Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / Music Series 7: Chris Reali / Understanding Music Business / Records & Streaming / Rock n Roll

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Music Series 7: Chris Reali / Understanding Music Business / Records & Streaming / Rock n Roll · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of come together
• 0:15
  we are live with Professor Chris reality how are you today good
• 0:19
  to. Be with you.
• 0:19
  Yeah, Thanks for having me. Sure, of course.
• 0:23
  Yeah, I, I was doing some homework on some guests that
• 0:26
  really knew the insurance and outs and backgrounds of the
• 0:29
  music world. And when I saw that you were in
• 0:31
  Ramapo College, I got really excited as a local Rockland
• 0:36
  County, you know, I was born, I think I was born in Valley
• 0:39
  Hospital. My mom went to Ramapo.
• 0:42
  And so I got excited about that. And then I was even more excited
• 0:44
  about everything that you study, so and everything you research.
• 0:48
  So I'm excited to have you here. Thanks.
• 0:49
  Yeah, happy to be here. So there's the, you know, I, I
• 0:54
  mentioned, I sent you an e-mail yesterday with a couple of
• 0:56
  things I wanted to talk about, and you said that each of those
• 0:58
  topics were, you know, worthy of several hours worth of
• 1:01
  conversation. Indeed.
• 1:04
  And I wanted to talk to you about the business of music
• 1:07
  because I've done a lot recently about the about particular
• 1:10
  artists or particular genres. And I kind of want to get into a
• 1:13
  little bit of the nuance of how the business works because the
• 1:16
  music industry is known as a pretty tough industry for the
• 1:20
  artists, very cutthroat as far as trying to make it yourself.
• 1:25
  And if you can maybe give me just a little bit of background
• 1:28
  on how the introduction to those to this industry, it would would
• 1:31
  be that would be awesome. Well, I guess the the question,
• 1:35
  how do what kind of perspective do you want?
• 1:37
  Because there are there's so the industry is you is huge, right?
• 1:41
  And there's also like there is if we divide it into a dichotomy
• 1:44
  like there's the artist side and then there's like the wickets
• 1:46
  call the label side and there's more than that.
• 1:48
  So right. Oh, that's a.
• 1:49
  Great. That's a great question.
• 1:50
  Thank you for asking. OK, for asking to elaborate,
• 1:53
  I'll be curious first from the artist side, If you're, you
• 1:56
  know, if you're an artist and you're trying to make it as a
• 1:58
  musician, And I know that historically you would probably
• 2:03
  start by playing local bands, trying to get someone to or some
• 2:05
  local gigs, trying to get someone to recognize you and
• 2:08
  then essentially try to get a record printed.
• 2:11
  At least historically, that was the way that you got started.
• 2:14
  True. Yeah.
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  So that is very true. So, you know, up until, well, I
• 2:19
  mean, that's still kind of, that's still kind of the case.
• 2:21
  So, you know, the modern music industry, I would say started
• 2:26
  roughly, we could say call it 100 years ago, you know, roughly
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  with the over the before the obviously Edison invents the,
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  the market, the recording technology in the 1800s.
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  And then it doesn't really take off till what's roughly the
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  1920s. You know, although the a lot of
• 2:40
  major, a lot of major labels have their roots that go back
• 2:42
  over 100 years. So they get very, very deep
• 2:44
  buckets. Yeah.
• 2:47
  So artists. Yeah.
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  So you you would, you know, do some local gigs, play some cover
• 2:52
  songs likely, and then you would hopefully attract local, local
• 2:57
  following, you know, and try to create a buzz.
• 3:00
  And that's still, that's still the case to this day, but there
• 3:03
  are very few. And then, you know, you know, if
• 3:06
  you had enough of enough of a buzz, maybe someone from a label
• 3:09
  would hear about you somehow and you would they come see a live
• 3:12
  show. And that's, that's that.
• 3:13
  That position is called an A&R artist repertoire.
• 3:15
  They don't totally exist that much anymore.
• 3:18
  There are very few people who like it was usually guys lurking
• 3:21
  in the back of the club, you know, trying to hear what what
• 3:23
  band trying to hear a potential in a band.
• 3:27
  Those positions exist, but not not so much anymore.
• 3:31
  A lot of a lot of the stuff happens via social media,
• 3:34
  although labels have kind of soured on signing someone who
• 3:37
  one of who's blown up on via TikTok because they realize that
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  they virality on TikTok or any social media platform doesn't
• 3:44
  actually trailer to butts in seats.
• 3:46
  So again, so you so you play, so you play gigs and then you, you
• 3:50
  if you were, you know, hopefully, you know, you maybe
• 3:53
  sign a record deal and those deals were rather onerous back
• 3:58
  in the day. And this goes back, you know, up
• 4:00
  up through roughly the early 2000s, you know, you'd sign
• 4:02
  maybe a six or seven record deal if you again, if you work in a
• 4:05
  major label, so. Let's consider a lot, right?
• 4:09
  Six or seven records is probably 10 years to work.
• 4:11
  For Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and, or more and, and, you know, and
• 4:16
  each, each, and, you know, back then they would typically refer
• 4:19
  to like what we call album cycles.
• 4:21
  And so album cycles are not years.
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  Album cycles are like basically like this.
• 4:26
  A songs, a song gets released or the album gets released or a
• 4:28
  single gets released on the album and then you work the
• 4:30
  album and it could be an album, it could be 3 years, sure.
• 4:34
  No, because it's, it's basically when they say, yeah, you know
• 4:36
  what? We've we've milked this thing as
• 4:37
  much as possible. And then and the artist, I'm
• 4:39
  going to take a break and they go recording do it again.
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  So again, so your, your six or seven deal album deal could
• 4:44
  literally be, you know, at least 10 years.
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  And often back in the day, we and one of the things that
• 4:49
  happened, you knew someone was leaving a label when all of a
• 4:51
  sudden the greatest hits came out.
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  And that was pretty typical, really standard.
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  That was like always typical. And it might be a bonus track.
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  You know, like the greatest hits typically admitted the end, end
• 4:59
  of the contract. So that was, that was what
• 5:01
  happened back in the day. Now artists are way more savvy
• 5:04
  and they're releasing single albums or, and, or, and the, and
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  the deals of the, the structure of the deals has changed quite a
• 5:11
  bit. So as there's been a lot more
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  information flowing to artists and yeah, so, so artists are
• 5:22
  aware that like ownership of your, of your intellectual
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  property is, is the biggest thing.
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  Despite the fact that the industry has changed quite a bit
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  from like we've gone from physical media to digital world,
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  the, the basic principle of industry has never changed.
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  And that's all. It's copyright ownership.
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  And so that is at the heart of everything.
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  And so who owns the copyright? So in a recording, there are two
• 5:41
  copyrights. So there was, there was the
• 5:43
  copyright for the recording and there's a copyright for the
• 5:45
  sheet music. And although most, most people
• 5:47
  don't deal in sheet music anymore, but that was that was
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  basically how that was the sheet music was, was a huge part of
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  the music industry up until the 1960s and 70s, even maybe
• 5:56
  beyond. Because that was considered
• 5:57
  exclusive. No, it's not exclusive because
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  so there were, so, you know, the copyright is, is enshrined in
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  the, you know, it's, it's a, it's a constitutional right.
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  And copyright is both the most basic thing and most complex
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  thing in the world. So like, you know, so I took a
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  picture on my phone or my camera, I have a copyright,
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  right? So that's it.
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  So the copyright is it is the right to copy.
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  That is basically what it means. And then if you want to register
• 6:20
  your copyright with the, with the US government, which do that
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  through the Library of Congress, that costs money, right?
• 6:25
  And So what happens is, is that if you want to when you sign a
• 6:29
  record deal. So if I assign you to my label,
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  so you write the songs, you have to then transfer ownership to me
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  because I can't release them without your permission.
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  And the only way to do that is to transfer them to me.
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  And so in exchange for that, I would give you a royalty and,
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  and the royalty rates are negotiable.
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  But there, there was a, there was a limit on what the
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  government says. There's a minimum of what you
• 6:49
  can, what you can stand, what you can stay, what you can,
• 6:51
  which you what you can collect again.
• 6:54
  And there's lots of nuance. And obviously the more famous
• 6:55
  you are, the the more the more you've been successful, the
• 6:58
  higher like the like higher like the liar back.
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  The higher you, the higher your, your royalty would, would be
• 7:05
  potentially. And royalties, royalties are
• 7:07
  different there. So you know, there's also people
• 7:09
  have discussed like, oh, Spotify pays .000 whatever, but there is
• 7:13
  no, there is no per stream rate. And so royalties, royalties
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  depend on, you know, there's different royalty rates for
• 7:19
  recorded media, there's different royalty rates for, for
• 7:21
  digital media. So it, it all depends.
• 7:23
  And so it's really complicated got you on so and, and, and so,
• 7:27
  and then there's also, there's also royalty for the songwriter.
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  So again, if you are the songwriter and the recording
• 7:31
  artist, you might get paid two different ways.
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  And so again, that that knowledge has been, that's
• 7:36
  always been the case, but I think a lot more artists know
• 7:38
  that. And so they're so going back to
• 7:42
  deals like, so a, a lot more artists are like, yeah, you
• 7:44
  know, I don't want to sign a long term record deal with it.
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  I, I just want you to, I need a label to promote me because
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  that's kind of what major labels really do is that they, they
• 7:51
  help you get above the din, right?
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  Because there's literally hundreds of thousands of songs a
• 7:56
  day released. How do you, how does someone
• 7:58
  find your song if it is worse than a needle in the haystack?
• 8:01
  Yeah. And so that major labels can
• 8:02
  help with that, and so can independent labels, too.
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  And it also depends on the style of music.
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  Right, right, right, right. It's so it's so funny to and
• 8:09
  interesting to think about because that it really is.
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  I mean, first of all, just the aspect of there's so many
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  different avenues and ways for, you know, streams of money to be
• 8:19
  coming in and going. Would you think that part of
• 8:22
  part of the reason why it's so complicated is because artists
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  tend to be less business oriented or savvy and so this
• 8:29
  would find other ways are bound kind of getting them the full,
• 8:32
  you know, as much as they probably could earn?
• 8:33
  Yeah, Yeah. I mean, yeah, just typically
• 8:35
  artists have not been that savvy on the business side and they've
• 8:38
  got screwed, you know, and historically, people of color
• 8:41
  and women have gotten really got screwed.
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  And I mean, there's lots of documentation about that.
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  So. Yeah.
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  And it's I mean. I can't and I can't help think
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  about the whole Springsteen debacle with Mike Appel and
• 8:51
  yeah, and you know, I mean, the fact and and and go to to your
• 8:54
  point about owning the song, I thought this is interesting as
• 8:57
  as you were saying it, he fought so hard to have, you know, the
• 9:00
  rights to to to the Born to Run album and you know, the other
• 9:04
  albums that he wrote before that.
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  And I think just a couple of years ago, he ended up selling
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  the whole his all his all his rights to Sony, I believe,
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  right. Like 8 hundred 800 million or
• 9:14
  billion dollars. Something crazy like 8. 100
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  million, yeah, roughly, yeah. You know, again.
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  And I mean, yes, so ownership can.
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  Ownership is really crucial, right.
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  So, you know, there, you know, you know, if your song gets
• 9:24
  placed in a movie or a television show, I mean, that
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  can be a very lucrative payday. If not, you know, I mean,
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  there's obviously lots of the, you know, the, the lots of
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  examples of artists who are like, quote UN quote, like they
• 9:36
  were top of the chart and they were broke because they, they,
• 9:40
  they signed very poor deals. I think, you know, not, not no
• 9:44
  fault of their own. Someone like, Hey, listen, just
• 9:45
  on this deal, let's 100,000 bucks right now and don't work
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  at the back end and like, oh, back.
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  And what's that on? You know, I think it's front,
• 9:52
  you know, and and this happened a lot in the in the early R&B
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  days in the 50s where I get someone to give you 200 or 500
• 9:58
  bucks, which was a lot of money back then.
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  But again, but knowing that copyright last very completely
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  at this point, copyright, it's life with the author plus 70.
• 10:07
  So like that is basically like, you know?
• 10:10
  Hey everyone real quick if you're enjoying the show, click
• 10:12
  subscribe and rate the show. 5 stars helps a time.
• 10:15
  Thanks so much. It is 150 years basically
• 10:19
  depending how long you live. Yeah, yeah.
• 10:21
  And, and, and the, and the owners of those songs, whether
• 10:24
  it's the label or, or the publishing company or both, you
• 10:27
  know, they, they, they, they are making money for a long time.
• 10:30
  And that that that's what was at the heart of Taylor Swifts, you
• 10:33
  know, complaint with with big machine and Scooter Braun is
• 10:36
  like, I want to own my masters. And then and then she found this
• 10:39
  loophole by some by recording stuff and and then and, and
• 10:43
  because she did that, every major label has made more than
• 10:46
  wall that off. That'll never happen again.
• 10:48
  Like she are smarter than which is great, you know, good for
• 10:51
  her, But that that whole thing was basically about money as
• 10:54
  well. It was about artistic control.
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  And I know the Swifty is going to come after me, but for this,
• 10:57
  but it's true. I mean, she had artistic
• 10:58
  control, but she also, she also wanted money and, and, and, and
• 11:01
  she's all entitled to make that so.
• 11:03
  The Swifties are everywhere. You can't.
• 11:05
  You can't escape them. You.
• 11:07
  Know like you know she's she's an amazing business woman,
• 11:09
  right? She's a very talented songwriter
• 11:11
  and a very talented performer too like it again?
• 11:12
  No, she's. Incredible.
• 11:13
  She's incredible. There's no question about it.
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  And, and the hate that she gots it, I think, I think is more
• 11:19
  than a little silly. And I think that anyone that
• 11:21
  does the amount of work that she does and puts the amount of
• 11:23
  effort that she puts into anything deserves an enormous
• 11:26
  amount of respect, whether or not you appreciate the art.
