. Um, and most of the people are okay with it. You know, they like the recommendations. YouTube cut the cord with, you know, subscribers getting every video. YouTube will send you a video if if it is something that they think you'll be interested in. Just like YouTube, uh, people that are more ad tolerant get more ads. Yeah, it's like he feeding the hardest guy at the table the spiciest meal. Yeah, I think your channel's one one of the most I would say uh consistent that when I finish one of your videos, it takes me to another from your channel. I think it's very bingeable. I think people sequence watch a lot of the stuff on your channel. Um huge advantage is that you get more plays. slight disadvantage is that I think you have to cap a little bit of the watch time because if you start getting up toward 20 30 minutes, people actually don't end up finishing which means that they don't get delivered your next video, they're distracted by something on the [ __ ] sidebar. So, it's a an interesting balance. But yeah, I just wonder I wonder whether we've seen the death of subcultures. I mean, you know, growing up for me, you would have seen sort of goths, emo kids. You would have had kids that were in a hard style. I mean, I'm from the northeast of the UK. You can tell it was very workingass. Wasn't anything very refined. There wasn't a classical music subculture up there or a jazz subculture. Um, but I wonder whether the sort of homogenization, the fact that everybody is operating to appease the algorithm, whether it flattens some of the more experimental and interesting spikes and because everything's so fast-paced, it doesn't allow any scene to oify into, oh, these are established rules. These are the sorts of things that you can expect. This is what this scene means. Because very quickly, it's in and out. What's the next thing we've got to chase? Where the algo's going? What's the trend? What's happening on Tik Tok? Well, it kind of goes back to my video I made that was in two parts. Music is too easy to make and too easy to consume, right? So, you can put down a song and you and I could write a song right now and uh and record it and we could put it out five minutes from now. Yep. and the the idea of a scene developing now. They're just things are too immediate. People are too connected. And because of that, it makes everything more homogenized. Yeah. We'll get back to talking in just a minute, but first, some things are built for summer. Sunburns, hot girl walks, your ex posting their Euro road trip, and now lemonade and salt. Huh? Element just dropped their brand new lemonade salt flavor, and it's everything that you want on a hot day. Tart, salty, and stupidly refreshing. It's like a grown-up lemonade stand in a stick with actual function behind the flavor. Because let's be real, if you're sweating through workouts, sauna sessions, or just walking to your car in July, then you are losing more than just water. Element replaces the electrolytes that your body actually needs. Sodium, potassium, and magnesium with no sugar, no junk, and no nonsense. I've been drinking it every single day for years. And in the Texas heat, this lemonade flavor in a cold glass of water is unbelievably good. Best of all, they've got a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. So, you can buy it and try it for as long as you want. And if you don't like it for any reason, they'll give you your money back. And you don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklnt.com/modern wisdom. What's the issue with music being too easy to make? Um the if one of the things, let's say guitar amplifiers, okay? And people that watch my channel, they see I've got 50 guitar amps before. Well, however many I have in the background. Well, most people nowadays don't use guitar amps. They use these whatever helix or axe effects or uh keer. These are digital modeling uh amplifiers if you will, but they're they're digital and everybody's using the same algorithms because the amplifiers are modeled, right? So the they have the same sounds. Yes, you can program them. You can change this. You can move them to mic placement. It's all digital though, right? It's not someone saying, "What would it sound like if I moved the mic, you know, 50 feet away this way, or tried this, or oh, I knocked the mic out, you know, out from in front of your amp." Oh, well, that sounded amazing. Where's the mic? It's laying on the ground right there. Well, that's an, you know, incredible sound that you would never get. You'd never think to put the mic on the floor to do that. And if everybody's using the same pallet to to paint on the on the canvas, then you're going to have these records that sound similar. And I you and I talked about this last night a little bit about the there's not as many professionals like professional prod producers and mixing engineers, for example, that are working in rock music, pop music, country music. Yes, that but in rock music because there's not the financial incentive that there was. For example, if you were a a huge rock producer in the 1990s, 1980s, you'd have three points on a record, three percentage points, and you had a million selling record, you'd make uh, you know, $10 retail, you'd make $300,000 per million. the producer would make against their points. You get an advance, 3,000 bucks a track, typically 10 song record, you get a $30,000 advance. You pay once you pay that back, you start getting your your money, right? So, multi-platinum records, you make millions of dollars as a producer. Well, now there's no money for producers like that anymore. Well, they've been competed away with advanced digital workstations. That's right. So, and and now there's been a whole generation of of people that are making records without producers and without engineers that that may have different ideas than the people in the band that learned everything they know about recording from YouTube videos. Well, that's your fault. Well, you know, that is that is your fault. It's uh you know it's when I go back and listen to um records from the that were still being mixed by prom mixers back in the '9s and the early 2000s and they just have a um when you have something that's really mixed well. I was listening to um um a Chevel record from maybe 2003. Um Wonder What's Next, I think that was the name of it. And um it's mixed by a guy Andy Wallace. Amazing mixer. And it sounds massive, so punchy. And and I was like, why don't records sound like that now? Well, it's because this guy's one of the best mixers of all time, mixing engineers. His records sounded incredibly good. And um or Brendan O'Brien that did all the Stone Temple Pilots records, all the Pearl Jam records. He mixed Super Unknown by Sound Garden. Brenda's mixes were are amazing. They're punchy. They're fat. They're they're they have dynamics. And um now when I hear everything, it's like I hear drum samples, I hear guitars that are recorded digitally with the same amp simulators and um and there's a there can tend to be a sameness with the music because everybody's using the same type of gear and they're recording it in on the same workstations. Like everything is the you know, everybody's using all the same stuff. So, it's hard for it not to get this homogeneous sound. And the difference is the people who who are the singers because that's the ones that that's the one thing. And then if you use autotune on your voice, does this mean that the importance of the front man or woman is going to continue to get bigger given that the singer is the highest point of differentiation that bands and artists have now? Yeah, I think that's always been the case though. I know, but you you would slash you've got some like very talented. Although I suppose especially when it comes to look at Sleep Token and look at the drummer, right? You know, I'm aware that they're not molesting their tracks in quite the same sort of a way. It's very self-contained unit. Um but there is still the opportunity now I suppose for very talented uh back further further back in stage uh contributors to to really shine through. But yeah, it seems to me that if what you're saying is correct, music sounds are becoming more homogenized. Everybody's using the same presets and [ __ ] decapitators and whatever the hell else it is that they're doing. You didn't think I knew that, did you? Shock. Yeah. Um, if that's the case, then where are the remaining points of differentiation? And I wonder whether this is going back to what we said at the very beginning. Well, what about your your marketing presence? What about your social media game? What about your your your roll out from an advertising perspective? That that's what it is. That's where the that's how you differentiate yourself is through that. Not through the actual art, but does somebody in the band have a big social media uh platform? Are they big on on Instagram and they're bringing people to the shows? Because that happens. That does happen. Um there's a a band from Australia, Carnival, that I love Carnival. Carnival is amazing. So the bass player, John, they have a new record coming out. He sent me um he sent me the new single, which I just It just dropped the other day. It didn't play when I tried I tried to play it and it wouldn't play on my Spotify. You know why? Why? Because he's in Australia. So, his Aussie time they said it was the 26th that was supposed to come out, Chris, and it didn't. What day were you? Mine was the 26th, but it was But they're a day ahead. Yeah. So, I I've had this before because I'm still on British T uh