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

Rick Beato 0:00 I just saw this video of Beyoncé the other night. She was up in the-

Chris Williamson 0:03 Oh, in a car? In the car-

Rick Beato 0:04 Yeah, and the car started going...

Chris Williamson 0:07 Dude, could you imagine if you were the guy that killed Beyoncé?

Rick Beato 0:09 (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 0:10 Oh, you could, you... She was stood on top of a car. Beyoncé dies in Eddie Guerrera-style catastrophe.

Rick Beato 0:17 It, I was thinking, uh, d- I was wondering, like, what in the world is she thinking while she's up there? She's gotta be scared. I mean, it, she was up really high.

Chris Williamson 0:25 Is she harnessed in?

Rick Beato 0:26 I, I think that she was.

Chris Williamson 0:27 Gotta have some sort of backup.

Rick Beato 0:28 Has to.

Chris Williamson 0:28 Yeah. I mean-

Rick Beato 0:29 I mean, they have to have-

Chris Williamson 0:29 ... could you imagine the fucking insurance policy-

Rick Beato 0:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:31 ... on Beyoncé?

Rick Beato 0:31 Has to be. Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:33 It would bankrupt-

Rick Beato 0:34 But that was-

Chris Williamson 0:34 It would bankrupt a country.

Rick Beato 0:35 That was crazy to see that, to imagine some type of a, a problem like that. You know that that's not gonna happen again, though.

Chris Williamson 0:42 Uh, Ronnie Radke, one of his... Was it his drummer who got second-degree burns, uh, from flames that came, uh, d- 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 0:58 You know, you're, when you're, when you're dealing with that kind of stuff, w- a- any type of pyro... When, when I was at the Metallica show, I was 30 feet from the stage, but, but at the same level. And when they... And th- and I asked Kirk, I said, "How do you know that... to kn- What happens if you're somewhere you're not supposed to be?" He goes, "Oh, they're in our ears saying, 'Okay, pyro's coming, pyro's coming.'"

Chris Williamson 1:20 "Get the fuck away." (laughs)

Rick Beato 1:21 "Get to the..." No. "Get to a m- get to a mic."

Chris Williamson 1:23 Oh, because all the mics are in safe-

Rick Beato 1:25 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:25 ... areas?

Rick Beato 1:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:26 Right. Okay.

Rick Beato 1:27 So, but it's, it's hot from, uh, when you're 30 feet away. And I said, "How hot is it onstage?" He was like, "Oh, man, it's insanely hot onstage."

Chris Williamson 1:38 Like, inferno.

Rick Beato 1:38 "These thing, these things are going... The flames are up, going up 20 feet."

Chris Williamson 1:40 You seen the Rammstein build, where they have that big set of exhausts that come out-

Rick Beato 1:44 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:44 ... the top?

Rick Beato 1:45 Yeah. I mean, it's... The, the, those kind of setups are... It's gotta be a nightmare to do that, really, to, um... The liability with that, and, um, and to make sure that that's right every night, where nobody gets-

Chris Williamson 2:01 Hmm.

Rick Beato 2:02 ... nobody gets blown up. But it used to be... Havi- having accidents, you know, was not an uncommon thing, uh, in the past.

Chris Williamson 2:11 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 2:12 With, uh, with those... You know, anytime, anytime you're, you're doing something like that, there's bound to, uh, bound to be some, some issue.

Chris Williamson 2:21 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 t- you know, the 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 2:52 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 s- somebody sings a song, that they are the writer on it, or if they have co-writers, that the co-writers are, are th- a minor part of this, right? But the- but in reality, most pop songwriters, not all, but most, have very little to do with their songs, other than choosing them. They might come in and say, "Okay, I have an idea for a story of a song," they'll describe it, and then these professional songwriters will help them realize that idea. Or, the people might have the song completely done and they come in. Y- h- hard to generalize, but... Does Taylor Swift write her, write all of her lyrics?She probably writes most of her lyrics, I would think. But, um, but typically, um, it used to be that when, when you... In the 1980s, rock bands, there would, there were very few people that were songwriters that worked with artists. Desmond Child was one. He worked with Bon Jovi, he worked with Kiss. He w- and he would co-write. He was a, a specialist that would write with rock bands. But it was very rare. Rock bands wrote their own songs. And s- 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 kinda have to be an expert in social media.

Chris Williamson 4:43 Mm.

Rick Beato 4:44 And I see people that, um... Um, one of the people is Tate McRae 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, uh, they can lip sync, they can do a dance. They can cut the stuff themselves on their phone and upload it. And you're a big pop star if you can do that? That's a tremendous advantage, and it... This is how songs become hits, because if you don't have a viral moment with a song, that's, you know... Th- th- the days of the record labels creating your career are pretty much over. Yes, they can help, but, um, but it's very difficult if you don't have something that's on TikTok blowing up.... to, uh, to have a successful single.

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Rick Beato 6:57 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 6:57 It's vocals and a guitar and programmed drums. How- why- what were the fifth and... There's Chris Martin, then there's the other one.

Rick Beato 7:05 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 7:05 I think there's two more. Who the fuckin'... Who are these 11 people in the room with them?

Rick Beato 7:09 Well, I always wonder that too. Like, who are these people? Coldplay, the first... To me, the first two Coldpa- play records are great records, really. The second record to me is an absolutely brilliant record. Um, as people get older, I've made videos about this, that, uh, that once people hit 30 or so, artists-

Chris Williamson 7:32 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 7:33 ... they begin to, um, lose the spark, if you will. The Beatles broke up the year that Lennon and, uh, Ringo turned 30. Otherwise, Paul McCartney was 28 when they broke up. George Harrison was 27. These guys were young guys. They did 12 albums over the course of eight years, uh, some of the most important songs ever written, and they were, they weren't even 30. They literally broke up. Lennon turned 30 on November 9th, 1970, they were already broken up by then.

Chris Williamson 8:02 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 8:14 Yep.

Chris Williamson 8:14 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, run it, run it again. Um, well, that would, you know, extend... That... You're talking about a 20-year career off the back of the same pacing. So how much of it do you think is, I don't know, some sort of wall that creatives hit at 30, and how much of it is, "I've just exhausted my, my juice"?

Rick Beato 8:38 I think it, 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, th- they released the, the record Rubber Soul on August 6th, 1965. Then on December 3rd, they released, or they released he- 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.

Chris Williamson 9:11 That's crazy.

