Ep. 249: Rick Beato | Songwriters Got Poorer. AI Is Next. So Where Is Music Going?

I think we're in the best era of pop music. Am I wrong? You're wrong. Why? There will never be another Beatles again. Never. You spend your life being a musician. What was it like for you to have the biggest hit of your life be a YouTube channel? That was a big change in the industry then. Did that make music worse? We're watching a Michael Jordan pop music. I would argue that there are no two people that are current stars that could come out and have the gravity of who are those two people today. How did you get involved in YouTube? We make this one-minute video and I put it on my Facebook page which add about 30 followers. Eventually that video got about 80 million views. The quantity of writers on Solens is a conversation that you and I were talking about. You have to write more than two times the amount of hits to get paid what you got on the first. You're getting 140,800 dollars a song that is a billion streams wild. Are you bullish on the future of the music business? This season is presented by NMPA, the National Music Publishers Association. Champions of songwriters and publishers everywhere. Welcome to And The Writer is I'm your host, Ross Golan. Today's guest is not just a producer, he's not just a songwriter and he's definitely not just a YouTuber. This legend is one of the most influential music educators of the modern era. A producer, multi-instrumentalist, professor and content creator who's built a global audience by breaking down the art of science of music itself all the way from Atlanta. This man is leading the conversation about music and the writer is Rick Biotto. What's up Ross, Samaria. Yeah, we're doing this. So introduce yourself. I mean, you know, like people who don't know who you are, like, well, then you're living in Iraq, but who is Rick Biotto? So Rick Biotto is, I'm almost 64 years old. I've been doing music for my whole life. I graduated from college with the master's degree in music. Actually, jazz studies from doing the conservatory back in the distant past of 1986. And then I was a college professor for five years. And then I got signed to a publishing deal with Polygram Publishing in 1992, a guy named John Tita signed me to a publishing deal. Yes. Yes. John was a legend. And he saw me play at CBGB's with a band. He's like, you got hit songs. I thought I was joking. He gives me his cards. Like John Tita. So I call my lawyer. I'm like, Hey, this guy John Tita says he wants to sign me to a publishing deal. Is he actually a real deal? He's like, dude, he's one of the head guys at Polygram. Yeah. So I did that. I moved to Atlanta 94. I played in bands got signed to a record deal with the band in 98, 98, 99, 98 made a record was a disaster. And what was that? The band was called billionaire. And we we were signed to London Sire Records. We made a record with a producer they got fired. And I didn't know how to produce at the time. So we were out here in LA for like four months. We were at Royal Tone and our G at like we were doing studio tour paying two grand a day with a producer that didn't show up ever. So then the label came in one day. He was there on the day that they came in and they fired him. And then they hired this guy Kevin Shirley to try and mix the record. And it was 48 track analog with no track sheets. It was a disaster. And then he cut all the he cut the leader tape. He put it on. So the time code wouldn't sync up. This is kind of right when pro tools gives it was 99. So it's basically when they didn't quite have the mix systems out yet or anything where you could put it all in pro tools. Well, I think they did. But anyways. So that's when I started producing. I was like, I'm never going to let that happen again. So I started hanging out with Kevin who's now really good friend of mine. And I started learning how to produce. And I that's I started producing bands. And then that's what I did for. So our band got dropped when the first universal bought out polygram. And then all the bands got dropped about three weeks after our record came out. What year was that? It was in two. It was a 99. It's what you know, I was I was just telling a story. And in 1999, this is this is what made me think about it was I was watching one of your clips about, you know, uh, throughout thriller in 1983 when it came out. And my one of my first jobs out here was being a runner for Michael Bodaker studio. He's the guy who played since on all that Michael Jackson stuff, you know. And, uh, but 1999 was this time when the thriller was only 16 years old. Right. And so when we're talking right now, we're talking about albums that came out in 2010. 1999 is like a bizarre time. I will say I did record my first two albums also to tape. And what you have to do is be rehearsed. That's right. You have to have played songs live and make mistakes and learn how you're supposed to record it. Yeah. And then sometimes you leave the mistakes just because you don't want to risk losing anything. But 99 that was Napster came out June 99. That was the beginning of the end. That USC and USC was the first to sue Napster. So you had this school. You had this music industry program. This before there was a pop program where the kids are using reason on their computers. And the teachers and the teachers are all trying to say like, uh, digital never work. You got to use analog. Analog is everything. Let's sue Napster. And the kids are like, we're all using Napster in our rooms. And then we're and we're using reason like there's a disconnect here. Well, a lot of stuff. That particular year was a really pivotal year. It wasn't just Napster, but it was, um, did you design put out this? Did you oh one, which is the first, you know, the first home recording thing that I think that now obviously a lot of people use Ableton, they use logic, things like that. But that really changed the music industry was that when people started, computers got fast enough, even though they were using the scuzzy ports. I don't know if you remember those. Yeah, sure. With the 10,000 RPM, uh, drives and stuff. But that was a big change in the industry, then, um, that basically is how you do records now. Did that, uh, make music worse? Not initially, not initially. It was, it was a, like, I wouldn't be here talking to you today if it wasn't for the digio one because one of the things that Universal did. So Universal dropped our band and resigned us, but they didn't put our record out again, but they bought me a G3, a Mac G3 and a digio one and, uh, SM7 and a, and a 57 and a 421. So that, so I could record stuff. And that's how I learned how to do audio recording and producing. If it wasn't for that, then I wouldn't be able to do the video stuff when I, uh, you want to start my YouTube channel on 2016. So this was all, so this is really related. And I'm friends with the guy, Peter Goacher, who started digio design back in 89. I think it was and Peter, we've, we've talked, we talked a lot about this, about the development of pro tools and he sold it to avid in 2000. When you got into, uh, producing for other artists, one, did it make you jealous? No, no, because I was about, I was, you know, when I started producing, I was 37 at the time. So I was kind of like, I don't really want to go around in two or I don't want to do this. And, you know, I'd much rather, uh, work with, uh, do un-multiple projects because you always, it's always something new, right? I mean, you do, you write all the time. It's always something different. So to me, you know, one day I'd be working with, uh, you know, alternative band, you know, kind of indie band, next day I'm working with a new metal band and, uh, it was all different genres and music. And, um, I enjoy not only the, the producing part, but I enjoy the engineering and mixing. And I love tracking and stuff like that. I love recording drums. I love, I'm into the engineering part of it. To me, that's, that's, that's one of the most fun, fun parts of it. When, uh, I know the answer to this, but for those who don't, uh, what are some of the biggest bands you've worked with and what are some songs that people might know? I don't know if people know many of the songs. I worked with a band called Shine Down and their first record in 2002. Um, but I didn't really have any of the big singles. I don't know if they had, they had a, their single that they had on there was a song that they recorded acoustically on a radio station that they added to the record after that, um, it was a cover. It was a, a, uh, Leonard Skinner cover, Simple Man. And that was the massive hit on the record. And it wasn't even part of the record. But it was an era when you could, it reaped the benefits, uh, of a hit song that wasn't yours. Yeah. So that was a, but they did it at a radio station in Boston. And, uh, and then the labels like, we need to add this to the record. Which is kind of weird when you think about it adding it to the record. Well, now you could do it. Well, you would not, now you would just release it as a separate single. You know, you just put it up on, on Spotify or whatever. But, uh, but then you, they had to actually reprehend. the record. They're actually now, it's almost the opposite