British Tik Tok, British Spotify. Yeah. I get access even in Austin, I'll get access to songs at 6 p.m. because it was 6 hours behind. Now, the fact that it's a full day, that that's something else. My entire theory has gone out the window. Uh, but if you set your Spotify to Australia time, you'll get access to songs 18 hours ahead of it. He sent me He sent me the link and I wrote him back, like, John, that doesn't play. I imagine you felt good about that. Okay, so they they I did a breakdown of a song Goliath that's on um what record is on came out in 2007, but the the Carnival record. Yeah. and uh Forester Saviles that was the producer of it and the sounds are phenomenal on it. The drum sounds, this one tune is in a really weird like 274 time signature and Forester sent me the tracks for it and you can hear the bass in the drum tracks because they're playing it at the same time and the drum sounds are phenomenal. Then then you hear the guitar sounds. They have the rooms in them. They're done through amps. I mean, it's impeccably recorded and mixed. Uh, John the bass player, his bass sound is just unbelievably great. Distortioned, most aggressive bass sound. And it's um, and this is this is kind of before people started using all this kind of all the same gear. And it was done in a professional studio with a professional producer. And you know, the band is obviously very involved in what they do. These guys are pros, but uh it's mixed so well. Uh and I'm really curious to hear what the new record sounds like when you can finally get access to it. Um, so my I guess total lay person contention here is if it's the case that the sound is becoming more homogenized, if everybody's using the same presets, if everybody is becoming more reliant on doors to basically not enable but like buttress like to replace the uh uh production process. Surely that opens the door to anybody that has even a modicum of ability to properly make music. So for every zig, there's another zag. So if everybody is using the same sounds, the same presets, the same 808s, the same drum, whatever decapitated [ __ ] If everybody's using that, well, all that you need to do as an artist is actually learn your craft. And it's total blue ocean strategy. So I understand people might be worried about the vanilla ice cream, you know, live, laugh, loving of of music production that it's it's very prefabricated, but that would just open up the door for more inventive art or just even remotely original artists, somebody that was built in the '9s, so to speak, but born in the 2000s to be able to take over. So surely we're just going to see this swing back in the other direction. Do you not think? I hope so. It still comes down to do you have a tick- tockable moment in your song. It just does Chris. That's the you know it's you can have the greatest record in the world the most different sounding record revolutionary new trend in music and if you don't have those if people don't say can you feel my heart then it doesn't it doesn't Okay let's talk about this. So why does my 12-year-old know that song that came out in 2013 before she was born? Before she the year she was born. Yeah she was born. Yeah. Well, I mean that song, it was a good song, but it it kind of languished at least in terms of their bring these bigger songs for a long time. I mean, okay. What how do you come to think about the impact of Tik Tok on music generation? Because I think a lot of the time normal people like me think about we consider it in one direction, which is songs that blow up on Tik Tok, but it's birectional, which is the reverse happening. The opportunity to blow up on Tik Tok causes musicians to create music with the express purpose of being Tik Tok blowupable. You know what I mean? So what does that what does that sound like? What what is happening to the form and the structure and the sort of way that music is actually created in order to be how do you make a song tick- tockable? Okay. So, I've I thought a lot about this and and um I I believe that there's a formula for having a successful song. It is figure outable. This is my my my word using uh there's a lot of data out there that's available. There's a I have different apps. There's an app called chart metrics that that will show you met give you metrics of artists, Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube. um that it'll show you when something blew up. I'll give you an example. So there's um artist Image and Heap and my my daughter Leila were I drive her to school every day. So she's like, "Can you play this song called Headlock by Image and Heap?" I says, "How do you know that song?" So I play that came out in 2005. I was going to say Imagin Heap's 20 years old. Yeah. I said that came out in 2005. So I play, she said, 'Yeah, I heard it on on on uh YouTube Shorts, and I want to hear what the whole song sounds like. Right. And so, so I play her the song. She's like, "Oo, that's really good." I said, "You know, there's another song on here that was a bigger song called Hideand Seek." Yeah, it's huge. Huge. So I start playing. She's like, "Yeah, I've never heard this." All of a sudden, 2 minutes and 47 seconds in, there's this spot that is the tick tock spot. And she's starts singing along. She goes, "Oh, I know this song. It's the bridge of the song where the the singing where it gets into the the faster singing part and she knew that. And so then I go back and I open up this chart metric. I started looking at it. It's like, okay, so this song had a spike 6 months ago. People started playing on Tik Tok. And then I and I I started looking at it and then she started getting way more followers on Instagram. And then I went back and I said, "Layla, where did you hear how did you hear this?" She goes, "Well, I heard it on a few different places." So, she sent me the the three different places. Two of them were anime videos, but they used different parts of the song, Chris. They weren't the same Tik Tok, but they had the same a similar payoff, and they were they were uh they were from some anime. And then one influencer that had 3 million followers uh had shared it as well, but it was in multiple places, and it was hashtag um headlock. And so I started studying these things to see and it had blown up multiple times over 6 months. It kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Y until she became aware of it. So what is the constituent parts of a song that has that verality? What what is it that that makes that? I'm trying to figure that out right now. So I don't I'm not sure yet. I'm not sure what makes people want to use things. And can you imagine how many resources are being spent trying to get trying to reverse engineer what that is? I mean, I'm sure that lots of record labels and producers will have got some sense of maybe someone's got the formula. You know, maybe there's some person behind the scenes that's doing all the rest of it. Uh you remember what was that uh the dude that was uh skateboarding down the street drinking Ocean Spray? Ocean Spray doing the Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. Okay, so this is so Creed. [ __ ] Creed, dude. Yeah, like I guess that was partly like Texas Rangers winning the World Series and that kind of being a part of it. Um, yeah. Where's this coming from? So, I uh when I first started on YouTube, I used to have things not only content IDed, but blocked where they'd take down videos. And one of the videos I had taken down was a Fleetwood Max song. It was a song, Go Your Own Way, but it was written by Lindseay Buckingham, whereas Dreams was written by uh Stevie Nicks. And I argued, I made a lot of videos about blocking. Why are why are these big labels blocking stuff on YouTube of songs that are 40 years old that I'm making videos of? It's like free publicity. Why block it? Just take the Content ID money and make You're making money on it. Why do you want to take down a video that has a million views, two million views? Like, what's the point of it? It's just free promotion for them. So, finally, when that Tik Tok video that you're talking about with a guy with the Ocean Spray, you know, listening to the song, that song went to number one and all of a sudden the labels are like, "Wait a minute, this is promotion. Wait, wait, we can actually, you know, and then they then they stopped blocking it and all of a sudden all of my old videos that were blocked got unblocked. Oh, that's interesting. Over over the course of a few months after that, there's not really an equivalent from from my industry. A little bit of a one if you have a a particularly good quotable moment. Uh, there's a famous bit from Lex interviewing Huberman and Andrew says, "Can you read me the quote one more time?" And then people super cut that with either stuff that's real or stuff that's like uh like taking the piss. There was one I did a thing called Finn Versus the Internet. Finn Taylor is a like a friendly roast comic from the UK and it's half a skit and half a sort of real roast. And anyway, he brings his pretend step stepson out, Jeffrey. And Jeffrey is sat on a stool and he's saying that I use a lot of quotes on the show. And Jeffreey's giving me some of his favorite quotes back. And he says, "All a man needs is the same as his dog. Food, water, shelter, put your nose in a stranger's ass." And that clip, that short clip has been used tens of thousands of times by the Brazilian jiu-jitsu community because if you're in North South where you're like this, like that, um, you've got your nose in a stranger's ass. And it's like it's the equivalent