Rick Beato 9:11 So they wrote, recorded, and released-

Chris Williamson 9:14 Yeah.

Rick Beato 9:14 ... and they toured, three records in one calendar year. That's insane. But, and they, 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 on tour for 18 months, they tour for two years, whatever. Then, then it's, you're kinda out of shape writing, 'cause 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, "Nah, those aren't very good." That's the- they starting to get back in shape again, you know?

Chris Williamson 9:45 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 9:45 Takes a couple weeks to...

Chris Williamson 9:47 How did The Beatles do it?

Rick Beato 9:50 The Beatles were just, they... Well, first of all, they were so famous that they couldn't do anything else. They were stuck in hotel rooms a lot, I guess. Um, and they had incredible competition between Lennon and 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, um, that... Beatles are kind of a unique, unique case.

Chris Williamson 10:19 Yeah, it's, it's like, I don't know, talking about Usain Bolt's ability to run fast or something.

Rick Beato 10:24 Right.

Chris Williamson 10:24 Uh, so just explain, how would you identify or categorize the difference between a producer-driven song and an artist-driven song? Is, is there such a thing? Or does it just, uh, is it just, uh, meritocracy and whatever sounds best at the end of the day is, is what matters?

Rick Beato 10:43 Producer-driven songs are songs like, um, would be something like Since U Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson. That was Max Martin and Dr. Luke wrote this song. They recorded ev- they wrote the song, they wrote the lyrics, they recorded everything, she came in and sang it, and that's a producer-driven song. Uh, literally written by the two guys that produced it, including the lyrics. So, um, most music nowadays, or a lot of music, is producer driven. Whereas, um, people come up with a track, whether it's country music, whether it's, uh, pop music, even rock music, there's some bed track first. Now, to be fair, historically, almost every songwriter writes the music first. They sing a melody and then they write lyrics to the melody, Elton John being the exception. Bernie Kop- Taupin was Elton's lyricist, they co-wrote the stuff. Bernie would finish the lyrics, give them to Elton, Elton would sit at the piano, improvise the song, sing it, re- record it on a half inch or on a DAT, and then, uh, and then they would cut the song.He would basically improvise it to the lyrics he had. I mean, this is very rare. I think, uh, uh, in the Beatles catalog, from what I know, there was one song across the universe where John Lennon had the lyrics first. So-

Chris Williamson 12:06 I mean, he's like the Juice Wrld of the pop-

Rick Beato 12:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:10 ... era.

Rick Beato 12:11 Yeah. So this is- this is- when- when I went to Nashville to do some songwriting, I told you I had a- a- a- one number one song, the only country song I ever wrote. But then I- I went to Nashville and I- they- if you have a number one song, they put you in with all the A-list songwriters. So I went there and I, uh, in- for probably three months in 2014. And I wrote with all the top songwriters in Nashville. So the first session, I went in and it was always three people. And I was like, "Why is it three people?" "Well, that's the way that we do it here." And I was like, "Why?" "Well, because we want to involve, you know, at the time, as many publishing companies as possible, different publishing companies." So I was signed to Sony/ATV. There was a guy from- there'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?" "Uh, it's interesting. Um, what else you got?" Play them 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.

Chris Williamson 13:23 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 13:23 "Oh, I got this line from someone else," and then they would have to be included in on the songwriting too or whatever. So that would be, uh, that was in Nashville. And- but at that time period, that's when track guys started.

Chris Williamson 13:36 Mm.

Rick Beato 13:36 The track guys are basically the producers that would come in and- and, um, uh, that would be a producer-driven song. And almost everything you hear on country radio now is producer-driv- driven.

Chris Williamson 13:48 I don't- I don't think people... And I certainly didn't. I don't think people understand just how much of a music factory Nashville is. It is a-

Rick Beato 13:58 Always has been.

Chris Williamson 13:59 It is the Chinese sweatshop (laughs) of music production.

Rick Beato 14:02 People go in and write, you know, they write five songs a week.

Chris Williamson 14:06 Yeah.

Rick Beato 14:07 It's amazing. It's real-

Chris Williamson 14:09 I have a friend-

Rick Beato 14:09 It's really amazing.

Chris Williamson 14:09 I've- I've a friend who produces at least five songs every single week.

Rick Beato 14:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:13 Yeah.

Rick Beato 14:14 I went into- to... Back then, in 20- 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, um, when I first started going to Nashville back, you know, 10 years ago, I sat in on some songwriting demo sessions. They don't do them as much anymore. And what they do is they have these session players, about five or six of them, they'd have an engineer that wa- 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, a s- 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- s- or- or the- the- the guy that was running the session, they'd listen to it once, and they would write down the- their parts, and then they cut it.

Chris Williamson 15:04 These guys would just cut it there and then?

Rick Beato 15:05 And that was it, yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:06 I've heard that these session musicians are like the Navy SEALs.

Rick Beato 15:09 Oh my God, they're amazing.

Chris Williamson 15:11 Yeah. One... Yeah, got it, and then that's it. One take, two takes, and then they fuck- they're in the next room.

Rick Beato 15:17 It's so... They play so well. So I did a video where I- I, uh, I- I have a good friend, Tom Vukovac, 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 wanna do a video where I wanna get... Can- get a few of your players and we'll- we'll sit in a 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?"

Chris Williamson 15:44 Mm.

Rick Beato 15:44 I was like, "Okay." So he's- he- he had a, um, this guy Daniel Tashian, who's a great songwriter, did- uh, and had produced Kacey Musgraves, um, her... He's had all- many- many hits, uh, with Kacey Musgraves and- and other people. So Daniel sent me a couple songs and we decided on the song. So I go up there, and I knew a couple of the guys in the band, and he introduced me to everyone. So I'm making the video, we're- we're going around talking to each individual person, Chris McHugh is the drummer and Anyhow, so they go in, they get their sounds, I go in the control room, the engineer has everything dialed in, and they- they play it- they play it down and they play their parts perfectly. They did a couple takes, but it was perfect. Singing the vocals at the same time too. Harmonies, two microphones in the same room, Daniel and this, uh, uh, Cecilia Castleman was a- was a singer, and they, um, they were singing the harmonies in the same room, and that was the video. It was-

Chris Williamson 16:48 Basically a live recording.

Rick Beato 16:50 It was a live recording.

Chris Williamson 16:50 It was essentially a- a live recording-

Rick Beato 16:51 It was.