now, because super fans are buying want to own something tangible, that CDs and vinyl right now, the extra tracks that are added on, the bonus tracks are back to being cool, because there aren't a lot of things that labels can do to create exclusivity. So these bonus tracks are being released on repressings of these vinyl to create a lower amongst fan bases. So you're going to see more of the additional song becoming the single like it was 10 years ago and like it was 20 years ago. So it's actually coming back to this, because people are starting to want vinyl. You know when I interviewed a couple of the guys in Pearl Jam, Mike McCready, guitar player, their song "Yellow Lead Better" was a B-side, and that's one of their biggest songs. I mean I have my first number one song, a country song that was a B-side, and you know I've had my first Celo single, that was a B-side, the Lady in a Belm song, I had an Andy Grammar song that was a top 10 song, that was B-sides, like the B-sides, even then as the repackage, it's an opportunity to say like hey focus on this, but I think it got lost in streaming as like this is the extra song is just so we can keep you longer so we can, you know, benefit more on stream. So your album just becomes a longer playlist, but it didn't actually serve a purpose and now it's starting to serve a purpose again, which is kind of cool. I had a song in 2007 that I wrote with the band, I was just talking about this, that this band called "Parmely Country Band". So I wrote this song with them called "Carolina" 2007 and in 2013, I didn't forgot about it honestly, in 2013 the singer Matt calls me, he's like, "Hey, we got signed we're a country band now and do you remember the song "Carolina" that we wrote together?" I was like, "Uh yeah, so I went back and listened to it." I was like, "Oh yeah, remember that song?" Well, it's going to be our next single and we rerecorded it's coming out in February. Okay, cool, I mean how many times do you? We think they think it's going to be a big hit, making a video for it okay. Well, December of that year was number one for two weeks, so a song that was six years old that sat around in a hard drive forever and you know. It's also, you can't explain two weeks in the pop world is a different thing than two weeks in country. Country has a tradition of ringing the bell and then letting them go. That's right. You know, so a song that has two weeks at country radio number one has a lot of likes to it and that's a real hit. Yeah, so it was 43 weeks till it hit number one 43 weeks in the church. That's also another anecdote which is you want, the song comes out and you hope that it goes to number one the next week but in reality, what you really want is that it goes number one in 43 weeks because then you can, you get royalties as it grows, it builds a bigger fan base, those songs that ring the bell and then disappear, those are far less valuable. What was interesting about it is that they, they went up and down around 40. If you lose your bullet back then, it was pretty, you pretty much was over, so if you know, but, but they lost their bullet like four times and it came back and it was pretty amazing. So good. Yeah, so, but that was, but I did a little stint Nashville where I wrote with all the top country readers in 20, the end of 2013 into 2014 for probably about three months or so, but then it's like, I lived in Atlanta. It was tough to drive up. My kids were young and it's funny because I'm friends with all the people now because I know all the session players up there and everything, but, but I was like, yeah, this is, you got to live in Nashville to really do that or you got to be committed to writing all the time, but I was a track guy back before. It's kind of like right when being a track guy. In pop music, there were track guys then obviously, but, but in Nashville, you know, because I can play everything and I would do demos with, I'd, I'd program the drums. I'd play the bass, keyboards, banjo, mandolin, whatever it needed, you know, and I would come there with fully recorded songs and what do you think of this? What do you think of this? And then, you know, the best part of Nashville is you walk away feeling like, man, I'm the best. And then nothing comes out really like all the songs I've ever had come out they've done anything in Nashville. We're mostly written in LA and I've spent a lot of time in Nashville. I got married in Nashville. I love it so much, you know, but it's a, you know, different. It's a different thing like you always leave and somebody who can come in with well recorded tracks, they get, they get a lot of love. You just said that you, I asked before the cameras were rolling. I said, did you, you know, are you still producing? You said you had just gone to Nashville. What were you working on? No, I was, I wasn't. So, so when I went to Nashville, so I did a, I did a video with Daniel Tashian. He wrote a song that, that I wouldn't say, I produced this thing. I made a video where I'm theoretically the producer, but it's why, why do you say that? Because the Nashville guys produce, they do their own tracks, Tom Bukovak. So I called up, I was going to Nashville to do an interview. So I called up Tom Bukovak, who's a really good friend of mine. Like, hey, Tom, uh, let's get, I'm going to be up in Nashville. Why don't we get you in a couple other guys, different instruments to get together and we'll just kind of sit around and I'll interview you guys together. And he's like, why don't you just produce a track? And I said, well, who's track? He goes, let me find, find somebody with the song and I'll put together a group. So he puts together a group. I knew about half the guys in the thing and, and, um, and Daniel provided the song and there's this singer Cecilia Castleman that was, um, she was a singer and they tracked the song live. The vocals are live. Daniel's harmonizing at the same time. So we tracked it live and filmed it, but it was three passes. And I was like, uh, uh, uh, the, I said, did anyone make a mistake and Todd Lombard or the acoustic, but he's like, well, my fingernail buzzed on one chord. He's like, I can punch that and it's like, okay, well, punch that in. Then Tom's like, I can double my solo. I was like, okay, that'll be good. But the video's like nine minutes long. It's infuriating when you see it the first time. If you're in a, describe what a demo session is in Nashville. Hey, guys come in. They do, you know, they'll do a takedown of the chart that one, whoever the session leader is, they'll write down the number chart. They'll pass it around and then they, they play like two takes. Maybe they're all like, they're all like talking and drinking coffee while this thing's playing and then they go and they nail it on the first try and what I said when you said I said, well, that's just AI. Yes. What is the difference between AI and what you just did? Well, they don't, they don't own the rights to the, they're not using the rights to other people's songs. Okay. What if it's license AI? What if, what if, what if it is license and it was trained, and it trained on license works? Because there will be ethical AI. What's the difference then between producing a song using AI and producing something using other people's intelligence? Well, I mean, this is just like how do people feel about it? You know, my thing is like people are going to use AI. That's, that, that thing is long. Yeah, it was so, like I don't, to me, it's, it's not even like I don't even have the discussion with it about it anymore. The, the, the labels own the intellectual properties of the actual sound recordings. They own the sound recordings. The, the artists theoretically own their voices or the voice print of their voices. They don't. They don't. The label does. The label does, but they own them. Sadly, you don't in the United States. Okay. First of all, you know, like, shout out to, to companies like Splice that have, that are training ethical models on this, like there is a world where this, I do believe that this will be helpful, especially for songwriters who may not have the access. Okay, wait, so you're, if you're signed to a deal, then they will own your voice. Correct. Well, and if you're not though, this is a sad part. You don't even own your visual likeness in the United States. So I saw the No Fakes Act is why we're trying to get that past as, you know, to get into some advocacy stuff, supporting No Fakes Act is so the United States can protect people's likeness, vocally, aesthetically, in other countries. In, I believe it's maybe the Netherlands. You actually trademark your face and your voice, but in the United States, you cannot trademark your face or your voice, which is why you can sue AI models for training on existing works that they don't own, but you can't sue for using your voice. So the, which is wild. Yeah. Okay, so wait, continue on with the, with the, with the about AI, what they're doing, the Nashville guys about that. - I'm saying this in just, look, man, I love instrumentalists and I am, you know, they using somebody's feel and whatnot in the moment, there's, I think there will be a giant push for analog performances, even if it's going to be DJs, the idea of living in the moment, live