#965 - Rick Beato - AI Bands, Spotify, TikTok & The Death Of Songwriting

Summary

Modern Wisdom Episode #965: Rick Beato on AI Bands, Spotify, TikTok & The Death Of Songwriting

Release Date: July 10, 2025

In this thought-provoking episode of Modern Wisdom, host Chris Williamson engages in a deep conversation with renowned music producer and YouTuber Rick Beato. They delve into the evolving landscape of the music industry, focusing on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), streaming platforms, and social media on songwriting and live performances.

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1. The Complexities of Live Shows and Ticket Pricing

[00:00] Chris opens the discussion by questioning the widespread criticism of Live Nation, a dominant player in the live event industry. Rick shares insights from a long-term employee, revealing that much of the disdain stems from exorbitant ticket prices and additional fees.

Rick Beato: "People like to complain about things like ticket prices being expensive, add-ons, taxes, all this kind of stuff." ([00:05])

They explore the multifaceted nature of organizing live concerts, highlighting the intricate logistics involved—from sound engineering to stage management.

Chris Williamson: "I didn't realize just how complex it is to make sound come out of speakers on a stage with a person." ([03:33])

Rick recounts experiences at elaborate shows, emphasizing the coordination required to manage multiple bands or complex stage setups.

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2. Evolution of Songwriting in Nashville

The conversation shifts to the Nashville songwriting scene, where Rick criticizes the modern approach dominated by multiple songwriters collaborating on tracks.

Rick Beato: "Most pop songwriters have very little to do with their songs other than choosing them. They might come in and say, okay, I have an idea for a story of a song, and then professional songwriters help realize that idea." ([10:08])

Rick contrasts this with the past, where artists like The Beatles were deeply involved in writing their own music, fostering creativity and unique soundscapes.

Rick Beato: "The Beatles were just so famous that they couldn't do anything else. They were stuck in hotel rooms a lot, and they had incredible competition between Lennon-McCartney and George Harrison to write better and better songs." ([17:03])

He laments the loss of individual artistry, attributing it to the rise of "producer-driven" songs where a team shapes the final product, often leading to homogenization.

Rick Beato: "Producer-driven songs are like Kelly Clarkson's 'Since You've Been Gone'—written and produced by Max Martin and Dr. Luke, with her just performing." ([17:58])

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3. AI's Intrusion into the Music Industry

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the burgeoning role of AI in music creation and distribution. Rick expresses concern over AI-generated bands and artists, questioning their authenticity and the ethical implications.

Rick Beato: "There will be AI versions of The Beatles and Michael Jackson, trained on their music and vocals. Some people will prefer AI-generated versions over the originals." ([84:54])

Chris probes the potential consequences of AI on live performances and the uniqueness of human artistry.

Chris Williamson: "Live experiences will still hold value because AI can't replicate the spontaneity and emotional depth of human performers yet." ([124:00])

Rick acknowledges the challenges but also sees opportunities for AI to assist rather than replace human creativity.

Rick Beato: "AI can be a tool for mastering and mixing, allowing artists to enhance their sound without replacing the creative process." ([95:03])

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4. The Dominance of Streaming Platforms and Algorithmic Curation

The duo examines how platforms like Spotify and TikTok influence music trends and artist success. Rick criticizes the algorithm-driven discovery, which often favors virality over artistic merit.

Rick Beato: "Spotify's algorithmic playlists create echo chambers, making it difficult for unique or experimental music to gain traction." ([37:23])

Chris highlights the frustrations artists face with streaming revenue and playlist placements, noting the disparity between major and independent artists.

Chris Williamson: "Artists often find that getting onto popular playlists is nearly as competitive as going through traditional radio promotions." ([112:07])

Rick underscores the financial realities, pointing out that live performances remain the primary revenue stream for most musicians today.

Rick Beato: "Live music is definitively where most musicians make a significant income, as streaming alone rarely suffices." ([103:55])

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5. TikTok's Role in Shaping Music Creation and Virality

The influence of TikTok on music production and popularity is another critical topic. Rick discusses how artists tailor songs to fit TikTok’s short-form, virality-driven format, often compromising musical complexity for catchy hooks.

Rick Beato: "Musicians now create tracks with the express purpose of being TikTok-blow-up-able, focusing on segments that can be used as memes or challenges." ([57:28])

Chris argues that this shift undermines the emotional and lyrical depth of music, turning it into mere background for social media content.

Chris Williamson: "The essence of songwriting—emotion and storytelling—gets lost when songs are engineered solely for virality." ([64:33])

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6. Future Trends and the Sustainability of Authentic Music Creation

In their concluding discussions, Chris and Rick ponder the sustainability of authentic music creation amidst technological advancements. They debate whether AI will ultimately complement or undermine human creativity.

Rick Beato: "AI has the potential to both compete with and enable artists. It can handle repetitive tasks, allowing artists to focus more on creativity, but it also introduces new competition." ([84:54])

Chris emphasizes the importance of maintaining the human element in music to preserve its emotional resonance and cultural significance.

Chris Williamson: "As long as live performances retain their unique, unreplicable nature, music will continue to thrive as a deeply human experience." ([124:00])

Rick concurs, suggesting that the future of music will likely involve a symbiotic relationship between human artists and AI tools.

Rick Beato: "AI can enhance production and distribution, but the core creative processes require human intuition and emotion that AI cannot replicate." ([95:03])

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Notable Quotes

• Rick Beato on the nature of producer-driven songs:

  "Producer-driven songs are like Kelly Clarkson's 'Since You've Been Gone'—written and produced by Max Martin and Dr. Luke, with her just performing." ([17:58])

• Chris Williamson on AI's impact on live experiences:

  "Live experiences will still hold value because AI can't replicate the spontaneity and emotional depth of human performers yet." ([124:00])

• Rick Beato on TikTok's influence:

  "Musicians now create tracks with the express purpose of being TikTok-blow-up-able, focusing on segments that can be used as memes or challenges." ([57:28])

• Rick Beato on the future relationship between AI and artists:

  "AI can enhance production and distribution, but the core creative processes require human intuition and emotion that AI cannot replicate." ([95:03])

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Conclusion

Chris Williamson and Rick Beato provide a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and transformations within the music industry. From the rising dominance of AI and algorithm-driven platforms to the enduring importance of live performances, the episode underscores the delicate balance between technological advancement and human creativity. They advocate for preserving the authentic, emotional core of music while embracing AI as a tool to enhance, rather than replace, the artistic process.

For those interested in the intricate dynamics of modern music creation and distribution, this episode offers invaluable insights into the future of songwriting and the preservation of musical integrity.

Transcript

[Chris]

Why does everyone hate Live Nation? What's the problem with Live Nation?

[Rick Beato]

I talked to one of my best friends this morning who works for Live Nation. He's worked for Live nation for probably 25 years. I'll have to ask him that question. I don't hate Live Nation. I do live shows occasionally and at Live Nation venues. Why do people hate it? They for, for a lot of the same reasons people hate how much ticket prices are. And that's related to that. But you know, it's. People like to complain about things that's, you know, it's like ticket prices are expensive, there's tons of add ons, taxes, all this kind of stuff. That's one of the reasons, I think as far as Live Nation though, there's always somebody that, that's getting in the way that annoys people. It's like me saying to you, Chris, why do people complain in the comments section about how many ads there are? Or you know, like I'll have a video that's demonetized. Right. I'll play music and it gets demonetized. So I have no control over the ads. I, I can und. Undemonetize it and they play as many ads as they can and, and people get mad at me. It's like I'm not even making money on the video.

[Chris]

Oh, that's interesting. I didn't realize that when a video gets popped for copyright that you rescind all ability to either place or remove ads. That's really funny.

[Rick Beato]

But people are mad about it and.

[Chris]

It'S like, sorry, not on me.

[Rick Beato]

Right.

[Chris]

Yeah. I only learned recently about dynamic pricing. This is something I didn't even know existed. Can you explain how that works?

[Rick Beato]

You're talking about like pricing that changes from depending on availability.

[Chris]

Yeah. For live shows and demand on the site is high and the price goes up as more people.

[Rick Beato]

I can't understand that honestly. Because I'll look at somebody be like, why is it that the, the price here was. Why is it $800 here in this part, but it's $300 three rows back? What's the deal with it? And, and my agent who books my live gigs, Larry, he explains this stuff to me and I'm like, I don't get this. I don't understand this. It's. I, I don't understand how, how live. How they do live pricing of. For any. For events. I really. That's not a thing. That, that, that. It's not like when I used to go to concerts where it's like you buy your Ticket, it's a price as the end they, you know, if you went to a concert in the 1970s, you buy your ticket. Tickets have a particular price for that particular seat and that's what you pay. And now it's, you know, things are changing. Depends on availability. Sometimes they'll hold seats for people if they're guests of the, of the artist and then they're going to release seats day before, you know, or they'll ask me, how many people do you have? Well, I don't have 20 people here, so you can, I only have four people coming so you can release the other seats, you know, so there's so.

[Chris]

Many factors I really didn't realize. I mean it makes sense when you think about trying to put together the operation that is a live concert. I run nightclubs for ages. Putting together live music is gonna be a bit complex. But I didn't realize just how complex it is to make sound come out of speakers on a stage with a person. But oh no, no, no, there's gotta be an LD and there's gotta be a production manager and there's got to be the, oh, the monitor guy that looks after the in ears and then there's a special mic at the back of the stage that they can speak to to communicate to the person that's looking after that. And oh, each different band member on stage has got a different tech who's looking after them or they might have a different monitor outside who's looking after them as well. Especially as you say Metallica playing in the round. They've got. It's. I don't know, it feels like a military operation. Especially as you get bigger.

[Rick Beato]

I went to see this band of Perfect Circle play.

[Chris]

I love Perfect Circle.

[Rick Beato]

I love Perfect. So, so I know all the guys in the band. I've interviewed Maynard a couple times and, and Billy the guitarist invited me to come by the sound check. So I came by with my, with two of my kids, my daughter Layla and my youngest and my son Dylan and Josh Freeze. Layla's favorite song is a song week and Powerless. It's off the 13th step record and it's got an amazing drum beat on it. So I had told Josh when I interviewed him, yeah, it's my, my 12 year old's favorite song, Vegan Powerless. So we go up the sound check and we go up the top of the. This riser and they're up there and they had this incredibly elaborate setup because it was a perfect circle. Pussifer Maynard's band and then Primus was playing with them. And they did every two songs. They switched between it. This was a. An really interesting setup. So every two songs hit, it's a different band playing. Wow. But anyway, so we go up to the top of this riser. It's probably 20ft up. And they have a chair sitting there. And the three of us are sitting there while they're doing sound check. And they played this song. And then Josh says to Layla, she's like, do you want to play the drums? She didn't play. She's like, no. But then they gave us a tour. We ran around and met all the techs, which I love. All the backstage area. They showed us how the concerts are run because my kids hadn't been. Hadn't had a tour of backstage, although they've been backstage at other concerts before. But really to see where catering is where. And I think that's fascinating to me, the inner workings of a big rock show.

[Chris]

Me too.

[Rick Beato]

Is fascinating.

[Chris]

Yeah, me too.

[Rick Beato]

So. But this was specifically insane because three different groups.

[Chris]

Is that the most complex thing you've seen?

[Rick Beato]

I think it's. Yeah. Well, I don't know. The Metallica thing is. The Metallica thing has four. I think it's four different drum sets. Yeah. Ford, the guitar rigs, they must be playing through one set of. Of guitar rigs. And that's all done with wirelesses, but there are four separate drum sets on it that come up. I don't even know how they do it. I don't know how they go through and play a two hour show or two and a half hour show. And with that, you know, intense energy.

[Chris]

Slides crazy summer of loud thing I was telling you about that was on this weekend. They have a 20 minute changeover between the bands. And this includes set deck as well. So one band's got a big snake that wraps around them. The other's got barbed wire fences around pillars going up. There's flames going all over the place. And then Parkway Drive, the drummer gets rotated upside down inside of fire. And you've got 20 minutes to put the fucking thing together.