• 11:29
  Yeah, I, I, I, I tell all my music students, my business
• 11:32
  students is like, listen, you don't have to like her, but you
• 11:34
  need to pay attention to what she does because she, she moved
• 11:37
  the needle, right? You don't like the music that it
• 11:38
  doesn't matter, right? In this, in the business of
• 11:40
  music, it is not about who is better or best.
• 11:42
  That's that's subjective, right? It's it the, the artist who, the
• 11:45
  artist who quote UN quote wins. The industry is the one who
• 11:47
  sells the most records. So and right now it's basically
• 11:49
  her and BTS are winning. You know, are you, are you
• 11:52
  familiar with the podcast called The Town with Matt Bellamy?
• 11:56
  I'm not. He's a, he's a Hollywood guy,
• 11:58
  but you know, there was a he does, he does cute episodes and
• 12:01
  he's, he's a big insider. He gets, you know, Netflixs CEOs
• 12:05
  and Sony CEOs and AMC CEO and he gets a lot of big people to
• 12:09
  interview short 30-40 minute segments and and he had this
• 12:13
  conversation with a bunch of people more than once.
• 12:15
  If you had to pick up the phone for like Bob Iger, the CEO of
• 12:18
  Netflix or Taylor Swift, they're like, we're picking up the phone
• 12:21
  for Taylor Swift every single time, you know, like, you know,
• 12:24
  that anything that she touches is going to turn to absolute
• 12:26
  gold. But it's great to hear everyone
• 12:28
  say that like her reach is really incredible.
• 12:31
  You mentioned earlier that that that that the standard that the
• 12:36
  way that that record companies would find artists has shifted
• 12:40
  in that you said a TikTok and online presence doesn't
• 12:43
  necessarily put butts in seats. Can you elaborate on that a
• 12:45
  little bit? Sure.
• 12:48
  You know, again, part of that was was pandemic, right?
• 12:50
  So looking for the next big thing.
• 12:53
  No and yes, of course, you know, labels.
• 12:57
  Look at your social footprint right there.
• 12:59
  They are. They're going to want they want
• 13:01
  to know what your fan base is and like and and your social
• 13:04
  footprint finds. Give them an indication.
• 13:08
  And so, you know, again, you might have, you know, you could
• 13:12
  have a, a global following on, on either Instagram or, you
• 13:15
  know, I, I know most people don't use most people who I'm
• 13:18
  coming to use Facebook or TikTok.
• 13:20
  But you know, you, if you have a, you have 10 million followers
• 13:23
  on Instagram, right, which is an enormous amount of people, but
• 13:26
  they're of they're scattered across the globe and you want to
• 13:28
  do a show in New York City and you only have, you know, even
• 13:32
  the 50,000 followers in New York City.
• 13:33
  And again, you can atomize that you compete there.
• 13:35
  There are platforms that look, you know, let's say there's
• 13:37
  where that you can literally go down to say almost to the block
• 13:40
  level, right? And so, but that doesn't mean
• 13:44
  that if you do a show at, you know, a club in Brooklyn or a
• 13:46
  club in the city that they're going to show up.
• 13:48
  And so so labels realize that you could or so you again, you
• 13:52
  might have this viral moment and and it's and and so again,
• 13:56
  trying to trying to Co trying to get the fans out of their house
• 13:59
  into your show, or there's that and all the they also like
• 14:02
  there's no second song, right? So like, you've got this really
• 14:05
  awesome one song, but there's no you don't like you don't.
• 14:08
  I have none of the 50 songs ready to go.
• 14:09
  Like I spent all my time working on this one song to have it go
• 14:12
  viral and then I don't have anything else in my in my tank,
• 14:15
  right? Because because of, you know,
• 14:16
  virality, I mean, virality is not virality is more or less
• 14:19
  manufactured at this point, right?
• 14:21
  It's almost really hard to to get that to go organic.
• 14:23
  But either way, again, you, you need to have what is your second
• 14:26
  song, right? So they, I mean, you know,
• 14:28
  there's, there's a famous line that's often attributed to Elvis
• 14:30
  Costello, although he doesn't recall saying this is like you
• 14:33
  have, you have your entire life to write your first record.
• 14:36
  You have six months to write your second one.
• 14:37
  And so I, I think labels realize that again, they, they, they
• 14:40
  would easy cash in, they, they, they, they pluck an artist off
• 14:43
  of TikTok, they dump some money into it to, to blow it a bit
• 14:46
  more, and then they would extract some more from there.
• 14:47
  And the, and the artists make some money too, and then they
• 14:49
  move on to somebody else. And so how how many artists you
• 14:52
  know, have been signed it have had sustained career growth
• 14:57
  through either TikTok, you know, even you know, even YouTube, you
• 15:00
  know, I, I know Bieber just played, you know, Coachella, You
• 15:03
  know, if you know, and you know he there's, you could count on
• 15:06
  one hand the amount of artists who actually blown up because of
• 15:09
  social media and have had a career.
• 15:11
  I've had a long time career after that, you know, it's
• 15:14
  again, you can, you can use the platform to get attention, but
• 15:17
  to sustain that attention, you need to have the talent as well.
• 15:19
  Sure. And, and, and, and so that's
• 15:21
  that's kind of what I mean. So, you know, and it's and it's
• 15:25
  obviously a combination of all that.
• 15:26
  So, you know, do you have a social presence?
• 15:27
  Do you have, you know, do you have a show?
• 15:29
  Do you have passionate fans who are willing to come see you on a
• 15:31
  Tuesday night at midnight, you know, and in in some, in some
• 15:34
  podium town somewhere, right, because that, that's what that's
• 15:37
  what needs to happen, right? It is is a sustainable career.
• 15:41
  It's really interesting. It's really cool.
• 15:43
  I I feel like going forward in the next couple of years, the
• 15:46
  music business is going to switch into it's going to, I
• 15:49
  mean further come apart and there's going to be an industry
• 15:54
  of live music, you know, and festivals and you know, and and
• 15:58
  and live performing bands. And then there's going to be the
• 16:01
  industry of the online presence and the studios and the digital
• 16:04
  slash real world. And I know it kind of already
• 16:06
  is, but I know that historically they're always tied together.
• 16:09
  Like you said, you know, if an album used to was easily, you
• 16:13
  know, you'd, you'd single, like you said, release the album and
• 16:16
  then spend anywhere between six months and a year and a half or
• 16:19
  whatever it is touring that album, you know, all over the as
• 16:22
  as as often as you can that expectations not really there
• 16:25
  anymore. And you don't really have the
• 16:27
  same kind of like, you know, Springsteen River tour or, you
• 16:31
  know, Bob Dylan, you know, whatever, whatever tour they
• 16:34
  whatever. I guess he does a little bit
• 16:35
  more sporadically. But the Grateful Dead with tour
• 16:38
  albums or whoever it was, that's not an obligation anymore to
• 16:43
  make it as an artist these days. And yeah, maybe, maybe maybe I'm
• 16:47
  wrong. That's just what I what I feel
• 16:49
  like from what I consume. Well, so you know, when I talk
• 16:53
  about, so I teach classes about the music industry and so I, I
• 16:57
  talk about there are, there are basically like 7 aligned mini
• 17:02
  universes, right? So, you know, often I tell, so
• 17:04
  when people think about the music industry, especially
• 17:06
  people who are not, who not do don't know, but the business
• 17:09
  side, they often think about the recording artist, right?
• 17:11
  So like the face of, for many people, the face of the industry
• 17:13
  are people like BTS or Beyoncé or Telus, We have to, because,
• 17:17
  because they see the recording artist, but in reality, it's way
• 17:19
  bigger than that. And so, so there's the recording
• 17:22
  industry, right? And, and a lot of this overlaps,
• 17:24
  right? There's the publishing industry,
• 17:25
  there's the live industry, there's, there's, I know there's
• 17:29
  brick and mortar store. So there's so there, there, you
• 17:31
  know, there's music education. So you know, I tell my students,
• 17:34
  do you are part by taking these classes, you or you are part of
• 17:36
  the music industry, like as I taught middle school band music
• 17:39
  industry. So there's, there's a very broad
• 17:40
  universe. So you know when so that's why I
• 17:44
  asked you earlier. Well, what aspect you want to
• 17:46
  talk about because it because the, the, the answer depends on
• 17:48
  on how we're, how we're framing this.
• 17:50
  So yes, you know, the artists would typically go out and you
• 17:54
  know, you get signed to a deal and you promote a single.
• 17:56
  Hopefully the single got to radio.
• 17:58
  And so now radio is not as important anymore.
• 17:59
  You know, you know, again, in my day and maybe part of your day
• 18:02
  too, like, you know, getting a song on, you know, WPLJ or WW
• 18:06
  was a big if it's a rock thing or, you know, if it was a
• 18:08
  rapper, rapper or, or anything on Hot 100 or whatever.
• 18:12
  And again, and they had a huge reach, right?
• 18:14
  And you know, millions of people heard those songs at the same
• 18:16
  time. And so now, now people trying to
• 18:19
  get songs onto, onto, you know, onto playlists, you know, and
• 18:22
  you know, there was there were these a lot of gate.
• 18:24
  There were, there were, there were lots of gatekeepers on the
• 18:26
  radio right there. There are, there are lots of
• 18:28
  still lots of gatekeepers on, on streaming, on streaming
• 18:30
  platforms. And, and then artists would go
• 18:32
  out and, and, and, and try to make some money and they would,
• 18:34
  they would. So the record sales didn't
• 18:36
  actually make money. And there was a, there was a
• 18:41
  time where record sales did, people did make some money.
• 18:44
  Again, obviously, if you know, when you start selling Michael
• 18:46
  Jackson and was like for Thriller or you know, I will
• 18:48
  always love you. Bye by Whitney Houston like
• 18:51
  those they made lots of money because those sold in the 10s of
• 18:54
  millions, right. And so the one of the one of the
• 18:59
  one of the one of the major impacts of the of the the
• 19:04
  pandemic was obviously the sort of shut down all the live stuff.
• 19:06
  And so that's how a lot of artists still make what had were
• 19:09
  making money and then still make money because, you know, this,
• 19:12
  you know, streaming income is a trickle, but it's but you know,
• 19:16
  again, there are lots of mid level artists who are who are
• 19:18
  pulling, you know, 30,000 streamers of, you know, 30,000.
• 19:21
  This is a month and making a living by doing that and they
• 19:23
  can make it, you know, is it a good living, right, But you
• 19:26
  know, but you can go play a show and you walk out with the cash
• 19:29
  in hand, right. Again, you know, you play a show
• 19:32
  with the garden, right? You're going to you'd like the
• 19:34
  you're going to walk up with millions of dollars that that
• 19:37
  again, there's lots of expenses that are going to be wrong.
• 19:38
  But you know, and depending how that artist lives, you know, you
• 19:41
  you could actually have, you know, you could do A11 arena
• 19:44
  tour again, if you're that level every couple years and you're
• 19:47
  going to do and you are going to never have to work and never
• 19:49
  have to have to have a real job again, right?
• 19:51
  You know, but but that's that is very far in between.
• 19:54
  Most artists are working at the pub level, right, So that
• 19:57
  they're playing breweries, they're they're playing, you
• 19:59
  know, the small 300 feet, 300 seat clubs or 303 hundred
• 20:02
  capacity clubs, you know, And so I but again, you can still make
• 20:05
  you can still do pretty well there too.
• 20:07
  And then. And so the idea is having
• 20:09
  numerous revenue streams coming at the same time.
• 20:11
  So like I can go on tour, play some shows.
• 20:14
  I will have some money flowing in from, from my songwriting and
• 20:17
  my recordings. Also know that, Also know that,
• 20:20
  again, most people don't realize this, that recording royalties
• 20:23
  and publishing royalties take about almost a year to get to
• 20:27
  you. So you release a song.
• 20:30
  Yeah, you release a song today and it, it could be #1 right.
• 20:34
  And then you actually don't get paid.
• 20:36
  It just takes us so long. Not granted that lie.
• 20:39
  It's opaque. It's opaque by nature, right?
• 20:42
  So it is so like I, you know, I'm, I, you know, I, I write
• 20:44
  songs and I have, I have stuff, I have a couple albums out, you
• 20:47
  know, and, and I have some stuff trickling in and like, I get
• 20:50
  the, the, my latest royalty statement was from BMI because
• 20:53
  I'm a BMIBMI member. BMI is a performing bright
• 20:56
  organization. They're not a publisher.
• 20:57
  I, my publishers is, is Song Trust and I think I'm the, I got
• 21:03
  paid. It's about a year ago.
• 21:04
  Like the music I'm getting, what I get paid for now is stuff that
• 21:06
  was played about a year ago. It's, it's why it's because it's
• 21:10
  opaque. It's really challenging to, you
• 21:11
  know, to, to the accounting to fact trace the song, right,
• 21:14
  where'd it come from? And then finally have a trickle
• 21:16
  down and, you know, not granted, if you're with a major label.
• 21:20
  And so you would see a song and it blows up, it comes, becomes
• 21:22
  #1 and it, it's and, and you and you are, if you were the artist
• 21:26
  are like, hey, listen, I'm eating chicken Mcnuggets here.
• 21:29
  I need, I want to have a steak. Can you label, lend me some
• 21:32
  money based on royalties? They will say, yes, you know,
• 21:34
  you could, and you could say we'll give you X amount of
• 21:36
  money. And then when the royalties come
• 21:38
  in, we will keep that bat we will retain that, but we'll give
• 21:41
  you money. But, but we've already paid you
• 21:42
  for that. And then that happens all the
• 21:44
  time. But you can advance on your
• 21:45
  royalties. I don't know if you're familiar
• 21:47
  with the, there's a case now where Limp Bizkit suing
• 21:51
  Universal Music Group for, for the, because they, they said you
• 21:54
  owe us back royalties. And like, they're suing them for
• 21:56
  like, like $50 million. Wow.
• 21:59
  And UMG was like, we gave you that money, you signed the deal,
• 22:02
  we gave you $1,000,000 advance and you have not recouped, you
• 22:06
  have not earned back the money. So you took that money upfront
• 22:09
  and we have kept everything else because?
• 22:10
  Wow. So it's.
• 22:11
  It's kind of like a loan system, not it's not a bank loan, it's
• 22:14
  kind of. Like sure, sure.