music, all these things are gonna gain more and more value in a world where everyone has more and more access to create slot. So, I support people who support real instrumentalists and real songwriters and real art, and if that means even while they're training AI to support actual players is essential for having music that sounds like actual music, that's why I sort of die a tribe on it. But I think the idea of sitting at a computer and prompting it to perform instruments and arrangements in a certain way is not totally dissimilar to a producer in a room with the most skilled instrumentalists in the world and saying, "Hey, Kenny Arnaf, like, I want that drum fill." Hey, Leland Sklar, I want that bass fill. I'm specifically speaking of an era that you're very familiar with too, because there aren't a lot of studio musicians at all anymore in the pop world, but those guys played on everything in the 80s. We can go down the list of these guys where it's like, the A-list people will continue to eat, but I think that the, I think that as models, as AI models, improve people who know how to use it as a tool and can get the performances out of it like a good producer would, is, I don't know, it creates an equity amongst people who aren't in Los Angeles, you know? - So when I interviewed Steve Lucas, there was a dear friend of mine and Steve played on million records. He played on human nature, Michael Jackson on Thriller. Now, the muted guitar part and the arpeggio thing that he plays, like nowadays, that would, you get songwriters credit. And a lot of the stuff that he does on all these famous songs that he plays all these hook lines, he would get credit for it. - Yeah. - And-- - How do you feel about that? - Well, I mean, I asked him how he feels about it. I'm not the one that played it, right? And that was just understood that that was part of being a session guy, that you just brought those ideas in and you did not get compensated for him. So, all these Nashville guys, they've played on a million, everybody that I had on my video has played on a million records. Anything that's trained on the records that they've done, which is a lot of them, it's just regurgitating their ideas and everything. But then again, if you have four chords that you're playing over, C, G, E minor, D, right? There's only so many things that people are gonna play, the same person is gonna play on these things. If you have a million songs written that way. - Well, let's go back to, I think the quantity of writers on Solens is a conversation that you and I were talking about, it's something important to discuss. And one of the things Teter and I talked about, and you also spoke to Teter about that 20 years ago, I think the average number of writers on a top 40 song was, I wanna say 3.4 and 20 years later we're at 7.4. I will say anecdotally that I know that those splits are not necessarily equal splits, but for the sake of this conversation, let's round down to three writers and seven writers and just assume that they're equal splits. So 20 years ago, you're a writer on a top 40 song, you have 33.3%, somebody gets 33.34%, and now you're getting 14.28%, which means that you have to write more than two times the amount of hits to get paid what you got on the first, not including things like inflation and all the other stuff. - Okay, can you give us, Ross, can you give us some, some, instead of splits, let's actually take money and let's do it. - Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna butcher this, so I'd have to look up what the actual numbers are, but you know, I mean, it's easier to just think that-- - Let's say the song generates-- - Let's take of that album track from 2002, that's probably a better thing, you know? An album that sold two million copies at 9.1 cents per song generates 1.82 million dollars on that one song that was not a single. That was not a single, that you could make a living-- - You could make a great living by having album tracks. - So you get one third of those songs, and you're talking about a lot when you have seven songs on an album, or when you have two songs on an album. - Yes. - You know, those guys, we all know those guys that had the one song on, you know, the Britney Spears records, or the, you know, the Backstreet Boys records and 50/50 song, and those were tremendously valuable when you're talking about 20 million albums worldwide. But now you're talking about album tracks, they're almost completely worthless. - Right. - So even if you have one seventh of an album track that has no worth, but if a song that is, you know, let's assume that has a billion streams, which is a lot. - Yep. - They're only like a thousand songs that have reached a billion streams. So a billion creates one million in revenue from, only from streaming on that one platform, but roughly a million, even a little bit less than that. So that million now you're only putting in, you're getting a hundred and forty two thousand, eight hundred dollars on a song that is a billion streams. That is a bit of a travesty in, in and of itself. - Absolutely. - It's why I think also AI can be a huge advantage to songwriters who are not going to have to add in the instrumentalists who are demanding a share of publishing on a song they didn't write. - That's an interesting take. I have to think about that. I like that that say that you're taking this from the perspective of the writer that it's actually helping the writer. - I mean, think about all the writers. - It's interesting. - And how many times I've heard that before. That's kind of interesting. - You haven't been on this podcast yet. - Okay, wait, so when Ryan was on your podcast, he talked about the amount of songs that he, and I talked to him a little bit about this, the amount of songs that it used to take, well, he talked about a few different things about how many tracks he used to have to write versus, pre-2017, I guess, versus now, and kind of what the splits are and how much that they, how much a hit song is worth, then versus now, and how dramatically different it is. - Yeah, well, first of all, there were also a lot of artists, more artists that were willing to take outside songs. However, we're in a global economy now, and it's why I think the Grammys and other organizations should really reach out to Asia, because I think a lot of American writers are aiming to write on the biggest artists outside of the United States, 'cause they're still willing to take outside songs. And a lot of artists in the US are encouraged to write, even if they don't have the skillset to be a writer, which is a different conversation, too. But let's go back to the musicians that get writing credit on songs they didn't write. - Right. - You know, when we were trying to David Foster, I asked him, he was like, I didn't write the song, you know? And you're trying, you know, it was one of the greatest ever to do it. - Right. - Do you think that these guys should have gotten credit? - You have to understand, I come from that era, and that's just nothing that you even asked about. - You would never dream to ask about it. - You'd never dream to ask about it. You just assumed that when I played on records back then, and I played parts that some of you nowadays, well, that's the hook. The guitar part that you did there and everything, it's like, you just never said anything. I never did when I was producing. I never said anything, even if I changed melodies and stuff, it's like, I agree. I mean, I agree on a lot of it. I will say this, I think the order of process matters. So if you're going to create the track in which the song wrote on, it's not dissimilar to, you know, Lieber and Solar once sitting at the piano, one's writing lyrics, like, it's not dissimilar to like, if I'm gonna be the track guy and I send it out and somebody writes to that track, I think the person who created the track is part of the songwriting process. I think if there's four, five, six, seven people in the room, which, you know, I have a song that's top 15 at Dance Writing. right now with March Mallow, and there were a lot of people in the room, and we all contributed, and everyone is a writer on it. There are a lot of writers, but we knew what it was going into it. -Okay, so how do you do the splits when you're doing this? This is all equal splits? -We just went into it knowing that it was going to be what it is, yeah. It wasn't like, it wasn't like, "Hey, you contributed the pre-course, you have this." I don't really believe in that. Whenever I come across those artists, like the last time I'll work with that artist, but I think when you have seven people in a room, then yeah, it should be 14.28 percent, or some version of that, whatever it is. That's because that's everybody's contribution. I don't think that people were writing songs with seven people in the room, commonly before, but when you watch that Get Back video, and you see somebody coming in and helping with some of the chord structure for Paul McCartney, when he's writing "Let it Be" in this era. -He was Glenn Johns. -Yeah, might have been Glenn. In that era, like Paul McCartney's a writer, everyone's there is in service of the song and helping out, but Ringo in the back, who's not really paying attention, isn't