of that. It's the only sort of equivalent thing that if you capture a small piece of something that it could that was not what this was intended for, right? It's just part of a skit that the guys wrote. But yeah, I suppose the same thing goes with music. I think the thing that the thing that everybody feels concerned about is how contrived the process of creating anything is like the whole reason for verality is that this thing wasn't meant to go viral and then it does, right? It's the by It's the fact that it feels naturalistic. That's cool. The fact that the Fleetwood Max song was not meant to be listened to while skateboarding, drinking ocean spray, cranberry juice, right? That's what's going the fact that Can You Feel My Heart has this sort of slow wave and then it comes back up and you can do cool stuff on videos with it. I've seen lots of people doing like trampolining videos and [ __ ] to that song. That wasn't why it was designed. No, but as soon as you get to the stage, if you see how the magic trick is done, I think it kind of kills the allure of believing in it. And the same thing goes for the Tik Tokification thing that you you're playing a super gaslight game where you need to create a track that works on Tik Tok but doesn't seem like it was made to do that. You want people to believe that they created this meme themselves. And yeah, I it's like a I don't know 5D chess. I don't I don't know if that people can really create things that are going to work. It's It's I've had a lot of viral videos and I never know what's going to go viral. I have no idea. I do know that it it's almost all my viral videos are just me talking to camera. Almost all of them invariably are that. But other than that, I don't know what I never, you know, I can't you can't plan anything. You never know how video is is going to do. And um uh it's to me I just make it move on. I wonder how many I wonder how many times I know of the last 10 years I'd say. I wonder how many times people have gone into a studio finished the final master on a track. I mean like guys that is a [ __ ] number one and the song's gone out and not even charted. I wonder how well the guys in the music industry can pick them now. I know people that have written many number one songs and they've told me that they had no idea it was going to be a number one song. You included. Yeah. But you wrote it for you even wrote it for a different genre. You didn't even write it for the genre and it was like 10 years later. Yeah. Yeah. So you don't you know whoever thinks something's going to be a number one song. Well, if no, if you're writing something for Beyonce or Sabrina Carpenter or somebody that's a famous star and it's picked as the single, the chances of it uh of it going number one or being really successful are exponentially higher. That's less so to do with the artistic merit of the song, though. Yeah, that's that's interesting. One of the hardest things uh being a producer or songwriter um is to get your song picked to be a single. Historically, that's always a thing is that um um you write songs for a record. You might be one of 15 different songwriters on a record. Let's say let's say it's um there's three people per song, but there's five different groups of people to write for a record and everything. And then they go back and forth and back and forth with the ANR department, the head of the label. Well, maybe this is going to be the single. Well, we we send it out to our radio guys. they think this is the single and they think this is the single. It's just like and to actually have your song picked is is just the first step in that and then it has to be uh you know and then it's the public has its vote, right? It's like uh one of my friends is like uh I always say well people tell me that they want me to make these kind of videos and I make them and people don't watch them. M it's like well people ultimately vote with their attention because we're in the attention economy and that's um and that to me is not predictable what yes you can you can talk about something that's a trending topic and it can do well but you still don't um don't have any control over what the public is this why record labels like replicable formats when it comes to music that we kind of have an idea that this thing worked before. The same way as you I use the example of you and Dr. Mike Israel uh in terms of appearance quite different in terms of content strategy actually quite similar. No, I like Mike. I like Dr. Mike. Yeah. Yeah. But he's got a strange shaped head. Uh he described himself as a human callous to me. He's kind of like a if a Verooa took human form. Um but very similar very s okay we're going to do some sort of I have a degree of expertise in pretty specific area I'm going to break stuff down musically there has to be and this is why I was so interested he has a far better sense of humor than I do he's he's really funny that's true but he's also Jewish so you know there's positives and negatives to to to the way that Mike puts himself across very good with money very bad at spending it you know um so he yeah the The thing that I I thought was interesting when it comes to the music industry is the we find a format that works and then okay, how do we how do we sort of crank this until it becomes old and then we go again and we s where does the genesis of that come from? Is that even predictable? I thought a lot about this like what happened when new metal um came about you know let's say it's early mid9s corn limp biscuit Lincoln Park God I miss pod and uh pod so so new metal was the dominant force in rock music now called divorced dad metal is that what they call it now divorced dad rock Okay. So, so um and then you had bands Creed was not really a new metal band. They were more of a hard rock band like Breaking Benjamin, stuff like Breaking Benjamin was was a would would be a new new metal band. One of my really dear friends produced uh produced Breaking Benjamin. Um but um um it it was this dominant force in radio until it wasn't. And why? What happened? What? What? You know, was it the nickelbackification of uh [ __ ] all roads lead back to Chad Kroger, man, right? Holy [ __ ] Is it uh is it that he had too many hits? Over. It's interesting. So, so the the engineer for Nickelback, Joey Moy, that worked with Chad on all those records, moved to Nashville, and he is the one of the biggest producers in Nashville. And he is uh he engineers, mixes, produces, and he's just had hit after hit after hit after hit. And I don't know why Chad Kroger didn't move to to Nashville. Um but for some reason I I think that um I I thought like maybe it's I used to say that when blues left rock music when there's no no blues riffs anymore if you think of like Audio Slave or um you know as an extension of Rage Against machine. A lot of the bands, the Pearl Jam, Sound Gardens, the bands of the '9s had a lot of blues elements in them, but a lot of new metal does not. Lincoln Park does not have blues licks like uh Crawling or I mean, a lot of the songs on the first Lincoln Park record are are not based. They don't have blues melodies. They don't have blues licks. And once rock music became disconnected from the blues, it started losing its appeal to people. And then people moved to listening to country music. And now country music has been popified where you hear, you know, the same drum loops that you hear in pop music, you hear in on Morgan Wallen songs and like a lot of country songs that are that you hear that hit top top 40 radio now. I mean it's amazing how much country is in top 40. I we need to talk about this. What has happened with the ascendancy of country over the last 5 years? What what's going on? Um, I think it's that I think that they the the production style has changed and it's and it sounds like pop music and so it's uh I think that it's um that it just connects with with more people because it doesn't sound like country music anymore. Doesn't sound like the country music of when I was going to Nashville and and and writing songs. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Momentous. 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Right now, you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to live momentous.com/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's L I V M O M E N T O S E N T O L I V E M O M N T O us.com/modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. So the reason at least for me the day I can tell you the day that I decided to move to America and it was partly because of country music uh which just sounds like the most scoped way for an English person to decide to move to America. So, it's 4th of July on Broadway in Nashville and I was doing a road trip with a friend and we started off in uh Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, did Nashville, did Gatlinburg, uh you have to we went to Lake We didn't do Dollywood, went to Lake Norman uh and then finished up in uh Norfolk, Virginia, and then I flew to uh Canada and you know, rented a soft top Camaro. Me and my friend, we were training every different day, staying in random places, and uh it was 4th of July. We got up and we ran the Nashville 5K. Um which was fun. Had a little nap back at the hotel and then went out to Broadway. Fourth of July, let's [ __ ] go. This is going to be cool. So I go down onto Broadway and I see Whiskey Row. I'm like that look that place looks cool. This is nice. I walk in and it's one of these classic super talented pay by the hour sort of Nashville bands. Dude's got a truck cap on and no