[Rick Beato]

You know, I just saw this video of Beyonce the other night. She was up in the.

[Chris]

On a car and the car.

[Rick Beato]

And the car started going, dude, could.

[Chris]

You imagine if you were the guy that killed Beyonce? Oh, you, You. She was stood on top of a car. Beyonce dies in Eddie Guerrera style catastrophe.

[Rick Beato]

I was thinking, I was wondering, like, what in the world is she thinking while she's up there? She's got to be scared. I mean, she was up really high.

[Chris]

Is she harnessed in?

[Rick Beato]

I. I think that she was.

[Chris]

Got to have sort of backup.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah.

[Chris]

I mean, could you imagine the insurance policy on Beyonce has to be. Oh, yeah, it would bankrupt. It would bankrupt a country.

[Rick Beato]

That was crazy to see that. To imagine some type of a problem like that. You know that. That's not gonna happen again, though.

[Chris]

Ronnie Radke, one of his. Was it his drummer who got second degree burns from flames that came somewhere and he just fired everybody. Everybody's fired except for the band. Everybody's fired. No one's allowed to do this again. Run it back. We'll get somebody new.

[Rick Beato]

You know, when you're dealing with that kind of stuff, any type of pyro. When I was at the Metallica show, I was 30ft from the stage, but at the same level. And I asked Kirk, I said, how do you know that? What happens if you're somewhere you're not supposed to be? He goes, oh, they're in our ears saying, okay, pyro's coming. No, get to a mic.

[Chris]

Oh, because all the mics are in safe areas.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah.

[Chris]

Right. Okay, so.

[Rick Beato]

But it's. It's hot from when you're 30ft away. And I said, how hot is it in stage? He's like, oh, man, it's insanely hot on stage. These things are going. The flames are up, going up 20.

[Chris]

You seen the Ramstein build where they have that big set of exhausts that come up the top?

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, those kind of setups are. It can be a nightmare to do that really, to the liability with that and, and to make sure that that's right every night where nobody gets. Nobody gets blown up. But it used to be having accidents, you know, was not an uncommon thing in the past with, with those, you know, anytime. Anytime you're doing something that there's bound to be some. Some issue.

[Chris]

What do most people not understand about the process of making a pop song now? I think everybody's got this allure of. Of music. It really is pop music is moving into pop culture. It's crossing over. People are seeing behind the scenes, Instagram stories, relationships, tabloid journalism, whether it's from TikTok or, you know, citizen journalists or YouTube channels doing reactions. But I think that the process of getting to the stage of this song is now live, seems to have changed quite a lot. So what is it that people don't necessarily get about what that process looks like now?

[Rick Beato]

So I just made this video where I was talking about the people that are behind the scenes that help write the songs. And in many cases write the songs. And people have the impression that because somebody sings a song that they are the writer on it or if they have co writers, that the co writers are a minor part of this. Right, but, but in reality, most pop songwriters, not all, but most, have very little to do with their songs other than choosing them. They might come in and say, okay, I have an idea for a story of a song. They'll describe it and then these professional songwriters will help them realize that idea. Or the people might have the song completely done and they come in. Hard to generalize, but does Taylor Swift write her. Write all of her lyrics? He probably writes most of her lyrics, I would think. But. But typically, it used to be that when, when you. In the 1980s, rock bands, there were, there were very few people that were songwriters that worked with artists. Desmond Child was one. He worked with Bon Jovi, worked with Kiss, and he would co write, he was a specialist that would write with rock bands. But it was very rare. Rock bands wrote their own songs and a lot of pop artists wrote their own songs. But, you know, Madonna always had co writers. This has been a thing since the 1950s. People have had, had songwriters, they've had co writers. The thing now about pop music is that you have to be your own promotion department basically to be really successful. So you have to be. You kind of have to be an expert in social media. And I see people that. One of the people is. Tate McCray is a huge pop star and she started on YouTube. She knows how to make her own videos for. And she'll make 20, 30 TikToks for a song for a single. You can't beat that for advertising. And, and people that have that advantage, they can just put up their phone, they can lip sync, they do a dance, they can cut the stuff themselves on their phone and uplo it. And you're a big pop star. If you can do that, that's a tremendous advantage. And it. This is how songs become hits. Because if you don't have a viral moment with a song that's, you know, the days of the record labels creating your career are pretty much over. Yes, they can help, but. But it's very difficult if you don't have something that's on TikTok blowing up to have a successful single before we.

[Chris]

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[Rick Beato]

Well, I always wonder that too. Like, who are these people? Coldplay first. To me, the first two Cold Play records are great records, really. The second record, to me, is an absolutely brilliant record. As people get older, I've made videos about this, that. That once people hit 30 or so artists, they begin to lose the spark, if you will. The Beatles broke up the year that Lenon and Ringo turned 30. Otherwise, Paul McCartney was 28 when they broke up. George Harrison was 27. These guys were young guys. They did 12 albums over the course of eight years. Some of the most important songs ever written. And they were. They weren't even 30. They literally broke up. Lennon turned 30 on November 9, 1970. They're already broken up by then.

[Chris]

How much do you think that's due to the fact that they were 30? And how much of that do you think is due to the fact that they released 12 albums in the space of eight years? Because it seems to me that the pace of release. I know you've talked about this. Is now slower.

[Rick Beato]

Yep.

[Chris]

That people are producing an album every 18 months. Something like that. Maybe if you're cranking. Right. And then tour on it once, twice, come back running, run it again. Um, well, that would, you know, extend that. You're Talking about a 20 year career off the back of the same pacing. So how much of it do you think is, I don't know, some sort of wall that creatives hit at 30 and how much of it is. I've just exhausted my, my juice.

[Rick Beato]

I think, I think it's both those things. So one of the things if you think about writing songs is like working out, right? So The Beatles in 1965, they released the record Rubber Soul on August 6, 1965. Then on December 3 they released or they released help, I'm sorry and then they released Rubber Soul on December 3rd and they released Revolver on August 5th. So in 364 days they released three 14 song albums. So they wrote, recorded and released and they toured three records in one calendar year. That's insane. But, and, and they had so many hit songs on it. But that's like working out, you know, it's the more you work out. Whereas nowadays if you go. Most bands now they do a record, they go out and tour for 18 months, they tour for two years, whatever. Then, then it's. You're kind of out of shape writing. Because when you're on the road, most people don't like to write on the road. So what do you have to do? You come back, you put down a bunch of ideas and those aren't very good. That's the, the starting to get back in shape again. You know, it takes a couple weeks to.

[Chris]

How did the Beatles do it?

[Rick Beato]

The Beatles were just, they. Well, first of all, they were so famous that they couldn't do anything else. They were stuck in hotel rooms a lot, I guess. And they had incredible competition between Lennon McCartney and George Harrison too to, to write better and better songs. Plus they were competitive with bands like the Beach Boys as well. But Beatles are kind of a unique.

[Chris]

Yeah, it's like, I don't know, talking about Usain Bolt's ability to run fast or something. So just explain how would you identify or categorize the difference between a producer driven song and an artist driven song? Is there such a thing or is it just meritocracy and whatever sounds best at the end of the day is. Is what matters.

[Rick Beato]

Producer driven songs are songs like would be something like since you've been gone by Kelly Clarkson, that was Max Martin and Dr. Luke wrote this song. They recorded. They wrote the song, they wrote the lyrics, they recorded everything. She came in and sang it. And that's a producer driven song. Literally written by the two guys that Produced it, including the lyrics. So most music nowadays, or a lot of music, is producer driven. Whereas people come up with a track, whether it's country music, whether it's pop music, even rock music, there's some bed track first. Now, to be fair, historically, almost every songwriter writes the music first. They sing a melody and then they write lyrics to the melody. Elton John being the exception. Bernie Toppin was Elton's lyricist. They co wrote the stuff. Bernie would finish the lyrics, give them to Elton. Elton would sit at the piano, improvise the song, sing it, record it on a half inch or on a dat and then. And then they would cut the song. He would basically improvise it to the lyrics he had. I mean, this is very rare, I think in the Beatles catalog for. From what I know, there was one song across the universe where John Lennon had the lyrics first. So.

[Chris]

So he's like the juice world of the pop.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah.

[Chris]

Era.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah. So this is, this is when, when I went to Nashville to do some songwriting. I told you I had a, A, I had one number one song, the only country song I ever wrote. But then I, I went to Nashville and I, they, if you have a number one song, they put you in with all the A list songwriters. So I went there and I in for probably three months in 2014 and I wrote with all the top songwriters in Nashville. So the first session I went in and it was always three people. And I was like, why is it three people? Well, that's the way that we do it here. And I was like, why? Well, because we want to involve, you know, at the time, as many publishing companies as possible. Different publishing companies. So I was signed to Sony atv. There was a guy from. There'd be a writer from Warner Chapel or maybe two writers from Warner Chapel. And you get in a room. I was a track guy. So I came in with my laptop and I would have five tracks that I programmed drums, I played guitar, I played banjo, I played whatever on and I had a full track. What do you think of this? Oh, that's interesting. What else you got playing the next song? Oh, I like that. I think I might have a chorus line. Everybody opens their lap laptops. What do you think of this? And then they're looking through, typing through. Oh, I got this line from someone else. And then they would have to be included in on the songwriting too, or whatever. So that would be. That was in Nashville. But at that time period, that's when track guys started. The track guys are basically the producers that would come in and and that would be a producer driven song. And almost everything you hear on country radio now is producer driven.

[Chris]

I don't think people, and I certainly didn't, I don't think people understand just how much of a music factory Nashville is. It is a, always has been. It is the Chinese sweatshop of music producers.

[Rick Beato]

People go in and write, you know, they write five songs a week. It's amazing. It's really amazing.

[Chris]

I have a friend who produces at least five songs every single week.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, I went into back then in 2014. I have a lot of friends in Nashville. I know all the, I have friends at publishing companies, at record labels, everything. And I know a lot of session players. And when I first started going to Nashville back, you know, 10 years ago, I sat in on some songwriting demo sessions. They don't do them as much anymore. And what they do is they have these session players, about five or six of them. They'd have an engineer that was also the producer and they would produce demos and they'd have a song. They'd had songwriters come in and do three songs. So a songwriter would come in or two, two or three songwriters would come in. They'd stand in the control room, they'd hand out sheets with the, with the tracks or, or, or the, the, the guy that was running the session, they'd listen to it once and they would write down their parts and then they cut it.

[Chris]

These guys would just cut it there.

[Rick Beato]

And that was it.

[Chris]

Yeah, I've heard that these session musicians are like the Navy seals.

[Rick Beato]

Oh my God, they're amazing.

[Chris]

Yeah, one, Yep, got it. And then that's it. One take, two takes. And then they, they're in the next room.

[Rick Beato]

It's so, they play so well. So I did a video where I, I, I, I have a good friend, Tom Bukavac. He's one of the top guys, like the top guitar session guy in Nashville. So I was going up there and I said, hey, Tom, I want to do a video where I want to get, can get a few of your players and we'll, we'll sit in the room and we'll just talk and everything. He's like, why don't we do a song? Why don't you just produce a track and I'll get my guys to come in and play on it. It's like, okay. So he's, he, he had a, this guy, Daniel Tashian, who's a great songwriter, did and had produced Casey Musgraves. Her, he's had many, many hits with Casey Musgraves and other people. So Daniel sent me a couple songs and we decided on the song. So I go up there and I knew a couple of the guys in the band. He introduced me to everyone. So I'm making the video. We're going around talking to each individual person. Chris McHugh is the drummer. And anyhow, so they go. They get their sounds. I go in the control room, the engineer has everything dialed in, and they play it. They play it down, and they play their parts perfectly. They did a couple takes, but it was perfect. Singing the vocals at the same time, too. Harmonies. Two microphones in the same room. Daniel. And this Cecilia Castleman was. Was a singer and they. They were singing the harmonies in the same room. And that was the video.