a writer. Now it would be hard to argue that Ringo didn't get something for being there, and certainly everyone else, everyone in that room, and certainly anyone who contributed to chord structure while the song is being crafted would probably get publishing. -Yeah, the Beatles in 2026 is a four-way co-write. -Yeah, probably. -I think I just have, you know, my general thought is writers, and this is where the AI thing can be really useful is, you know, I've learned to be a pretty good producer without AI, but with AI, I also can quickly check out like what's the version of this song, the seven-year-old that that producer botched, you know, on a song that I thought was pretty good, and similarly, there are times where I'm like, that production was really good, but I think the song was even better, and I run it through a bunch of things, I'm like, man, this song is not good, and that guy saved it. The only reason why I was any good is because the production was incredible. I'm not saying that produced great producers shouldn't be tapped into either. I just think there's opportunity for writers to work on showing the song in the best way they can, and essentially, you can, you know, if people replay the parts, just what you're doing in Nashville. -That's true. And that's a lot of things that are happening in Nashville now, is that they are replaying parts of things that are generated on AI. I know that's crazy. -I'm telling people it needs to be. So when I first, I've been making videos about AI music since 2023. I did a, I testified on a Senate committee hearing and they did nine closed door hearings back in 2023, and I was on one of them. There were four four senators there. There were 19 people on the, in the hearing I was in, people from Spotify, people from the Motion Picture Association, and one of the things we all had to present papers and talk about them. One of the things that I chimed in on when they asked me, I said that, that anything that's 100% generative should not be able to have a copy right on it. That was my contribution. And that's, and what's interesting, because then, any, any of the AI music up until, I'd say probably a year ago, my kids, I've got three kids, my kids could tell instantly when something was AI, because the artifacts, usually in the vocal reverbs, it took me a while to, to figure this out. I'd, I would test it. I'd bring my phone up to our kitchen, I'd just start a song. If somebody's like, I think this is AI, I started, and my son, Dylan, and my daughter, Layla would be like, why you listening to AI? And I was like, great. And I said, how do you know this? They said, can't you hear that buzzing in the vocal? I was like, what do you know? So then I, then I split the tracks on. You could hear artifacts in the vocal reverbs, because of the way that the song is constructed with the layers and everything. And then, um, so I made a video where I, um, when this, what is it? Velvet sundown or something band came out and people were texting me, hey, I've heard this is AI. Can you tell if it is and everything? And so I made this video and then I made a video with lyrics. That's what lyrics sucked. That was one of the things. That's a, that's a big identify. Yeah. So, um, so then I was like, okay, I'm going to make a video with a fake artist. So I made up this artist, Eli Mercer, but I wrote the lyrics with Claude. Could Claude make, can write way better lyrics than, than, as soon as lyrics are terrible. So I, so I, I do the prompt and everything, and I write this song and make this video. And it was a big, really big video. So then I got, had people calling me, I did a CBS this morning thing where they did a piece, like a seven-minute piece where I wrote another song. They wanted me to basically remake my video. And I made it, and it made up this, um, uh, Sadie Winters was the artist that they made up. She's like an indie, indie pop songwriter. And, uh, and the song came out great. And, um, the people at Suno called me, I know people, they were like, did you sweeten the track or anything? I was like, what do you mean? I said, it doesn't sound like it had a lot more reverb and everything. It's like, I didn't do anything to it. That's just the way it came out. Now I did write the lyrics with Claude. And, and I think a lot of these models, the better the lyrics are. Yeah. I think it has to do with the, with the, uh, about how the, the, um, lyrical, um, kind of the rhythm of the lyrics will lend itself to, to the thing coming up with better ideas or something. I'm not sure. But I didn't prompt it more. I just prompted it one time. Does that deserve a copyright? Um, because it took a certain skill and taste to make that happen or no? I don't think so. No. It's fully generative. No. I don't think so. Yeah. Now they filmed it. So it's the guy sitting there. It was literally, it happened in, because when they called me, they said, how long will this take to make the song? I said, I don't know, like three minutes or so. It took about four seconds to do the lyrics. I typed out the prompt on the thing. I generated a picture first. Okay. Her name's Sadie Winters. So Chatchee BT, generated a picture. Then I wrote the lyrics with Claude. Uh, and then, um, I had a more sophisticated prompt to write the lyrics. And then I put it in the soon note. It came out with the thing. And, yeah, then people made AI videos of her singing this song. Yeah. It's crazy. Right. And then, um, and then I did another thing for NPR where I wrote another song, but this was like a dance, this is like an EDM song. And this was really, I thought a good song. And it was another female artist. And so I was playing it in the car from my daughter, Laila. She's come back from Taekwondo. And she's like, is this AI? And I said, can you tell? She goes, well, the song seems really good. But I think it could be AI. I said, it is AI. She's like, can you, can you isolate the tracks? I said, yeah, there's a stem. This is what when they came out of the stem splitter in sooner. So I came home. We go down the studio. I isolate the tracks. She says, let me hear the voice by itself. So I play the voice. And she says, wow, that's really good. The vocals now are incredible. Incredible. And I said, and I said, you know, to get a vocal because of the range was really, the range was like Kelly Clarkson in 2004. You know, a vocal take that you would work on for three days or something to get. And it was so. With the demo singer, you'd have to pay $1,200. That's right. So it was, it was amazing. And she's like, wow, that's really good. Yeah. And yeah, I think this what's really important. And I was on a text chain late last night with some strong visionaries of the next generation who are trying to demand, you know, the DSPs to take down fully generated songs, which AI generated songs, which is unlikely to happen. But I do think that that one of the things they're really honing in on is making sure that DSPs identify absolutely songs that are AI generated. So the there's not a question, you know, you can like you know cartoons that are hand drawn or done by computer or done by AI. But you generally know which one is which depending on the house that creates it. And in this in this world, it's so important. I don't I don't think it's realistic to assume that DSPs are going to take down any fully because they don't want you to leave. No, but I do think it's not worse for them to at least identify whether it's AI. And if you have a a toggle switch that would say I don't want to listen AI music, then it would remove it from your algorithm. Absolutely. But it wouldn't it wouldn't prevent someone else who doesn't care from listening to it. And if the reality is that I don't know what the point is if there's no commercialism around it, you know, here's some advice for those of you who are savvy. Listen to that fully AI generated hit and steal every part of it. Sample it, interpolate it, make your own hit out of it and they can't do shit because they have no copyright protection. Which is what you testify on yeah, so like if you really want to be savvy find all that AI Slop that's doing pretty well and that's you know and steal all of it and and because You also won't own that section, but you'll own the rest of it and the original people it'll just be like Like you can go pillage their quote, you know AI art so I just think if you're going to If this is the bad that they're making then a songwriter sleeping it man go take it go do it you want You know some people got mad at me when I was did these when I demonstrated how Suno works and stuff and it's like I'm just demonstrating to show people because a lot of people watch my videos to show them how How the thing works because otherwise you know you're there's a lot of non-musicians mostly non musicians and watch my channel and I think it's instructive to know about what these programs can do now I just did a video where I talked about a particular AI Artists that's on Spotify this unidentified is that and I And I said this is a way to tell if something is is fully generative go to their Instagram See what it was created so this one this one had a four million monthly listeners on Spotify wow and but yet the biggest song had 9 million plays so there's