one's looking at the band. Like, what the [ __ ] is going on? Everybody's at the bar. And this is 3:00 in the afternoon, like peak Broadway time. Sun's beating down. It's be windows are open. It's money. And everybody's at the bar. It's like, what the [ __ ] is going on? Why is this band all crushing? I've never heard this song before, but it was cool. It was kind of like it sounded a bit emo, I guess, but it was definitely country twangy. What the [ __ ] Anyway, this dude is partway through the bridge of this song and he grabs a shot and puts the shot in the air and everybody in the room like a like they were part of a cult lift a shot up as well. It's like what the [ __ ] is going on? Like it was is there an email that went out that I wasn't a part of or something? It was a song Tequila by Dan and Shay and there's a bit where it does a it goes like a full step up or there's a little change as it goes into the final verse the final chorus sorry and uh when I taste tequila everybody knocked this shot back the room explodes I was like I am [ __ ] moving to this country consider me sold and then I got to it turns out that uh friends with those guys right he's a fan of the show so I got to go and see them and I got to catch up and got to see this ridiculous bus setup he's got oh yeah the way that we put the bus together. It's the same way that Taylor Swift's got hers cuz if you put the the bed at the back of the bus, you can actually have more width and it's over the back wheel, which means it's a I was This is [ __ ] insane. But I mean, it's a they're superstars, right? Super super production. And um I saw kind of in that moment, I was like, "This sounds so familiar to me as somebody that hasn't listened to that much country." And that summer, the summer of, uh, 2019, uh, Luke Holmes's massive album, uh, Hardy with like Rednecker, um, you know, we had this, uh, Brot Trip playlist and I think about all of that music and I remember listening to it at the time and coming back to the UK and, you know, I had nearly 3 years before I finally moved to America after that, two, two and a half years. I'm like listening to this music wondering like why the f like this seems like a really really good scene. So it kind of does make sense to me that we've got to the stage now where someone who was open to alternative music but not into country found [ __ ] by country if that's what you want to call it easy access country I suppose pop country. I could see that country music was moving that way that when I got involved uh in the scene in the you know in the teens. Um it was during the Bro Country era. The Bro Country era lasted for a few years. Uh and then but the the era of the track guys there were people moving to Nashville uh you know starting in 2015 2016 and then Nashville just blew up and then the music started to change in style and um and it um it just I started noticing my friends that used to listen to rock changed over and started listening to country. I think part of it is that there were there were guitars in country and there was no rock on the radio that that uh that they connected with because they didn't necessarily connect with the metal bands that were were going on in the in the you know in the mid- teens and um I don't think people know just how much the country music industry is built on the back of former scene kids and metal guitarists like all I think all of Jelly Rolls band X you suicide something or Amity the something, you know what I mean? Like everyone was part of some very blackwearing like death metal band in the 2000s and then grew up to do this. But yeah, Jelly Roll, massive pivot, Post Malone, massive pivot, Beyonce, massive pivot. I guess Taylor Swift pivoted away, but you I Well, she moved to New York and and uh and changed her music and and she her thing was that she was dominating the charts and then she started she's like, "Okay, how do I broaden my appeal to to start hitting uh you know, pop radio cuz it was a different thing back when she did and uh whenever it was 2012 when she start working with Max Martin and other outside songwriters like that. Max Martin and Shellback and um and then she started having massive worldwide hits. So, um, the it's just, you know, I I look at this stuff, Chris, and I think it's just tough for for musicians to um uh there's just it's so hard to connect with the audience. Even in the era when it's so easy to connect with people, it's so hard to get any type of a um uh of momentum going, right, with with a song that or with with any type of artist to get to that 100 million plays. You're talking about the Bring Me the Horizon song. That's uh 500 million now. 7 What's that? How much is it? 500 million. 720 million plays. It's insane, right? If to get over 100 million plays on a song, 100 million plays is I was talking about this this morning actually. It is about um $300,000 I think it something like that. No, $3 million. Three. Oh jeez, I just No, $300,000. I think a bill Yeah, a billion plays song is is about3 to5 million depending. Do you imagine if me or you had a billion play video? It' be like Baby Shark. Yeah, it is. That's what you should do next. I was going to make this video series. Is this song better or worse than Baby Shark? That's That's a pretty good barometer. Is this song better or worse than What does the fox say? Uh, okay. We need to talk about AI artists. Yeah. AI artists. Uhhuh. What's going on? What's going on? AI bands. AI everything. What's happening? Um I think that um that one of the AI companies is testing whether people will accept AI music. I mean Spotify has AI music that they're already pushing in playlists that um uh that that are that get millions of views. A lot of it is kind of light jazz or atmospheric music and things like that. But now they have this thing I just made a video on about this band, the Velvet Sundown, that's a purported to be a fake band that has AI looking pictures and AI sounding songs. I always have said in my videos every time I've made many videos on AI. I got I testified at a Senate hearing in 2023. Went to Washington. I was one of 19 people. It was a closed door session. They did nine closed door hearings. I was in the seventh one. The first one they had Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, all these people were all the top people at these big about music about No, this is about AI, right? Okay. I was going to say I don't I don't think I care about music. They they invited me in with all the people SAG ARA um Spotify people for all these that worked at all you know all all basically all different interest groups right and then me because I had made a lot of big videos on AI music and one of my things that I said is that I don't didn't believe when they asked asked me questions the senators asked me questions I don't think that anything that's completely fully generative AI should have be able to be cop copyrighted. So that takes away the financial incentive for companies to uh to go and put AI music out there to make money on it. If Spotify can put out AI fake artists and people stream it and they're perfectly okay with it and then not pay artists that are getting streamed as well because they're and then that then it just increases the incentive for them to fill their playlist with fake artists, right? But now what's happened is that there's this artist that may or may not be fake, the sundown that has a verified symbol on Spotify and they have a second record even though there's no record of these people. Kind of looks like a fake bio. There's no record of these people. Uh and they have another record coming out in two weeks, a second record. And no one's coming forward saying it's us. Now, if this was a a marketing ploy, this is actually a very smart thing. But people are saying in the comments and the video I just made yesterday, well, these are all bots that are on here. It's got over 600,000 followers now on Spotify in a week. Went from zero to 600,000. It's crazy, right? Is the song any good? Well, there's a whole record there. Mhm. And um uh it's I don't think it sounds good to me. I not it doesn't uh people are voting with their ears though. Did you not say earlier on that meritocracy here? Yeah. And I think that people will embrace like I I said early on when you started seeing all these fake Drake videos and and fake Beatles videos and all this stuff that they were on YouTube but with with the voices of the uh you know young Paul McCartney or young John Lennon, whatever. And I said eventually there's going to be the Beatles and the Beatles AI and Prince and Prince AI and Michael Jackson and Michael Jackson AI. There will be songs that are trained on their music on the multitracks that are controlled by whoever owns the publishing. They license the stuff out. And there will be people that say, "You know what? I like Michael Jackson AI better than Michael Jackson." That's going to hap that will happen. There are going to be people that like AI music and they're perfectly fine with it. Should there be protections in place for artists to avoid AI bands, AI artists coming in and taking plays? Do you think that Spotify should ban AI music? Um, should they ban it? Um, well, there's so many workarounds with this. I mean, you can you can create your song via a have AI a completely AI prompted written song and then just recut it and then it's you doing it. It doesn't have all the artifacts. You have all the independent tracks and everything and and then who sues you? The Sunno or UDIO or whoever owns the hey that's our music. like, "Wait, wait, no, no, it's