• 22:17
  So I know people I know, I know some I know, I know people that
• 22:19
  are in the commercial mortgage industry that the same thing
• 22:22
  that they say their salary quote, UN quote is really a loan
• 22:25
  from the bank until they close deal and then they have to pay
• 22:28
  back their salary. So you want to actually,
• 22:29
  hypothetically as low of a salary as possible because you
• 22:33
  don't, you don't really care about, you know, you want you,
• 22:35
  you're waiting for that deal, you know, and so, and then
• 22:38
  you'll pay back whenever you pay back.
• 22:39
  But, but you know, at the moment, you know, you get by
• 22:42
  exactly. Yeah.
• 22:43
  I, I, I did a podcast to the with a gentleman.
• 22:46
  I forgot his name now, but he wrote a book called the Economic
• 22:48
  History of the Grateful Dead. And he was able to and he was
• 22:52
  able to just tracking their receipts and just going through
• 22:54
  their books was able to track their their success.
• 22:58
  And they were kind of known as as a touring band.
• 23:03
  What do you think of the touring industry as its bounce back from
• 23:09
  COVID in recent years? Are you hopeful for it?
• 23:12
  Do you think that it's going strong still?
• 23:15
  You think that there's anomalies that people go out for but
• 23:17
  generally don't really care? What's your feel about it?
• 23:20
  Well. I mean, you know, the touring is
• 23:22
  certainly bounced back post COVID.
• 23:24
  I mean, what I'm concerned primarily, and I'm not the only
• 23:26
  one, is like, is this the ticket prices are so expensive.
• 23:29
  Insane. And you know, you know, I know
• 23:33
  my first show was for sure I saw was cardi business and Nash in
• 23:36
  like 198485 and I think the ticket was 12 bucks.
• 23:40
  Now granted again, so my, my ticket 85 is my $12.00 ticket 85
• 23:45
  does not account to $500 and 2026.
• 23:47
  Like there's, there's a lot of things happening and, and I, I
• 23:50
  know how, I know how the, I know how this works.
• 23:53
  And I know there's a lot of people taking a cut, you know,
• 23:56
  But as, as you know, what I, what I, what I think most people
• 23:58
  don't realize is that as artists don't make that much money on
• 24:02
  the on the record side anymore. They're, they're, they're, they
• 24:05
  are, they're trying to make up that deficit on the on the live
• 24:11
  side again. And that's fine.
• 24:13
  You know, I, I have lots of students who go see shows all
• 24:15
  the time and I'm like, how do you afford this?
• 24:17
  I'd barely go to see industry because I I, I.
• 24:19
  Can't go. I see cover bands.
• 24:21
  I see local cover bands now instead.
• 24:23
  Pretty. Much, you know, and I and I
• 24:24
  can't as, as much as I'd like to see some, you know, there's a
• 24:28
  few, a few like Living Legend. I just see I'm like, I'm not,
• 24:31
  they're not worth spending me having me spend $1000 on it.
• 24:35
  I was like, that's just not happening.
• 24:37
  And you know, I can also. And then as someone who's also
• 24:39
  worked in the in the touring side, I like, I saw somebody
• 24:41
  search for free. I'm kind of like I don't want to
• 24:42
  pay for any shows anymore because I suffer.
• 24:46
  Yeah, and. And, and you know, and so I, I,
• 24:48
  I would rather go see I'm, I'm not a huge fan of cover bands,
• 24:52
  but that's a that's a whole other thing.
• 24:53
  I'd but like. I'd rather go see a local
• 24:54
  position do doing their thing and and give.
• 24:56
  Them too I love, I love live live, live local musicians.
• 24:59
  Yeah, yeah. So, so yeah, yeah, yeah, it is
• 25:01
  hopeful, you know, and obviously there's, there's the, there's
• 25:03
  the, the, the, the case against Live Nation just went to the
• 25:06
  jury or is about, is about to go to the jewelry and we'll see
• 25:09
  what happens. You know, Ticketmaster's not
• 25:11
  they're, they're not, I mean they're not, they're not Saints.
• 25:14
  And, you know, neither, neither them nor Live Nation are Saints,
• 25:16
  but they're also not the entire enemy.
• 25:18
  The a lot of the artists are complicit in, in these, in these
• 25:20
  fees and the, and the ticket prices.
• 25:21
  The, the artist says the price, right.
• 25:23
  The artist I need, I mean, it's, it's, it is the math is very
• 25:26
  basic in some ways. And if I can make it really
• 25:28
  reductionist, it's like, OK, the artist says I need to have
• 25:30
  $1,000,000 from free for my night.
• 25:32
  OK, great. And so then the promoter says,
• 25:34
  we take this arena and we say we divide the, how many seats are
• 25:38
  there by, by the, by what the artist wants.
• 25:40
  And then and that's sort of how we get to the ticket price.
• 25:42
  So that as the higher the fees, the the higher, the higher, the,
• 25:45
  the higher the, the, the, the artists.
• 25:51
  Like then you say, well, that goes, you know that.
• 25:53
  So that goes into the ticket price.
• 25:54
  Obviously, you know, if when you go see a show, like I often
• 25:57
  reference Travis Scott did the astral world tour a couple years
• 26:02
  ago, like he had a Ferris wheel on stage, right, So there was a
• 26:04
  lot of there was a lot of shit on stage.
• 26:07
  Like this is insane, right, Like they spent a lot of money and
• 26:10
  brought up a circus like atmosphere, right, You like so
• 26:12
  there's a lot of money in that. But when you go see an artist is
• 26:14
  like again, like again, you know, I know you're obviously
• 26:17
  famous Springsteen, like Springsteen plays a long time,
• 26:19
  right? But like, it's pretty, it's a
• 26:20
  fairly no fields production, right?
• 26:22
  Because it's just some matrons. And like, again, that nothing
• 26:25
  wrong with that, you know, but like, but like, and, and not
• 26:28
  that that doesn't cost money, but like if you just go see a
• 26:30
  system and stand on stage and there's not much happening like
• 26:32
  as far as like lights or, or pyrotechnics, like why am I
• 26:35
  spending $1000 a ticket on this? Right?
• 26:37
  Because, because you know, because some of that money
• 26:38
  obviously goes to pay the crew and the production cost and all
• 26:41
  that stuff. So you know it.
• 26:43
  So, you know, there's, there's a lot, there's a lot of factors
• 26:46
  involved, so. You think that if an artist in
• 26:49
  order to for the artist to get $1,000,000, let's say he sells
• 26:52
  at a stadium, he needs $30 a ticket.
• 26:54
  How much do you think a consumer is is going to end up paying at
• 26:59
  the end of the day? You think 6070 bucks and you
• 27:01
  think the artist probably takes 50% of the ticket price?
• 27:03
  The ticket? Value.
• 27:05
  I mean the the Led Zeppelin, Peter Graham was Led Zeppelin's
• 27:08
  manager. He more or less established the
• 27:10
  split is basically 9010. So the band.
• 27:12
  So whatever, whatever is made out of show, OK, you know,
• 27:16
  again, again, when you, when you, so I'm, I'm not talking
• 27:19
  about some local cover band, you know, pub or whatever.
• 27:22
  It's like you, you're playing the show that again, Madison
• 27:24
  Square Garden or Newark or some it's like the artist typical
• 27:28
  gets 90% of what is what gets comes in right?
• 27:31
  So, and but that's, you know, so there's a guarantee.
• 27:34
  And then and then and then there and then there is, you know,
• 27:37
  they get they get a cut, the artist gets a cut of of
• 27:39
  obviously the merch sales, but the house gets a cut of the
• 27:41
  merch sales. The artists also get a can also
• 27:43
  get a cut of the liquor sales if that's if that's in there as
• 27:46
  well. So that there's other ways that
• 27:47
  artists make money. And then so, yeah, so the, the,
• 27:53
  again, the artist says I want, I need $5,000,000 guarantee or
• 27:56
  whatever. And then as they just sort of
• 27:58
  work backwards, but the artist also again, but beyond, beyond
• 28:01
  the guarantee, the artist and, and their team make money from
• 28:04
  very many different avenues as well.
• 28:06
  So again, so they're $5,000,000 my, my 7 million at the end of
• 28:09
  the night or whatever. So and again, you know, and that
• 28:11
  that, does that justify the ticket fee?
• 28:13
  Does that justify high ticket cost?
• 28:15
  I don't think so. I I I I I tend to agree.
• 28:18
  I tend to agree. What if I, what if I want to get
• 28:20
  into the music industry And I am not, you know, I, I, I like
• 28:24
  music and I'm OK at playing, but you know, I, I, I would love to
• 28:27
  get into the, the business component, the business side of
• 28:30
  things. And I want to and I want to deal
• 28:33
  with the creatives, but but I'm not on the stature of, you know,
• 28:38
  performing myself. What do you, what would you say
• 28:41
  is it a typical journey for someone in that in that
• 28:43
  situation? Well, actually, you know,
• 28:44
  there's, there's so there's way more choices.
• 28:47
  So I can, I have, I have a little thing on my desk.
• 28:49
  My students come in like I want to be in the music industry and
• 28:51
  like, you know, and so they they're like, they always know
• 28:53
  they typically want to work with a major artist.
• 28:55
  And that's that's great. And I said go for that.
• 28:56
  But there's so many different ways to enter into the music
• 29:00
  industry. So, you know, you know, so
• 29:02
  obviously, you know, you know, the, the more quote, UN quote
• 29:05
  glamorous jobs are like maybe being artist manager, right?
• 29:07
  So, but there's one, there's one side of that.
• 29:09
  So then, you know, but there's, there are, there are, you know,
• 29:11
  I have a lot of students who actually wind up working on
• 29:13
  social media marketing for a, for a label.
• 29:15
  And they, they might, they might be in charge or work for, you
• 29:19
  know, you know, a marketing app. You know, if you're working the
• 29:22
  label, like a label might oversee a label, Let's say a
• 29:25
  label has 50 different artists, right?
• 29:27
  There's not 50 different people working individually.
• 29:30
  There's one, there's a team that works with these 10 artists,
• 29:33
  right? And then, and so there's that.
• 29:34
  And so they handle social media and, and not every artist is
• 29:36
  firing at the same time, right? So like sometimes you're off,
• 29:39
  sometimes you're on the road, sometimes you're off the road.
• 29:40
  So there's that, you know, there are, I know there are people who
• 29:43
  are rock'n'roll accountants, right?
• 29:45
  So all they do is handle the accounting for, for, because
• 29:48
  it's, it's, it's complex right there.
• 29:50
  And, and there's lots of funky loopholes and ways to try to
• 29:53
  waste ways to manage your money. You know that you can, you know,
• 29:56
  at a certain level you might have, you could be a business
• 29:58
  manager just managing the money for people who are creatives,
• 30:00
  right? And that's a very lucrative
• 30:02
  business because you're looking at lots of 0.
• 30:03
  And that there, there, there are people who just, there are
• 30:05
  people who just, they are, they are rock'n'roll caterers, right?
• 30:08
  And I use the word rock'n'roll here.
• 30:09
  Like, so like, so you go on tour and you like, there are the
• 30:12
  people go and like, they will do bring a team of chefs with you
• 30:15
  and they're, they're cooking for the band and the crew and, you
• 30:19
  know, and it could be, you know, that again, that costs
• 30:21
  significant money. But again, that's up.
• 30:23
  There are people who are travel agents.
• 30:24
  All they do is book tours, right?
• 30:26
  So they book the travel for the like, you know, that's cool.
• 30:29
  Yeah, it's because they, they're out there, right?
• 30:31
  Artists are quirky. And so they're hotels that that
• 30:34
  sort of cater to artists, you know, or like, or there, you
• 30:37
  know, there's that too. And some again, some of this
• 30:38
  happens, you know, you know, as a when I was a tour manager, I
• 30:41
  do a lot of this myself, but there's also, but there are
• 30:43
  people you can reach out to, you know, so so there's all
• 30:45
  different. There's there's a lot of non
• 30:47
  music jobs that actually happen in the music industry that
• 30:49
  people will think about. You know, I you know, there, you
• 30:51
  know, you pick, you know, you want to own a venue, right?
• 30:53
  So there's some commercial landlord, you know, you I own, I
• 30:56
  own a building and I have AI have a recordings to do there or
• 30:59
  recordings to do. Is there right.
• 31:01
  So, you know, IA friend of mine, she makes weeds for oboes,
• 31:06
  right? Like, so like, you know, that's,
• 31:07
  that's, that's her, that's her that I mean, she was a music
• 31:10
  faculty, but her side also was making weeds for oboes.
• 31:12
  So there I mean, so there's so many different ways in there.
• 31:15
  And as I said, most people think about the Arias first and think
• 31:18
  that's the entryway. But I often say Taylor Swift,
• 31:21
  you know, she, you know she, you know, there was one type of
• 31:23
  Swift or Beyoncé or people, you know, they probably, they
• 31:26
  probably employ indirect, directly at least a dozen people
• 31:30
  and indirectly thousands of people.
• 31:32
  Sure. Because, because, because,
• 31:33
  because of the way the money flows.
• 31:35
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, so I, I teach high school
• 31:38
  English. I tell my students this all the
• 31:40
  time. Like they're like, oh, well, you
• 31:42
  know, like the love entertainment.
• 31:43
  I love movies, I love music. I'm like, well, I can't, you
• 31:45
  know, I'm never going to be an actor.
• 31:46
  I'm like, dude, you don't need to be an actor, man.
• 31:48
  Like I, I, I, I interviewed A gentleman named Joel, Joel High,
• 31:52
  who's music supervisor. How cool.
• 31:55
  And yeah, and, and, and his job is one of the coolest freaking
• 31:58
  jobs in the world. Any, any.
• 32:00
  And and it's he, he, he will either deal with creating the
• 32:03
  score or he'll deal with getting the rights to particular songs.
• 32:06
  And, you know, and a lot of times artists will demand to see
• 32:09
  the scenes of the movies before they, before they prove to be
• 32:12
  like, I don't want to make sure that that my song is not being
• 32:14
  used in a crappy movie. Correct.
• 32:16
  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Music, music supervision
• 32:19
  is a big deal. That's called music sync.