Chris Williamson 16:51 ... with studio- studio-quality kit.

Rick Beato 16:52 Yeah. So- so Tom, uh, Vukovac, he's like, I think that, uh... He overdubbed the solo, then he's- then he's like, "What do you think about me doubling it an octave down?" I was like, "Yeah, sounds great." Like, there's no producing to be, you know-

Chris Williamson 17:04 Yeah.

Rick Beato 17:05 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- there... "Can we just punch that one note?" And (laughs) I mean, it was ridiculous.

Chris Williamson 17:23 That's the level of-

Rick Beato 17:24 Yes. "My fingernail-"

Chris Williamson 17:25 ... resolution.

Rick Beato 17:25 "... accidentally touched a string."

Chris Williamson 17:26 Okay. So we've got this big engine going on. Nashville is kind of, uh, maybe patient zero for it, uh, but it's- 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- what's- like, what's going on in her life that- that this has something to do with it? M- and I think you can read into the lyrics, the- the, uh, deeper sentiment when the song has been written by the artist that's performing it. I think that that adds, uh, allure and, uh, canon.... as the kids say, you know, um, there's lore attached to this. But there isn't. If, well, we, we think that if Sabrina, that 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?" "Oh, I wouldn't quite say that." There's two things. You get your songwriting credit, and then you do it. It... Is this gaslighting the audience into thinking that their favorite artist is a, 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 18:36 I, I think it's, it's the audience is the one that thinks that the artist has more to do with it. That's the problem. It's not like the artist is going out there saying, "Oh, I wrote this song and..." You know, it's like, uh, the Nashville, uh, y- when Nashville songs were 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, and get interviewed about the songs that they wrote. They, they, you don't see those kind of things. It'd be like, um... There's a famous song, one of the most famous songs of all time, Wichita Lineman. It's, Glen Campbell did this song in 1968. It's one of my favorite songs. And this guy, Jimmy Webb, wrote the song. And I interviewed Jimmy. He's, he's in his 70s now and, um, and Bob Dylan said, "One of the greatest songs ever written." I mean, a lot, a lot of people think this is the greatest song ever written, Wichita Lineman. Well, Glen Campbell sang it. Nobody interviewed Glen Campbell about, "How did you write... Tell me about Wichita Lineman." It's like, "Well, I asked Jimmy about it. He's the one that wrote it," you know? They're not gonna 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 Williamson 19:46 Do you think that the audience is that aware? Do you think that they, they know this? 'Cause I, I get the sense that they really don't. I think that the, the entire story arc, from the v- music video, to the shoot, to the single artwork on Spotify, to the cut downs that go onto, uh, social media, I think it very much is playing into this arc that this is a, a, a genuine outgrowth of something that the artist is, is feeling or going through. And I suppose maybe somebody else can write a song that you then perform and own that is resonating with what it is-

Rick Beato 20:22 Yes.

Chris Williamson 20:22 ... that you're doing. That can be the case.

Rick Beato 20:24 Yes.

Chris Williamson 20:25 But the level of prefabrication does seem to make it feel a bit more kind of perverted.

Rick Beato 20:31 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.

Chris Williamson 20:45 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 20:45 Whereas if you take a song like Hurt, that's a Trent Reznor song that Johnny, that, uh, Johnny Cash did-

Chris Williamson 20:51 Yep.

Rick Beato 20:52 ... and Trent said that, "That song is, song is owned by Johnny."

Chris Williamson 20:55 It's his now.

Rick Beato 20:55 It's his now.

Chris Williamson 20:56 Yeah.

Rick Beato 20:56 Right? So it's, so that's...

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Rick Beato 22:03 Um, so that song, Rick Rubin produced w- and, uh, w- with the song Hurt, right? So Rick, I mean, it was right at the end of his life. And Rick, uh, had, uh... He told me the story when I interviewed him. He said that he had, 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'd 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 in it and everything." And, and Rick's like, "Let me just do a version where I, I think you can really... I think this song would be amazing." So Rick had a, somebody come in and play guitars and, and do a, a rough demo. And then Johnny heard it and sang over it, and, and he's like, "Oh yeah, this is, this is amazing." But when he first heard it, because it has a couple dissonant chords in it on Trent's version, the Nine Inch Nails version, and he didn't hear it at first. He s- he was like, "I, I don't know. That song's kind of strange." And, uh, it was, uh, it was really interesting to, to hear about the, the backstory of these things.

Chris Williamson 23:18 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 23:18 And he, he was, uh, you know, there'd be days where he didn't, he couldn't sing 'cause he was very ill when he did that, when he was, uh, singing, singing the vocals on that. And, um, and so Rick had to be available whenever Johnny was...

Chris Williamson 23:36 Feeling good enough.

Rick Beato 23:36 Yeah. But, um, amazing.

Chris Williamson 23:39 What,

Chris Williamson 23:41 what is it then that a modern pop star brings to the table? Like, primarily what is their value add now?

Rick Beato 23:50 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. Finneas plays a lot of the, I mean, you know, they, they co-write all the songs, and they're a self-contained band, unit, whatever you want to call 'em. Uh, and...... it's hard to think of other, of other artists that are pop artists that, um, that can function like that without out- outside songwriters.

Chris Williamson 24:22 Okay. So if you're not Billie Eilish-

Rick Beato 24:24 If you're not Billie Eilish-

Chris Williamson 24:25 ... what do you, what are you bringing to the table?

Rick Beato 24:28 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, uh, who? Selena Gomez. Uh-

Chris Williamson 24:48 Jake Paul.

Rick Beato 24:48 Yeah. Jake- (laughs) There you go. Um, and Sabrina Carpenter. So the D- Jake Paul, that's funny. Uh, the s- the, the, these Disney stars that were already famous, and then you put them together with songwriters and-

Chris Williamson 25:03 Oh, Addison what's-her-face.

Rick Beato 25:05 Addis- Addison Rae is a TikTok, TikToker, uh, which is sa- she's famous already. She's got 80 million followers on TikTok. I'm re- re- waiting for Charli D'Amelio. I don't know if she can sing or not, but she would, you know...

Chris Williamson 25:18 Someone must be eyeing her up to get singing lessons.

Rick Beato 25:20 Charli D'Amelio, to me, is kind of like a pop star too, these people that can dance. This is a, this is interesting to me. Athleticism is, has been part of pop music forever, James Brown, people that could really dance. Michael Jackson, uh, Prince, uh, then the modern pop stars like Tate McRae. Her mom is a dance teacher, she's a professional dancer.