[Chris]

Basically a live recording. It was essentially a live recording. Studio. Studio quality kit.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah. So. So Tom Bukovac, he's like. I think that he overdubbed the solo. Then he's. Then he's like, what do you think about me doubling it at octave down? I was like, yeah, sounds great. Like there's no producing to be, you know, uh, and. And then he plays it perfectly. And that's it. They literally. Oh, the. The guitar player, Todd Lombardo is. He said, my fingernail touched a string on one of the chords. There's a. Can we just punch that one note? And I mean, it was ridiculous.

[Chris]

That's the level of.

[Rick Beato]

Yes, my fingernail accidentally touched a string.

[Chris]

Okay, so we've got this big engine going on. Nashville is kind of maybe patient zero for it, but it's happening all over the place. Is there. Should people feel differently about Sabrina Carpenter's new song, knowing that maybe she just changed a couple of words in it, but it's, you know, it's all about, oh, it's meaningful. Who's it about? Like, what's going on in her life? That this is something to do with it. And I think you can read into the lyrics the deeper sentiment. When the song has been written by the artist that's performing it, I think that that adds allure and canon. As the kids say, you know, there's law attached to this, but there isn't. If we think that if Sabrina. The people are wondering who she's dating and what her dating life is like, and if we do this song and she can come in. Oh, why don't we make it seem a little bit more open ended and vague in this regard? I wouldn't quite say that. There's two things. You get your songwriting credit and then you do it Is this gaslighting the audience into thinking that their favorite artist is a more of a creative than they are? Or is this just kind of the way that music is evolving now? Should people be bothered?

[Rick Beato]

I think it's, it's the audience is the one that thinks that the artist has more to do with it. That's the problem. It's not like the artist is going out there saying, oh, I wrote this song. And you know, it's like the Nashville. When Nashville songs are written, most of the artists do not write their own songs in Nashville. Or many times they don't. Right. So. But they don't go on and get interviewed about the songs that they wrote. They, they, you don't see those kind of things. It'd be like, there's a famous song, one of the most famous songs of all time, Wichita Lineman. It's Glenn Campbell did this song in 1968. It's one of my favorite songs. And this guy Jimmy Webb wrote the song. And I interviewed Jimmy, he's. He's in his 70s now. And, and Bob Dylan said, one of the greatest songs I've written. I mean, a lot, a lot of people think this is the greatest song ever written. Which doll I meant? Well, Glenn Campbell sang it. Nobody interviewed Glenn Campbell about how did you write Tell me about Wichita Alignments. Like. Well, I asked Jimmy about it. He's the one that wrote it. You know, they're not going to ask him what do the lyrics mean? What were you thinking when you said this in the second verse? So that's the same kind of thing with the Sabrina Carpenter thing.

[Chris]

Do you think that the audience is that aware? Do you think that they know this? Because I get the sense that they really don't. I think that the entire story arc from the music video to the shoot, to the single artwork on Spotify, to the cut downs that go onto social media, I think it very much is playing into this arc, that this is genuine outgrowth of something that the artist is feeling or going through. And I suppose maybe somebody else can write a song that you then perform and own that is resonating with what it is that you're doing. That can be the case, yes. But the level of prefabrication does seem to make it feel a bit more kind of perverted.

[Rick Beato]

I think when people see the videos of these songs like this, the Sabrina Carpenter song, when people saw the video, they connect it with her writing it because of the way that she performs it in, in the video. Whereas if you take a song like Hurt that's a Trent Reznor song that Johnny that Johnny Cash did and Trent said that that song is song is owned by Johnny.

[Chris]

His now.

[Rick Beato]

It's his now. Right? So.

[Chris]

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[Rick Beato]

So that song Rick Rubin produced with the song Hurt, right? So Rick, I mean, it was right at the end of his life. And Rick had, he told me the story when I interviewed him. He said that he had put this song as the first song on this CD that he gave Johnny multiple CDs. It'd be the first song. And Johnny never said anything about it. He keep listening to it. And then so Rick, Rick said, how come you never say anything about that song? He goes, oh, I don't know. It just kind of has a couple weird chords and everything. And, and Rick's like, let me just do a version where I, I think you can really. I think this song would be amazing. So Rick had somebody come in and play guitars and, and do a rough demo and then Johnny heard it and sang over it and, and he was like, oh yeah, this is, this is amazing. But when he first heard it, because it has a couple dissonant chords in it on Trent's version, the Nine Inch Nails version, and he didn't hear it at first, he said, he was like, I don't know, that sounds kind of strange. And it was really interesting to hear about the backstory of these things. And he was, you know, there'd be days where he didn't, he couldn't sing because he was very ill when he did that, when he was singing, singing the vocals on that. And so Rick had to be available whenever Johnny was feeling good enough. Yeah. But amazing.

[Chris]

What is it then that a modern pop star brings to the table? Like primarily, what is their value add now?

[Rick Beato]

Depends on who it is. To me, somebody like Billie Eilish, her and her brother, that's a rarity really, where they create all the music on their own. Phineas plays a lot of the, you know, they, they co write all the songs and they're a self contained band unit, whatever you want to call them. And it's hard to think of other, of other artists that are pop artists that, that can function like that without outside songwriters.

[Chris]

Okay, so if you're not Billie Eilish, what are you bringing to the table?

[Rick Beato]

Well, it's, it's gotten to the point where you need to be famous in order to be a big pop star. You need to be famous prior to being a big pop star. So think of all the Disney people from Demi Lovato, Hilary Duff. Who? Selena Gomez, Jake Paul. Yeah, there you go. And Sabrina Carpenter. So the Jake Paul. That's funny. These Disney stars that were already famous and then you put them together with songwriters and oh, Addison, what's his name? Addison raised a TikTok. Tiktoker, which is same. She's famous already. She got 80 million followers on TikTok. I'm waiting for Charlie D'. Amelio. I don't know if she can sing or not, but she would.

[Chris]

You know, someone must be eyeing her up to get singers.

[Rick Beato]

Charlie d' Amelio to me is kind of like a pop star too. These people that can dance, this is, this is interesting to me. Athleticism is, has been part of pop music forever. James Brown, people that could really dance, Michael Jackson, Prince. Then modern pop stars like Tate McCrae. Her mom is dance teacher. She's a professional dancer.

[Chris]

I saw Benson Boone do a backflip off a stage.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, these people are athletes and you have to be. Dancing is a massive part of pop music. There's, there are routines that you have to be from Lady Gaga to Beyonce to whoever.

[Chris]

MGK now.

[Rick Beato]

Yes, there you go. So it's. And I really respect the athleticism of these people.

[Chris]

Right. But we're still not at no point here. Have we said, you know, the tonality, the ability to understand form and musical function and deep knowledge of where this comes from and the control of the voice, the vibrato, you know, like, as of yet, I haven't heard you talk about anything to do with songwriting. Capacity, creativity, Vo, vocal, like, know how.

[Rick Beato]

Well, there's. There's plenty of people that are.

[Chris]

Ed Sheeran.

[Rick Beato]

Ed Sheeran's a real songwriter. He can write his own songs, and he's a pro. Not only can he write his own songs, but Ed can go out and play them with an acoustic guitar.

[Chris]

He can loop. Loop pedal. Yeah, exactly.

[Rick Beato]

Amazing. Yeah, Ed is a pro. I mean, there. So there are people. There are people that can do that, that are great songwriters, that are really talented, that can perform, put on a show themselves. Chris Martin can go out just with a piano without even the rest of Coldplay can go out there and entertain.

[Chris]

The audience or the 11 other people.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah.

[Chris]

I just had it in my head that I wonder why we haven't seen. Or maybe we have and we just don't know about it. I wonder why we haven't seen prefabricated DJs yet.

[Rick Beato]

It's coming.

[Chris]

You think?

[Rick Beato]

Probably.

[Chris]

I just get the sense you have somewhat. Charli d'. Amelio. Let's assume that. Let's say that she was a dude and she couldn't. And he couldn't sing. Be like, oh, we've got the platform. This motherfucker just cannot hit a note. Make him a dj. Make him a dj. Where's Skrillex? Sonny Moore must be around. Get him in. Get him to. Where's Fred again? Speak to Fred. Fred will do us a track or whatever. Right? Get that in. Okay. Put him up there. And then you've got the platform and you have somebody that is creating tracks in that way.

[Rick Beato]

Well, for. In Charlie's case, it's not cost effective. She's already doing okay. She doesn't need to be. She doesn't need to be a musician at this point. Unless they've. Unless they discontinue TikTok or something.

[Chris]

That nearly happened.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah.

[Chris]

What are the trends?

[Rick Beato]

Music? It's interesting just. Just to. To make a point of that. My son Dylan is. And all his friends are on TikTok. The one day they. They stopped TikTok for one day, all of his friends went back to Instagram and they don't use TikTok anymore.

[Chris]

You're kidding. From that one day?

[Rick Beato]

From that one day. Now, it's not that nobody's on TikTok, but he said he noticed that all of his friends stopped using TikTok.

[Chris]

That's just.

[Rick Beato]

I mean, it was literally down. I don't even think it was down 24 hours.

[Chris]

Yeah, it was like eight hours or something. Yeah, well, I mean, it keeps getting extended. That band keeps getting just another extension. The second or third extension.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah.

[Chris]

I have to say, I think in the interests of national security, the collective aggregate IQ of the entire west and my social media presence, given that I kind of suck on TikTok, I'm very pro TikTok being taken down because I'm fucking allergic to that platform and everyone hates me on there. So we've sort of, I guess explained at least part of the process of what's going on, which is pretty interesting when I watch your videos, which everyone should go and check out. It kind of feels to me like seeing a translator who understands a language that you enjoy but actually have no idea what's going on. Right. I can't break a song into its constituent parts. I can't tell you what's. Oh, there goes a full step down here. This is. Oh, that's interesting. That's sort of a discord. You'll notice that there's some swing in the beat or whatever. And I'm like, nice, good vibe. You know, that's my Muggle level interpretation. What are the trends musically that are dominating right now? People can have this sense that they understand where the scenes are at. But what are you seeing? What are the sort of dominant oral themes that are going on?

[Rick Beato]

I don't know if there is a dominant genre or dominant trend right now. Everybody is. Is algorithmically siloed at this point. And I don't see that. That there's very few shared experiences that people have as far as with music nowadays.

[Chris]

She might have got with radio.

[Rick Beato]

Yes. Once radio stopped being something that was. Stopped being dominant, then people just didn't have any shared narratives. It go back to, you know, up until 2000 or so. We'll go back to Nirvana because Nirvana was a. A change, A band that really changed radio formats, changed everything. So Nirvana comes out. Glam metal, hair metal, whatever people want to call it was huge in the 80s. All of a sudden MTV comes out and I remember it 1991. First time I saw the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit. What is that? I didn't understand what he was saying, but I knew it was something game changing and spawned a alternative music. I mean, it literally overnight changed music. Killed pretty much all the hair bands except for Guns N Roses and maybe a couple others. But that was a, that was still part of the music business, where you make a record, put out a single three months before the record comes out. You go to radio with your, with the record labels, radio promotion team, they go out to their, you know, to their regions that they, you know, that they are in charge of. Somebody comes to the south, they go to Atlanta, they go to 99X, whatever. They try and get their program director. Here's a new single from the. This band we're trying to get on the radio. And then you start gaining traction. Then you, then if, if it's doing well, you hire independent promoters. There was a whole system of things that happened and, and there were budgets to do these things. Okay, so you're gonna get, you know, we have a budget to hire indies to go and promote the record. And if we can get it on kroc, it's gonna put it over the top. So we're gonna pay extra money to get the person, this person can get it on kroc. It's just, you know, that's the old music business, basically run like the mob.

[Chris]

I was gonna say it sounds very sort of nepotistic.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, it's, you know, to have a hit single back in the day, you know, it's going to cost $500,000 or so of promotion money to, to get it. Where to pay the people what they need to get paid. Usually it's the independent people. They, they put people, when they made payola illegal, they put people in, in the middle of these things to these independent promoters. So you didn't. The record labels wouldn't directly be paying the radio stations. They pay the independent promoter that would interface and, and get the songs played. But, but as far as dominant trends nowadays, I don't, I don't know how, how it will ever return from that. Everything is controlled algorithmically by massive platforms. Spotify, you know, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram.