not. I prompted it myself and then I covered it." It's like it's like the Spider-Man meme. I don't even know what, you know, this this I don't know what's going to be done with it. I don't know how they can um I I I think this is a great take. I think that's a really interesting one cuz if you're a real person, but 80% of the process is AI enabled, where does the line get drawn? You know, you can lock me in a room with some parchment and a quill and say, "Write 60,000 words, no source material, or I can prompt chat GBT to do it all for me." Somewhere in the middle is where most people are. And some people are basically zero. Some people are essentially a quill, but then they've got source material. Well, Ryan Holidayiday, he's got reams and reams of flashcards from all of these books that he's reading. I I've become very obsessed with the idea of plagiarism versus inspiration because very few ideas come from real first principles. You You're telling me that this was not inspired by anything? Well, when I look at the saxophone that you're holding, you're holding it the right way up. You're blowing into the bit at the top and not through the bit at the bottom. So, you've been inspired by all of the people that came before you that taught you how to play a [ __ ] saxophone. Right. right? Like, you know, you're playing this thing in time. You're using the kick and the snare in a very typical sort of form because there's only so many. So, everybody is inspired or educated by what came before them. And that goes all the way to well, I read this book or I watched this movie or I listened to this song and I like that, oh, that made me think about this thing. So, there's a a wonderful line from William James that says originality is just undetected plagiarism. And what we are seeing now is the veil being lifted on detectable plagiarism, right? Which is not only is this a direct copy of something else, but it's a direct copy of something else masquerading as something original because it's been rec constituted by an AI. Um, I'm going to piss every musician off by saying this. If AIs are able to create better music than you as an artist can, I think it's a very difficult argument to make to say that they should be held back given that this is supposed to be a meritocracy because all of the graphic designers for whom Midjourney just came in decapitated, people were up in arms about it and tried to make a big issue around it. It it happened podcast there is a website where you can put any topic in. Yeah. And it will create a pretty listenable podcast that explains notebook. Notebook LM is is really good if you like learning if you like learning stuff. Thems have all the Oh, it's interesting with the way that we Yeah, you're so right, Rick. you know, um, and if Notebook LM gets to the stage where it is able to produce a better podcast than the one that I can, then I either need to up my game to be able to compete or I'm going to I'm going to be defeated by the [ __ ] robots. Here's my theory, and I'd love to get your take on this. The reason that I think that musicians feel particularly agrieved when it comes to AI coming and replacing plays, taking uh ear real estate from the audience is that the barrier to entry in order to be able to create music is so high. Anybody can do a podcast. They can be very bad, but anybody can do a podcast, right? Anybody can draw anything. Can be really bad, but anybody can draw anything. If you put a saxophone in my hands, I cannot make a sound come out of it. Right. Right. So the level of investment, the moat that has typically protected musicians for a very long time, not just from being able to play the the instrument, but from understanding musical form, from being able to master produce, mix, understanding how all of this stuff is supposed to be constructed. When you level the playing field for something that people have invested a ton of time into, they quite rightly are going to feel agrieved because they say, "This is unfair. Look at how much time I spent getting myself to the stage to be able to do this." And you've just taken a shortcut. I am not allowed to feel as agrieved because an AI is able to replicate chatting [ __ ] on a podcast, right? because I know that the moat, the barrier to entry, the uh required skill set in terms of training was lower than somebody who's a afficionado at playing the keyboard or at playing the drums or doing something like that. And I think that this is the reason that musicians have a particular be in their bonnet around the AI thing. But I struggle to see where the delineation is between the graphic artists and the podcasters and the musicians. And if we're not going to stop Notebook LM or MidJourney, I think it's difficult to say Spotify should ban AI music for the same reason because wow, it took me ages to learn to play the drums. When I talked about this about the being good prompter, I mean, there is an art to writing a prompt. I use AI programs all the time. Um, and sometimes I'll say, "Okay, here's my title for my video." And to me, the best title generator is Gemini because they have all YouTube's data in it. It's Google. So, I'll be like, "Okay, here's a title for my video. Gemini, I want you to create 10 variations of this title for a Rick Bat YouTube." Well, it knows me. I've trained the whole thing to do this for my it knows my my video titles and things like that and so and and then it'll spit it out. It's like make it more clickable, make it this, make it that. And um and a lot of times it'll be like I like the first part of this one. I like the second part of that one. And I'll do that. And um or sometimes I'll be like, you know, I need something for a for a thumbnail, a background where I have a cutout of me or I'm trying to do something, but I um uh you I want something that's that I couldn't create, but I can imagine what it is. You put it in there, it'll create it. No, do another variation. No, do another variation. No, make it more this. Can you make the, you know, so it's so I use it constantly and and you have to just keep refining it, refining it, refining it like you refine a song. It doesn't replace the the decades that it takes to become great at an at an instrument. But there is you could argue I'm not arguing this. One could argue that being a prompting is the same kind of skill as as learning how to play an instrument. And I'm not saying that it is. You're being very diplomatic today. But um but well because I actually do use AI programs and uh and there um you know we we talked about this yesterday about the uh the how there are things that to me that these AI programs can do really well in music like to me mastering and I don't mean to upset any mastering engineers or anything but To me, that seems like a great use of of a um of AI is to learn how to master songs, right? I think mixing I think yes, mixing there's taste. There's all these things involved, but I sure love to be able to say, "Hey, could you mix it the There's a guy Serban Gana that's that mixes every big pop song." And and then you have uh you know you have your rock mixers Chris Lord LG, Tom Lord LG, Brandon O'Brien, Andy Wallace, all these these famous rock mixers that um you know, oh could you mix it in the style of this guy or mix it in the style of this guy and have instantly have your thing or in 15 seconds have have a completely different take of your song mixed by a different mixer. That would be kind of interesting. That to me seems like a great use of of AI as opposed to AI creating the song from scratch. To go back on what I said, uh I think it's a difficult argument to make that music is some particular protected class. All that being said, I do not like the idea of listening to music that's being created by an AI because to me, and this is another reason why the prefabrication of of music generally by songwriters also removes a lot of the magic and the allure because I like the story. I like to read into what the songwriter meant by these lyrics and what's the emotion that's trying to be put across here. And if it's a, you know, a philosophical zombie, the idea of that that it sort of operates like a human but behind the scenes there's nothing going on. if it's the musical equivalent of that, like upfront it sounds good and behind the scenes there's nothing going on. But then you think, okay, is there anything particularly more special about music that was created by an AI and produced by an AI than something that was made by a team of 15 songwriters and then produced by an artist that had nothing to do with it? You know, the again, right, and this is like an ethical That's a that's a great point. That's a great point. It's uh one of my friends says, "Well, you know, when you have 15 songwriters based like like AI anyways, to your point and and that, you know, then you give it to this to the person that had nothing to do with it that sings it." It's like, well, you know, well, at least there were real people playing it. Well, are there really real people playing it? There's like one guy that played the keyboard parts and put all the the drum loop drums are [ __ ] sequenced. Yeah, exactly. But then when you okay well electronic music, dance music that's there's no very rarely apart from maybe if you've got some custom vocals done made [ __ ] scary monsters and nice sprites on like a 2010 MacBook Pro on planes. He never It was never anything, right? I guess he would have recorded his vocals at some point to put that in. But okay, where do we draw this line? And I think it very much is an ethical