Chris Williamson 25:47 Fuck me, I saw Benson Boone do a back flip off a stage a couple of weeks ago.

Rick Beato 25:50 Yeah, these people are, are, are athletes.

Chris Williamson 25:52 Yeah.

Rick Beato 25:52 Th- And you have to be... Dancing is a massive part of pop music.

Chris Williamson 25:58 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 25:59 There's, there are routines that you have to beat, from Lady Gaga to Beyoncé to whoever.

Chris Williamson 26:04 MGK now?

Rick Beato 26:05 Yes. There you go.

Chris Williamson 26:06 (laughs)

Rick Beato 26:06 So it's, uh, um... And I really respect the athleticism of these people.

Chris Williamson 26:15 Right. But what's still not, at, at no point here have we said, "You know, the tonality, the-"

Rick Beato 26:19 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 26:20 "... ability to understand form and musical function and the, uh, deep knowledge of where this comes from and control of the voice, the vibrato." You know, like we've... (laughs) As of yet, I haven't heard you talk about anything to do with songwriting capacity, creativity, voi- vocal, uh, like, knowhow.

Rick Beato 26:40 Well, there's, there's plenty of people that are-

Chris Williamson 26:43 Ed Sheeran.

Rick Beato 26:44 Ed Sheeran's a 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 'em with an acoustic guitar. He can loop, he can do stuff, yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:53 And a fucking loop pedal, yeah, exactly.

Rick Beato 26:54 Amazing.

Chris Williamson 26:55 Yeah.

Rick Beato 26:56 Ed is a pr- does... I mean, there, so there are people-

Chris Williamson 26:58 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 26:59 There, there's, there are people that can, that can do that, that are great songwriters, that are really talented, that can perform, put on a show themselves. Chris Martin can go out just with a piano without even the rest of Coldplay, can go out there and entertain the audience.

Chris Williamson 27:12 Or, or the 11 other people.

Rick Beato 27:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:15 I w- I was... I just had it in my head that I wonder why we haven't seen, or maybe we have and we just don't know about it, I wonder why we haven't seen prefabricated DJs yet.

Rick Beato 27:27 It's coming.

Chris Williamson 27:28 You think?

Rick Beato 27:29 Probably.

Chris Williamson 27:30 I just get the sense y- you have somewhat... Uh, e- uh, Charli D'Amelio, let's assume that, uh, let's say that she was a dude and she couldn't, and he couldn't sing.

Rick Beato 27:38 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 27:38 And be like, "Oh, we've got the platform. God, this motherfucker just cannot hit a note." Make him a DJ.

Rick Beato 27:45 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 27:45 Make him a DJ. He gets... Where's Skrillex? He mu- 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 28:00 Well, for, in Charli's case, it's not cost-effective. She's already doing okay. She doesn't need to be a, she doesn't need to be a musician at this point, unless they've g- unless they discontinue TikTok or something.

Chris Williamson 28:12 Uh, that nearly happened.

Rick Beato 28:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:14 What are the trends, music-

Rick Beato 28:17 It's in- it's interesting, just-

Chris Williamson 28:18 Yeah.

Rick Beato 28:18 ... 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 Williamson 28:32 You're kidding.

Rick Beato 28:33 No.

Chris Williamson 28:33 From that one day?

Rick Beato 28:33 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 Williamson 28:40 That's-

Rick Beato 28:41 Just, I mean, it was literally down, I don't even think, think it was down 24 hours.

Chris Williamson 28:44 Yeah, it was like eight hours or something.

Rick Beato 28:46 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 28:46 Yeah, d- well, I mean, it keeps getting extended, that ban keeps getting ex- I just g- like another extension, second or third extension.

Rick Beato 28:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:53 Uh, I have to say, I, I think in the interests of national security, the collective aggregate IQ of the entire West, and, uh, my social media presence, given that I kind of suck on TikTok, uh, I'm very pro, uh, TikTok being taken down, because I, I, I'm fucking allergic to that platform and everyone hates me on there. Um, I, uh, so we've sort of, uh, I guess explained at least part of the process of what's going on. It was 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, 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 disco. You'll notice that there's some swing in the beat," or whatever. And I'm like, "Uh, uh, nice, you got a g- good vibe." You know, that's my muggle level interpretation.

Chris Williamson 29:52 What are the trends musically that are dominating right now? Y- uh, people can have this sense that they understand where the scenes are at, but what are you seeing? What are the sort of dominant m- oral themes that are going on?

Rick Beato 30:07 I don't know if there is a dominant genre or dominant trend right now. Um, everybody is, is algorithmically siloed at this point, and I don't see that that...... uh, there's very few shared experiences that people have as far as with music nowadays.

Chris Williamson 30:25 Which you might have got with radio.

Rick Beato 30:27 Yes. Once radio stopped being something that was, uh, w- w- stopped being dominant, then, uh, people just didn't have any shared narratives. It... Go back to, to, you know, up until 2000 or so. Or, we'll, we'll go back to Nirvana, 'cause Nirvana was a, a change, uh, a band that really changed radio formats, changed everything. So, Nirvana comes out, um, glam metal, hair metal, whatever people wanna 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. I was like, "What is that?" I didn't understand what he was saying, but I knew it was something game-changing. And it, um, it spawned, uh, alternative mus- I mean, it, it literally, overnight, changed music, killed pretty much all the hair bands except for Guns N' Roses, um, and maybe a couple others. Um, but that was a... That was still part of the music business where you make a record, put out a single three months before the record comes out. You go to radio, uh, with your, with the record labels, um, radio promotion team. They go out to their pres- y- you know, to their regions that they, uh, you know, that they are, uh, in charge of. Somebody comes to the South, they go to Atlanta, they go to 99X, whatever, they try and get the program director. "Here's a new single from the, this band. We're trying to get on the radio." And then you start getting traction, then you, then if, if it's doing well, you hire independent promoters. There was a whole system of things that happened and, and there were budgets to do these things. "Okay, so you're gonna get a... You know, we have a budget to hire indies to go and promote the record, and if we can get it on KROQ, it's gonna... You put it over the top, so we're gonna pay extra money to get the person. This person can get it on KROQ as just..." You know. That's the old music business, basically run like the mob.

Chris Williamson 32:43 I was gonna say, it sounds very, sort of, nepotistic.