• 32:21
  That's that's called sync that you need.
• 32:22
  Like so if you get your song synced, which means it the the
• 32:24
  music is synced with with, with, with a, with a motion picture
• 32:27
  wagon. But there's film television on
• 32:29
  online, right? So, yeah.
• 32:30
  And, and there, and there that is basically the Wild West
• 32:33
  because there is no, there's no, there's no, there's so for, for
• 32:36
  recordings is what's called the statutory rate to get paid.
• 32:39
  But in the in the sink world. So if you want.
• 32:42
  So, you know, I often use like the James Bond films as, as the
• 32:45
  examples because like, so you want to so you know, I know
• 32:48
  Adele's done to Billy eyelash of Paul McCartney.
• 32:49
  There's been a lot of a lot of people done these, these big
• 32:52
  theme films and they so you get a fleet, you get a flat things
• 32:56
  like, Hey, Adele, we want, we're going to give you $1,000,000
• 32:58
  just to record this song, song. And then you can get money every
• 33:02
  time it gets played, you know, everything, every theater.
• 33:04
  And then, then there's different rights for if it goes on
• 33:06
  television, there's different rights.
• 33:07
  It goes on DVD And, and, and because, and because there's no
• 33:10
  such story, right? You can, it can be a very, very,
• 33:12
  very lucrative payday, right. You know, again, it's, you know,
• 33:15
  I, I have a lot of a lot of students who are musicians like,
• 33:17
  oh, I want to get to syncolizes. It's like great, but you have to
• 33:20
  create relationships. It's that you don't just like
• 33:21
  send, send this on to somebody random is hey, place my song in,
• 33:24
  you know, in, in certain name of TV show.
• 33:26
  It, it doesn't work that way. I mean, it could, but it's free
• 33:28
  rare. So but yeah, that's cool.
• 33:30
  Yeah. So music supervision again.
• 33:31
  And, and, and if you have a track, if you have a success,
• 33:34
  successful track record of like getting, you know, a hit hit
• 33:38
  show on an insert, you know, whatever state, whatever the
• 33:40
  streaming platform or Netflix or HBO.
• 33:42
  And like, then all of a sudden you become a very hot property.
• 33:45
  And then it's because you you're able to negotiate the deals
• 33:48
  because it it there's a lot of negotiation going on for that.
• 33:51
  And, and again, you know, you'd know, you need to know you as
• 33:54
  the artist need to know what the going rate is.
• 33:55
  And there is no going rate, which is, which makes it very
• 33:58
  challenging. So you could say, oh man, I, I,
• 34:00
  they took my song for 50,000 bucks.
• 34:02
  Like that's great. And like, but the supervisors
• 34:04
  like we would have given you 100,000, but you didn't ask for
• 34:06
  it. So like so and so.
• 34:07
  It's really hard. That's always, I feel like
• 34:09
  that's always been the artist's problem.
• 34:11
  That's the artist's problem is that you're throwing them in
• 34:13
  tow. I mean, I think it's just the
• 34:18
  problem of the innocent versus the institutions is usually what
• 34:20
  it is. I mean, you can make you the
• 34:22
  same argument about colleges. For a lot of people, you know,
• 34:24
  you're throwing them in and having them sign up for $250,000
• 34:26
  of debt before they even know what they're talking about.
• 34:28
  True. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:30
  Again, going back to the whole individual opaque.
• 34:32
  And again, so a lot of these deals are especially in the sink
• 34:35
  world, a lot of or even even recording deals, right, they're
• 34:38
  all these are proprietary things.
• 34:40
  And so these are not public documents.
• 34:42
  And so, and so if you're not in the, if you don't move in those
• 34:45
  circles, right, it's in the sink world, then you're likely going
• 34:48
  to undersell your undersell your, your first, the first time
• 34:51
  you get a big sink deal, you likely going to undersell it.
• 34:53
  And again, you know, as long, but if, if you are happy.
• 34:56
  So hey, listen, I've got this thing, someone gave me 10 grand
• 34:59
  and I made $10,000 in one day. I I mean, forget about how much
• 35:03
  it took, how long it took to make it like that's a pretty
• 35:05
  good payday. I think anybody would take a
• 35:06
  happy, take a $10,000 for one day.
• 35:08
  You look like, and, and, and with the potential of making
• 35:10
  money on on the wealthy side too.
• 35:11
  So yeah, and you earn. And it was really cool, though,
• 35:15
  because I was even thinking the example that you gave about
• 35:18
  writing a song for the for a movie, right?
• 35:20
  Like, I think was it Shakira that did Zootopia?
• 35:22
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you're saying that the
• 35:26
  structure of the deal would be that we're going to pay you X
• 35:27
  amount to record it. And then whenever people buy
• 35:31
  this Zootopia record, you know, or have physical vinyl and
• 35:34
  Barnes and Noble, you get XY and Z cut.
• 35:35
  And every time that it's streamed and it's licensed down
• 35:38
  on Disney Plus or Hulu, whatever it is, you're going to make
• 35:40
  another cut there. Cool.
• 35:41
  And then, but then there's also the and I've heard I've heard
• 35:45
  stories or interviews with people maybe like, you know,
• 35:47
  they're an artist. And then, you know, they had
• 35:49
  mild success and then they just disappeared for 10 years, kept
• 35:52
  on living their lives. And someone knocked on the door
• 35:54
  and said, Hey, you want your song for XY and Z movie or TV
• 35:57
  show? And all of a sudden their entire
• 35:58
  career just jumped back, You know, comes jump started.
• 36:01
  Well, yeah, so that's Kate Bush was running up a hill, right?
• 36:04
  You know that if it first Stranger Things, right, so
• 36:09
  highly respected, incredibly talented artist, right, sort of
• 36:13
  in the very doesn't do much in the public eye, right.
• 36:18
  And then that song, you know, it gets gets landed Stranger
• 36:21
  things. So like, so getting a song and
• 36:22
  stranger things, I would have been like that again.
• 36:24
  That's like almost a golden ticket.
• 36:25
  So and so that's and and that song went back on the charts
• 36:29
  and, you know, and, and you know, and she again, if
• 36:31
  depending how, what and how much she owns of that song, I hope
• 36:35
  with all of it, she could have had a very lucrative payday.
• 36:38
  You know, the same thing happened with the that TikTok
• 36:41
  video with in dreams by the Fleetwood Mac in the years ago
• 36:44
  about the guy that album didn't need that song and album didn't
• 36:48
  need any more help. But like, it went back in the
• 36:50
  charts again, right? I'm so excited when people, when
• 36:55
  I saw it popping up on social media again and I was like, I'm
• 36:57
  so happy that this is making another round, you know?
• 36:59
  Right, Yeah, yeah. You know, I remember telling my
• 37:02
  telling my students, you know, again, going back to the K Bush
• 37:04
  thing, like again, you know, some of the songs in that I only
• 37:08
  watch, we only watch a couple of episodes of Stranger things.
• 37:09
  But like a lot of the songs that they played, like they were
• 37:11
  really obscure songs in the 80s to begin with.
• 37:14
  And, and you know, and I, somebody who grew up in the 80s
• 37:16
  again, not that I, I didn't obviously wasn't, I don't, I'm
• 37:18
  not all knowing about the 80s, but I was like, she was known,
• 37:21
  but that's these were like these were left of center songs,
• 37:24
  right? These were not pop hits.
• 37:25
  So I'm glad that someone found her song and said it worked
• 37:28
  perfectly for that move, for that, for that, for that series.
• 37:31
  Yeah, yeah. And so people's careers can all
• 37:34
  of a sudden, you know, the the it's what's called mailbox
• 37:36
  money. So a song that you recorded
• 37:38
  years ago, someone decides to put into a movie and then all of
• 37:41
  a sudden you're like, oh, damn. I was like, what did.
• 37:43
  Oh, cool. And and IA friend of mine who
• 37:46
  was a rapper and lives in North Carolina, like he said one of
• 37:49
  his songs somehow got and gotten got included in American Idol
• 37:52
  like as one of the as as as a bumper, like one of the IT was
• 37:55
  played like during I was like, like, like leading up to a
• 37:59
  commercial break. And he's like, I have no idea.
• 38:01
  He's like the checks just started rolling in.
• 38:03
  Wow. We'll have no idea who did this,
• 38:05
  but he's like, I'm very thankful to them.
• 38:08
  Incredible, incredible, so cool. Do you know anything about, And
• 38:11
  then I want to, I want to ask maybe this last topic and then I
• 38:14
  want to switch to a little bit of, about rock'n'roll and actual
• 38:16
  the music history. But I feel like it'd be, I'd be
• 38:20
  crazy not to try to talk about the company's Spotify or Apple
• 38:24
  Music or these big streaming platforms like YouTube Music and
• 38:27
  Amazon. How do those business models
• 38:29
  work? And, and I, I don't even
• 38:35
  understand a really how they work very much.
• 38:37
  I've read a book or two about Spotify, the company.
• 38:41
  I don't know if I completely understood all the details and I
• 38:43
  don't entirely understand, you know, they had a lot of like
• 38:46
  artists rebellions against them too over the years.
• 38:48
  Can you maybe talk a little bit about that if you're familiar
• 38:50
  with it? Yeah, so streaming right is.
• 38:58
  Stream from Limewire No no no, no no no.
• 39:01
  It goes way back. So stream radio is a streaming
• 39:03
  technology, OK, right, Right. So you know, and you know, as
• 39:08
  when I teach the history streaming, I I realize it's like
• 39:10
  it doesn't Spotify did not invent streaming, right?
• 39:13
  The radio is a streaming device. There's basically there's on
• 39:16
  demand streaming and and and then there is the the the phrase
• 39:22
  left knee. But like, so basically like
• 39:23
  there is radio is there is interactive and non interactive.
• 39:27
  That's it. So, so non interactive is like
• 39:30
  the radio like you cannot the song, they just play the song
• 39:33
  and you can request a song, but like they just, it just plays
• 39:36
  and you just have no choice. Interactive is like, I get to
• 39:39
  pick the song. So Spotify and most streaming
• 39:42
  services operate on either one of those models, you know, but
• 39:45
  there's also, there's also SiriusXM, right?
• 39:48
  And there's Pandora, so like Pandora and you know, you can
• 39:51
  interact with Pandora and have it change.
• 39:52
  So and but Sirius SiriusXM is also not interactive like you,
• 39:56
  you cannot suggest a song. It just they just play stuff for
• 39:58
  you. And so and all those, and of
• 40:00
  those, all those different, all those different mediums and the
• 40:02
  way and they also they all pay out at different rates.
• 40:06
  So, so get so right, right, so obviously.
• 40:09
  Napster paved the way for what became Spotify, right?
• 40:13
  So Napster short lived and Napster did not invent the MP3.
• 40:17
  They were invented by these, these brainiac German dudes who
• 40:20
  had worked a long time, what was called psycho acoustics.
• 40:23
  And they eventually they inherited this.
• 40:24
  They they inherited this one guy inherited this, inherited the
• 40:27
  problem from his from his mentor.
• 40:29
  And they cracked the code and basically figured out how to,
• 40:30
  how to compress these files and, and to make them sound, just
• 40:34
  make them, it was transportable, make the fall small enough, but
• 40:37
  still sound, still sound enough. And so that that happened and
• 40:40
  they, they developed the MP3 technology, which again, which
• 40:43
  allowed Napster to actually go go crazy because they developed
• 40:46
  the platform to share those things.
• 40:48
  And so then Apple comes in and Apple says, you know, I mean,
• 40:51
  there were numerous, there were numerous streaming platforms in,
• 40:53
  in around the 20s, around 2000, right?
• 40:56
  Owned by different labels and people, you know, most consumers
• 40:59
  don't give a shit what label your artist is on, right?
• 41:02
  They just want the music. And so all the, and then Apple
• 41:04
  came in and said, we're going to solve that.
• 41:06
  And we have Apple through iTunes and then and then and then.
• 41:08
  Individual songs. I remember a dollar, a song or
• 41:11
  whatever. Right now that's a song and
• 41:13
  everyone's like, oh, Apple solves our problem, right?
• 41:15
  And so, and then and then, and then what 2011 is when Spotify
• 41:20
  launches in the US, if they start, if they start in
• 41:22
  Scandinavia and and Sweden in 2009, roughly, Spotify starts
• 41:26
  off as like they don't know what they're going to sell.
• 41:29
  They're basically, they're basically an advertising
• 41:30
  platform that that's what Daniel, like the background is,
• 41:33
  is like it's there, it's advertising.
• 41:34
  And they didn't, they didn't know what they were going to do.
• 41:36
  And they kind of stumbled upon music as a thing and they, and
• 41:40
  they realized that that technology would work.
• 41:42
  And so again, it didn't really matter.
• 41:44
  It was almost like a widget, like we don't care what we sell.
• 41:46
  I bought this platform and figured out and they figured out
• 41:48
  our music. And then I was taking a while
• 41:50
  to, to get the licensing deals and going on.
• 41:53
  And you know, and, and then at the, but also at the same time,
• 41:56
  right, that's when labels were really suffering.
• 41:58
  They, they're sort of like the CD had CDs had declined.
• 42:01
  And I know this, I know that labels blame piracy, but I don't
• 42:04
  buy that the math, the math this doesn't add up.
• 42:08
  Yes, You know, again, what NAFTA did was illegal, right?
• 42:10
  Again, that at the end of the day, it was copyright.
• 42:12
  They don't have, they don't own the right, they don't have the,
• 42:14
  you don't own it. You can't give it away, right?
• 42:16
  So they basically that that's that was the that was the crux
• 42:19
  of of what that was brought down the house, brought down their,
• 42:22
  their, their they're they're short on the empire.
• 42:24
  So again, label, yes. Did labels lose money?
• 42:27
  Absolutely. Is it the same as the figure
• 42:30
  that they that they're recording industry association of America,
• 42:34
  Are those are those accurate? Probably not that.
• 42:36
  I don't think it's anywhere near that anyway.
• 42:37
  So so so the labels are happy to have Spotify and Apple or Apple
• 42:42
  and Spotify like sort of solve their issue of how do we get
• 42:45
  people to to to to listen to more music.