question um of what is it do we need to have to identify AI artists? I think that would probably be quite a nice thing to do. I think if there was a a particular tick and this has been talked about on other social media platforms too, the dead internet theory that um because AI is able to produce such a high volume eventually almost all of the content on the internet is going to be produced by AIs. And the same thing may occur for music. But for me, I I would feel conned uh had I would have felt catfished by music by a song if I went on and I'm reading into oh what does it mean? What what did it what does he really mean that you know it the rain fell like blood like what did oh that's so deep and it's like uh don't know like it was influenced by some [ __ ] Marilyn Manson song from whatever 2005. um that would suck. And I I feel like there's two ways that AI is going to make a change. One is it's going to compete and the other is that it's going to enable existing artists to be more effective. And it's a case of whether or not the uh for you your channel may be replaced by Rick Bato AI, but yeah, which would be great because you could retire. Um, but also it's enabling you to stay ahead. So, it's a case of are people going to use the tools in order to keep the competitive advantage over to them and how much is the competition going to come through. There's a there's a program called 11 Labs that I use. And um when I trained it on my voice, it's weird because I I I inputed uh dialogue from I I have a I have a mic that's about it's out of out of camera range. It's probably four feet in front of me. That's about this high or so. It's a little shotgun mic. It's a stereo mic. Stereo condenser mic. That's what I typically record my my YouTube videos with. So, it's a it's a there's a little bit of room ambience in it, but it's pretty dry because I'm in a recording studio, you know. So, uh and then I had I trained some of it using a SM7 like we're using right now, which is a very different sound. It's got much more bass. It's closer. It's it's more more in your face. But most of my videos are not like that. But I used it when I was training it. So when I use when I try to use that sometimes I want to punch in on a video but I don't have access to this and I and so I try and use 11 Labs but it's like it's sending me results back with the close mic when the thing's done with the distance. Right. So so I talk to 11 Labs and they're going to do a two different voice profiles for me. One with a close mic and one with a distant mic. So let me give you this from [ __ ] 11 Labs. This is crazy. So, uh, Archer on 11 Labs, you know that? It's the It was the go-to British AI voice. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Archer, you remember that? Yeah. They updated it recently. Okay. I'm just going to get you to have a little listen. Just see if you notice anything about the particular voice that 11 Lab's goto standard Archer British male AI voice is. Chiligit is a powerful tarlike resin found high in the Himalayan mountains formed over centuries from ancient decomposed plant matter. Where's your royalty? It's loaded with over 80 trace minerals, fulvic acid, and essential nutrients your body needs to function. So, how does it work? You hear that? Work. Work. That's That's me. That's that's Middlesbrough. That's it's been trained on my voice and that's now. So if anybody has an issue with my take around AI coming and taking people's jobs, right? So that's now that was an ad for chilleit, which is like a mineral testosterone thing. Uh I have no take on chilleit. I'm not associated with whatever that company is, but it's using my voice. Do I own the likeness to my voice? When uh that's a that's a great question. When I trained it on my on my voice, I provided the sound samples. It takes about three weeks or so. And then once it was done, it says, "Okay, it's ready." Then they you sign into 11 Labs. Then they have you read a paragraph because they have to do the voice print and make sure it's you so you're not stealing someone else's voice, which is cool. It's very smart. Verification. Yeah, verification. Y and you have 15 seconds to do it. you have to read this thing and it's like yeah okay it's you recognizes you're but um I still haven't gotten it to where it it doesn't sound natural mine doesn't sound natural because I maybe I have a uh odd way of speaking I use different registers yeah yeah you know uh but I have used 11 labs as an experiment where I'll go to some B-roll and I'll put 11 Labs line in there. See if no one if anyone notices. No one ever notices. I've done it a few times. I don't use a lot of B-roll, but sometimes I'll sneak things in there. I was like, I wonder if anyone notices. That's cool. But um but I want to get it to where it it is where it works. So that um if I don't have access to a microphone or something and I have an idea and I want to hear what it sounds like or sometimes I'll I never use scripts. I always improvise what I do. But sometimes I'll improvise it and and I'll have it transcribed and then I'll feed it in there and I'll and I'll listen to it. And um I was using 11 Labs this morning actually for um I had some ideas that I wrote down and I wanted to listen to them back. Mhm. But I put them in a different voice. You didn't use [ __ ] Archer, did you? I'm not reading I'm not reading your ideas back. I was going to say you better enjoy using 11 Labs before this huge lawsuit comes down. I called my assistant Tom. I said, "Hey, can you and he was like, what do you want me to do?" I said, "I want you open up 11 Labs and take this and put it in there so I can listen to it." Why do you want to listen to it? I said, "Because I I would wrote this down and I want to remember it, but I want to remember it by listening to it." Okay, fine. So, uh, so I did that. How do you come to think about the sort of earnings and financials arc of the music industry over the years? I've heard, you know, all manner of you need to be as much a business person as an artist now in order to be able to make it in the world of music. That live is flourishing, that live is dead, that albums are pointless, that waterfall releasing is the only way to make money. What's the what's the current state of financials in the music industry? Well, live music is definitely a place to that if you excel if you want to make a lot of money and you're you have a successful live um I mean there there's not the money in in just say rock music. There's not money in there's not as much money in streaming as there is in live music if you're a huge band. You know, Metallica is not out there living off their streaming. Well, they maybe they are with their streams because they have songs that are getting streamed that were that came out with the [ __ ] lifestyle that Metallica has probably got. Yeah. So, um uh it's live is incredibly important. Can you um can you make a living as a um from record sales? I mean, it used to be a thing where if you had a hit record that sold 3, four million copies, physical copies, the record labels, it would eventually get to the point where they had to pay you for the record sales. But you r very very few artists made money from actually selling records. They'd make money from publishing. They make make money from, you know, radio airplay, things like that. Um, but one of the only reliable places to make a living in music is playing live. as far as and it that that goes for any level whether you're playing at your local pub, whether you're playing at the Norormo Dome here, wherever it is. I don't know what Austin with the Moody Center. Okay. Um that's why people go out in these long tours. That's why ticket prices are incredibly high. Um if you can sell tickets, that's where because it's funding the rest of the operation. Yeah. Right. And it wasn't that wasn't always the case. You know, pop music still there's still money in streaming for huge pop songs. You know, there's plenty of uh plenty of artists. Post Malone, you look on his thing or the weekend, they used to have they have multiple songs. They have over two billion streams, you know. Um, Cold Play, anybody that's in the top any any of the top 25 artists on Spotify, those people are making a fortune from streaming. Um, as you get further down, it's less and less. And then it's just, uh, you know, kind of always been like this. I think sometimes it's overexaggerated how much money people used to make from from uh radio and from record sales and things like that. Everybody loves the idea of a golden era. Yeah. That they weren't a part of, right? I will say this though, as a producer, one of the things that when I started producing and things were um went to streaming eventually, is that people didn't have the physical CD to see the producers's name on the back, whoever it is, whether it's me or whoever it is, or see the songwriters or see um who played on it. So, those things are not available. Well, if I want to know who played on a song, I have to go to a separate website. I have to go to allmusic.com to It's not in Is it not in credits on credits on on Spotify are they'll have the songwriter and they'll have um but they don't have the the people that played on the record. Oh, okay. So, you have to either go to to um Wikipedia. Would you those things should be connected? Do you think it would be a good idea for Spotify to just integrate? Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's so bad about um like if you look at Sabrina Carpenters's newest song when you go to Manchild for example, Amy Allen and Jack Antonoff both have hundreds of credits, but Amy Allen only has a little triangle that oh you can click on it. You click on it and shows you all the list of her songs from the most streamed down. Jack Antinoff's doesn't have that. But if you go to a different song of Sabrina Carpenters, Please, please, Please, that was on the last record that they were both involved with, then you then they both have arrows on it. You can click J Jackinoff to see all his stuff. Why is that? It's just that they haven't gotten around to updating it. I mean, it's stupid, right? You'd think that, hey, if you were him, hey, why don't you update my thing there? And and whose job is it to put it on there? And then of course you go to this streaming thing on Spotify, it takes you to a different on my phone, a Safari browser, and then you can't get back to Spotify. You have to close that. And if you want to look someone else up and it's just it's ridiculous. All that information should be contained in there. What What's the good, the bad, and the ugly of Spotify and its impact on the music industry? I like Spotify because I like it's easy to make playlists on it. And Apple, I have both. I pay for both every month. I've always paid for Apple. If you have an iPhone, you know, I I have tons of music that I paid for that are part of the Apple ecosystem and I pay the monthly fee and um but I use Spotify predominantly. I just it's just easier to use. And that's the thing, you know, it's the it's kind of like why did certain why did Facebook outlast MySpace, you know, why did you know eventually people upload so much stuff to Instagram or Facebook or whatever that they don't want to try a new social media platform. Right. You're saying that Spotify the ease of making playlists on Spotify has given everybody sunk cost fallacy. Yeah. And unless I can port all of my very complex and my algorithmic preference. Oh, so you're telling me I need to go back to 2014 and listen to all of the stuff I was doing there and it needs to see the arc that I went through and Yeah, Chris, I have hundreds of playlists on Spotify, private playlists that I refer back to. Hundreds. What What do I really want to go and start them all all over again on another platform? Even though Spotify pisses me off a lot, no, I don't want to do that. I don't know of any artists. I know of lots of podcasters, me included. Thank you, Danielle E. Uh, they treat me very well. I'm super happy with what they've done. Uh, but I it's very rare that I speak to a musician and they say, "Yeah, Spotify, thanks. Really good." People get mad at me when I do my every four months I do a Spotify top 10 countdown video. And I do that so that people know and and people get mad in the comments like, "I don't believe that these are the top songs." What? What do you mean? I'm just reading them off the thing. Easily verifiable. Yeah. I'm not part of a scop to make you believe that Sabrina Carpenter is higher up than she actually is. Right. It's like what? I have nothing to gain from, you know, this is what's on the charts. Well, it's all I don't believe it because it's uh these are all bots on this thing. It's like you where's your evidence that it's all bots on? Is it possible for something to change with regards to Spotify? It does seem like I don't know what coming to a head even means. Musicians need Spotify. If you got, you know, even medium-sized bands doing hundreds of thousands of plays monthly, what are you going to do? You're going to protest Spotify. You're not not putting your music on Spotify. You're going to keep putting your music on Spotify. So, what does it mean to try and apply pressure to the guys at Spotify HQ in order to make some sort of a change? But we have a a little bit of a unsolvable equation here, which is that the artists, many of the artists I speak to have a problem with it. You know, it's And what is their problem? That they don't feel like they're getting compensated fairly. Yeah, there's the the compensation is um insufficient. the removal of staff that happened I think about 18 months ago, 2 years ago or so, uh resulted in much more algorithmic curation of playlists rather than human curation of playlists. Uh that largely seems to be a complaint by artists who aren't getting algorithmically curated into playlists very much cuz I'm sure that all the people that are at the top of the new music Wednesday or whatever are like, "Yeah, I love it." Um but still, I I I do think that it allows the um system to be gamed in a manner that's a little bit less fair. I think rightly artists have a a very big concern around what's happening with AI. Uh, I don't know whether this is true. I got sent some information uh that suggests record labels get paid out at a higher rate per stream than independent artists do that there's some sort of preferential pricing which means that if you can bypass the record labels and go straight to the AI artist. There's also a even more uh large concern which is well if Spotify is able to reverse engineer its own AI artists then kind of like if only fans developed a VR girlfriend uh company that you would end up completely bypassing all of the poor Only Fans models that were no longer needed because you have both distribution and creation contained within the same platform. So, I think the the last two around the AI bands and and this reverse integration up back up the the stack. Um, those are future concerns. Compensation and playlists are the two things that I hear the most. Um, but I don't know I don't know what artists can do. They need Spotify. They do need it. It's it's uh it's it's kind of like people that complain to me, oh, they're I'm I'm being shadowbanned on YouTube or I'm doing this and that. Your content sucks, dude. You know, the algorithm hates me. It's like the algorithm is the audience. It's like there's nothing to hate. It's, you know, it does it's it's agnostic. You've fallen off for a little bit and you just need to be a bit more creative. Yeah. I I feel it. It's uh I don't know. I I just I I wonder what that is. Okay. What do you think the future of music monetization looks like? What will artists do when it comes to keeping the liquidity wheels greased? It's hard to say. Um, I saw a uh I forget who was talking about this about using blockchain to to verify that something is a real a real artist as opposed to AI, right? and um that that's a a would be a great use of that technology. Um and as far as the future of of monetization, hard to say. Um because I'm even though I'm involved in the music business, at least in the with what I do, I don't A lot of the people that I interview are really famous people that made their money in the old music business and they're like heritage. Yeah. So it's uh none of them are missing any meals as they as they say. So, it's I don't hear about the struggle. I No, I have friends that are that are uh that I have on the channel, younger musicians, and but they're all out touring for the most part. Everybody that I interview are people that are pro musicians that are, you know, my friend Tosen that plays in Animals as Leaders, he's been on my channel many times. Tim Henson from Polifia. And, you know, I know all the guys. Yeah. Zed. I mean, all these people that that that are friends of mine that have been on my channel, they're all professional musicians and they've all got their own recipe of of all the different income streams, whether it's some people are they have the money from Spotify, they have a YouTube channel, they have a pedal that they that's their thing or pedal company or they've got their amp model that that is uh made by Neural DSP or what whatever it is they've got their whole recipe of special Yamaha leather strap or whatever it is whatever it is that that uh that or they're doing you know some people do these lessons group lessons before shows they do VIP meet and greets I mean there's so many different places that you can that you can uh that's a really good point I think what musicians and I understand why uh especially given the CPMs that we can generate on YouTube, uh, especially on podcasting with a 2, three hour long episode, the RPMs can get really get up there, especially if you hold on to people. Um, I understand why I put so much blood, sweat, and tears into making this record. I put it out and you got to pay 10 bucks a month and listen to it infinity times and I got paid a rounding error on my sandwich for today. Um, that feels unfair and I think it feels unfair largely due to anchoring buyers that in the past that CD would have cost $10.99 or $7.99 or something. And [ __ ] like that like I missed that. Imagine if I got the streams I did, you know, a million plays a month, but they were all they were all single sales at 3.99. That would be amaz but and you don't. But then on the flip side of that, you think, okay, well, you can do uh early access uh Patreon behind the scenes subscriberonly content. You can get easier access to merch. I got a a friend who the way that they do merch at shows in order to speed it up is these QR code things that you buy in advance and then you collect it like getting Uber Eatats like collection, which is a great idea. Yep. uh you have the uh listing on your Spotify page for your upcoming events that will geoarget the people that are listening. Dude, that wouldn't have happened. You'd have had to have had an outdoor billboard campaign that would have been organized in each different city that you were going to or fly posting or putting in the newsletter or putting it on paying for [ __ ] radio spots. Okay, so