it's no one has four million monthly listeners has their biggest song is 9 million plays and They had 6,300 Spotify listeners. Yeah, I mean Instagram followers people are just looking you know when they have those Followers is because right now it's a gimmick so people are checking it out They listen to half a song and nobody wants to listen to it twice because they're like oh this embarrassing Well, I don't even think that they're listening. I think those are bots that are that are following either way It's still like non it's non repeat customers. That's right. You know NMPA is our lead sponsor yet again What is the National Music Publishers Association? What do publishers have to do as songwriters anyway? Well, unlike artists who can be unsigned artists there is no such thing as an unsigned writer You can be a self-published a co-published or a publisher writer publishers only make money if songwriters make money So NMPA goes and fights for you. They go to Congress They go and support the community. They fight DSPs to get you paid more. That's what they do They fight for you and they fight for this podcast So thank you for fighting for songwriters NMPA. Thank you for fighting for us, too I want to talk about, you know, you keep mentioning your channel and It's fantastic and as a guitar fan and a Pedestrian guitar player. It's fun to watch, you know some of these instrumentalists who are the best in the world You've been doing since 2016. I am in 2015 in December. I made a video to show my My friend Shane's wife Shane is this country singer I was working with and my son Dylan came down to the studio And I was like, oh, check this out and I start playing these chords for Dylan. Dylan is singing sing all the notes in this chord Dylan Dylan has insanely good perfect pitch Really dissonant chords, and so it changed like make a video of this for my wife Angie so I can sure so I think okay So I was like Dylan come on downstairs. I want to make this video. I don't want to I was like it's take one minute I don't want to use chewing a bunch of candy and I say to my wife me and it tell Dylan to come downstairs I was going to a school board meeting. I was on the school board of the school and he was in Second grade or some third grade Go on down. Go on downstairs. No, so we make this one minute video and I put it on my Facebook page which had about 30 followers So I'm in this school board meeting and Shane keeps calling me. I'm like, what's Shane calling me declined declined? So I get out of there and I'm like, you know, what's up, man? Because that video's viral and I said what do you mean viral? He says it's got 5,000 views. I'm like 5,000 views not viral video because you only have 30 followers on Facebook He goes watch tomorrow. I'll have a million. I was like, I don't believe it. So wake up the next day. It's got like 22,000 views I call Shane. It's like well, it doesn't have a million. He goes wait Well that night by like 10 o'clock I had three million views eventually that video got about 80 million views and I got thousands and thousands of emails from people um and a lot of famous musicians Writing to me to to ask me I mean people you would know if I could teach them this Yeah, and they didn't know who I was. I didn't have my youtube channel or anything and but they were just writing to me They found my email wrote to me So about six months later. So then we made people send some people thought it was fake So I made a couple other ones that got millions of views were Dylan's closing his eyes and it's like oh my god Don't we can do this because these were insanely hard things. It was very cool. Yes. I mean, I remember that Yeah, like who didn't who didn't see that one so um so it's like So six months later, I got so many emails I was like, I'm just gonna start teaching the theory and do ear training videos and stuff on youtube. That's how I started And then uh and then it was but I didn't do any music production things or anything like that at first and then I started branching out and Eventually did these song breakdown videos what makes a song great and I did these top 20 countdowns Then I started doing interviews in 2018 and um So I do I mean I do all types of videos and stuff but Is it weird, you know you spend your life being a musician you play on some stuff some stuff that becomes hits You know experienced a number one song in country, you know rock records that are number one But what's it like to what was it like for you to have the biggest hit of your life be a youtube channel It's uh, well it's it's strange um In that wherever I go people recognize me I think because I It's I mean it doesn't matter. I go to Europe. I go to Japan Korea wherever and people I think that I they see my pictures so many times because my thumbnails get hundreds of millions of views a month I mean I get about 50 60 million views on my youtube channel a month And but the thumbnails are seen but it hundreds of millions of times each month and I'm on every thumbnail So over 10 years and billions of views on on the channel like people recognize me Is it because your hair is excellent? I think so It's I must really look exactly like well everybody says you look exactly like you do I've filmed my videos in 4k and they're closing, you know you can see what I look like but I have a guy's got glowing skin and perfect hair You know, it's a weird thing. We're in a In a place right now where every time our podcast, you know rings the bell and it fluctuates and And they're they're charts you can watch and when you when you have these moments where you're you know you ring the bell It's it's not it doesn't feel any different in many ways than Having this week that hits on and there are artists that have You know if you if you can ring the bell a couple times in a year or you can sit there if you sit there for a while Then it's like having a number one song for two weeks. It's like having a number one song and it's hard to explain Oh, I'm just realizing oh, I kind of think we're we're kind of like an artist and this is our chart It's not just like You know in an alt rock chart. So they used to have a trending chart on YouTube that they discontinued a few months ago So I in the in three years I had 43 trending videos. That's like top 50 on YouTube in the world. Yeah, across all platforms. Yes And so I've had I had ones that were number two on trending in the world Right and these were be you know These are videos that we get a million views in the first in first 24 hours or whatever or more And they'd be I mean they're just be huge Bullets but it's like having a hit song. I mean basically. It feels like that. I guess well It doesn't it also creates revenue in a way that's that's unique for its path and it's a legit, you know um It's legit and what it is and since it's incredible. Do you uh what who's who's somebody that you really want to interview that you haven't Paul McCartney. Yeah, I say the same thing uh ringo. Can we just do it together? Yeah, let's do it But I mean there's very I've interviewed most of the people that I want to interview Keith Richards. I like to interview um You said this great. Sorry when we were talking on the phone the other day about uh getting the email About the key the key change or the uh it was uh Whatever your friend was who was playing all the different versions of the organ. I think it was So can you tell me that story because that story is so good. Oh with uh that I had this guy reach out to me about that He played this part wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I was I did this video back in 2019 top 20 Keyboard intros of all time And so this guy writes to me and he says hey, uh, I watch your video. I really liked it But on this song that was number one on my list wider shade of pale which came out in 1967 He's like your friend less played it wrong. Uh, he's played it's common people commonly play it wrong He's doing these inversions on the f and g coordinate and it's like So I write back I never return these kind of emails and I write back it's like well Maybe next time I'll hire you to do it and and if you can do it you think you can do all 20 Keyboard intros on the same day and and play them all correctly in front of the game. And he goes, he writes back, he goes, "Well, I know I can play that one right. I guess you don't recognize my name." And I was like, "So I'm thinking like, okay, what's, it can't be?" It was from 1967 type, I see Matthew Fisher. I type it in. I was like, what are the chances? I got Wikipedia. Yep. Matthew Fisher, keyboardist and writer, one of the writers from Progo Haram of Wider Shade of Pail. I could have played that. I wrote him back. Yeah, I'm so sorry. What a jerk, and he was totally cool. He was totally cool about it. But it was like, what are the chances? 1967 is, you know, 2022 or whatever. Yeah, well as they say, you know, the chances are 100%. 