[Chris]

Does that suggest that we're going to see more entrenched subcultures? If people get siloed off into algorithmic echo chambers? You'd think that people would listen to more of the same kind of music, but it feels like more of a homogenization than an individuation when it comes to subcultures. So how do you square that circle? Do you understand what I mean? Does that make sense?

[Rick Beato]

If you think about how the Spotify, how Spotify works, you put in a band, Bad Omens. If you like this, then you're going to like sleep Token, you're going to like, you go through the list of bands, whatever they are, we could look it up right now, we could pick any band and then you're going to see other bands that are similar cross referenced underneath. And that's how these platforms work, period. And, and the, they make your playlist for you. Once they know what you like, you get your daily playlist on Spotify. If you use that, you get your recommended videos on YouTube. And most of the people are okay with it. You know, they like the recommendations. YouTube cut the cord with, you know, subscribers getting every video. YouTube will send you a video if, if it is something that they think you'll be interested in. Just like YouTube, people that are more ad tolerant get more ads.

[Chris]

Yeah, it's like he feeding the hardest guy at the table the spiciest meal. Yeah. I think your channel's one, one of the most, I would say consistent that when I finish one of your videos, it takes me to another from your channel. I think it's very bingeable. I think people sequence, watch a lot of the stuff on your channel. Huge advantages that you get more plays. Slight disadvantages that I think you have to cap a little bit of the watch time because if you start getting up toward 20, 30 minutes, people actually don't end up finishing, which means that they don't get delivered your next video. They're distracted by something on the fucking sidebar. Yeah, so it's an interesting balance, but yeah, I just wonder, I wonder whether we've seen the death of subcultures. I mean, you know, growing up, for me, you would have seen sort of goths, emo kids. You would have had kids that were in hard style. I mean, I'm from the northeast of the uk. You can tell it was very working class. There wasn't anything very refined. There wasn't a classical music subculture up there, a jazz subculture. But I wonder whether the sort of homogenization, the fact that everybody is operating to appease the algorithm, whether it flattens some of the more experimental and interesting spikes and because everything's so fast paced, it doesn't allow any scene to ossify into. Oh, these are established rules, these are the sorts of things that you can expect. This is what this scene means because very quickly it's in and out. What's the next thing we've got to chase? Where the algos go? What's the trend? What's happening on TikTok?

[Rick Beato]

Well, it kind of goes back to my video I made that was in two parts Music is too easy to make and too easy to consume. Right. So you can put down a song and you and I could write a song right now and, and record it and we could put it out five minutes from now.

[Chris]

Yep.

[Rick Beato]

And the, the idea of a scene developing now, they're just. Things are too immediate, people are too connected. And because of that, it makes everything more homogenized.

[Chris]

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[Rick Beato]

The if one of the things, let's say guitar amplifiers, okay, People that watch my channel, they see I've got 50 guitar amps before, however many I have in the background. Well, most people nowadays don't use guitar amps. They use these, whatever Helix or Ax Effects or Kemper. These are digital modeling amplifiers, if you will, but they're, they're digital and everybody's using the same algorithms because the amplifiers are modeled, right? So the, they have the same sounds. Yes. You can program them, you can change this, you can move them. The mic placement, it's all digital though, right? It's not someone saying what would it sound like if I move the mic, you know, 50ft away this way or tried this or. Oh, I knocked the mic out, you know, out from in front of your amp. Oh, well that sounded amazing. Where's the mic? It's laying on the ground right there. Well, that's an amaz, you know, incredible sound that you would never get. You'd never think to put the mic on the floor to do that. And if everybody's using the same palette to, to paint on the, on the canvas, then you're going to have these records that sound similar. And I, you and I talked about this last night a little bit about the. There's not as many professionals, like professional producers and mixing engineers, for example, that are working in rock music, pop music, country music. Yes, that. But in rock music. Because there's not the financial incentive that there was. For example, if you were a, a huge rock producer in the 1990s, 1980s, you'd have three points on a record, three percentage points, and you had a million selling record. You'd make, you know, ten dollar retail. You'd make $300,000 per million the producer would make against their points. You get an advance, 3,000 bucks a track, typically 10 song record. You get a $30,000 advance. You pay. Once you pay that back, you start getting your, your money. Right, so multi platinum records, you make millions of dollars as a producer. Well now there's no money for producers like that anymore.

[Chris]

Well, they've been competed away with advanced digital workstations.

[Rick Beato]

That's right. So. And now there's been a whole generation of people that are making records without producers and engineers that may have different ideas than the people in the band that learned everything they know about recording from YouTube videos.

[Chris]

Well, that's your fault. That is your fault.

[Rick Beato]

It's, you know, it's. When I go back and listen to records from the. That were still being mixed by pro mixers back in the 90s and the early 2000s and they just have a. When you have something that's really mixed well. I was listening to a Chevelle record from maybe 2003. Wonder what's next. I think that was the name of it. And it's mixed by a guy, Andy Wallace, amazing mixer and it sounds massive, so punchy and. And I was like, why don't records sound like that now? Well, it's because this guy's one of the best mixers of all time, mixing engineers. His record sounded incredibly good and or Brendan o' Brien that did all the Stone Temple Pilots records, all the Pearl Jam records, he mixed Super Unknown by Soundgarden. Brenda's mixes are amazing. They're punchy, they're fat, they're, they're, they have dynamics. And now when I hear everything, it's like I hear drum samples, I hear guitars that are recorded digitally with the same amp simulators and, and there's a. There can tend to be a sameness with the music because everybody's using the same type of gear and they're recording it in on the same workstations. Like everything is this, you know, everybody's using all the same stuff. So it's hard for it not to get this homogenous sound. And the difference is the people who are the singers because that's the ones that, that's the one thing. And then if you use auto tune.

[Chris]

On your voice, does this mean that the importance of the front man or woman is going to continue to get bigger given that the singer is the highest point of differentiation that bands and artists have now?

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, I think that's always been the case though.

[Chris]

I know, but you would slash even you've got some like very talented. Although I suppose especially when it comes to look at Sleep Token and look at the drummer. Right. You know, I'm aware that they're not molesting their tracks in quite the same sort of a way. It's very self contained unit. But there is still the opportunity now I suppose for Very Talented back further, further back in stage contributors to. To really shine through. But yeah, it seems to me that if what you're saying is correct, music sounds are becoming more homogenized. Everybody's using the same presets and fucking decapitators and whatever the hell else it is that they're doing. You didn't think any of that, did you Shock? If that's the case then where are the remaining points of differentiation? And I wonder whether this is going back to what we said at the very beginning. Well, what about your marketing presence? What about your social media game? What about your rollout from an advertising perspective?

[Rick Beato]

That's what it is. That's where, that's how you differentiate yourself.

[Chris]

Is through that, not through the actual art.

[Rick Beato]

But does somebody in the band have a big social media platform? Are they big on. On Instagram and they're bringing people to the shows? Because that happens. That does happen. There's a band from Australia, Carnival, that I love.

[Chris]

Carnival.

[Rick Beato]

Carnival is amazing. So the bass player, John, they have a new record coming out he sent me. He sent me the new single, which.

[Chris]

It just dropped the other day.

[Rick Beato]

It didn't play when I tried. I tried to play it and it wouldn't play on my Spotify.

[Chris]

You know why?

[Rick Beato]

Why?

[Chris]

Because he's in Australia. So his Aussie time, they said it was the 26th.

[Rick Beato]

That was supposed to come out, Chris, and it didn't.

[Chris]

What day were you?

[Rick Beato]

Mine was the 26th, but it was. But they're a day ahead.

[Chris]

Yeah. So I. I've had this before because I'm still on British. British TikTok. British Spotify.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah.

[Chris]

I get access. Even in Austin, I'll get access to songs at 6pm because it was six hours behind. Now the fact that it's a full day, that. That's something else. My entire theory's gone out the window. But if you set your Spotify to Australia time, you'll get access to songs 18 hours ahead of you.

[Rick Beato]

Well, he sent me, he sent me a link and I wrote him back. I'm like, john, that doesn't play.

[Chris]

I imagine he felt good about that.

[Rick Beato]

Okay, so I did a breakdown of a song, Goliath that's on what record is on? Came out in 2007. But the, the Carnival record. Yeah. And Forester Saviles, that was the producer of it. And the sounds are phenomenal on it. The drum sounds. This one tune is in a really weird like 27 four time signature and Forester sent me the tracks for it. And you can hear the bass in the drum tracks because they're playing it at the same time. And the drum sounds are phenomenal. Then. Then you hear the guitar sounds. They have the rooms in them, they're done through amps. I mean it's impeccably recorded and mixed. John the bass player, his bass sound is just unbelievably great distortioned it. Most aggressive based on. And it's. And this is, this is kind of before people started using all this kind of all the same gear. And it was done in a professional studio with a professional producer. And you know, the band is obviously very involved in what they do. These guys are pros. But it's mixed so well and I'm really curious to hear what the new.

[Chris]

Record sounds like when you can finally get access to it. So my, I guess total layperson contention here is if it's the case that the sound is becoming more homogenized, if everybody's using the same presets, if everybody is becoming more reliant on daws to basically not enable but like buttress like to replace the production process. Surely that opens the door to anybody that has even a modicum of ability to properly make music. So for every zig there's another zag. So if everybody is using the same sounds, the same presets, the same 808s, the same drum, whatever. Decapitate bullshit. If everybody's using that. Well, all that you need to do as an artist is actually learn your craft. And it's total blue ocean strategy. So I understand people might be worried about the vanilla ice cream, you know, live, laugh, loving of, of music production that it's, it's very prefabricated but that would just open up the door for more inventive artists or just even remotely original artists. Somebody that was built in the 90s so to speak, but born in the 2000s to be able to take over. So surely we're just going to see this swing back in the other direction, do you not think?

[Rick Beato]

I hope so. It still comes down to do you have a tick tockable moment? It just does, Chris. That's the, you know, it's. You can have the greatest record in the world, the most different sounding record, revolutionary new trend in music. And if you don't have those, if.

[Chris]

People don't say can you feel my heart? Then it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Okay, let's talk about this.

[Rick Beato]

So why does my 12 year old know that song that came out in.

[Chris]

2013 before she was born.

[Rick Beato]

Before she, the year she was born.

[Chris]

Yeah, she was born. Yeah. Well, I mean that song, it was a good song but it kind of languished at least in terms of their bring these biggest songs for a long time. I mean. Okay, what, how do you come to think about the impact of TikTok on music generation? Cause I think a lot of the time normal people like me think about, we consider it in one direction, which is songs that blow up on TikTok, but it's bi directional which is the reverse happening. The opportunity to blow up on TikTok causes musicians to create music with the express purpose of being TikTok blow up able. You know what I mean? So what does that, what does that sound like? What, what is happening to the form and the structure and the sort of way that music is actually created in order to be. How do you make a song TikTok?

[Rick Beato]

Okay, so I've. I've thought a lot about this and, and I, I believe that there's a formula for having a successful song.

[Chris]

Here we go.

[Rick Beato]

It is figureoutable. This is My. My Word using. There's a lot of data out there that's available. There's a. I have different apps. There's an app called Chart Metrics that. That will show you met. Give you metrics of Artists, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. It'll show you when something blew up. I'll give you an example. So there's artist Imogen Heap and my. My daughter Layla. I drive her to school every day. So she's like, can you play this song called the Headlock by Imogen Heap? How do you know that song? So I play that came out in 2005.

[Chris]

It's gonna say Imogen Heap's 20 years old.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, so that came out in 2005. So she said, yeah, I heard it on. On. On YouTube shorts, and I wanna hear what the whole song sounds like. Right? And so. So I play her the song. She's like, ooh, that's really good. I said, you know, there's another song on here that was a bigger song called Hide and Seek.

[Chris]

Yeah, it was huge.