we've got that. We got merch. Merch can be sold through a merch shelf on Spotify. We don't have that yet. Podcasters don't have that yet. where I can't sell my merch that on Spotify. Um, you can sell courses same way that you do, the same way that Gabe from I prevail does, right? You can use your live experience, capture that, use that as the front end of your funnel, then teach people to do the thing that you do to get the life that you have in order to, you know, so it's kind of just a changing of the times. Um, but I I really do I feel it because fundamentally what we want is creative songs that make us feel something and are a good vibe. And the less that bands are incentivized or artists are incentivized to do that thing, ultimately the live experience will be worse because the songs aren't going to be as good, the listening experience is going to be worse because it's going to be more homogeneous and and there's going to be less care and attention put into it. like everything is sort of born out of the song. And is it Spotify's job to incentivize the culture of music creation in that way? Probably not. I think it's a difficult argument to make that it's their job to do it. But uh it kind of is their position in the market uh to to enable that at least. And I think that this little Gordian knot is kind of where where people get caught up. When I open Spotify, if there's a band that's in town in Atlanta, it's oh my god, they're playing. I mean, that's that's it's amazing to be able to you're you've shown the interest and you go go to this artist. I would never have known because there are no magazines or anything that I'd look at to see I I Fred again's coming to Austin. I didn't even see that. Yeah. So, it's it's uh uh there's so many artists that I when I look at Spotify that I'll click on a song and and I was, "Oh my god, they're'll be here next week." And I think that that there are so many opportunities for people to um you have to be creative though to make to to take all these different income streams and combine them to make a living. But uh the uh my friend Tosen, Tosen Ambassi, Tosen has a guitar company. He's uh has plugins that he makes or that he's uh he's got so many different things that he's a part of. He's a real entrepreneur. And the and the people that do well nowadays that uh are people that that don't just write songs and go out and tour with their band. they they they have to figure out what their recipe is for making a living and and it takes a lot of work to do that. That's that's the drag of it that it takes a lot of work that is that used to be done by other people and is orthogonal to the main thing. Right. A lot of musicians and this is kind of creating the world that music's going to move into which is a lot of musicians get into music to be purists and then to play songs that they care about and have people respond and all the rest of that stuff. But increasingly, if you need to be a businessman and the success of your uh operation is based on how good you are at business, well, that's going to select for business people, not for musicians. And right, that's not fantastic given that we're all here to listen to good music. And uh yeah, I Chris, when people complain to me, I didn't mean to interrupt, but when people complain to me, younger musicians, about stuff, I'm like, "Hey, I'm 63 and I figured out how to do this stuff." I mean, come on. It's like I think the we're not splitting the atom here. The glass half full approach to this is the only way to go about it because okay, dude, you're not happy with the state of the music industry. Stop, right? Stop making your music. Yeah, that's cool. There's there's other stuff that you can do. Why don't you go be a music teacher? I don't want to do that. It's like, all right, then figure it out. Figure it the [ __ ] out. Right. You do not get to whine about the changing of an ecosystem that is happening to everything. You know, the the horses being upset, quite rightly so, at the fact that they were about to be killed, uh, and supplanted by the automobile in, you know, the 20s. There was an entire industry of muck shovelers in New York, New York City, to get rid of all of the muck that came out of the horses. Within the space of 5 years, all of the muck shovelers were gone. um okay that that's some but here's another thing you are as far as I can see it from a musician standpoint you are more protected than almost any other industry because of live because AI cannot come and replicate live yet it's not what what would that mean what would it mean to replicate a live experience I was just talking about the state robots going out and playing the AI songs okay of course I'm I'm joking with this yes so this is uh of course this will be somewhere in the future be robots that can really shred on the guitar. Mhm. I think people will go and see it as a spectacle. Yeah. But it's not going to have and again Okay. So, you have this walled off garden in order for me in the podcasting world to do that. I need to completely revamp. It is not the same skill set for me to go out on stage and do a 2-hour TEDex talk with fingering jokes, which I am doing actually. So, come and see me in Chicago, Boston, Denver, New York, Salt Lake City, and where's the [ __ ] final one that I've forgotten about? Austin, uh, this winter. Come and see that. Everyone else is sold out. In order for me to do that, I don't just get to do the thing. I don't just get to replicate things I say on a podcast. Like, it's a whole new [ __ ] Yeah, it's a whole new moat for me to get over in order to be able to do that. But even for me, I'm thinking I should probably apply quite a lot of effort to becoming really good at doing live because if Notebook LM comes [ __ ] human centipedes me out of the front of this industry, I'm going to have to have a new moat that can't be replicated. And um and the people that it can that that it's going to replicate, the people like you and I that have so much content out there with our image training data, right? I mean, that's the this is like the easiest easiest thing to do. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I mean, 2,000 videos for you, whatever. Two two and a half thousand on my channel. Yeah. I look, I really think that the the live element is something that will be protective, but you are fighting against an ever more insular uh culture, especially among young people. So yeah, going out to see Benson Boon or whatever sounds great, but you know, Netflix is on and I'm sure that someone will record it and put it on YouTube and I can just watch it through my whatever. I like I've heard it on Spotify a bit like do I really need to go out? So times are changing, man. And um I know I my for all that I can kind of tell musicians that I think it's the times are going to change and they need to keep up with it. I really hope it doesn't damage the creation of music cuz that would make me really sad. Been a huge part of my life and um it would suck. It would suck to not have the kind of emotional depth that people access through good songwriting be taken away by uh yeah. Well, we're in an interesting time right now. Just the fact that that that these AI artists that they're I mean to me that they're testing the waters and then we don't know who's doing it. If it's Spotify's art AI artists, is it Sunno? Is it Udo? Whose artist is this? Is this in conjunction? Is it one of these AI company music companies with Spotify and they're testing it out to see if people will will bite on it? I think it's fascinating actually. Well, there's definitely going to be and the the main fear that people have is it's an open loop. It's like, okay, what's going to happen? And we don't know, you know, if we come into land and, oh, okay, there's, yeah, there's AI playlist with AI artists in there, but it's actually walled off or it's this, but the concern people have is what if the top 10 is, you know, five of them are AI? What if that makes it twice as hard to get to the stage that I need to? And actually to create even more fear, um, if you assume that the reason that live works is because people have privately listened to the track, but that real estate in people's ears is being taken up increasingly by AI, that does make getting to the critical mass to become a successful live artist more difficult. Um because the the song the record is the genesis of the interest and the popularity that you then sell merch and do your courses and do all the rest of it. Well, I'm sure that there'll there will be platforms that will arise that are, you know, non AI just human only. Yeah. Which is pretty funny to to think of, right, that you have to do that. But that's there's a there's a business model for that out there right now ready to be had at some point. Yeah. I don't use Spotify anymore. They have AI artists. I don't you know it's like buying people I only buy organic, you know, organic music. Funny. Rick Bat, ladies and gentlemen. Rick, you're awesome, man. Your channel [ __ ] crushes. I appreciate it. Same. Same. But thank you for inviting me. Until next time, man. Let's uh let's keep a weather eye on whether or not we're going to be replaced by robots anytime soon. Hopefully not. Right. Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, well, first off, congratulations for making it to the end. You have the staying power and lack of ADHD that you should be very proud of. But there is an episode with Under Oath all about music, touring, mental health, performance anxiety, and a ton of other stuff right here. So, watch it. Gone.