100%. So, we've never done this, but we decided to put together some cards. Uh-oh. So I think, look, I think you and I share a lot of similar thoughts about music. Obviously, we were, you know, I think some of the, you know, as you say, like you post videos and people have comments on it a lot of times. And, you know, I'm a proponent of where pop music is today. I'm the co-chair of the songwriter composer wing. And I see music in a really healthy place right now. And I know, you know, a lot of different conversations you've had. So, from that perspective, we'll start with the first one, which is, our songs today better or worse than they were 40 years ago. Depends on the song. Okay. When you said in, you said in a video you were talking about this year's Grammy nominees. And then you showed the 1984, you know, Grammy nominees for best song. And in 1984, what was it? Beat it. There were two Michael Jackson songs. There was Lionel Richie all night long. All night long, right? Michael Sambala was a maniac and then staying every breath you take, which won. Yeah. But the presenters were Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan. Now, there is no comparison. No one has the, there's no one out there. There's no, I would argue that there are no two people that are current stars that could come out and have the gravity of to present the year. Present song a year that are Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder. Who are those two people today? Who, well, those people today would be, you know, probably like a Kendrick Lamar, who, you know, it maybe would be like a Kendrick Lamar and Bruno Mars. Okay. I would argue that Kendrick Lamar and Bruno Mars are not Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan. Why would you say that? I just, they haven't been around long enough. Those guys at that time. That'll be really hard to. Well, Kendrick, I mean, Kendrick's a Nobel winning author. Yes. You know, he's like, he is as far as lyrics, you know, so is Bob Dylan. So both of them have, you know, both of them come from a Nobel, although Bob turned it down, you know, and then you have someone like Bruno, who is, you know, probably today, the most streamed American artist in the world and has, I would argue a discography that rivals. So you'd have to go back, so Bob Dylan, we have to go back into the early 60s. By 1984, these guys have been artists for 20 some out of years. Both of them, okay? That's right. And so, but these guys don't Kendrick Lamar and Bruno Mars's careers don't go back that far. Right. That's right. They're each about probably 10 years for it. Well, Bruno, maybe. Yeah. So, to me, that equivalent of someone that's been. Taylor Swift would be the closest thing to that. Taylor Swift would be the closest. That had a career long enough. We go back to 2006, when Taylor's first record came out, something like that, right? So, I mean, I think she's probably the, you know, maybe not even inarguably the biggest pop artists of all time. Inarguably, is it? I would say, like, I don't know, wait. Okay, because she has. Arguably or inarguably? No, I don't think you can argue it. Okay. I think it's a non, I don't think you can argue somebody who has the tours she's had, the albums she's had, the, the business havingness she's had, the longevity, the consistency amongst both the commercial success and the critical claim for 20 years. There were times in between, you know, maybe in parts of the '70s where Bob Dylan's records weren't as good as when it came out. Okay, let's, okay, we'll play it, play a game here. So, let's open up Spotify and look at Queen and compare Queen to Taylor Swift. Okay, and in their, the size of their top five songs in spins, Queen has been around for 50 years and monthly listeners versus Taylor Swift. Now, if we did that, does anybody have a phone here that we can do that with? I think here's the thing, you're still talking about Queen had a very short run in comparison, like, you know, yeah, I'm-- I'm Freddie Dye in 1991. And the Beatles had nine years of creation. You know, in the Beatles are the greatest band of all time. It's still be hard to compete with somebody with 20 years of like unrivaled chart success. Well, the Beatles were only together for eight years. For eight years, sorry. Well, the releasing records for eight years, yes. But I mean, the same, same thing, the idea though, of somebody like a Taylor Swift having, you know, the-- I'm curious now. The launch of it. I'm not even-- Okay, so what do we, what do we have here? Monthly listeners comparison. Monthly listeners comparison Queen 15.8 million Taylor Swift 105. Okay, what, what about their biggest stream songs? Queen, William & Rapsley, will go top five. William & Rapsley, three million. Crazy. Stop me now, 2.5 billion, under pressure, two billion. Another one buys the dust, 2.3. And we will rock you 1.6. That's pretty good. Oh, yeah. Hard to read, because it's a little out of order, as far as the top stream songs, it looks like cool summer, 3.2, blank space, 2.3, shake it off 1.8. Boom. [INAUDIBLE] Wow, that's amazing, actually. That's fast. That's a real fast, wow. So I mean, I'm just saying the idea of the longevity aspect of it is something that's undeniable. It doesn't even matter if I'm like a swifty or not. I'm just looking at straight up numbers. And it's really a difficult thing to rival there being a bigger artist. Even if you love Elvis, even if you love Madonna, even if go down, whoever it is, Diana Ross, these people had great runs and an amazing hits across multiple parts of their career. Michael Jackson, still like, I don't think, 20 years of a consistent chart success and tour successes. It's hard to be, we might be, we're watching, we're watching a, you know, we're watching a Michael Jordan of pop music. It's hard to have a career that's successful over 20 years, almost impossible. And the fact that we were both surprised that she's over a billion streams already. The record's been out since November, maybe, right? To have a billion stream song already in that short period of time is amazing. I will, another interesting fact is like, if you look the most streamed artist in the world, it isn't Taylor Swift, it isn't Bruno Mars. It's, you know, Indian artists and people outside of the United States. I think there are, there's this assumption, especially within the United States that they're American people. Going back to, you know, the idea of that post was that songs today don't rival those four songs at that time. Well, actually, my post was about the particular songs that were on this year's chart. And I think, I will say this, I think in the end, I don't know if the Kendrick song, I don't know where that will land as far as ever Greens go. But, you know, I do think that back to Friends which wasn't nominated, ordinary which wasn't nominated, will be those songs that certainly rival Maniac, which I grew up in the 80s, I loved the song, but I don't think if you asked a kid who was born now, if they knew, you know, when they're, they won't know Maniac. They're not going to know Maniac. And they certainly, you know, four. But they do know, they do know every breath you take. They do know thriller and they do know. I'd be more interested in what the songs were, say, like 1986. And this is where the Taylor Swift thing is, if you have a Taylor Swift or Bruno Mars in the same year, die with a smile is, you know, that's, that will, you know, that has, and that has chord changes. Yeah, that's chord changes. It's got a great melody and it's got a great production on it too. What's a better song, Papa Roach, last resort or ordinary Alex Warren? Papa Roach. Why? Because it's, because, 12 year old kids like it. Yes. And 12 year old kids don't like ordinary. It's more, I think it's skews more towards a little bit older. And, and, uh, pop roach is a bit 1.5 billion plays. They probably have about the same amount of plays. How many plays the ordinary have? I think it's over two billion. But, you know, you're trying to, it's, you know, it's set records across all radio in every country, like the UK and the US. It's one of the biggest songs. And I know, you know, uh, uh, uh, bias. I love the writers of that song. Um, great people. And I, but I think, you know, the feel of that and golden both had this shuffle 6, 8, 4, 4, depending where you count it, feels and vocal performance is on both of those were extraordinary and, uh, no pun intended. And I think that they, I don't know. There's something about the, I felt, I feel like the quality of that composition as a song is, is a better song. However, I think, you know, obviously I think it's our part of pop roaches, fucking set. Got a great guitar part. The, uh, it's interesting though that the, the, but the, the, when I make videos on stuff like that, I was just surprised that I put that on just to see the pop roach. Yeah. I put the pop roach song on the car. A lot of my videos come from driving my two daughters to school. It's like whatever I just said, I was like, I'll put this on. And then the fact that my, my 13 year old now, it's her birthday today, Layla. Yeah. So she was like, I know that song. I was like, what, how would you know this pop roach song? You kidding me? And, um, I guess you know it because it was, it's because it's all over YouTube shorts and Instagram and TikTok. Great. Like a virgin or pink pony club. Uh, pink pony club. Interesting. Why that? I'm bored of like a virgin. Yeah. That's fair. Bob Dylan or Kendrick or Bob Dylan. Uh, who's your favorite lyricist of all time? Johnny Mitchell. She lived not too far from here. This was this