[Rick Beato]

Huge. So I start playing. She's like, yeah, I've never heard this. All of a sudden, 2 minutes and 15 minutes, 47 seconds in, there's this spot that is the TikTok spot. And she starts singing along. She goes, oh, I know this song. It's the bridge of the song where the singing. Where it gets into the faster singing part. And she knew that. And so then I go back and I open up this chart metric. I started looking at it. It's like, okay, so this song had a spike six months ago. People started playing on TikTok. And then I. And I started looking at it. And then she started getting way more followers on Instagram.

[Chris]

And.

[Rick Beato]

And then I went back and I said, layla, where did you hear. How did you hear this? She goes, well, I heard it on a few different places. So she sent me the. The three different places. Two of them were anime videos, but they used different parts of the song. Chris. They weren't the same TikTok, but they had the same. A similar payoff. And they were. They were. They were from some anime. And then one influencer that had 3 million followers had shared it as well, but it was in multiple places and it was hashtag headlock. And so I started studying these things to see. And it had blown up multiple times over six months. It kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger until she became aware of it.

[Chris]

So what is the constituent parts of a song that has that virality? What. What is it that that makes that.

[Rick Beato]

I'm trying to figure that out right now. So I don't. I'm not sure yet. I'm not sure what makes people want to use things.

[Chris]

And can you imagine how many resources are being spent trying to get. Trying to reverse engineer what that is? I mean, I'm sure that lots of record labels and producers will have got some sense of. Maybe someone's got the formula, you know, maybe there's some person behind the scenes that's doing all the rest of it. You remember what was that? The dude that was skateboarding down the.

[Rick Beato]

Street, drinking Ocean Spray, doing the Dreams by Fleetwood Mac.

[Chris]

Okay, so this is so Creed fucking Creed, dude. Yeah, I guess that was partly like Texas Rangers winning the World Series and that kind of being a part of it. Yeah. Where's this coming from?

[Rick Beato]

So I. When I first started on YouTube, I used to have things not only content ID, but blocked, where they'd take down videos. And one of the videos I had taken down was a Fleetwood Mac song. It was a song Go youo Own Way, but it was written by Lindsey Buckingham, whereas Dreams was written by Stevie Nicks. And I argued. I made a lot of videos about blocking. Why are. Why are these big labels blocking stuff on YouTube of songs that are 40 years old that I'm making videos of? It's just like free publicity. Why block it? Just take the content ID money and make. You're making money on it. Why do you want to take down a video that has a million views, 2 million views? Like, what's the point of it? It's just free promotion for them. So finally, when that TikTok video that you're talking about with a guy with the Ocean Spray, you know, listening to the song, that song went to number one. And all of a sudden the labels are like, wait a minute. This is promotion. Wait, wait. We can actually, you know. And then they. Then they stopped blocking it. And all of a sudden, all of my old videos that were blocked got unblocked.

[Chris]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Rick Beato]

Over the course of a few months.

[Chris]

After that, there's not really an equivalent from my industry. A little bit of a one. If you have a particularly good quotable moment. There's a famous bit from Lex interviewing Huberman, and Andrew says, can you read me the quote one more time? And then people supercut that with either stuff that's real or stuff that's like taking the piss. There was one. I did a thing called Finn versus the Internet. Finn Taylor is a, like a friendly roast comic from the uk and it's Half a skit and half a sort of real roast. And anyway, he brings his pretend step stepson out. Jeffrey. Jeffrey is sat on a stool and he's saying that I use a lot of quotes on the show and Jeffrey's giving me some of his favorite quotes back. And he says all a man needs is the same as his dog. Food, water, shelter, Put your nose in a stranger's arse. And that clip, that short clip has been used tens of thousands of times by the Brazilian Jiu jitsu community. Because if you're in north, south, where you're like this, like that, you've got your nose in a stranger's ass and it's like it's the equivalent of that. It's the only sort of equivalent thing that if you capture a small piece of something that it could. That was not what this was intended for. Right. It's just part of a skit that the guys wrote. But yeah, I suppose the same thing goes with music. I think the thing that. The thing that everybody feels concerned about is how contrived the process of creating anything is. Like the whole reason for virality is that this thing wasn't meant to go viral. And then it does. Right. It's the byproduct. It's the fact that it feels naturalistic. That's cool. The fact that the Fleetwood Mac song was not meant to be listening to while skateboarding, drinking Ocean Spray cranberry juice. Right. That's what's cool. It's the fact that. Can you feel my heart has this sort of slow wave and then it comes back up and you can do cool stuff on videos with it. I've seen lots of people doing like trampolining videos and shit to that song. That wasn't why it was designed.

[Rick Beato]

No.

[Chris]

But as soon as you get to the stage, if you see how the magic trick is done, I think it kind of kills the allure of believing in it. And the same thing goes for the tick tock ification thing that you've. You're playing a super gaslight game where you need to create a track that works on TikTok but doesn't seem like it was made to do that. You want people to believe that they created this meme themselves. And yeah, it's like a. I don't know, 5D chess.

[Rick Beato]

I don't. I don't know if that people can really create things that are going to work. It's, it's. I've had a lot of viral videos and I never know what's going to Go viral. I have no idea. I do know that it. It's almost all my viral videos are just me talking to camera. Almost all of them invariably are that. But other than that, I don't know what. I never, you know, I can't. You can't plan anything. You never know how videos is going to do. And it's to me, I just make it and move on.

[Chris]

I wonder how many. I wonder how many times. I don't know, over the last 10 years, let's say. I wonder how many times people have got into a studio, finished the final master on a track. I mean, like, guys, that is a fucking number one and the song's gone out and not even charted. I wonder how well the guys in the music industry can pick him now.

[Rick Beato]

I know people that have written many number one songs and they've told me that they had no idea it was going to be a number one song.

[Chris]

You included.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah.

[Chris]

You even wrote it for a different genre. You didn't even write it for the genre. And it was like 10 years later.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, yeah. So, you know. You know, whoever thinks something's going to be a number one song? Well, if. No, if you're writing something for Beyonce or Sabrina carpenter or somebody that's a famous star and it's picked as the single, the chances of it. Of it going number one or being really successful are exponentially higher.

[Chris]

Less so to do with the autistic merit of the song, though. Yeah, that's. That's interesting.

[Rick Beato]

One of the hardest things being a producer or songwriter is to get your song picked to be a single. Historically, that's always a thing, is that you write songs for a record. You might be one of 15 different songwriters on a record. Let's say. Let's say it's. There's three people per song, but there's five different groups of people to write for a record and everything. And then they go back and forth and back and forth with the a R department, the head of the label. Well, maybe this is going to be the single. Well, we. We sent it out to our radio guys. They think this is the single, and they think this is the single. It's just like. And to actually have your song picked is. Is just the first step in that. And then it has to be.

[Chris]

You.

[Rick Beato]

Know, and then it's the. The public has its vote. Right. It's like one of my friends, like I always say, well, people tell me that they want me to make these kind of videos, Then I make them and people don't watch them. And say, well, people ultimately vote with their attention because we're in the attention economy. And that's. And that to me is not predictable. What? Yes, you can. You can talk about something that's a trending topic and it can do well, but you still don't. Don't have any control over what the.

[Chris]

Public is this why record labels like replicable formats when it comes to music, that we kind of have an idea that this thing worked before the same way as you. I used the example of you and Dr. Mike Israel. In terms of appearance, quite different. But in terms of content strategy, actually quite similar.

[Rick Beato]

I like Mike. I like Dr. Mike.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah.

[Chris]

But he's got a strange shaped head. He described himself as a human callus. To me, he kind of like if a Veruca took human form. Um, but very similar. Very. Okay, we're gonna do some sort of. I have a degree of expertise in pretty specific area. I'm gonna break stuff down musically. There has to be. And this is why I was so interested.

[Rick Beato]

He has a far better sense of humor than I do. He's. He's really funny.

[Chris]

That's true. But he's also Jewish, so, you know, there's positives and negatives to. To. To the way that Mike puts himself across. Very good with money, very bad at spending it. You know, so he. The thing that I thought was interesting when it comes to the music industry is we find a format that works and then, okay, how do we sort of crank this until it becomes old and then we go again and we. Where does the genesis of that come from? Is that even predictable?

[Rick Beato]

I thought a lot about this. What happened when new metal came about? You know, let's say it's early mid-90s corn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park.

[Chris]

God, I miss pod and pod.

[Rick Beato]

So. So new metal was the dominant force.

[Chris]

In rock music now called divorce dad metal.

[Rick Beato]

Is that what they call it now?

[Chris]

Divorced dad rock.

[Rick Beato]

Okay.

[Chris]

So.

[Rick Beato]

So. And then you had bands. Creed was not really a new metal band. They were more of a hard rock.

[Chris]

Band like Breaking Benjamin.

[Rick Beato]

Stuff like Breaking Benjamin was. Was. It would. Would be a new new metal band. One of my really dear friends produced. Produced Breaking Benjamin, but was this dominant force in radio until it wasn't. And why. What happened?

[Chris]

What.

[Rick Beato]

What? You know, was it the nickel back. Ification of it?

[Chris]

All roads lead back to Chad Kroger, man.

[Rick Beato]

Right.

[Chris]

Holy.

[Rick Beato]

Is it. Is it that he had too many.

[Chris]

Hits like an overexclav?

[Rick Beato]

It's interesting. So. So the. The engineer for Nickelback, Joey Moy that worked with Chad on all those records moved to Nashville and he is the, one of the biggest producers in Nashville and he is, he engineers, mixes, produces and he's just had hit after hit after hit after hit. And I don't know why Chad Kroger didn't move to, to Nashville, but for some reason I, I think that I thought like maybe it's. I used to say that when blues left rock music, when there's no, no blues riffs anymore. If you think of like Audio Slave or you know, as an extension of Raging as a Machine, a lot of the bands, the Pearl Jam, Soundgardens, the bands of the 90s, had a lot of blues elements in them, but a lot of new metal does not. Linkin park does not have blues licks like Crawling or. I mean, a lot of the songs on the first Linkin park record are, are not based. They don't have blues melodies, they don't have blues licks. And once rock music became disconnected from the blues, it started losing its appeal to people. And then people moved to cut listening to country music. And now country music has been popified where you hear, you know, the same drum loops that you hear in pop music, you hear in On Morgan Wallen songs. And like a lot of country songs that are, that you hear that hit top, top 40 radio now. I mean, it's amazing how much country is in top 40.

[Chris]

I, we need to talk about this. What has happened with the ascendancy of country over the last five years? What, what's going on?

[Rick Beato]

I think it's that, I think that they, the, the production style has changed and it's, and it sounds like pop music and so it's, I think that it's, that it just connects with, with more people because it doesn't sound like country music anymore. Doesn't sound like the country music of when I was going to Nashville and, and, and writing songs.

[Chris]

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[Rick Beato]

I could see that country music was moving that way. When I got involved in the scene in the, you know, in the teens, it was during the bro country era. The bro country era lasted for a few years and then. But the. The era of the track guys, there were people moving to Nashville, you know, starting in 2015, 2016, and then Nashville just blew up and Then the music started to change in style and, and just I started noticing my friends that used to listen to rock changed over and started listening to country. I think part of it is that there were, there were guitars in country and there was no rock on the radio that, that, that they connected with because they didn't necessarily connect with the metal bands that were going on in the mid teens.

[Chris]

I don't think people know just how much the country music industry is built on the back of former scene kids and metal guitarists. I think all of Jelly Roll's band X, Suicide something or Amity, the something, you know what I mean? Everyone was part of some very black wearing death met band in the 2000s and then grew up to do this. But yeah, Jelly Roll, massive pivot. Post Malone massive pivot. Beyonce massive pivot. I guess Taylor Swift pivoted away. But you.

[Rick Beato]

Well she moved to New York and, and, and change her music and, and she, her thing was that she was dominating the charts and then she started. She's like okay, how do I broaden my appeal to, to start hitting, you know, pop radio? Because it was a different thing back when she did and whenever it was 2012 when she started working with Max Martin and other outside songwriters like that Max Martin and Shellback and, and then she started having massive worldwide hits. So the, it's just, you know, I, I look at this stuff Chris and I think it's just tough for, for musicians to. There's just. It's so hard to connect with the audience. Even in the era when it's so easy to connect with people. It's so hard to get any type of a, of momentum going right with, with a song that. Or with, with any type of artist to get to that hundred million plays. You know you're talking about the Bring Me the horizon song. That's 500 million now. 7. What's that?