Rick Beato 32:47 Yeah. It's, uh... You know, to have a hit single back in the day, you know, you... It's gonna 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, uh, in the middle of these things to, uh, these independent promoters so you didn't... The record labels wouldn't directly be paying the radio stations. They'd pay the independent promoter that would interface and, and get the songs played.

Chris Williamson 33:22 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 33:23 But, um, but as far as dominant trends nowadays, I don't, I don't know how, how it will ever return from that. Everything is controlled algorithmically by massive platforms. Spotify, uh, you know, YouTube, TikTok-

Chris Williamson 33:45 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 33:46 ... Instagram, Deezer.

Chris Williamson 33:49 Does that suggest that we're gonna 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 34:13 If you think about how the Spotify, how Spotify works, you put in a band, Bad Omens. If you like this, then you're gonna like Sleep Token, you're gonna like... You, you go through the list of bands. Whatever, whatever they are. We could look it up right now.

Chris Williamson 34:28 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 34:28 We could pick any band and then you're gonna see other bands that are similar cross-referenced underneath. Um, and that's how these platforms work, period. And, and, uh, uh, 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. Um, and most of the people are okay with it, you know? They like the recommendations. YouTube cut the cord with, you know, subscribers getting every video. YouTube will send you a video if, if it is something that they think you'll be interested in. Just like YouTube, uh, people that are more ad-tolerant get more ads.

Chris Williamson 35:26 (laughs) Yeah. It's like he- uh, uh, feeding the hardest guy at the table the spiciest meal. Yeah. I think your channel's one, one of the most, I would say, uh, consistent, that when I finish one of your videos, it takes me to another from your channel. Think it's very binge-able. I think people s- sequence watch a lot of the stuff on your channel. Um, huge advantages, that you get more plays. Slight disadvantages that I think you have to cap a little bit of the watch time, 'cause 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.

Rick Beato 36:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:03 So it's, uh, uh, a, an interesting balance. But yeah, I, I just wonder... I wonder whether we've seen the death of subcultures. I mean, uh, you know, growing up, for me, you would've seen, sort of, Goths, emo kids. You would've had kids that were into hard style. I mean, I'm from the northeast of the UK. You can tell it was very working class.

Rick Beato 36:23 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 36:23 Wasn't anything very refined. There wasn't a classical music-

Rick Beato 36:25 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 36:25 ... subculture up there, or a jazz subculture. Um, but-I wonder whether the sort of homogenization, the fact that everybody's 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 gotta chase where the algos go. What's the trend? What's happening on TikTok?"

Rick Beato 37:02 Well, it kinda goes back to my video I made that was in two parts. Music is too easy to make and too easy to consume, right? So you can put down a song, and you and I could write a song right now, and, uh, and record it, and we could put it out five minutes from now.

Chris Williamson 37:24 Yep.

Rick Beato 37:25 And the, the idea of a s- scene developing now, there just... Things are too immediate, people are too connected, and because of that, it makes everything more homogenized.

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Chris Williamson 38:52 the issue with music being too easy to make?

Rick Beato 38:55 Um, the... If... One of the things, let, let's say, guitar amplifiers, okay? For any people who watch my channel, they see I've got 50 guitar amps before me. Well, however many I have in the background. Well, most people nowadays don't use guitar amps. They use these... whatever. Helix or Axe-Fx or, uh, Kemper. These are digital modeling, uh, amplifiers, if you will, but they're, they're digital. And everybody's using the same algorithms, 'cause the amplifiers are modeled, right? So the, they have the same sounds. Yes, you can program them, you can change this, you can move the mic placement. It's all digital though, right? It's not someone saying, "I wonder what it would sound like if I moved the mic, you know, 50 feet away this way, or tried this," or, "Oh, I knocked the mic out," y- you know, uh, "out from in front of your amp. Oh, well, that sounded amazing. Where's the mic? Oh, 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 t- to do that. And if everybody's using the same palette to, to paint on the, on the canvas, then you're gonna have these records that sound similar.

Chris Williamson 40:18 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 40:18 And I, you and I talked about this last night a little bit, about the, there's not as many professionals, like professional prod- producers and mixing engineers, for example, that are working in rock music. Pop music, country music, yes, that... But in rock music, because there's not the financial incentive that there was. For example, if you were a, a huge rock producer in the 1990s, 1980s, you'd have th- three points on a record, three percentage points, and you had a million-selling record, you'd make, uh, you know, $10 retail, you'd make $300,000 per million, the producer would make. Against their points, you get an advance, 3,000 bucks a track, typically. 10-song record, you get a $30,000 advance, you pay, once you pay that back, you start getting your, your money, right?

Chris Williamson 41:09 Not bad.

Rick Beato 41:10 So multi-platinum records, you make millions of dollars as a producer. Well, now there's no money for producers like that anymore.

Chris Williamson 41:18 Well, they've been competed away with advanced digital workstations.

Rick Beato 41:21 That's right. So, and, and now there's been a whole generation of, of people that are making records without producers and without engineers that, that may have different ideas than the people in the band that learned everything they know about recording from YouTube videos.

Chris Williamson 41:38 Well, that's your fault.

Rick Beato 41:39 (laughs) Well, it's, you know-

Chris Williamson 41:41 That is your, that is your fault.

Rick Beato 41:43 (laughs) It's, uh, you know, it's... When I go back and listen to, um, records from the, that were still being mixed by pro mixers back in the '90s and the early 2000s, and they just have a... Um, when you have something that's really mixed well, I was listening to, um, um, a Chevelle record from maybe 2003, um, s- Wonder What's Next, I think it was the name of it? And, um, it's, it's mixed by a guy, Andy Wallace. Amazing mixer, and it sounds massive.

Chris Williamson 42:27 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 42:27 So punchy, and, and I was like-Why don't records sound like that now? Well, it's because this guy's one of the best mixers of all time, mixing engineers. His records sounded incredibly good. And, um... Or Brendan O'Brien that did all the Stone Temple Pilots records, all the Pearl Jam records. He mixed Superunknown by Soundgarden. Brenda's mixes were, are amazing. They're punchy, they're fat. They're, they're... They have dynamics and, um, now when I hear everything, it's like, I hear drum samples, I hear guitars that are recorded digitally with the same amp simulators and, um, and there's a s- there can tend to be a sameness with the music because everybody's using the same type of gear.

Chris Williamson 43:16 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 43:16 And they're recording it in, on the same work stations. 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, who are the singers, because that's the ones that... That's the one thing. And then if you use Auto-Tune on your voice...