bot. Beat it or blinding lights. Ooh. That's tough. I love blinding lights. Most stream song of all time. Yeah. Mmm. But my friends played on Beat it. So I'll say beat it. Mm hmm. Uh, yes. Yeah. That's that's right. Hey, and, and, you know, uh, similarly, you know, I gotta go blinding lights because I'm friends guys. I think it's amazing. Um, is Max Martin the greatest songwriter of all time? I am the biggest Max Martin fan. I love Max. And, um, so the greatest of all time, I'd have to put Lenin McCartney up there and stuff. But Max, to me, is one of the most brilliant melody writers and, um, and producers. I think he's, you know, and I'd love him to come on my channel. I got a chance to meet Max one time a couple years ago. And he was incredibly cool. And I think he's so talented. Yeah. He's super generous. He's, you know, I've said, I've said all the nice things. You know, he's just, he's great. Um, all right. Do too many songwriters ruin or make a song better? Um, it depends on what song. I can't generalize that. Well, let's take Apta, APT, whatever you have, everyone to pronounce it. So there, there's a Gajillion writers on that song. You know, um, and there's a reason why. But what is the reason why explain it? Well, I think what's interesting about a song like that is one, everybody who contributed to the song actually fundamentally changed the song. Okay. Which is slightly different than people just playing to a fully written composition. People changed, you know, arrangements. They added different melodies. They had different lyrics. They moved the song around and they each had an opinion on it. And they were compensated kind of appropriately. I do think one of the saddest things in music since, you know, take the beat at era is like, you know, my Sherona got, those writers got a portion of Apta. What the fuck are we talking about? Like shame on musicologists, especially ones that work at record labels whose jobs are not to protect their writers and artists, but to go and litigate against their own creatives. Because they're scared of a blurred lines, you know, lawsuit that has never been held once, used, used once in court. And so you, you know, you have an era where all of a sudden there are more writers on that song than should be. So some of those writers and some of those interpolations are not actually interpolations. They're fear-based musicologists who are arguably unethical in the way that they're treating their job. So I think a lot of times you end up with songs with more writers on it because somebody, somewhere along the lines, who you have to clear this. Right. And they have to add those people. And they have to, they're added to it. Yeah. Just so that they don't have to. Just in case. Yes. I think the argument should be that if a label asks you to interpolate a song or request that, that the label needs to compensate you equally on the master's share. In the past, when somebody would would use a fragment of a melody that people, most of the time people never said anything. There's a, there was a thing, I remember where there's a Led Zeppelin song going to California. And there's a Pearl Jam song given to fly and there's a Torie Ames song. Silent all these years. Love that. Amazing song. That have similarities between the verse melodies. Just in the way it's a stepwise thing. Was there any lawsuits between those songs? No. Now maybe there will, maybe there will be because I just said that. No, no, no, they don't. People didn't care. No, they didn't care. No, it's if it was interpolated, it would be a, you know, it would be considered an homage. It would be, yeah, you know, Revell and Chekhovsky. And it's like always the example I use. Like they, they literally would go back and forth out of respect. Use the same melody and show what they could do with it. Right. You know, the jazz you call it a quote. Yeah, man, it's like a sweet thing to do. I'm not saying that you go and, you know, if I say, you know, if you're going to use the same title, the same lyric, the same melody, I've had one situation that was actually theft. Other than that, everything else that I've ever gotten an interpolation was some label that cleared a song I wrote with the publishers who were like, hey, by the way, you're a writer on this song. I'm like, I'm not, I didn't write that song. They're like, yeah, no, you wrote it because you, they cleared this sample. Well, that feels weird, man. This song that's out right now that's a single that I was like, they came to me and they said, well, what percentage do you want? I said, I don't want to percentage. I want to hug if it goes number one. I also can't be a songwriter advocate and then be a can't be two-faced about it. So Geese or Radiohead? Radiohead. What about Geese now versus the bends? The bends. We had this discussion last night at dinner. I mean, the answer is the bends. Yeah, the bends. I'm not, like, I'm not arguing with you. I just was curious. Yeah. I mean, the bends really is what made Radiohead because the first record, Pablo Honey is just, it's creep. Yeah, it's creep. That's the first record. And had they not made the bends? No one would know Radiohead. Right. I mean, that's what I was trying to, Marcus was on here, Mumford and we talked about the bend. I love it. Adele or Whitney? I love Adele. I love Whitney, but I love Adele. Yeah, also like, you know, iconic songwriter. I don't know what the answer is. They're so different, but like, so it's not really fair for me to do and then I have an answer, but I don't have an answer. So there you go. Let's go with, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Am I wrong? You're wrong. Why? Because the best era of pop music was, was 1960. '62 to 1970. - That's a really strange time to choose. - Well, I just think about that's basically the Beatles. - Yeah, but you're going from the sort of the, the reason why I say that is 'cause up until 1964 in the U.S. before the Beatles get here, it's Braille Building, Braille Building. You know, it's obviously, you know, whatever, Gershwin, all the way through, right? And you get into Braille Building in the '50s and, you know, Elvis and you get into like real pop music, the beginning of the music business, all the duop stuff. And then, so, the reason why I say that's a weird time to include is 'cause you're talking about the transition from an industry that's fully outside songs to by 1970, will extend it to 1971 to Carol King going from Braille Building to, you know, one of the greatest artists of all time. - Tapestry. - So it's really like this weird era switch from '62 to '70, 'cause I feel like that's like-- - When I think about-- - That's such a pivoting. - When I think about music, but-- - I think of the Beatles, that that's the era of pop music, that I think the greatest songs are written. I think the Beatles wrote the greatest songs and greatest pop songs. And there's no one that wrote with the variety that those guys wrote with in that period of time. There's just nothing we'll ever touch them. There will never be another Beatles again, never. They invented and they didn't repeat themselves. Their songs are so varied that there's nothing that anyone can do. First of all, their songs are far more sophisticated. They're hits. They're 27 number ones are far more sophisticated than pretty much anything that you hear on the radio nowadays. At least when it comes to harmony and melody. So the Beatles basically invented-- When I think of pop music, I think of top 40 radio, pop music. So it's like when people say, what's the Baroque era? Well, the Baroque era of music is 1685 to 1750. Well, that would be the dates the Bach lived. Not the Bach-- - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Was he competing, composing? I mean, the first pieces you hear from about 1705 or so when he was 20 years old. You don't know any early things. Did it really start in 1685? The other were composers, you know. But I mean, I guess look, okay. So when you're talking about this era of radio from 1941 all the way till streaming. Better yet, radio from 1941 all the way to 1994 when the, when basically what happened was regional radio and there were regional bands. And you could have a band that had smashes just within a region. What pop music did was, there were syndicated programs that would consolidate the best songs from these regions. And in 1994 it became allowed for independent radio stations to be bought by Conglomerate. So you ended up with a centralized place choosing what the play listing would be nationally and it destroyed the idea of regional music. - Well, this was really kind of-- - May of 1996, the Telecommunications Act. That destroyed the music business. - It destroyed media. - Really, you think so? - I think so, yeah. I've made a video on this before. That, that, him signing that, that's when all the, that's when Clear Channel and Cumulus and all these things went up and bought all these balli stations, then you lost all the regional, you lost all the regional music. - The last great regional music is certainly like Seattle, although there, you know, been, you know, things that have popped up, you know, obviously Atlanta in the turn of the century. - That's right. - And, you know, they're definitely pockets