• 42:47
  So you thought? So initially they were, they
• 42:48
  thought it was like a more extended marketing opportunity.
• 42:51
  Yeah, absolutely. And you know, and you know, and,
• 42:54
  and yes, you alluded to that a lot of artists are very upset
• 42:57
  with Spotify and they are then that it is legit, but they
• 43:01
  should be the the artist should be upset with the record labels
• 43:04
  because the record labels are the ones that signed the deals,
• 43:06
  right? So why would they upset with
• 43:07
  Spotify? Can you can you clarify?
• 43:09
  Yeah, sure. Because because the, the the
• 43:12
  payouts are very small, right. Again, as you said that it's,
• 43:16
  you know, 0.000 whatever, right So per stream.
• 43:20
  So a couple things right. So that is entirely true.
• 43:24
  The payout of the smonic and there is no set rate Apple and
• 43:28
  Spotify and Amazon, they don't pay any per rate.
• 43:30
  It's not a it's not a pro rata model.
• 43:32
  They they the the system is very complicated and the the the the
• 43:37
  numbers that people use are averages.
• 43:39
  So, so, but the one, the one thing that is good is so in the
• 43:44
  old model, you buy a record, right?
• 43:46
  So you don't see, like I have, I have thousands of CDs around my,
• 43:50
  around my office and like, you buy a record and it's 10 bucks,
• 43:53
  right? So back when I first started
• 43:54
  buying CDs that were $18.00, right?
• 43:56
  So, and so that's what it was. We'll use 10 bucks.
• 43:59
  So I bought the record and it was your record.
• 44:01
  And so you got some kind of royalty for my, and I, I, I can
• 44:05
  listen to the album a million times, right?
• 44:08
  And like, but you only got paid once, right?
• 44:11
  Right. So the bonus of of the the
• 44:13
  current system is is that. Interesting.
• 44:15
  Cool. Now every time I listen to a
• 44:18
  song on whatever platform you someone's getting paid by the
• 44:22
  artist getting a trickle, right, But again, you know, but legacy
• 44:26
  artists, right. So again, someone, some my
• 44:29
  legacy artist is someone, either either they're the band is no
• 44:31
  longer because someone's dead or they, they broke up or, or what
• 44:33
  all the above, right? So that there are still money
• 44:36
  flowing into the catalog of The Beatles, right?
• 44:39
  So we know that or Michael Jackson or Sam Cooke, whoever,
• 44:42
  because the music's out there, right?
• 44:44
  And so, so whoever, whoever owns those rights are still making
• 44:47
  money from that catalog. But again, which, which, and so
• 44:50
  that, but that is a good thing, right?
• 44:53
  But it was, but it was the small payouts that people were very
• 44:56
  upset at. Like are they looking at like my
• 44:57
  song was streamed 1000 times and I literally made 42 bucks, you
• 45:03
  know, and you know, but if my, but if 10,000 people bought my
• 45:08
  album as independent artists, that's a, that's a, that's a,
• 45:11
  that's an impressive #10,000 no matter what.
• 45:14
  I mean I I have I have some students like they they get like
• 45:17
  30,000 streams a year, which is again.
• 45:19
  It's a lot. Yeah, it is.
• 45:20
  I mean, they're not making they're, they're not making any
• 45:22
  money from that. But that's that's but like
• 45:24
  that's an impressive number. I'm like you're the.
• 45:26
  Audience of 30,000. That is exceptional, you know.
• 45:30
  Someone who lives in Bergen County or somewhere or like
• 45:32
  that's like, holy shit, that's cool 30,000 people love my
• 45:35
  music. That's awesome, right?
• 45:37
  But like then you look at your old streaming like, oh, I made,
• 45:40
  I made $1000, right? Which is, you know, you can't,
• 45:42
  which is, that's not even a car payment, right?
• 45:44
  So. If I got 30, if I got 30,000
• 45:47
  streams, can I go to a venue and say I would love to play?
• 45:51
  Here's here's evidence that that that, that, that, that people
• 45:54
  listen to my music and that it's good music.
• 45:56
  Yeah, I mean, so yes, you can. I mean, venues want to know not
• 46:01
  so much about how many people listen to your music is how many
• 46:03
  people come to see you. So I mean, you know, you need to
• 46:05
  say I can go. You know, when you again, when
• 46:07
  you when you get beyond like the local bar level and you're like
• 46:11
  I I'm I'm going to move into because you know, I know the the
• 46:13
  competition kind of shift a little bit.
• 46:14
  But like, so there are there are venues that have there are,
• 46:17
  there are there are spaces that have music and there are music
• 46:19
  venues, right? So they're different.
• 46:22
  So the bar, the the restaurant bar that has a band in the back
• 46:25
  is not necessarily a music venue, right?
• 46:27
  The band is there for ambiance. So when you start moving into
• 46:29
  the actual venues that like they are, the primary focus is music,
• 46:33
  but they want to know how many people are you going to bring to
• 46:37
  me? And and you just say, yeah, I
• 46:39
  played these shows around this area and I have ticket counts.
• 46:43
  If it's a hard ticket, means there's like ticket sales or you
• 46:46
  know, like there was averaging 24 people a night, right?
• 46:50
  And again, and, and that's, that's what people want to know
• 46:52
  at, at for, for concert, for venues.
• 46:54
  They want to know those hard numbers of again, yes, having,
• 46:58
  having, having streaming numbers can support that.
• 47:01
  And you can artist can use those numbers, say, Oh, if I got, I
• 47:04
  have 100,000 monthly listeners, right?
• 47:06
  And then I know they're, they're in Buffalo, they're in, they're
• 47:08
  in Detroit, right? You can dig down there.
• 47:11
  There are, there are there are platforms that that will look at
• 47:13
  this and will to get get that, get those analytics and you can
• 47:17
  then you can say I'm going to play some shows in there because
• 47:19
  this is this is where my fans are, right?
• 47:21
  And and that goes back to my to the virality thing.
• 47:23
  So like if you have, if you have a million fans, but there's ten,
• 47:26
  it's only it's only 10 people here in temple.
• 47:28
  No one's going to come to your show.
• 47:30
  You need to have a critical mass.
• 47:32
  As a as a case in point, my wife and I went to a band called
• 47:35
  Pigeons playing Ping Pong, which is a funk, cool band, jam band.
• 47:40
  I I went we went to a venue in Fort Lauderdale that probably is
• 47:43
  a 500 person venue I see now on Spotify.
• 47:47
  I pulled up they have 122 and a .2000 monthly listeners.
• 47:52
  OK, that's great. Yeah.
• 47:52
  So. 120 two 123,000 listeners, listeners and there's and
• 47:57
  they're and they're selling out 500 venue seats like that.
• 48:02
  I mean, that's, that's not a it's not a it's not it's not
• 48:06
  even close to 1 to 1. You know, one to 1/2 to 1/3 to
• 48:09
  1. You need to rack up a lot of
• 48:11
  listeners to kind of sell anything it seems like.
• 48:14
  Yeah, yeah. But in up again, but like a band
• 48:17
  like that, I'm not from with him like that like they're probably
• 48:19
  they don't have day jobs I would guess, right.
• 48:21
  So if you're getting, you get 100,000 listeners, again,
• 48:23
  depending how big the band is, right?
• 48:26
  You know, and again, keep in mind that's just on Spotify,
• 48:28
  right? So, you know, there, there are
• 48:30
  numerous platforms and you know, there are platforms, you know,
• 48:32
  and you know that you can be, you can be making money, you can
• 48:34
  have, you can have a fan base in another country, right?
• 48:37
  And you know, and, and you know, and like, you know, Deezer's big
• 48:40
  and I know mostly there's, I mean, there, you know, there's,
• 48:42
  there, there, there are streaming service in Asia,
• 48:44
  right? 10 cent has their own, their own
• 48:46
  streaming platform. So again, so you know, it's like
• 48:49
  it's so you have so you might be having if you have 100,000
• 48:52
  listeners on numerous platforms and again, depending, depending
• 48:55
  how owns the rights of music and you're and you're doing, you
• 48:58
  know, you're you're playing a couple.
• 48:59
  That even makes the point even that makes the point even
• 49:01
  stronger that there's even less of a correlation between the
• 49:03
  amount of streams you have in butts in the Sea.
• 49:05
  You know that I mean, because if they're getting 100,000 on
• 49:08
  Spotify, 200,000 on Apple X amount on YouTube, which is
• 49:11
  probably a lot more than both of them and like and like so that
• 49:15
  now you're at, let's say, you know, half a million, you know,
• 49:17
  monthly listings or more. That means that for half a
• 49:21
  million listeners, you you're selling out 500 seats a night.
• 49:24
  I mean, like, listen, you're obviously again, you have this,
• 49:26
  this is your full time job. You don't have a day job, but it
• 49:29
  shows how hard you have to work. It shows how the numbers are.
• 49:32
  Yeah, yeah, you know, and again, going to the live side, the idea
• 49:35
  is you want to, you want to sell out every show.
• 49:37
  So, you know, I mean, you know, the, the some of the artists I
• 49:39
  work for, like, you know, we, the idea is like, I'd rather
• 49:42
  play 2/2 shows and the same, same venue two different nights,
• 49:46
  then go to a bigger venue and then all of a sudden have it be
• 49:49
  half be have it be maybe even a quarter MP again there.
• 49:52
  So there, there. And also there's a strategy.
• 49:54
  There's, you know, if you have a booking agent and even if you
• 49:58
  don't, you know, most bands are their own booking agents.
• 50:00
  You're like, the idea is like, yeah, we went and we sold out,
• 50:02
  whether that's 50 or 500 or 50,000, but that is a that is a
• 50:06
  huge, that's a very enticing thing to the next level.
• 50:08
  So we did, you know, and, and you know AEG or Live Nation,
• 50:11
  they have they own venues in every market.
• 50:14
  Like we have our 400 seat room, we have our 800 seat room, we
• 50:17
  have our 12 and I and you move up right?
• 50:19
  And so, and, and, and then you try to find the ceiling and
• 50:21
  hopefully the ceiling Hope you know, obviously artists you
• 50:23
  know, are going to find the ceiling, but it's a, it's a very
• 50:25
  long process. You start it at 200, you start
• 50:28
  at then you go to 500, then you go to 1500 up, then you go to
• 50:31
  3000 up, didn't sell up and go back and you know, and then and
• 50:33
  you know, and then you keep going back And so and, and, and,
• 50:35
  and you're trying to maintain sell off because that's that is
• 50:37
  way more important than saying I played 1000 seats women had 400
• 50:41
  people than saying I played A400 seats women had 400 people.
• 50:43
  That's that's way better. Sure, sure, sure.
• 50:46
  Really interesting. Really, really, really cool
• 50:48
  stuff. I thank you so much.
• 50:51
  By the way, I just want to say you are a are a freaking an
• 50:55
  incredible source of information and you're breaking all this
• 50:57
  down really, really beautifully and you're hitting out of the
• 51:01
  park as far as I'm concerned. Thank you so much.
• 51:03
  It's awesome. Let's talk about music now.
• 51:05
  You mean? The song itself you mean we have
• 51:09
  been talking about. We haven't been talking about.
• 51:10
  You mean the songs itself? I mean, the songs itself for a
• 51:12
  little bit, yeah. Or maybe even a little bit of
• 51:14
  the history. I'm really interested in the
• 51:17
  background and the roots of a lot of this stuff.
• 51:20
  Rock is one of the genres that there's so much to talk about.
• 51:25
  Rock is a genre that for me, I've noticed has pockets of
• 51:29
  manifestations. Like you have Laurel Canyon
• 51:32
  rock, you have San Francisco rock, you have Jersey rock, you
• 51:35
  know, you have Alabama rock. You got, you know, Southern,
• 51:38
  Southern rock in general, that whole style, you know, and they
• 51:43
  all, they're all so dramatically different, but they all kind of
• 51:47
  embody, you know, they all embodied by rock.
• 51:51
  What do you what do you think about that and how?
• 51:54
  What do you think rock is at its core and why?
• 51:56
  Why there's so many different manifestations of it?
• 52:00
  So, so you mentioned the word southern rock and as Greg Allman
• 52:08
  and once famously said, he's like Southern rock is a
• 52:11
  redundant because most of Brock comes from the South, right?
• 52:16
  So so we we as humans like labels, right?
• 52:21
  We need we genres help us to figure out what things are.
• 52:25
  Again, the analogy I often use is go to imagine going to a
• 52:29
  supermarket where the food was not organized by type, right?
• 52:34
  It was just like, it's all out there, right?
• 52:37
  So there's no cereal aisle like to suck some cereals over here
• 52:40
  and some cereals over there and you're like that it's confusing
• 52:43
  and go to Target, pick it like it's it, it's because we said we
• 52:46
  have we like to we like to compartmentalize,
• 52:47
  compartmentalize things like David Letterman's top ten list.
• 52:50
  We like things neatly organized. That's, that's just a human
• 52:53
  characteristic. And so as, as music expanded,
• 52:58
  right, music's been going on for, I don't know, I don't know,
• 53:00
  centuries, right, thousands of years, right, millennia.
• 53:03
  And so as you know, if we look at the start of rock music
• 53:08
  arbitrarily pick 1954, which is when Elvis decides to go in and
• 53:12
  make a make a half 1/2 assed recording at Sun Records for his
• 53:16
  mom. And then Sam Phillips benches
• 53:18
  make a note of that guy. He's pretty good.
• 53:20
  And then about a year later he comes back and then and he
• 53:23
  records. That's all right, Mama.
• 53:24
  And then and then and then he blows up.
• 53:26
  But Elvis didn't start that right.
• 53:28
  He was influenced by R&B. And so as this music develops
• 53:32
  and it's not quite R&B, it's not quite country, it was actually,
• 53:35
  it was actually called rockabilly.
• 53:37
  So, you know, Elvis was a basically a rockabilly artist
• 53:40
  for about a nanosecond. And then, you know, and he was,
• 53:43
  I mean that that's what it was. He was called the Hillbilly Cat.