Chris Williamson 43:37 Does this mean that the importance of the front man or woman is gonna continue to get bigger, given that the singer is the highest point of differentiation that bands and artists have now?

Rick Beato 43:54 Yeah. I think that's always been the case though.

Chris Williamson 43:57 I know, but you- you- you would slash, you've got some, like, very talented... Although, I suppose especially when it comes to... Look at Sleep Token and look at the drummer, right? You know, I'm aware that they're not molesting their tracks in quite the same sort of a way. It's a very self-contained unit. Um, but there is still the opportunity now, I suppose, for very talented, uh, back, further, further back in stage, uh, contributors to, to really shine through. But yeah, it seems to me that if what you're saying is correct, music sounds are becoming more homogenized, everybody's using the same presets and fucking decapitators and whatever the hell else it is that they're doing. You didn't think I knew that, did you? Shock.

Rick Beato 44:38 I like that.

Chris Williamson 44:39 Um... If that's the case, then where are the remaining points of differentiation? And I wonder whether this is going back to what we said at the very beginning. Well, what about your, your marketing presence? What about your social media game? What about your-

Rick Beato 44:52 That is... That's-

Chris Williamson 44:53 ... your rollout from an advertising perspective?

Rick Beato 44:55 That, that's what it is. That's where the... That's how you differentiate yourself is through that.

Chris Williamson 45:01 Not through the actual art, but through the promotion.

Rick Beato 45:02 Does somebody in the band have a big social media, uh, platform? Are they big on, on Instagram and they're bringing people to the shows?

Chris Williamson 45:10 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 45:10 'Cause that happens. That does happen. Um, there's a, a band, uh, from Australia, Karnivool, that-

Chris Williamson 45:17 I love Karnivool.

Rick Beato 45:18 Karnivool's amazing. So the bass player, Jon, they have a new record coming out. He sent me, um, he sent me the new single, which-

Chris Williamson 45:24 It just, it just dropped the other day.

Rick Beato 45:26 It didn't play when I tried. I tried to play it, and it wouldn't play on my Spotify.

Chris Williamson 45:30 You know why?

Rick Beato 45:30 Why?

Chris Williamson 45:31 Because he's in Australia, so his Aussie time, they set-

Rick Beato 45:36 It was the 26th it was supposed to come out, Chris, and it didn't.

Chris Williamson 45:39 What day were you?

Rick Beato 45:40 Mine was the 26th, but it was... But they're a day ahead.

Chris Williamson 45:43 Yeah. So I- I've had this before because I'm still on British Ti- uh, British TikTok. British Spotify.

Rick Beato 45:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:49 I get access. Even in Austin, I'll get access to songs at 6:00 PM because I'm six hours behind. Now, the fact that it's a full day, that, that's something else. My entire theory is gone out the window. Uh, but if you set your Spotify to Australia time, you'll get access to songs 18 hours ahead of everybody in America.

Rick Beato 46:04 Well, he sent me, he sent me the link, and I wrote him back. I'm like, "Jon, that doesn't play." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 46:10 (laughs) It fucking literally doesn't work. I imagine he felt good about that.

Rick Beato 46:12 But, but... Okay, so they, they... I did a breakdown of a song, Goliath, that's on, um... What record is it on? Came out in 2007, but the f- the...

Chris Williamson 46:21 Karnivool record?

Rick Beato 46:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:22 Right.

Rick Beato 46:22 And, uh, Forrester Savells 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, 27/4 time signature, w- And Forrester sent me the tracks for it, and you can hear the bass in the drum tracks 'cause they're playing it at the same time, and the drum sounds are phenomenal. Then, uh, 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.

Chris Williamson 46:54 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 46:55 Uh, Jon, the bass player, his bass sound is just unbelievably great. Distortion, most aggressive bass line, and it's, um... And this is, this is kind of before people started using all this kind of... All the same gear, and it was done in a professional studio with a professional producer. And, you know, and the band is obviously very involved in what they do. These guys are pros. But, uh, it's mixed so well, uh, and I'm really curious to hear what the new record sounds like.

Chris Williamson 47:30 When you can finally get access to it. Um, 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's becoming more reliant on DAWs to basically not enable, but, like, buttress, like, to replace the, uh, uh, production process, surely that opens the door to anybody that has even a modicum of ability to properly make music. So for every zig, there's another zag. So if everybody is using the same sounds, the same presets, the same 808s, the same drum, you know, whatever, Decapitator 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 j- 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 48:46 I hope so, but still comes down to, do you have a TikTokable moment?

Chris Williamson 48:49 (laughs)

Rick Beato 48:49 Or something. Uh, it just does, Chris. That's the, uh, you know, it's ... You can have the greatest record in the world, the most different sounding record, revolutionary y- new trend in music, and if you don't have those 15 seconds-

Chris Williamson 49:04 If people don't say, "Can You Feel My Heart," then it doesn't, it doesn't really mat-

Rick Beato 49:07 That's right.

Chris Williamson 49:07 Okay, let's talk about this. Wha-

Rick Beato 49:08 So why does my 12-year-old know that song that came out in 2013?

Chris Williamson 49:11 Before she was born.

Rick Beato 49:12 Before she ... No, the year she was born.

Chris Williamson 49:14 Year she was born.

Rick Beato 49:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:15 Yeah. Well, I mean, that song, it was a good song, but it, it kinda languished, at least in terms of their, their Britney's biggest songs for a long time. I mean, okay.

Chris Williamson 49:24 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 bidirectional, which is the reverse happening, the opportunity to blow up on TikTok causes musicians to create music with the expressed purpose of being TikTok blowupable.

Rick Beato 49:52 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 49:52 You know what I mean? So what does that ... W- what does that l- 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 ... Uh, h- how do you make a song TikTokable?

Rick Beato 50:06 Okay, so I've, I've thought a lot about this. And, and, um, I, I believe that there's a formula for having a successful song.

Chris Williamson 50:13 Here we go.

Rick Beato 50:13 That, that is figureoutable, this is the, my, my, my word, using ... Uh, there's a lot of data out there that's available. There's a ... I have different apps. There's an app called Chart Metrics that, that will show you met- it'll give you metrics of artists' Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. Um, the, it'll show you when something blew up. I'll give you an example. So there's, um, artist Imogen Heap, and my, my daughter Layla, we're d- I drive her to school every day. So I'm like, she's like, "Can you play this song called Headlock by Imogen Heap?" And I says, "How do you know that song?" So I play it. Uh, I said, "That came out in 2005."