[Chris]

How much is it?

[Rick Beato]

500. 720 million plays. It's insane, right? If to get over 100 million plays on a song. 100 million plays is. I was talking about this this morning actually is about $300,000. I think something like that. No, $3 million. Three. Oh geez. I just. No. $300,000. I think a billion. Yeah, a billion play song is, is about 3 to 5 million dollars depending.

[Chris]

Do you imagine if me or you had a billion play video.

[Rick Beato]

It'D be like Baby Shark?

[Chris]

Yeah, it is. That's what you should do next.

[Rick Beato]

I was going to make this video series. Is this song better or worse than Baby Shark?

[Chris]

That's a, that's a pretty good barometer. Is this song better or worse than what does the Fox say? Okay, we need to talk about AI artists.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, AI artists. Uh huh.

[Chris]

What's going on? What's going on? AI bans AI everything. What's happening?

[Rick Beato]

I think that, that one of the AI companies is testing whether people will accept AI music. I mean Spotify has AI music that they're already pushing in playlists that, that, that are, that get millions of views. A lot of it is kind of light jazz or atmospheric music and things like that. But now they have this thing I just made a video on about this band the Velvet Sundown, that's a. Purported to be a fake band that has AI looking pictures and AI sounding songs. I always have said in my videos, every time I've made many videos on AI I got, I testified at a Senate hearing in 2023, went to Washington. I was one of 19 people. It was a closed door session. They did nine closed door hearings. I was in the seventh one, the first one. They had Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg. All these people were all the top people at these big.

[Chris]

About music, about.

[Rick Beato]

No, this is about AI.

[Chris]

Right, Okay. I was gonna say I don't, I don't think I care about music taste.

[Rick Beato]

They, they invited me in with all the people, sag, aftra, Spotify people, people for all these that worked at all, you know, all, basically all different interest groups. Right. And then me, because I had made a lot of big videos on AI music and one of my things that I said is that I don't, didn't believe when they asked me questions, the senators asked me questions. I don't think that anything that's completely fully generative AI should have be able to be copyrighted. So that takes away the financial incentive for companies to go and put AI music out there to make money on it. If Spotify can put out AI fake artists and people stream it and they're perfectly okay with it and then not pay artists that are getting streamed as well because they're. And then that, then that just increases the incentive for them to fill their playlist with fake artists. Right. But now what's happened is that there's this artist that may or may not be fake, the Velvet Sundown, that has a verified symbol on Spotify and they have a second record. Even though there's no record of these people kind of looks like a fake bio. There's no record of these people and they have another record coming out in two weeks. A Second record and no one's coming forward saying it's us. Now, if this was a marketing ploy, this is actually a very smart thing. But people are saying in the comments on the video I just made yesterday, well, these are all bots that are on here. It's got over 600,000 followers now on Spotify. In a week went from zero to 600,000. It's crazy, right?

[Chris]

Is this song any good?

[Rick Beato]

Well, there's a whole record there and it's. I don't think it sounds good to me. It doesn't.

[Chris]

People are voting with their ears though. Did you say earlier on that ultimately it's a meritocracy here?

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, and I think that people will embrace. Like I, I said early on when you started seeing all these fake Drake videos and, and fake Beatles videos and all this stuff that they were on YouTube but with, with the voices of the, you know, young Paul McCartney or young John Lennon, whatever. And I said, eventually there's going to be the Beatles and the Beatles AI and Prince and Prince AI and Michael Jackson. And Michael Jackson AI. There'll be songs that are trained on their music on the multi tracks that are controlled by whoever owns the publishing. They license this stuff out. And there will be people that say, you know what? I like Michael Jackson AI better than Michael Jackson. That's going to happen. That will happen. There are going to be people that like AI music and they're perfectly fine with it.

[Chris]

Should there be protections in place for artists to avoid AI bands, AI artists coming in and taking plays? Do you think that Spotify should ban AI music?

[Rick Beato]

Should they ban it? Well, there's so many workarounds with this. I mean, you can, you can create your song via a. Have AI a completely AI prompted written song and then just recut it and then it's. You doing doesn't have all the artifacts, you have all the independent tracks and everything. And, and then who sues you? The Suno or Udo or whoever owns the thing? Hey, that's our music. Wait, no, no, it's not. I prompted it myself and then I covered it.

[Chris]

Yeah, it's like, it's like the Spider man meme.

[Rick Beato]

I don't even know what, you know, this, this. I don't know what's going to be done with it. I don't know how they can.

[Chris]

I think this is a great take. I think that's a really interesting one because if you're a real person, but 80% of the process is AI enabled. Where does the line get drawn? You know you can lock me in a room with some parchment and a quill and say, Write 60,000 words, no source material. Or I can prompt ChatGPT to do it all for me. Somewhere in the middle is where most people are. And some people are basically zero. Some people are essentially a quill. But then they've got source material. Ryan Holiday has got reams and reams of flashcards from all of these books that he's reading. I've become very obsessed with the idea of plagiarism versus inspiration, because very few ideas come from real first principles. You're so telling me that this was not inspired by anything. Well, when I look at the saxophone that you're holding, you're holding it the right way up. You're blowing into the bit at the top and not through the bit at the bottom. So you've been inspired by all of the people that came before you that taught you how to play a fucking saxophone. Right. Like, you know, you're playing this thing in time. You're using the kick and the snare in a very typical sort of form because there's only so many. So everybody is inspired or educated by what came before them. And that goes all the way to. Well, I read this book or I watched this movie, or I listened to this song, and I like that. And, oh, that made me think about this thing. So there's a wonderful line from William James that says originality is just undetected plagiarism. And what we are seeing now is the veil being lifted on detectable plagiarism. Right. Which is not only is this a direct copy of something else, but it's a direct copy of something else masquerading as something original because it's been reconstituted by an AI. I'm going to piss every musician off by saying this. If AIs are able to create better music than you as an artist can. I think it's a very difficult argument to make to say that they should be held back, given that this is supposed to be meritocracy, because all of the graphic designers for whom midjourney just came and decapitated people were up in arms about it and tried to make a big issue around it, but it. It happened. Podcasts, there is a website where you can put any topic in.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah.

[Chris]

And it will create a pretty listenable podcast that explains Notebook LM is. Is really good. If you like learning. If you like learning stuff.

[Rick Beato]

They have the oms, they have all the.

[Chris]

Oh, it's interesting with the way that we. Yeah. You're so right, Rick. You know, and if NotebookLM gets to the stage where it is able to produce a better podcast than the one that I can, then I either need to up my game to be able to, or I'm gonna. I'm gonna be defeated by the fucking robots. Here's my theory, and I'd love to get your take on this. The reason that I think that musicians feel particularly aggrieved when it comes to AI coming and replacing plays, taking ear real estate from the audience, is that the barrier to entry in order to be able to create music is so high. Anybody can do a podcast, they can be very bad, but anybody can do a podcast.

[Rick Beato]

Right?

[Chris]

Anybody can draw anything. Can be really bad, but anybody can draw anything. If you put a saxophone in my hands, I cannot make a sound come out of it.

[Rick Beato]

Right?

[Chris]

Right. So the level of investment, the moat that has typically protected musicians for a very long time, not just from being able to play the instrument, but from understanding musical form, from being able to master, produce, mix, understanding how all of this stuff is supposed to be constructed. When you level the playing field for something that people have invested a ton of time into, they quite rightly are going to feel aggrieved because they say this is unfair. Look at how much time I spent getting myself to the stage to be able to do this. And you've just taken a shortcut. I am not allowed to feel as aggrieved because an AI is able to replicate chatting shit on a podcast. Right? Because I know that the moat, the barrier to entry, the required skill set in terms of training, was lower than somebody who is a aficionado at playing the keyboard or at playing the drums or doing something like that. And I think that this is the reason that musicians have a particular bee in their bonnet around the AI thing. But I struggle to see where the delineation is between the graphic artists and the podcasters and the musicians. And if we're not going to stop NotebookLM or Midjourney, I think it's difficult to say Spotify should ban AI music for the same reason, because why? It took me ages to learn to play the drums.

[Rick Beato]

When I talked about this, about the being good prompter, I mean, there is an art to writing a prompt. I use AI programs all the time, and sometimes I'll say, okay, here's my title for my video. And to me, the best title generator is Gemini, because they have all YouTube's data in it. It's Google. So I'll be like, okay, here's the title for my video, Gemini, I want you to create 10 variations of this title for a Rick Beato YouTube. Well, it knows me. I've trained the whole thing to do this for my. It knows my, my video titles and things like that. And so, and. And then it'll spit it out. It's like, make it more clickable, make it this, make it that. And a lot of times it'd be like, I like the first part of this one, I like the second part of that one, and I'll do that. And. Or sometimes it'll be like, you know, I need something for a, for a thumbnail, a background where I have a cut out of me, or I'm trying to do something, but I, you. I want something that's. That I couldn't create, but I can imagine what it is. You put it in there, it'll create it. No, do another variation or do another variation. No, make it more this. Can you make the. You know, so it's. So I use it constantly. And, and you have to just keep refining it, refining it, refining it. Like you refine a song. It doesn't replace the, the decades that it takes to become great at an, at an instrument. But there is. You could argue, I'm not arguing this. One could argue that being. Prompting is the same kind of skill as, as learning how to play an instrument. And I'm not saying that it is.

[Chris]

You're being very diplomatic today.

[Rick Beato]

But. But, well, because I actually do use AI programs and, and there, you know, we talked about this yesterday about the, the how there are things that, to me, that these AI programs can do really well in music. Like, to me, mastering. And I don't mean to upset any mastering engineers or anything, but to me, that seems like a great use of, Of a. Of AI is to learn how to master songs. Right. I think mixing. I think, yes, mixing. There's taste, there's all these things involved, but I sure love to be able to say, hey, could you mix it? There's a guy, Serbin Gania, that's. That mixes every big pop song. And then you have, you know, you have your rock mixers. Chris Lord, lg, Tom Lord, lg, Brendan o', Brien, Andy Wallace, all these, these famous rock mixers that, you know, oh, could you mix it in the style of this guy or mix it in the style this guy and instantly have your thing, or in 15 seconds have. Have a completely different take of your song mixed by a different mixer? That would be kind of interesting. That to me, seems like a great use Of. Of AI as opposed to AI creating the song from scratch.

[Chris]

To go back on what I said, I think it's a difficult argument to make that music is some particular protected class. All that being said, I do not like the idea of listening to music that's been created by an AI because to me. And this is another reason why the prefabrication of music generally by songwriters also removes a lot of the magic and the allure. Because I like the story. I like to read into what the songwriter meant by these lyrics and what's the emotion that's trying to be put across here. And if it's a, you know, a philosophical zombie, the idea of that. That it sort of operates like a human, but behind the scenes there's nothing going on. If it's the musical equivalent of that, like, up front it sounds good, and behind the scenes there's nothing going on. But then you think, okay, is there anything particularly more special about music that was created by an AI and produced by an AI than something that was made by a team of 15 songwriters and then produced by an artist that had nothing to do with it? You know, the. Again, right. And this is like an ethical.

[Rick Beato]

That's a. That's a great point. That's a great point. It's. One of my friends says, well, you know, when you have 15 songwriters, basically like AI anyways, to your point, and. And that, you know, then you give it to the. To the person that had nothing to do with it, that sings it. It's like, well, you know, well, at least there were real people playing it. Well, are there really real people playing it? There's like one guy that played the keyboard parts and put all the. The drum loop.