• 53:44
  That was his first nickname. And then and then, and then that
• 53:49
  music becomes a little bit, it's not quite country, it's not
• 53:52
  quite R&B, but there's obviously there is, there's white southern
• 53:55
  roots, there's black southern roots.
• 53:57
  You know, there is there, there, you know, there's, there's the
• 54:00
  urban urban, there's northern urban appeal by somebody
• 54:03
  borders, you know, umm, you know, takes music off from the
• 54:06
  Delta. And then basically, you know,
• 54:08
  very and very productive. He goes off to Chicago and trade
• 54:11
  acoustic guitar. There's nothing to ever happen
• 54:12
  in Chicago. Trade trades in his acoustic
• 54:15
  guitar for his electric guitar. So we have this so, but then we
• 54:17
  have like these competing box, but it's all of the similar,
• 54:20
  right? And then, you know, then
• 54:20
  obviously you have chess records and and people like Chuck Berry
• 54:23
  who did start writing songs like Chuck Berry, you know, again, a
• 54:25
  brilliant guitar player, but also like a, you know, highly
• 54:28
  regarded songwriter, right? He's I got, I think he you know,
• 54:31
  so and then and then and that music influences the next
• 54:36
  generation. So you can so you've got Chuck
• 54:37
  Berry, you've got Buddy Holly, you've got Elvis, you got Little
• 54:40
  Richard, you know, you got Laverne Baker, you know, and you
• 54:43
  know the you know, the the queen of R&B, you know, for more or
• 54:47
  less, you know, sustains Atlantic records.
• 54:51
  Again, early Atlantic records was an early, early pioneer.
• 54:53
  And you know, of course there's Ray Charles and then you have
• 54:57
  some do up groups and then and then it then obviously people
• 55:01
  spread then as as radio, right, which was the predominant media
• 55:05
  at the time, right? It's that helps broad mildly
• 55:08
  broadcast across the across the across the the country.
• 55:11
  And obviously there's only four or five TV stations, you know,
• 55:15
  and then as artists are appearing on Ed Sullivan show
• 55:18
  and then, you know, obviously The Beatles in 64, you've got,
• 55:22
  you know, so, so people, so people in all these different
• 55:24
  pockets. So it's Laurel Canyon or it's,
• 55:25
  you know, or it was. It's not that people move to
• 55:27
  Laurel. It's not, it's not people in
• 55:29
  Laurel Canyon. It's people move to Laurel
• 55:30
  Canyon, right, right. And then you got you got
• 55:33
  teenagers in the South, teenagers N hearing this music
• 55:35
  going, Oh, that's what I want right.
• 55:37
  Then there's also the social aspect to it too, was so this is
• 55:40
  post World War 2. So you've got these these people
• 55:42
  who are, who are baby, but basically what we become baby
• 55:45
  boomers, right? So they have time and leisure on
• 55:48
  their hand. They got time and money, right?
• 55:49
  So there's no, there's no longer the threat of like there's no,
• 55:52
  there's not that we, we, there's no economic depression, there's
• 55:55
  no instant threat of World War 2, right?
• 55:57
  You've got the Cold War looming. And so people, people are they,
• 56:01
  you know, young people were like teenagers, like they can get a
• 56:04
  paper route and they can go down and they have some time and they
• 56:07
  have money to spend on record. And then, and then record labels
• 56:10
  then realize we have this new demographic we can market to.
• 56:14
  And so Rock'n'roll is marketed specifically towards teenagers,
• 56:19
  right? And, and, and, and, and you
• 56:20
  know, and then there's all sorts of, there's all sorts of teenage
• 56:23
  movies that are like men for teeny boppers.
• 56:24
  And so, and again, so it's all it's, it's there's a lot of
• 56:27
  exploitation in a good way, like.
• 56:28
  Dominant, predominantly white teenagers, right?
• 56:30
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yes and yes, you know,
• 56:32
  because a lot of the. Roots that you mentioned came
• 56:34
  from a lot of black music. And I do want to emphasize the
• 56:38
  the Yeah, for sure. Keep on going.
• 56:40
  I'm sorry, I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, absolutely no.
• 56:42
  Of course. Right.
• 56:43
  So, right. So, you know, I was, yeah, I was
• 56:44
  going to say like, obviously then we have this incredibly
• 56:47
  racially segregated society, right?
• 56:49
  And and when we could argue, we still do.
• 56:51
  But, you know, and and so the cultural side is like the
• 56:54
  breaking. So, you know, you get bored
• 56:55
  versus brown versus Board of Education is 54, right?
• 56:58
  Landmark civilized case, but it doesn't really disagree.
• 57:01
  Yeah, 10. Years Rock'n'roll was born too.
• 57:03
  Yeah, yeah, it doesn't really disagree gay anything, you know,
• 57:05
  but there. But the, the, you know, the one
• 57:07
  thing the the radios, the radios are really important part of
• 57:10
  this because like, you know, as people have said, like you can't
• 57:12
  segregate the airwaves. Even though there were stations
• 57:14
  that were geared towards white audiences, there were stations
• 57:16
  geared towards black audiences, right.
• 57:18
  So but like when you turn the radio on.
• 57:20
  You can stop listening to it. Right, Yeah, yeah, right.
• 57:22
  It doesn't. And and so and you know, and so
• 57:24
  you could, your parents could be very anti this or that music,
• 57:28
  but you have a transistor radio. You can sneak off to the beach
• 57:31
  or you can go outside to you know, and, and and listen and
• 57:34
  you know, and your your parents want to listen to Sinatra, but
• 57:36
  do you want to listen? But do you want to listen to
• 57:37
  Chuck Berry or whoever, right or vice versa?
• 57:39
  It doesn't matter, right? So.
• 57:41
  I would love to rebel by listening to Chuck Berry.
• 57:43
  That'd be cool to be considered a rebel and listen to Muddy
• 57:46
  Waters. Or, you know, like some of the
• 57:48
  real Blues I mean. You know, and yeah, there
• 57:52
  there's definitely, there's a, you know, an intrigue, you know,
• 57:57
  there's a little bit like, oh, you know, white teens interested
• 58:00
  in black music, you know, Yeah. Or as I I, you know, and or, you
• 58:03
  know, I know black, black, black people interested in country
• 58:06
  music. But the, but The thing is, it's
• 58:08
  the musics were way closer. They were, they were always way
• 58:11
  closer than than people thought. It wasn't that really.
• 58:15
  It was, you know, if, if you go back and listen to music from
• 58:20
  the 20s by, you know, there are, there are white artists who, who
• 58:23
  making string band music, there are black artists making string
• 58:26
  band music. And you know, it again, because
• 58:28
  we, because of the Jim Crow laws and segregation, right, music,
• 58:32
  music is labeled hillbilly or race music, right?
• 58:35
  And so the hillbilly development becomes country music, right?
• 58:39
  You know, and there's, there's basically, there's, there's like
• 58:41
  white vernaculars of the music and there's, there's black and
• 58:43
  vernaculars of the music, right? And so you get hillbilly and
• 58:46
  race, right? Race eventually becomes, you
• 58:48
  know, R&B, which becomes rock'n'roll, which becomes,
• 58:50
  which becomes, you know, and, and a lot of times they, they
• 58:53
  sort of, they, they, they always interweaving.
• 58:56
  And then sort of, and then in the 50s when Elvis comes out and
• 58:59
  seemingly out of nowhere, although if you know the
• 59:02
  history, like it really was out of nowhere, it was, it was on a
• 59:04
  collision course. It just happened to he was the
• 59:06
  one that were happened to Clive. Again, he was the first person
• 59:09
  to make this music. But again, because he was white
• 59:11
  and that he he had some privileges that others didn't
• 59:14
  have. Again, Elvis was really.
• 59:15
  Here's the manifestation of black music in all white in a,
• 59:18
  in a, in a white world and white community and made it popular to
• 59:21
  a degree that I think, you know, wouldn't have.
• 59:24
  I mean, you could, you could have, you could say that someone
• 59:26
  else could have made black music popular, you know, as popular
• 59:28
  but like Elvis did at the end of the day, you know, like.
• 59:31
  Yeah, yeah. He caused all that reach.
• 59:33
  Yes, he did right. You know, I, you know, and
• 59:36
  there's, there's a, there's a line which I'm, I've never
• 59:37
  found, never found it. But Sam Phillips says, if I, if
• 59:40
  I could find a white kid that sings like Howlin' Wolf, I can
• 59:43
  make $1,000,000, right. And, you know, and if you listen
• 59:46
  to Elvis's early recordings, like his recordings in 5455,
• 59:49
  he's really good. Elvis is really, really good.
• 59:51
  I mean, he sort of becomes a parody of himself, you know, but
• 59:55
  that's more or less because of his, his, his manager, the
• 59:57
  Colonel Tom Parker. But like, but Elvis, like, you
• 59:59
  know, he was, I, I do believe he was sincere in his appreciation
• 1:00:03
  of, of, of, of the music that he that he absorbed.
• 1:00:06
  Sure. You know, So, so, yeah.
• 1:00:09
  And so, yeah. You know, and so that again, we
• 1:00:12
  have these various offshoots of, of, you know, there's, you know,
• 1:00:15
  then, you know, then we have, you know, like the Northern R&B
• 1:00:18
  song, which is more or less is, is Motown.
• 1:00:20
  Then we have the Southern soul, right, which is stacks and stuff
• 1:00:23
  from the Shoals, you know, and James Brown at King in
• 1:00:26
  Cincinnati. You know, and then you know, and
• 1:00:28
  then that and then they you know, and then sort of like in
• 1:00:32
  the in the late 50s when sort of a lot of the first generation
• 1:00:36
  rock'n'roll sort of disappear, Elvis goes to the army, but he
• 1:00:39
  Holly dies, right? Chuck Berry gets arrested.
• 1:00:41
  Jerry Lee Lewis may has decides to marry his cousin.
• 1:00:45
  There's a. His own problems too, right?
• 1:00:47
  Right, Yeah, Little Richard. Little Richard gives up because
• 1:00:49
  he would he so I can super brilliant, you know, move like
• 1:00:52
  he didn't like the deal he had with his record label.
• 1:00:54
  So he says it takes, it would take an active God to get out of
• 1:00:57
  his label. So he said, so he becomes he
• 1:00:59
  goes into the he goes, he he says, I'm going to go to the
• 1:01:01
  seminary. It's like, which is an act of
• 1:01:03
  God. And he gets out of record of
• 1:01:05
  super brilliant, super brilliant business move.
• 1:01:07
  I say, Oh yeah, all those artists disappear, leaving a
• 1:01:09
  vacuum, right. And this is where like Frankie
• 1:01:12
  Valli comes in, you know, and, and and a lot of schlock rock.
• 1:01:15
  So like, you know, a lot of teeny bopper music because
• 1:01:18
  again, people didn't know what to do.
• 1:01:19
  And then and that and that leaves space and the surf rock
• 1:01:22
  comes in and that leaves basin and and so The Beatles going to
• 1:01:24
  fill that vacuum, you know, and, and, and to emerge in in the US
• 1:01:27
  in 64. Yeah.
• 1:01:28
  Beatles, Beach Boys were the stand.
• 1:01:30
  The Stones were active then. When was it but the Stones?
• 1:01:35
  The Stones were much more Blues influenced than than they were
• 1:01:38
  like teeny bop I I think they had the plenty of the teeny
• 1:01:40
  bopper crowd. Famously, of course, but yeah.
• 1:01:43
  I mean, you know, the one thing that, that I think people forget
• 1:01:45
  is that both The Beatles and the Stones and, and other bands of
• 1:01:48
  that era, the sort of the, the, some of the British Invasion
• 1:01:51
  band, they were actually cover bands like, you know, like the
• 1:01:54
  first, the, The Beatles don't release a full original music
• 1:01:59
  until Hard Day's Night. And so there was one or two
• 1:02:01
  original songs on their, on their first record.
• 1:02:03
  And, and, you know, and then, and then the Stones most again,
• 1:02:06
  same thing. I think the, the, you know, the
• 1:02:08
  I want to be your I want to be your lover, which is a song that
• 1:02:10
  Lennon McCartney wrote was, was the, was the first Stones
• 1:02:13
  original song, although they don't write it.
• 1:02:15
  And so, and so, I mean, so they would never ex those bands would
• 1:02:18
  never make it today because there's no bands going to
• 1:02:21
  release, like no labels going to take a risk on a cover band,
• 1:02:24
  right? Just releasing covers, right.
• 1:02:26
  And and then maybe 1. Day there are also cover bands I
• 1:02:28
  believe. I don't think that'd be the
• 1:02:29
  problem with When Assange with Warner was that they didn't have
• 1:02:32
  any. You know, like we have to tour
• 1:02:33
  because we don't have any songs to play.
• 1:02:35
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you, you're absolutely right.
• 1:02:37
  Yeah. So, and, and that model kind of
• 1:02:40
  existed through a good portion of the 60s where you again,
• 1:02:44
  most, a lot of bands become known as cover bands.
• 1:02:46
  And then and as, as they realized, as the musicians in
• 1:02:49
  those bands realized the the business is like, oh, the
• 1:02:52
  business isn't owning the songs, right?
• 1:02:54
  And so then they write more songs.
• 1:02:56
  That's interesting you, you think that that's what happened
• 1:02:58
  relative to them discovering their style of playing through
• 1:03:02
  covers, meaning covers for example, like again with the
• 1:03:05
  stones or with the dead or something like that.
• 1:03:07
  You could see that they had a lot of influences throughout the
• 1:03:09
  years and the and you know, this it started as a cover band, but
• 1:03:15
  the Grateful Dead realized that was such a different sound than
• 1:03:17
  any of the songs that we're covering.
• 1:03:18
  You know, like, I mean, if you listen to Casey Jones, you
• 1:03:21
  listen to going down the road feeling bad, you listen to any
• 1:03:23
  of these original songs. I know you rider that that that
• 1:03:26
  were all covers that are all became staples of their music.
• 1:03:30
  What makes them special with the way that the dead or that the
• 1:03:32
  Stones or that The Beatles performed these songs, Twist and
• 1:03:34
  shout was, you know, was a cover.