Chris Williamson 50:54 I was gonna say, Imogen Heap's 20 years old.

Rick Beato 50:56 Yeah. So that came out in 2005. So I play ... She said, "Yeah, I heard it on, on, on, uh, YouTube Shorts, and I wanna hear what the whole song sounds like." Right? And so, so I play her the song. She said, "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 Williamson 51:12 Yeah, it's huge.

Rick Beato 51:14 So ... Huge. So I start playing it. She's like, "Yeah, I've never heard this." All of a sudden, 2 minutes and fif- 47 seconds in, there's this spot that is the TikTok spot, and she's, she starts singing along. She goes, "Oh, I know this song." It's the bridge of the song.

Chris Williamson 51:26 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 51:27 Where the, the singing, where it gets into the, the faster singing part. And she knew that. And so then I go back and I open up this chart metric. I start looking at it. It's like, okay, so this song had a spike six months ago. People started playing it on TikTok. And then I, and I, I start looking at it, and then she started getting way more followers on Instagram. And then I went back and I said, "Layla, where did you hear ... How did you hear this?" She goes, "Well, I heard it on a few different places." So she sent me the, the three different places. Two of them were anime videos, but they used different parts of the song, Chris. They weren't the same ...

Chris Williamson 52:00 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 52:01 ... TikTok, but they had the same, a similar payoff. And they were, they were, uh, they were from s- some anime. And then one influencer that had three million followers, uh, had shared it as well. But it was in multiple places, and it was hashtag, um, Headlock. And so I started studying these things to see ... And it had blown up multiple times over six months. It kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger-

Chris Williamson 52:27 Yep.

Rick Beato 52:28 ... until she became aware of it.

Chris Williamson 52:30 So what is the constituent parts of a, a song that has that virality? What, what is it that, that makes that s-

Rick Beato 52:38 I'm trying to figure that out right now.

Chris Williamson 52:40 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 52:41 So I don't ... I'm not sure yet. I'm not sure what makes people want to use things and-

Chris Williamson 52:49 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 sentiment. Uh, maybe someone's got the formula. You know, maybe there's s- some person behind the scenes that's doing all the rest of it. Uh, you remember, what was that, uh, the dude that was, uh, skateboarding down the street drinking Ocean Spray-

Rick Beato 53:08 Drain- Ocean Spray, doing the Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. Okay, so this is, so-

Chris Williamson 53:12 Creed, fucking Creed, dude.

Rick Beato 53:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:15 Like, I, I, I guess that was partly, like, Texas Rangers winning the World Series, and, uh, that kind of being a part of it. Um, yeah, uh, what, where's this coming from?

Rick Beato 53:26 So I, uh, when I first started on YouTube, I used to have things not only content ID'd but blocked, where they'd take down videos. And one of the videos I had taken down was a Fleetwood Mac song. It was the song Go Your Own Way. But it was written by Lindsey Buckingham, whereas Dreams was written by, uh, Stevie Nicks. And I argued, I made a lot of videos about blocking. Why are, 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, make, you're making money on it.

Chris Williamson 54:01 Hm.

Rick Beato 54:02 Why do you wanna take down a video that has a million views, two million views? Like, what's the point of it? It's just free promotion for them. So finally, when that TikTok video that you're talking about with the guy with the Ocean Spray, uh, you know, listening to the song, that song went to number one. And all of a sudden, the, the labels are like, "Wait a minute. This is promotion ... Wait, wait. We can actually ..."

Chris Williamson 54:26 (laughs)

Rick Beato 54:27 "Uh," 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 Williamson 54:34 Oh, that's interesting.

Rick Beato 54:35 Over, over the course of a few months after that.

Chris Williamson 54:37 There's not really an equivalent from, from my industry. A little bit of a one, if you have a, a particularly good quotable moment. Uh, there's a famous bit from Lex interviewing Huberman, and Andrew says, "Can you read me the quote one more time?" And then people super cut that with either stuff that's real or stuff that's like, uh-

Rick Beato 54:59 Sure, yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:59 ... 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, Geoffrey. Geoffrey is sat on a stool, and he's saying that I use a lot of quotes on the show, and Geoffrey's giving me some of his favorite quotes back. And he says, "All a man needs is the same as his dog: food, water, shelter, put your nose in a stranger's ass." And that clip, that short clip has been used tens of thousands of times by the Brazilian jujitsu community.

Rick Beato 55:44 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 55:45 Because if you're in north-south, where you're like this, like that, um, you've got your nose in a stranger's ass. And it's like... (laughs) 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. It's the fact that the Fleetwood Mac song was not meant to be listened to while skateboarding drinking Ocean Spray-

Rick Beato 56:31 Correct.

Chris Williamson 56:31 ... 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 56:48 No.

Chris Williamson 56:48 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 TikTokification thing, that 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, I, it's like a, I don't know, 5D chess-

Rick Beato 57:17 I don't th- I don't know if that people can really create things that are gonna work. It's, it's... I've had a lot of viral videos, and I never know what's gonna go viral. I have no idea. I do know that it's... Almost all my viral videos are just me talking to camera.

Chris Williamson 57:36 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 57:36 Almost all of them, invariably are that. But other than that, I don't know what... I never... You, you know, I can't... You can't plan anything. You never know how video is, is going to do. And, um, uh, it's... To me, I just make it and move on.

Chris Williamson 57:58 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, and been 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 them now.

Rick Beato 58:19 I know people that have written many number one songs, and they've told me that they had no idea it was gonna be a number one song.

Chris Williamson 58:25 You included?

Rick Beato 58:26 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 58:28 But you wrote it for... You even wrote it for a different genre. You didn't even write it for the genre, and it was like 10 years later.

Rick Beato 58:33 Yeah. Yeah, so you don't... You know, whoever thinks something's gonna be a number one song... Well, if... No. If you're writing something for Beyonce or Sabrina Carpenter or somebody that's a famous star, and it's picked as the single, the chances of it, uh, of it going number one or being really successful are exponentially higher.

Chris Williamson 58:52 That's less so to do with the artistic merit of the song, though.

Rick Beato 58:55 Right. Right.

Chris Williamson 58:55 Yeah, that's, that's interesting.