[Chris]

Drums are sequenced. Yeah, exactly. But then when you say, okay, well, electronic music, dance music, that's. There's no. Very rarely, apart from maybe if you've got some custom vocals done. Sonny Moore made scary monsters and nice sprites on like a 2010 MacBook Pro on planes. He never. It was never anything. Right. I guess he would have recorded his vocals at some point to put that in. But. Okay, where do we draw this line? And I think it very much is an ethical question of what is it? Do we need to have to identify AI artists? I think that would probably be quite a nice thing to do. I think if there was a particular tick. And this has been talked about on other social media platforms too. The dead Internet theory that because AI is able to produce such a high volume, eventually almost all of the content on the Internet is Going to be produced by AIs. And the same thing may occur for music, but for me, I would feel conned, I would have felt catfished by music, by a song. If I went on and I'm reading into, oh, what does it mean? What does he really mean? The rain fell like blood. Like, what did what? Oh, that's so steep. And it's like, dunno, like it was influenced by some fucking Marilyn Manson song from whatever, 2005, that would suck. And I feel like there's two ways that AI is going to make a change. One is it's going to compete and the other is that it's going to enable existing artists to be more effective. And it's a case of whether or not for you, your channel may be replaced by Rick Beato. AI. But yeah, which would be great because you could retire, but also it's enabling you to stay ahead. So it's a case of are people going to use the tools in order to keep the competitive advantage over to them and how much is the competition going to come through?

[Rick Beato]

There's a, there's a program called 11 labs that I use and when I trained it on my voice, it's weird because I, I, I inputted dialogue from. I have a, I have a mic that's about, it's out of camera range. It's probably four feet in front of me. That's about this high or so.

[Chris]

It's a little shotgun mic.

[Rick Beato]

It's a stereo mic, stereo condenser mic. That's what I typically record my, my YouTube videos with. So it's a, it's a, there's a little bit of room ambience in it, but it's pretty dry because I'm in a recording studio, you know, so. And then I had, I trained some of it using a SM7 like we're using right now, which is a very different sound. It's got much more bass, it's closer, it's, it's more, more in your face. But most of my videos are not like that. But I used it when I was training it. So when I use, when I try to use that, sometimes I want to punch in on a video, but I don't have access to this. And I, and so I try and use 11 labs, but it's like it's sending me results back with the close mic. Right? So, So I talked to 11 labs and they're gonna do a. Two different voice profiles for me. One with a close mic and one with a distant mic.

[Chris]

So let me give you this from Elevenlabs. This is crazy. So Archer on 11 labs, you know that it's the. It was the go to British AI voice. Yeah, yeah, right. Archer, you remember that? Yeah, they updated it recently. Okay, I'm just gonna get you to have a little listen. Just see if you notice anything about the particular voice that Elevenlabs go to. Standard Archer, British male AI voice is. Shilajit is a powerful tar like resin found high in the Himalayan mountains, formed over centuries from ancient decomposed plant matter.

[Rick Beato]

Where's your royalty?

[Chris]

It's loaded with over 80 trace minerals, Fulvic acid and essential nutrients your body needs to function. So how does it work? You hear that? Work.

[Rick Beato]

Work.

[Chris]

That's me. That's. That's Middlesbrough. That's. It's been trained on my voice. And that's now. So if anybody has an issue with my take around AI coming and taking people's jobs.

[Rick Beato]

Right.

[Chris]

So that's now. That was an ad for shilajit, which is like a mineral testosterone thing. I have no take on shilajit. I'm not associated with whatever that shilajit company is. But it's using my voice. Do I own the likeness to my voice?

[Rick Beato]

When. That's a. That's a great question. When I trained it on my. On my voice, I provided the sound samples. It takes about three weeks or so. And then once it was done, it says, okay, it's ready. Then they. You sign into 11 labs, then they have you read a paragraph because they have to do the voice print and make sure it's you. So you're not stealing someone else's voice, which is cool. It's very smart.

[Chris]

Verification.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, Verification.

[Chris]

Yep.

[Rick Beato]

They have 15 seconds to do it. So you have to read this thing and it's like, yeah, okay, it's. You recognize that you're. You know, it's. But I still haven't gotten it to where. Doesn't sound natural. Mine doesn't sound natural because I. Maybe I have a odd way of speaking. I use different registers.

[Chris]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rick Beato]

You know, But I have used 11 labs as an experiment where I'll go to some B roll and I'll put 11 labs line in there, see if no one. If anyone notices. No one ever notices. I've done it a few times. I don't use a lot of B roll, but sometimes I'll sneak things in there. It's like, I wonder if anyone notices.

[Chris]

That's cool.

[Rick Beato]

But. But I want to get it to where is where it works so that if I don't have access to a microphone or something and I have an idea and I want to hear what it sounds like. Or sometimes I'll. I never use scripts. I always improvise what I do. But sometimes I'll improvise it and, and I'll have it transcribed and then I'll feed it in there and I'll. And I'll listen to it and.

[Chris]

I.

[Rick Beato]

Was using 11 labs this morning actually for. I had some ideas that I wrote down and I wanted to listen to them back, but I put them in a different voice.

[Chris]

You didn't use Archer, did you? I'm not reading. I'm not reading your ideas back to you. I was going to say, you better enjoy using 11 labs before this huge lawsuit comes down.

[Rick Beato]

I called my assistant Tom. I said, hey, can you. And he was like, what do you want me to do? I said, I want you to open up 11 labs and take this and put it in there so I can listen to it. Why do you want to listen to it? I said, because I wrote this down and I want to remember it, but I want to remember it by listening to it. Okay, fine. So I did that.

[Chris]

How do you come to think about this sort of earnings and financials arc of the music industry? Over the years, I've heard all manner of. You need to be as much a business person as an artist now in order to be able to make it in the world of music. That live is flourishing, that live is dead, that albums are pointless, that waterfall releasing is the only way to make money. What's the current state of financials in the music industry?

[Rick Beato]

Well, live music is definitely a place to that if you excel, if you want to make a lot of money and you're. You have a successful live. I mean there's. There's not the money in. In just say rock music. There's not money in. There's not as much money in streaming as there is in live music. If you're a huge band, you know, Metallica is not out there living off their stream. Well, they. Maybe they are with their streams because they have songs that are getting streamed that were. That came out with the.

[Chris]

And lifestyle that Metallica's probably got.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah. So it's. Live is incredibly important. Can you, can you make a living as a. From record sales? I mean it used to be a thing where if you had a hit record that sold 3,4 million copies, physical copies, the record labels, it would eventually get to the point where they had to pay you for the record sales. But you rare. Very few artists Made money from actually selling records. They'd make money from publishing. They make. Make money from, you know, radio airplay, things like. But one of the only reliable places to make a living in music is playing live as far as. And it. That, that goes for any level. Whether you're playing at your local pub, whether you're playing at the Enormo Dome here, wherever it is. I don't know what Austin with the moody sender. Okay. That's why people go out in these long tours. That's why ticket prices are incredibly high. If you can sell tickets, that's where.

[Chris]

Because it's funding the rest of the operation.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, right. And it wasn't. That wasn't always the case. You know, pop music still. There's still money in streaming for huge pop songs. You know, there's plenty of plaintiff artist Post Malone. You look on his thing or the Weeknd. They used to have. They have multiple songs, have over 2 billion streams. You know, Coldplay, anybody that's in the top, any, any of the top 25 artists on Spotify, those people are making a fortune from streaming. As you get further down, it's less and less and then it's just the, you know, kind of always been like this. I think sometimes it's over exaggerated how much money people used to make from. From radio and from record sales and things like that.

[Chris]

Everybody loves the idea of a golden era.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah.

[Chris]

That they weren't a part of.

[Rick Beato]

Right. I will say this though. As a producer, one of the things that when I started producing and things were went to streaming eventually is that people didn't have the physical CD to see the producer's name on the back. Whoever it is, whether it's me or whoever it is or see the songwriters or see who played on it. So those things are not available. If I want to know who played on a song, I have to go to a separate website. I have to go to allmusic.com.

[Chris]

It'S not in. Is it not in credits.

[Rick Beato]

Credits on. On Spotify are. They'll have the songwriter and they'll have. But they don't have the. The people that played on the record.

[Chris]

Okay.

[Rick Beato]

So you have to either go to. To Wikipedia.

[Chris]

Would you.

[Rick Beato]

Those things should be connected.

[Chris]

Do you think it would be a good idea for Spotify to just.

[Rick Beato]

Absolutely, absolutely. And they're so bad about. If you look at Sabrina Carpenter's newest song, when you go to Manchild, for example, Amy Allen and Jack Antonoff both have hundreds of credits, but Amy Allen only has a little triangle that. Oh, you can Click on it. You click on it. It shows you all the list of her songs from the most streamed down. Jack Antonoff's doesn't have that. But if you go to a different song of Sabrina Carpenter's. Please, Please, Please, that was on the last record that they were both involved with. Then you. Then they both have arrows on it. You can click Jack Antonoff to see all his stuff.

[Chris]

Why is that?

[Rick Beato]

It's just that they haven't gotten around to updating it. I mean, it's stupid, right? You'd think that, hey, if you were him, hey, why don't you update my thing there? And. And whose job is it to put it on there? And then, of course, you go to the streaming thing on Spotify. It takes you to a different. On my phone, a Safari browser. And then you can't get back to Spotify. You have to close that. And if you want to look someone else up on it, it's just ridiculous. All that information should be contained in there.

[Chris]

What's the good, the bad and the ugly of Spotify and its impact on the music industry?

[Rick Beato]

I like Spotify because I like. It's easy to make playlists on it. And Apple, I have both. I pay for both every month. I've always paid for Apple. If you have an iPhone, you know, I, I have tons of music that I paid for that are part of the Apple ecosystem, and I pay the monthly fee and. But I use Spotify predominantly. I just, it's just easier to use. And that's the thing, you know, it's the. It's kind of like, why did certain. Why did Facebook outlast MySpace? You know, why did. You know, eventually people upload so much stuff to Instagram or Facebook or whatever that they don't want to try a new social platform.

[Chris]

Right. You're saying that Spotify. The ease of making playlists on Spotify has given everybody sunk cost fallacy.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah.

[Chris]

And unless I can port all of my very complex and my algorithmic preference. Oh, so you're telling me I need to go back to 2014 and listen to all of the stuff I was doing there and it needs to see the arc that I went through and.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, Chris, I have hundreds of playlists on Spotify, private playlists that I refer back to. Hundreds. What. What do I do? I really want to go and start them all all over again on another platform, even though Spotify pisses me off a lot. No, I don't want to do that.

[Chris]

I don't know of any artists. I know of lots of podcasters, me included. Thank you, Danielle Ek. They treat me very well. I'm super happy with what they've done. But I. It's very rare that I speak to musician and they say, yeah, Spotify, thanks. Really good.

[Rick Beato]

People get mad at me when I do my. Every four months I do a Spotify top 10 countdown video and I do that so that people know and, and people get mad in the comments. They're like, I don't believe that these are the top songs. What do you mean? I'm just reading them off the thing.

[Chris]

Easily verifiable. Yeah. I'm not part of a psyop to make you believe that Sabrina Carpenter's higher up than she actually is.

[Rick Beato]

Right. It's like I have nothing to gain from, you know, this is what's on the charts. Well, it's all. I don't believe it because it's. These are all bots in this thing. It's like, you know, where's your evidence that it's all bots on there?

[Chris]

Is it possible for something to change with regards to Spotify? It does seem like I don't know what coming to a head even means. Musicians need Spotify. If you've got, you know, even medium sized bands doing hundreds of thousands of plays monthly, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna protest Spotify? You're not not putting your music on Spotify. You're gonna keep putting your music on Spotify. So what does it mean to try and apply pressure to the guys at Spotify HQ in order to make some sort of a change? But we have a little bit of a unsolvable equation here, which is that the artists, many of the artists I speak to, have a problem with it. You know, it's.

[Rick Beato]

And what is their problem? That they don't feel like they're getting compensated fairly.