• 1:03:36
  I guess that was a little more true to the original cover than
• 1:03:39
  say, you know, you know, Casey Jones that.
• 1:03:43
  But I, I could see a record company taking a risk on a on a
• 1:03:45
  band that has a proven style. And even though they're covering
• 1:03:50
  their music and their experience is fundamentally different than
• 1:03:53
  anything, and it seems to be working in its own right.
• 1:03:56
  Well, so yes and no. So the what?
• 1:04:00
  You know what, going back to the other the previous conversation,
• 1:04:04
  so the Stones had people, they put butts in seats, right?
• 1:04:10
  So The Beatles put butts in seats, right?
• 1:04:13
  So, you know, the gigs in Liverpool, the gigs at the
• 1:04:15
  Cavern Club, the Stones were playing in London, right?
• 1:04:18
  So there there was something about them.
• 1:04:20
  They had some charisma. They have charisma, right?
• 1:04:23
  And they, and they were, and they excited the audience didn't
• 1:04:27
  matter. The labels probably didn't give
• 1:04:29
  one iota whether they're playing original songs or cover songs or
• 1:04:34
  the how true they were to the original.
• 1:04:36
  And I, you know, I'm sure that The Beatles and the Stones tried
• 1:04:38
  to be as true as possible to the best of their abilities.
• 1:04:42
  And, and so, but, but, but it was the, it was the, the
• 1:04:44
  excitement of the audience, of the paying audience that
• 1:04:47
  attracted the label. And so, and the same thing with
• 1:04:51
  the Dead. I mean, you, you, you look at a
• 1:04:54
  lot of early, early, some of the early Dead cover the set lists
• 1:04:58
  where they're, they're playing Motown songs, they're playing,
• 1:05:01
  right. They're playing a bunch of
• 1:05:02
  bluegrass tunes, a bunch of jug bands.
• 1:05:03
  So they didn't know what they wanted to do, but they didn't
• 1:05:05
  know who they're going to be. It took them quite a while to
• 1:05:07
  figure that out. You know, I can have someone.
• 1:05:10
  I'm a huge Grateful Dead fan. I still I got to see them about
• 1:05:12
  25 times. Nice.
• 1:05:14
  Really. Yeah, and, you know, like, it's
• 1:05:19
  not really until, you know, Working Man's Dead and American
• 1:05:24
  Beauty, where they really figure out their own style, right.
• 1:05:27
  Where, you know, because, you know, I mean, yes, they're,
• 1:05:29
  they're, they're writing original music, but they, they,
• 1:05:32
  they, they, they, they go from like this experimental freak out
• 1:05:36
  band, you know, to like. Oh, I know these tidy.
• 1:05:39
  We don't have tidy, you know, you know, three minute, 4 minute
• 1:05:42
  songs. Sure.
• 1:05:43
  Yeah. Again, that that part of that is
• 1:05:45
  the influence of of John Barlow and and Hunter right on, on the
• 1:05:50
  influence of the lyrics for Anne Garcia and we respectively.
• 1:05:53
  So it's, you know, so it also goes back to what's not
• 1:05:58
  happening now in the music industry is that bands like The
• 1:06:00
  Beatles or the Stones or The Who or the Dead or in certain names,
• 1:06:03
  they're like labels allow the bands to develop.
• 1:06:07
  They said, we see potential here.
• 1:06:09
  And and so we are going to let you do some stuff, right?
• 1:06:13
  And as long as we're making forward progress, you're making,
• 1:06:15
  you're making some sales. There's butts in seats.
• 1:06:18
  We're going to let you figure this out.
• 1:06:20
  Now, labels, you need to be fully or pretty closely fully
• 1:06:25
  realized. Like you need to know who you
• 1:06:27
  want to be as an artist from the moment if you you start seeking
• 1:06:31
  the attention of labels, right? So labels, they want to know I
• 1:06:36
  have a vision. I want to, I want to be, I can
• 1:06:38
  pick a style, pick a whatever how you want to look.
• 1:06:41
  You know that you you need to become to the table fully vested
• 1:06:45
  and invested in your where again, you know, again, I don't
• 1:06:49
  think the Grateful Dead would be signed to this day.
• 1:06:51
  I don't think The Beatles would be signed because they were
• 1:06:53
  cover bands, right? It it again.
• 1:06:56
  I, I don't know when the day gets time.
• 1:06:57
  Let's maybe 676667. They're getting interest for
• 1:07:01
  sure, right, But they don't really become the the band that
• 1:07:04
  they are, the band that they, you know, when Garcia died,
• 1:07:06
  right? It took them five or six years
• 1:07:08
  to to get there and it took them even more time to figure out,
• 1:07:12
  you know, and if you listen, if you listen, if you look at
• 1:07:14
  again, look at Grateful Dead set lists, you know, up up up to the
• 1:07:17
  mid 70s, it's a but it is all insane.
• 1:07:19
  Like we don't like. I love those concerts.
• 1:07:22
  I love those. The early 70s concerts and the
• 1:07:25
  late 60s concerts are so my favorite.
• 1:07:27
  For them, right? Yeah.
• 1:07:27
  And again, you know, you know, I think.
• 1:07:29
  Pen, I love the Blues Pig Pen I thought was added such a great
• 1:07:32
  blue science and I think that they didn't feel like they could
• 1:07:35
  carry those those tunes without a player like him, even though
• 1:07:39
  they perform him. Well, I mean, you know, I mean,
• 1:07:41
  I picked a good, a good, a good point because like the the band
• 1:07:45
  like the like they start off as as, as basically, you know, it
• 1:07:47
  was mother Mccree's Uptown drug champions, right?
• 1:07:49
  And they're a blue band. And then they and they move away
• 1:07:53
  from the Blues and picked didn't really know what to do because
• 1:07:55
  he was like, and he was a good singer.
• 1:07:56
  He. Died of alcoholism,
• 1:07:57
  unfortunately. Yeah, unfortunately, and he was,
• 1:07:59
  he was, he was a mediocre keyboard player.
• 1:08:01
  And like, so he did when they started doing all the freak out
• 1:08:03
  stuff, he just walk off stage, you know, and he'd come in,
• 1:08:06
  they, they do hard to handle whatever, you know, or you know,
• 1:08:08
  Mr. Charlie, whatever. And then he would just sort of
• 1:08:10
  be in the sidelines, right? And so they, they kind of
• 1:08:12
  started moving a different direction, you know, you know,
• 1:08:14
  and, and he didn't, he, he died, but like, I don't think he would
• 1:08:17
  have, if he didn't die, I don't think he would have last with
• 1:08:19
  them because I don't, he wouldn't have fit because they,
• 1:08:22
  they, they, they, they moved in a different direction.
• 1:08:24
  So. I wonder if they moved in a
• 1:08:26
  different direction because he died though, because you could
• 1:08:27
  see that the styles of the band throughout the years.
• 1:08:29
  I don't want to just get too nitpicky about this, but the
• 1:08:31
  bands throughout the years, because the, the, the biggest
• 1:08:34
  thing that was always gone was the keyboard player and, and,
• 1:08:37
  and whenever and the keyboard players tend to bring a lot of,
• 1:08:41
  you know, Jerry Garcia brought a lot of country.
• 1:08:43
  Bob Weir brought a lot of that western, you know, cowboy type
• 1:08:46
  of music. And then, you know, I mean Keith
• 1:08:50
  or what's, what's his name, man? He had his own awesome solo
• 1:08:54
  career. Bruce Hornsby, you know, or Tom
• 1:08:58
  Constantine or whoever, you know, whoever it was, they all
• 1:09:01
  kind of brought their own flavor and influences to the band that
• 1:09:05
  I think would actually change the direction of the band's
• 1:09:07
  musical style many times that the egg, if you listen set from
• 1:09:11
  69 to 72 to 77 to 80 to 8 to the early 80s until the end of the
• 1:09:16
  career. It's a different genre band
• 1:09:18
  almost every time. And I could, I'm sure that you
• 1:09:20
  can make the argument it's because of the actual rotations
• 1:09:22
  of players in it. I'm going to say no to that.
• 1:09:25
  I'm going to say I don't agree with that.
• 1:09:27
  That's fine. It's like no, it was Garcia's
• 1:09:29
  band and and and they did what he wanted to do and they you
• 1:09:33
  know, and yes, the the the style of the keeper players certainly
• 1:09:36
  influenced. Like, you know, Keith was really
• 1:09:37
  good. Brent was an amazing musician,
• 1:09:41
  vocalist, you know, and you know, Hornby.
• 1:09:43
  Hornby was rather short lived, but and again, but you know, it
• 1:09:47
  said yes. So when you saw the bands and
• 1:09:49
  you know, in those different iterations, of course, that
• 1:09:51
  there was a different dynamic, but I, it was not they, they,
• 1:09:54
  you know, they were unfortunate, the keyboard players.
• 1:09:56
  They were, they weren't interchangeable.
• 1:09:58
  They weren't interchangeable. You know, again, the sound of
• 1:10:02
  the band, it was it's a mixer, Ron Garcia's guitar and you
• 1:10:05
  know, I and he led, he led the band.
• 1:10:08
  He he and we were not. I mean, they they were there was
• 1:10:12
  simpatico, of course, but again, it was Garcias band, I think.
• 1:10:15
  Well, no. Question is Garcias Band for
• 1:10:17
  sure. OK, Yeah, that's fine.
• 1:10:18
  That's that's fine. So the, and yeah, I guess it's
• 1:10:23
  so I think what we're getting actually at almost more than
• 1:10:27
  anything and everything I have in common that I've noticed
• 1:10:29
  about all my conversation about rock is that rock is pretty much
• 1:10:32
  almost like a pop fusion type of sound where it draws from
• 1:10:35
  influences of local of, of, you know, local time.
• 1:10:38
  So local roots, whether that be blue soul, bluegrass, country,
• 1:10:44
  whatever it might, you know, whatever that might be and
• 1:10:47
  whatever is kind of pop with the time that connects with the
• 1:10:50
  youth. And that's kind of what I'm able
• 1:10:54
  to gather from the different sounds that are happening all
• 1:10:58
  over the place, you know, as far as the location goes.
• 1:11:01
  Yeah, I mean, so the, I think the problem is there's a term is
• 1:11:05
  the term rock itself, right. So you know, you know, you know,
• 1:11:10
  when I teach the history of rock'n'roll class and, you know,
• 1:11:14
  I the first class, I will say what's your definition of rock?
• 1:11:18
  And for the most part, it's going to be a lot of people will
• 1:11:20
  write they, they, they, when you think about rock, people in
• 1:11:24
  general envision a dude with a guitar and, and that has that
• 1:11:30
  has become the stereotypical image of rock.
• 1:11:33
  And I get a lot of that has to just a lot of other factors
• 1:11:36
  involved in in that, in that, in that, in that, in that
• 1:11:40
  conception. And and also the way the Rock
• 1:11:44
  and Roll Hall of Fame sort of they sort of try to protect
• 1:11:47
  their idea of what rock is, right?
• 1:11:49
  I know that they just announced the the inductees.
• 1:11:52
  Yeah, right, including Wu Tang Clan and, you know, and like,
• 1:11:55
  and so because back in the day, Jan Wenner, who was involved in
• 1:11:59
  rock, like he had a very narrow definition of rock.
• 1:12:01
  Rock meant primarily white dudes with guitars, right?
• 1:12:04
  And as and as as rock progressed right?
• 1:12:08
  From from the early days with 55 took the present right there
• 1:12:12
  there there are not as many rock bands anymore, right?
• 1:12:15
  There are very few rock bands to be perfectly honest, right?
• 1:12:17
  Especially achieving any kind of chart success, you know, Foo
• 1:12:20
  Fighters, I guess, you know, sure.
• 1:12:22
  And so you need to expand the definition because at some point
• 1:12:25
  they would have run out of rock'n'roll from would have run
• 1:12:27
  out of people to induct, you know, And so, you know, I like
• 1:12:32
  the so ice Cube from N de Bray and I, I just ice cube like he's
• 1:12:35
  like rock'n'roll. When the N de Bray got it got
• 1:12:37
  inducted. People like, how are they in
• 1:12:39
  there is like rock'n'roll is not a style.
• 1:12:40
  It's just, it's an idea. It's just stick it to the man
• 1:12:43
  right? That and and like, and that is
• 1:12:45
  very much what rock rap hasn't come with rock.
• 1:12:47
  Like rock was very rebellious. So cool, so interesting.
• 1:12:51
  Never thought about like that but that's true.
• 1:12:53
  I love. You know, I, I remember like,
• 1:12:55
  you know, when the Beastie Boys, who I love got inducted, you
• 1:12:58
  know, the to rock people like, Oh my God, the Beastie Boys,
• 1:13:00
  like no, the Beastie Boys, they are the personification of
• 1:13:02
  rock'n'roll. They were a fucking poop band.
• 1:13:06
  They're amazing musicians. It's people have a very narrow
• 1:13:10
  definition of rock. And so when you so if you do,
• 1:13:12
  you think about rock as more of an attitude than a musical style
• 1:13:16
  because you know, again, just just just as there's
• 1:13:17
  subcategories of of rap or rock or rap or metal.
• 1:13:21
  Yeah. So, you know, rock is this very
• 1:13:24
  big umbrella term and then all everything else kind of falls
• 1:13:27
  under that, right. And and then there's you use a
• 1:13:30
  family tree, it gets very complicated and and obviously
• 1:13:32
  you can nitpick, you know, whether it's like, oh, it's like
• 1:13:35
  South Jersey rock or like, or, you know, or it's, or it's, you
• 1:13:38
  know, again, there's, you know, there's there is, you know,
• 1:13:40
  there's like Ohio rock, there is, you know, whatever it may
• 1:13:43
  be. So you know.
• 1:13:44
  Yeah, Yeah. And I was also thinking
• 1:13:46
  actually, while you're saying that, because I feel like the
• 1:13:48
  country world has kind of become a little bit, has developed a
• 1:13:52
  little bit of that attitude in modern day music.