where people go and seek out great music. But the concept of regional music really went away once you could consolidate. So it's hard not to think of the pop music in multiple ways, you know. They're most played songs at radio. Now we're far more played than songs pre-1996 because they would, they would, it was Beastbook. Although, you know, everything that you take is the most played song ever at radio. - Okay, so, so, so one of the most, another thing that happened in the '60s is that you started getting composers like Antonio Carlos Chobine, Brazilian composers. And Frank Sinatra made some of the most amazing records of Chobine's music in the mid '60s that are, you know, at least from a, and a lot of music that is referenced in today's music that has, that has a lot of Brazilian influences and things like that to come back to Bossa Nova, which became really big in the 1960s. It wasn't, you know, that influence not only pop music, but also influence jazz music. And jazz music is kind of like half Brazilian, half swing music and half Brazilian music, which we call straight-eighth music. - Stan Gatson. - Yes, that's right. - Great music or great songs? What do you choose to listen to? - Probably great music. Great songs fall into great music. So, because I don't listen to, I don't listen to only songs. I listen to a lot of classical music that I wouldn't consider songs or instruments and stuff. So, I tend to listen to more, you know, I tend to listen to more music because I don't get competitive or I'm not like at home hanging with my kids thinking about lyrics, you know. It's like, it allows me to, to be, you know, when I listen to music. But I, I really care as an artist. I only care about the composition. I don't think I care about the production. - Oh, well, okay, that's a totally different thing. Yeah, you have to have a great song. The production can make a great song even better, but you can't, production can't make us a bad song good. - Yeah, I agree with that. Do you think that are you bullish on the future of, the music business, or are you bearish? - I don't know if I'm bullish on the economic model of the music business, but because I think that kids, they don't care what came before. They only know what they hear today, you know what I mean? So they, everybody has their own era of music that they grew up with songs they connect with and stuff. So they don't care that there were the Beatles in the past or the Rolling Stones or Carol King or Joni Mitchell or anybody or Bob Dylan. I don't care, Stevie Wonder or Herbie Hancock. They, it's irrelevant to them. They only know what they are into. So I think that people will continue to love music. And I hope that the, I hope there's a way for people to, to do as well as people from my era did, from the music, but, you know, as far as being able to make a living wage from their music and stuff that I hope that that's something that can continue on. - What else should we talk about that we haven't talked about? Let's talk about you having your podcast on YouTube. What is the difference between having your podcast on as a podcast versus having the visual part on YouTube? - Yeah, it's interesting when I asked you, I meant, you know, you said how, when people say, I love your podcast, you're like, well, you don't really have a podcast, you have a YouTube channel. You know, and that's the difference. And, and we're over nine years old now. I wanted to be an archive for songwriters. And that was my concern. And never really even thought of, we started filming it over COVID when we would do zooms. - Yeah. - Once we started doing it in person, we even filmed a lot of those and didn't edit them. We didn't really know what to do with them. We talked about it for years, but I was like, well, that's, I don't know, what's the, like, I don't know, a lot of people have YouTube channels. And then, once we did video, it's like, holy shit. I had no idea. I also, like, especially in LA, like, I also get recognized in a lot of places. And you're like, whoa, song, you know. Songwriters are not really recognized. - Wait, I want to critique your thing. So your thing looks great and you're a great interviewer. This is from me being an interviewer too. That you have a look, like, the whole, when I saw it, I was like, wow. Not only is. it is what you do great and you're a great interviewer, but you also immediately have it down, chairs, and like everything, you're branding, I mean, this is great. Thank you. It definitely has opened up a lot of channels in my head of like what things that we could do that are helpful. I think the main thing, you know, in 2018, when the Music Modernization Act passed, part of that is because of the success of this podcast. That is maybe in my career, I don't think I believe in legacy in any real capacity. No one will remember any songs I've written. They don't remember the Beatles and the Beatles were everything. So like they certainly aren't going to care about any song I wrote. They won't care about any of us as writers, we're all going to be gone. Kids now are like, oh yeah, I learned about Bach, but they couldn't tell you one song, you know, one PC wrote. So I think in the end, like none of that matters. But if you can improve your community, like songwriters got involved. And they really helped pass the Music Modernization Act and for those who don't recognize what that means, that's like we removed all of Harry Foxx, so that 9.1 cents per song, per album that you got in the Shine Down era, those that a portion of that royalty went to the collection agency, we completely obliterated that 14% that went to Harry Foxx. And now the people who pay for that are the DSPs. Right. And that was the creation of the MLC and that's part of the Music Modernization Act. But songwriters did by posting, I'm a songwriter, I'm a producer, I support the Music Modernization Act, the phone calls, Ryan Tetter and Dan Wilson, and these people made to their senators and to their governors, moved the needle, the people who gave money so we could buy billboards outside of Senator's house is saying, Senator, why do you hate songwriters? That was the kind of shit that literally changed how songwriters get paid today. And it's because of the community that was built around podcasts like this or like yours. We can actually do things as a community. And I believe in a few things like if we can get, if we can get health care for songwriters, if we can get a living wage for songwriters and do what the Ivers are doing in the UK with major labels and bring that here, if we can have DSPs add AI labels to songs that are fully generated by AI, these are things that can be driven, these initiatives can be driven by the songwriting community and people can be educated on channels like yours. So I feel like the visual thing that what I've learned from YouTube is we can actually communicate some of those things differently than if it's just audio. I meant to say to you that the fact that you focus on the writers is really great because me being a behind the scenes person as a music producer, I mean, I think, you know, I played in groups, but I think of myself as a music producer. And I interview producers and I interview session players and things like that. And it's incredibly important because I want people to know who are the people that are behind the scenes because they're as important as the, you know, a lot of the things that you're hearing, the session players play in this stuff, it's like, these are the people that actually played on the on the stuff. And it's important to hear their stories too, just like having the writers. And I hope to have some more writers on my channel as well and and I think it's amazing. That's why I love watching this because I like to see who the people are and hear their stories. I love that. Well, thank you for doing this. This is fun. I mean, well, I'm sure we'll do this again because I feel like we can dive into all kinds of shit and just go in, but again, you know, us moving to YouTube, the first thing that Joe said is like, you got to watch Rick, you know, it's like, Oh, interesting. This is where this is, it was inspiring because I think I had this idea of what it was. And I think you've shown what it really is and what it can be. And I appreciate you highlighting songs. I love when you do top 10s, top 20s. I love when you interview people and, you know, I follow, I think pretty much every guitarist you've ever interviewed since going down the rabbit hole because I can't do what they do. And that's, that's magic to me because there's a, there are the greatest players ever live right now. Some young, young kids are, it's insane. And this is what, you know, this is why I'm really hopeful. And I'm really bullish on the songwriting business. I know that sounds crazy. Everyone's really like a naysayer right now. But if I were a betting man, which unfortunately I am sometimes, I'm putting, I'm putting a lot of eggs in the songwriting basket. I don't know if I'm putting it in, you know, session players or demo singers or some of these others. But if I'm a betting man, I believe in songwriters and, uh, I believe in YouTube channels. So I'm in, man. Awesome. Let's do it. Ross. Appreciate it. There you go.