[Chris]

Yeah, there's. The compensation is insufficient. The removal of staff that happened, I think about 18 months ago, two years ago or so, resulted in much more algorithmic curation of playlists rather than human curation of playlists. That largely seems to be a complaint by artists who aren't getting algorithmically curated into playlists very much. Because I'm sure that all the people that are at the top of the New Music Wednesday or whatever are like, yeah, I love it. But still, I do think that it allows the system to be gamed in a manner that's a little bit less fair. I think, rightly, artists have a very big concern around what's happening with AI. I don't know whether this Is true. I got sent some information that suggests record labels get paid out at a higher rate per stream than independent artists do. That there's some sort of preferential pricing, which means that if you can bypass the record labels and go straight to the AI artist, there's also even more large concern, which is. Well, if Spotify is able to reverse engineer its own AI artists, then kind of like if OnlyFans developed a VR girlfriend company, that you would end up completely bypassing all of the poor OnlyFans models that were no longer needed because you have both distribution and creation contained within the same platform. So I think the last two around the AI bands and this reverse integration back up the stack. Those are future concerns. Compensation and playlists are the two things that I hear the most, but I don't know what artists can do. They need Spotify.

[Rick Beato]

They do need it. It's kind of like people that complain to me, oh, I'm being Shadow banned on YouTube or I'm doing this and.

[Chris]

That your content sucks, dude.

[Rick Beato]

The algorithm hates me. It's like the algorithm's the audience. It's like there's nothing to hate. It's, you know, it's agnostic.

[Chris]

You've fallen off for a little bit and you just need to be a bit more creative. Yeah, I. I feel it. It's. I don't know. I just. I wonder what that is. Okay. What do you think the future of music monetization looks like? What will artists do when it comes to keeping the liquidity wheels greased?

[Rick Beato]

That's hard to say. I saw a. I forget who was talking about this, about using blockchain to. To verify that something is a real. A real artist as opposed to AI. Right. And that. That's a. Would be a great use of that technology. And as far as the future of. Of monetization, hard to say because I'm. Even though I'm involved in the music business, at least in the. With what I do, I don't. A lot of the people that I interview are really famous people that made their money in the old music business, like heritage.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Rick Beato]

So it's. None of them are missing any meals, as they say. So it's. I don't hear about the struggle. I know I have friends that are. That are. That I have on the channel, younger musicians and. But they're all out touring for the most part. Everybody that I interview are people that are pro musicians that are. You know my friend Tosin that plays in Animals as Leaders, he's been on my channel many times. Tim Henson from Polyphia. And you know, I know all the guys. Yeah, Zed. I mean all these people that are, that are friends of mine, they've been on my channel, they're all professional musicians and they've all got their own recipe of. Of all the different income streams, whether it's some people are they have money from Spotify, they have a YouTube channel, they have a pedal that they. That's their thing or pedal company or they've got their amp model that, that is made by neural DSP or what. Whatever it is, they've got their whole.

[Chris]

Recipe of special Yamaha leather strap or.

[Rick Beato]

Whatever it is, whatever it is that, that, that or they're doing. You know, some people do these lessons, group lessons before shows, they do VIP meet and greets. I mean there's so many different places that you can, that you can.

[Chris]

That's a really good point. I think what musicians and I understand why especially given the CPMs that we can generate on YouTube, especially on podcasting with a two, three hour long episode, the RPMs can get really get up there. Especially if you hold onto people. I understand why I put so much blood, sweat and tears into making this record. I put it out and you got to pay 10 bucks a month and listen to it infinity times. And I got paid a rounding error on my sandwich for today. That feels unfair. And I think it feels unfair largely due to anchoring buyers that in the past that CD would have cost 1099 or 7.99 or something and fuck like that. Like I missed that. Imagine if I got the streams I did, you know, a million plays a month. But they were all, say they were all single sales at 3.99. That would be amazing. But. And you don't. But then on the flip side of that you think, okay, well you can do early access Patreon, behind the scenes subscriber only content you can get easier access to merch. I got a friend who the way that they do merch at shows in order to speed it up is these QR code things that you buy in advance and then you collect it. Like getting Uber eats like collection.

[Rick Beato]

Which is a great idea.

[Chris]

Yep. You have the listing on your Spotify page for your upcoming events that will geotarget the people that are listening. Dude, that wouldn't have happened. You'd have had to have had an outdoor billboard campaign that would have been organized in each different city that you were going to or fly posting or putting in the newsletter or putting it on paying for fucking radio spots. Okay, so We've got that. We've got merch. Merch can be sold through a merch shelf on Spotify. We don't have that yet. Podcasters don't have that yet. Wow, I can't sell my merch on Spotify. You can sell courses same way that you do, the same way that Gabe from I Prevail does. Right. You can use your live experience, capture that, use that as the front end of your funnel, then teach people to do the thing that you do to get the life that you have in order to, you know. So it's kind of just a changing of the times. But I really do, I feel it because fundamentally what we want is creative songs that make us feel something and are a good vibe. And the less that bands are incentivized or artists are incentivized to do that thing, ultimately the live experience will be worse because the songs aren't going to be as good. The listening experience is going to be worse because it's going to be more homogenous and there's going to be less care and attention put into it. Like everything is sort of born out of the song. And is it Spotify's job to incentivize the culture of music creation in that way? Probably not. I think it's a difficult argument to make that it's their job to do it, but it kind of is their position in the market to enable that at least. And I think that this little Gordian knot is kind of where people get caught up.

[Rick Beato]

When I open Spotify, if there's a band that's in town in Atlanta and say, oh my God, they're playing, I mean, that's amazing to be able to. You've shown the interest and you go to this artist I would never have known because there are no magazines or anything that I look at to see.

[Chris]

I. Fred Again's coming to Austin. I didn't even see that.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, so it's. There's so many artists that I. When I look at Spotify, that I'll click on a song. And I was like, oh, my God, they'll be here next week. And I think that there are so many opportunities for people to. You have to be creative, though, to make. To take all these different things, income streams, and combine them to make a living. But the. My friend Tosin. Tosin Abbasi. Tosin has a guitar company. He's. Has plugins that he makes or these. He's got so many different things that he's a part of. He's a real Entrepreneur. And the. And the people that do well nowadays, that are people that. That don't just write songs and go out and tour with their band, they have to figure out what their recipe is for making a living. And it takes a lot of work to do that. That's the drag of.

[Chris]

Takes a lot of work that is.

[Rick Beato]

That used to be done by other.

[Chris]

People and is orthogonal to the main thing, right? A lot of musicians. And this is kind of creating the world that music's going to move into, which is a lot of musicians get into music to be purist musicians and then to play songs that they care about and have people respond and all the rest of that stuff. But increasingly, if you need to be a businessman and the success of your operation is based on how good you are at business, well, that's gonna select for business people, not for musicians. And that's not fantastic, given that we're all here to listen to good music. And yeah, I. Chris, when people complain.

[Rick Beato]

To me, I didn't mean to interrupt, but when people complain to me, younger musicians, about stuff, I'm like, hey, I'm 63 and I figured out how to do this stuff. I mean, come on.

[Chris]

It's like, I think the.

[Rick Beato]

We're not splitting the atom here.

[Chris]

The glass half full approach to this is the only way to go about it. Because, okay, dude, you're not happy with the state of the music industry, Stop.

[Rick Beato]

Right?

[Chris]

Stop making your music. Yeah, that's cool. There's other stuff that you can do. Why don't you go be a music teacher? I don't want to do that. It's like, all right, then figure it out. Figure it the fuck out.

[Rick Beato]

Right?

[Chris]

You do not get to whine about the changing of an ecosystem that is happening to everything. You know, the horses being upset were, quite rightly so, at the fact that they were about to be killed and supplanted by the automobile. In, you know, the 20s, there was an entire industry of muck shovelers in New York, New York City, to get rid of all of the muck that came out of the horses. Within the space of five years, all of the muck shovelers were gone. Do you go, okay, that's some. But here's another thing. You are, as far as I can see it from a musician standpoint, you are more protected than almost any other industry because of live. Because AI cannot come and replicate live yet. What would that mean? What would it mean to replicate a live experience?

[Rick Beato]

I was just talking about this today. Robots going out and playing the AI Songs. Okay, of course I'm joking with this. Yes. So this is. Of course this will be somewhere in the future. It'll be robots that can really shred on the guitar.

[Chris]

I think people will go and see it as a spectacle.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah.

[Chris]

But it's not going to have. And again, okay, so you have this walled off garden. In order for me in the podcasting world to do that, I need to completely revamp. It is not the same skill set for me to go out on stage and do a two hour TEDx talk with fingering jokes, which I am doing actually. So come and see me in Chicago, Boston, Denver, New York, Salt Lake City. And where's the fucking final one that I've forgotten about Austin this winter? Come and see that everywhere else is sold out. In order for me to do that, I don't just get to do the thing. I don't just get to replicate things that I say on a podcast. Like it's a whole new fucking thing. It's a whole new moat for me to get over in order to be able to do that. But even for me, I'm thinking I should probably apply quite a lot of effort to becoming really good at doing live. Because if NotebookLM comes, fucking human centipedes me out of the front of this industry, I'm gonna have to have a new moat that can't be replicated.

[Rick Beato]

And, and the people that it can, that, that it's gonna replicate the people like you and I that have so much content out there with our image.

[Chris]

The biggest fucking training data.

[Rick Beato]

Right. I mean, that's the. This is like the easiest, easiest thing to do.

[Chris]

Yeah, yeah, you're right. I mean, 2,000 videos for you, whatever. Two and a half thousand on my channel. Yeah, I. Look, I really think that the, the live element is something that will be protective, but you are fighting against an ever more insular culture, especially among young people. So, yeah, going out to see Benson Boone or whatever sounds great, but you know, Netflix is on and I'm sure that someone will record it and put it on YouTube and I can just watch it through my whatever. Like I've heard it on Spotify a bit. Like, do I really need to go out? So times were changing, man. And I know for all that I can kind of tell musicians that I think it's. The times are gonna change and they need to keep up with it. I really hope it doesn't damage the creation of music because that would make me really sad. It's been a huge part of my life and it would suck it would suck to not have the kind of emotional depth that people access through good songwriting be taken away by.

[Rick Beato]

Yeah, well, we're in an interesting time right now. Just the fact that these AI artists that they're. I mean, to me that they're testing the waters and then we don't know who's doing it. If it's Spotify's art, AI artists, is it Suno, Is it Udio? Whose artist is this? Is this in conjunction? Is it one of these AI company music companies with Spotify and they're testing it out to see if people will bite on it? I think it's fascinating, actually.

[Chris]

Well, there's definitely going to be. And the main fear that people have is it's an open loop. It's like, okay, what's going to happen? And we don't know if we come into land and oh, okay, yeah, there's AI playlists with AI artists in there, but it's actually walled off. Or it's this. But the concern people have is what if the top 10 is, you know, five of them are AI. What if that makes it twice as hard to get to the stage that I need to? And actually to create even more fear. If you assume that the reason that live works is because people have privately listened to the track, but that real estate in people's ears is being taken up increasingly by AI, that does make getting to the critical mass to become a successful live artist more difficult because the song, the record is the genesis of the interest and the popularity that you then sell merch and do your courses and do all the rest of it.

[Rick Beato]

Well, I'm sure that there will be platforms that will arise that are, you know, non AI, just human only. Human only, yeah. Which is pretty funny to think of, right, that you have to do that. But that's. There's a. There's a business model for that out there right now ready to be had at some point. Yeah, I don't use Spotify anymore. They have AI artists. I don't. You know, it's like buying people.

[Chris]

I only buy organic, you know, organic music. Funny. Rick Beata, ladies and gentlemen. Rick, you're awesome, man. Your channel fucking crushes.

[Rick Beato]

I appreciate it. Same, same. But thank you for inviting me.

[Chris]

Until next time, man. Let's keep a weather eye on whether or not we're going to be replaced by robots anytime soon.

[Rick Beato]

Hopefully not.

[Chris]

Thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode. Well, first off, congratulations for making it to the end. You have the staying power and lack of adhd that you should be very proud of. But there is an episode with Under Oath all about music, touring, mental health, performance anxiety and a ton of other stuff, right? So watch it. Go on. If you are looking for new reading suggestions, look no further than the Modern Wisdom Reading list. It is 100 books that you should read before you die. The most interesting, life changing and impactful books I've ever read with descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them. And you can get it right now for free by going to chriswillx.com/books that's chriswillx.com books.