• 1:13:56
  And the other thing I was thinking when you mentioned
• 1:13:58
  earlier was that, you know, you kind of have to have your career
• 1:14:01
  set and your idea of like what your music is going to be and
• 1:14:04
  everything is. And then and then, you know,
• 1:14:05
  you're ready kind of you don't have as much room to play
• 1:14:07
  around. I think it's interesting that
• 1:14:09
  you see artists kind of shuffling around like Jelly roll
• 1:14:12
  or some shit. What's the name?
• 1:14:14
  What's oh, gosh, Post Malone, you know, go from, go from one
• 1:14:19
  world all the way to another. And then, you know, you hear
• 1:14:22
  them talk about music and you find out about just how how deep
• 1:14:25
  their appreciation of music in general goes.
• 1:14:27
  And you kind of that kind of embodies that same kind of stick
• 1:14:29
  it to the man. Hey, you don't tell me what
• 1:14:31
  music I'm going to play or don't tell me what kind of artist I
• 1:14:34
  am. I'll do what I, you know, what I
• 1:14:35
  what I feel like. What do you think about that?
• 1:14:37
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's true, You know,
• 1:14:38
  You know, most artists typically stay in one lane because, you
• 1:14:42
  know, because it's, you know, that you can be influenced for
• 1:14:44
  lots of stuff, but you, you, you risk alienating a fan base,
• 1:14:49
  right? So, you know, I, I, when I, when
• 1:14:50
  I think about people who are, you know, visionary artists, I
• 1:14:53
  think about people like maybe like Miles Davis, who like did
• 1:14:56
  some stuff and his mind kept going David Bowie.
• 1:14:59
  Like, you know, like there's no, there is no, there is no David
• 1:15:02
  Bowie sound. The only constant is David
• 1:15:03
  Bowie's voice, right? And you know, and so, you know,
• 1:15:07
  even even Miss Swift, right, you know, started off as a country
• 1:15:10
  artist. And again, this was her.
• 1:15:12
  Her move was very calculated. Yeah.
• 1:15:14
  But yeah, you mentioned Jelly, Jelly roll or others like.
• 1:15:16
  Yeah, it's like, it's like, yeah, I like rock.
• 1:15:18
  I like rap. I like country.
• 1:15:20
  They're they're and, you know, and to me as a musician, as a
• 1:15:23
  human, they all make sense. And so I want to explore those
• 1:15:25
  ideas. But again, you don't get to do
• 1:15:27
  that unless you have success, right.
• 1:15:29
  So, you know, so you know, again, it's like, you know,
• 1:15:32
  think back when you know, Eric Clapton made his like most pure
• 1:15:36
  Blues album was only after he won all those Grammys for, for
• 1:15:39
  for the the unplugged record. And he comes back and drops like
• 1:15:42
  very strict Blues record. He doesn't do that unless he has
• 1:15:45
  less because he's he made so much money for himself and the
• 1:15:47
  label. He's like, I'm doing this record
• 1:15:49
  and you don't like it. Move on.
• 1:15:50
  So John Mayer comes to mind too. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:15:54
  Yeah, so, but yeah, but you know, again, going back, the
• 1:15:59
  music is there's way more connection between, between
• 1:16:02
  seemingly disparate styles like country, rap and rock.
• 1:16:06
  Then then there, then there's differences, right.
• 1:16:09
  And, and again, it's only the audiences that it's only
• 1:16:13
  audiences that that I mean, not the artists live in these boxes.
• 1:16:16
  But like, but if you are a strict country person, like, Oh
• 1:16:18
  my God, I can't believe that there's a that, you know, that
• 1:16:23
  this song sounds like rap like. Well, of course, because that's
• 1:16:24
  what the artists listen to. They're influenced Morgan Morgan
• 1:16:27
  Wall and obviously clearly uses lots of trap beats in his music.
• 1:16:33
  Postmones the kind kind of like a, you know, very much like a
• 1:16:36
  rocker guy. So, you know, and, and there's,
• 1:16:38
  there's a lot more affinity between the country and rock and
• 1:16:40
  there hasn't been for a long time where you take like Zac,
• 1:16:44
  Zac Brown, right, as as a country artist, like he's
• 1:16:46
  basically a rock, basically a rock band.
• 1:16:48
  Yeah, he's not rock. He's a Rocky.
• 1:16:50
  He's a Rocky Jimmy Buffett. Yeah.
• 1:16:53
  Oh yeah, I don't like to turn me out rock.
• 1:16:55
  That's that's that is that is the name that no one ever used
• 1:16:57
  so that that was based comes out of a sound live skin.
• 1:17:00
  Yeah, but you don't you don't you?
• 1:17:01
  You don't think that it conjures up a pretty accurate picture of
• 1:17:06
  like most songs you can expect in that kind of genre pretty
• 1:17:09
  easily. Yeah, I'm not saying it's not
• 1:17:11
  I'm not saying it's not accurate, but like, you know,
• 1:17:13
  well, like I I just had this conversation, you know, with my
• 1:17:15
  classes about two weeks, two or three weeks ago.
• 1:17:17
  Like talk about yard rocket. It it is a thing.
• 1:17:19
  That's that was that was applied after the fact.
• 1:17:21
  Sure. Michael McDonald, Fagan, like
• 1:17:24
  those guys hate that term. They're like, we were not
• 1:17:26
  listening. We were not we were not white
• 1:17:28
  dudes in a yacht. Yeah, might be he'll put the
• 1:17:30
  who's listening to his music. But that's not how that that we
• 1:17:33
  as the creators were not. That's not what we were trying
• 1:17:35
  to do or tell the audience. One of the most fun times that I
• 1:17:39
  had. Any show I went to with my wife
• 1:17:41
  our first two months after got married and we got married.
• 1:17:44
  We dated for seven months before we got married.
• 1:17:47
  Two months after we got married, he went to Jimmy Buffett in
• 1:17:49
  Orlando and it was so much fun there.
• 1:17:55
  And he died probably a year later.
• 1:17:57
  But he, he, he looked great. And the audience was anywhere
• 1:18:00
  from 18 to like 85 and everyone was wearing the tiny Bahama
• 1:18:05
  shirts and the parrot hats. And it was such like a, and
• 1:18:08
  that, you know, I, that I, you know, I talked about the, you
• 1:18:12
  know, the live, the live market. There's something that I think
• 1:18:16
  that is so incredible about group conscious to group
• 1:18:20
  conscious experiences, you know, like going to a show like that
• 1:18:23
  with we have something so emotionally strong in common
• 1:18:29
  with hundreds of thousands of people around you.
• 1:18:32
  That is I, I, I can't imagine the industry is going to go
• 1:18:35
  anywhere anytime soon. You know, I mean AI, but I think
• 1:18:38
  that people are going to look for it.
• 1:18:40
  Well, you know, if any, if anything, you know, like, so
• 1:18:44
  people crave connection, right? So, so a concert, whether it's
• 1:18:47
  again, whether it's 50 people or 50,000, right, there is there is
• 1:18:51
  that communal experience of of, of, of that connection.
• 1:18:53
  I was at that show, right. And with these other people.
• 1:18:56
  And you know, and obviously now with with, you know, the fact
• 1:18:59
  you can take video and, you know, and or you can, or you can
• 1:19:01
  watch stuff on YouTube later on. Yeah.
• 1:19:03
  So I mean, there is that, yes. And AI is not going to does not
• 1:19:06
  necessarily create that connection for sure.
• 1:19:08
  So yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:19:11
  It's it's fun. It's fun.
• 1:19:14
  OK, There was one last question I wanted to ask you.
• 1:19:19
  But now it is slipping my, my. Oh, yes, that's what I want to
• 1:19:23
  ask you. I think that I want to ask if
• 1:19:25
  you think the reason why rock bands have generally kind of
• 1:19:28
  disappeared or gone away was because I think if rock was a
• 1:19:31
  form of sticking it to the man and it got to such a point of
• 1:19:34
  enormous, such enormous popularity, that almost the
• 1:19:39
  initial incentive to create that rock music kind of goes away,
• 1:19:42
  doesn't it? Yes and no.
• 1:19:47
  I mean, I, I don't think rock is.
• 1:19:51
  I think rock will probably make a comeback, right?
• 1:19:55
  Wait, we phrase the I'm sorry, I lost my, but we phrase the
• 1:19:57
  question again. Sorry.
• 1:19:58
  Yeah, I think that the root of rock is people feeling like they
• 1:20:02
  don't fit in or like they feel like they want to stick it to
• 1:20:05
  the man or express themselves in a unique way that they wouldn't
• 1:20:08
  ordinarily be able to. And then it.
• 1:20:10
  Gained enormous popularity, so it almost like an like that
• 1:20:14
  initial motivation doesn't seem to apply anymore, you know?
• 1:20:18
  I, I, I think the motivation applies.
• 1:20:20
  I think people, I, I think the sticking to the man attitude is
• 1:20:23
  still there. I just think people are actually
• 1:20:25
  expressing it in through different genres.
• 1:20:28
  So I think which which is one of the reasons why I think rap is
• 1:20:31
  such a popular genre, because rap rap that is very much part
• 1:20:33
  of a rap ethos for sure. Yeah, And but the you know,
• 1:20:40
  there's still, you know, people still selling guitars, guitars
• 1:20:43
  and are still on operation, right.
• 1:20:45
  You know, there are still schools of rock and those type
• 1:20:47
  of things everywhere. So there's still, you know, and
• 1:20:51
  you know, there's still a lot of interest in playing instruments.
• 1:20:54
  So not, you know, not that rock doesn't play in physically do
• 1:20:57
  the laptop and the trainable very much instruments, but it's
• 1:21:01
  just I guess I guess what rock needs is a new like champion,
• 1:21:07
  right. So, like, you know, the Foo
• 1:21:08
  Fighters been around for a long time, right.
• 1:21:10
  So, like is it is it geese? Is that is are they are they the
• 1:21:13
  next band? You know, was it?
• 1:21:15
  You know, it's so, you know, and is it, you know, I guess also
• 1:21:20
  it's, it all depends on, on the major labels, right?
• 1:21:22
  Taking a risk on a four person band or whatever, a five person
• 1:21:25
  band as opposed to a single artist, right?
• 1:21:28
  We can with the band is important, but who's in the band
• 1:21:31
  is not as important to the, to the, to the, you know, to the,
• 1:21:33
  to the audience. So because there's more risk,
• 1:21:36
  but you got more people in the band you like, then there's more
• 1:21:38
  people to make, to make poor decisions, so to speak.
• 1:21:41
  So, yeah. So I'm not sure.
• 1:21:44
  I'm I'm not sure, you know, again, you know, you know, I'm
• 1:21:47
  optimistic about rock, but you know, but again, it is, it is,
• 1:21:51
  you know, there or I think rock and country have sort of aligned
• 1:21:55
  themselves a lot more even like, you know, Luke Bryan or, or.
• 1:21:59
  I'd call Billy Strings a, a, a, a, a voice like that, You know,
• 1:22:03
  I mean, I think he's got he because he also got that
• 1:22:06
  sensibility of it's Billy Strings.
• 1:22:09
  He has a consistent band. The his fans know the bands,
• 1:22:12
  right? Like they, they have a personal
• 1:22:14
  relationship, but it's not he's they're not, they're not,
• 1:22:16
  they're not Billy Strings and whatever it is, it's just him
• 1:22:19
  and, and he's been gaining. I mean, he's been, he's, he's
• 1:22:22
  been incredible for getting better and better for years.
• 1:22:25
  You want to talk about the communal experience, right?
• 1:22:28
  So like, he's inherited the Grateful Dead fandom, right?
• 1:22:30
  So right, So right. He's an amazing guitar player,
• 1:22:33
  right? He barely sells any records.
• 1:22:35
  He's a bluegrass band. He plays the Madison Square
• 1:22:37
  Garden. I mean, it's it is literally an
• 1:22:38
  anomaly. He's incredible.
• 1:22:40
  He makes, you know, I'm going to guess he makes about 30 or $40
• 1:22:43
  million a year, right? And it basically doesn't sell
• 1:22:46
  any records or almost not almost no records.
• 1:22:49
  It's all, it's all total. It's all the live experience.
• 1:22:52
  And I got a lot of that, a lot of that comes out of the that
• 1:22:55
  that is very much part of the communal.
• 1:22:57
  The communal experience is very much part of bluegrass and the
• 1:23:00
  bluegrass festival scene, which obviously where he grew up and
• 1:23:03
  and again, as the gravel that stop existed and then the dead
• 1:23:08
  could be more or less stopped, right.
• 1:23:09
  So there's a lot of crossover, you know, doing that to the gym
• 1:23:12
  and ethos, whether it's fish or whatever.
• 1:23:15
  And Strings has inherited those. You know those some of those
• 1:23:19
  fans for sure. Yeah.
• 1:23:20
  And what's fun is that he seems to be committed to the band, to
• 1:23:23
  the to the album structure too. As in he still is putting out
• 1:23:26
  albums every X amount of every two or three years.
• 1:23:28
  And even whether he's selling them or not, he's putting and
• 1:23:31
  like he's putting in the effort to create a full length album
• 1:23:34
  and not dropping a couple of singles and calling that an
• 1:23:36
  album like what is Pretty do these days.
• 1:23:39
  Yeah, Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can, but that's also
• 1:23:40
  that's also very, very part of the bluegrass tradition as well.
• 1:23:45
  But again, like, you know, if he if he wasn't making selling out,
• 1:23:48
  you know every show he plays, but he might be doing, he might
• 1:23:50
  be thinking more of a single, a single strategy, right?
• 1:23:54
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really interesting stuff, Chris.
• 1:23:57
  This was really a ton of fun. You're such a wonderful wealth
• 1:24:01
  of information. Thank you so much.
• 1:24:03
  And yeah, and I hope to have you back, you know, in a couple of
• 1:24:06
  months maybe we'll talk, we'll talk about the other topics of
• 1:24:09
  music we have in hand. But I think this was, this is
• 1:24:12
  awesome. And I really appreciate your
• 1:24:13
  time. Thank.
• 1:24:14
  You so much yeah, let me let me just let me know when it when
• 1:24:16
  it's going to drop so I can. Absolutely.
• 1:24:18
  You got it. OK.
• 1:24:19
  And have a good day. Bye, take care.
• 1:24:20
  Bye bye.