Rick Beato 58:58 One of the hardest things, uh, being a producer or songwriter, um, is to get your song picked to be a single. Historically, that's always a thing is that, um, um, you write songs for a record. You might be one of 15 different songwriters on a record. Let's say, let's say it's, um... There's three people per song-

Chris Williamson 59:22 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 59:22 ... but there's five different groups of people that 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 gonna 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, and so it's like... And to actually have your song picked is, is just the first step in that, and then it has to be, uh... You know, and then it's the, the public has its vote, right? It's like, uh, one of my friends is like, um... I always say, "Well, if people tell me that they want me to make these kind of videos, then I make them and people don't watch them."

Chris Williamson 1:00:04 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 1:00:05 It's like, well people ultimately vote with their attention, because we're in the attention economy. And that's, um, and that to me is not predictable. What... Yes, you can, you can talk about something that's a trending topic, and it can do well, but you still don't... Um, don't have any control over what the public...

Chris Williamson 1:00:29 Is this why record labels like replicable formats when it comes to music?

Rick Beato 1:00:34 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:00:35 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 Israetel. Uh, in terms of appearance, quite different, but in terms of content strategy-

Rick Beato 1:00:45 Thank you.

Chris Williamson 1:00:45 ... actually quite similar. No.

Rick Beato 1:00:46 I like Mike. I like Dr. Mike.

Chris Williamson 1:00:47 Yeah, yeah, but he's got a strange shaped head.

Rick Beato 1:00:49 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:00:49 Uh, he described himself as a human callus to me.You're kind of like a, if a verruca took human form. Um, but very similar. Very s- "Okay, we're gonna do some sort of a... I have a degree of expertise in pretty specific area. I'm just gonna break stuff down." Musically, there has to be, and this is why I was so interested-

Rick Beato 1:01:10 He has a far better sense of humor than I do. He's f- he's really funny.

Chris Williamson 1:01:14 That's true, but he's also Jewish.

Rick Beato 1:01:15 Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:01:15 So, you know-

Rick Beato 1:01:16 Well, there you go.

Chris Williamson 1:01:16 ... there's positives and negatives to, to mo- to the way that Mike puts himself across. Very good with money, very bad at spending it.

Rick Beato 1:01:22 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:01:22 You know. Um, so he... Yeah, it, the, the thing that I f- I thought was interesting when it comes to the music industry is the, we find a format that works, and then, okay, how do we, how do we sort of crank this until it becomes old, and then we go again and we s- Where does the genesis of that come from? Is that even predictable?

Rick Beato 1:01:46 I thought a lot about this, like, u- w- what happened when nu metal, um, came about, you know, let's say it's b- early mid-'90s, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park-

Chris Williamson 1:02:03 God, I miss P.O.D..

Rick Beato 1:02:04 ... and, uh, P.O.D.. So, so n- nu metal was the dominant force in rock music. I mean-

Chris Williamson 1:02:11 Now called divorced dad metal.

Rick Beato 1:02:13 Is that what they're called now?

Chris Williamson 1:02:14 Divorced dad rock. (laughs)

Rick Beato 1:02:15 Okay, so, so, um... And then you had bands... Creed was not really a nu metal band. They were more of a hard rock band.

Chris Williamson 1:02:23 Like Breaking Benjamin, stuff like that?

Rick Beato 1:02:24 Breaking Benjamin was, was a, would, would be a nu, nu metal band. One of my really dear friends produced, uh, produced Breaking Benjamin. Um, but, um, um... It, it was this dominant force in radio until it wasn't. And why? What happened?

Chris Williamson 1:02:45 Yeah, yeah.

Rick Beato 1:02:45 What, what, you know... Was it the Nickelbackification of, uh...

Chris Williamson 1:02:50 (laughs) Fucking all roads lead back to Chad Kroeger, man.

Rick Beato 1:02:52 Right?

Chris Williamson 1:02:52 Holy shit.

Rick Beato 1:02:53 Is it, uh, is it that he had too many hits?

Chris Williamson 1:03:00 Like in overexposure?

Rick Beato 1:03:01 It's, 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 has, uh... He engineers, mixes, produces, and he's just had hit after hit after hit after hit. And I don't know why Chad Kroeger didn't move to, to Nashville. Um, but... For some reason, I, I think that, um... I, I thought like, maybe it's... I used to say that when blues left rock music, when there was no, no blues riffs anymore. If you think of like Audioslave or, um, you know, as an extension of Rage Against the Machine, lot of the bands, the Pearl Jams, Soundgardens, the bands of the '90s had a lot of blues elements in them.

Chris Williamson 1:04:08 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 1:04:08 But a lot of nu metal does not. Linkin Park does not have blues licks. Like, uh, Crawling, or... I mean, a lot of the songs on the first Linkin Park record are, are not bass. 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 coun- listening to country music. And now country music has been pop-ified, 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 Williamson 1:04:59 I, I... We need to talk about this.

Chris Williamson 1:05:01 What has happened with the ascendancy of country over the last five years? What, what's going on?

Rick Beato 1:05:09 Um, I think it's that... I think that they, the, the production style has changed, and it's, and it sounds like pop music. And so it's, uh... I, I think that it's, um... That it just connects with, with more people because it doesn't sound like country music anymore. Doesn't sound like the country music of when I was going to Nashville and, and, and writing songs.

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Rick Beato 1:06:55 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:06:55 ... psyoped way for an English person to decide to move to America. So it's Fourth of July on Broadway in Nashville, and I was doing a road trip with a friend. We'd started off in, uh, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, did Nashville, did Gatlinburg.... uh... (laughs)

Rick Beato 1:07:11 You have to.

Chris Williamson 1:07:12 We went to Lake Nor- we didn't do Dollywood. Went to Lake Norman, uh, and then, uh, finished up in, uh, Norfolk, Virginia, and then I flew to, uh, Canada. And I, you know, rented a soft top Camaro, me and my friend. We were training every different day, staying in random places. And, uh, it was 4th of July, we got up and we ran the Nashville 5K, um, which was fun. Had a little nap back at the hotel, and then went out to Broadway. Was like, "4th of July, let's fucking go. This is gonna be cool." So I go down onto Broadway, and I see Whiskey Row, and I'm like, "That look... That place looks cool. It's nice." And I walk in, and it's one of these classic, super talented, pay by the hour sort of Nashville bands. Dude's got a trucker cap on. And no one's looking at the band. Like, "What the fuck is going on?" Everybody's at the bar, and this is three in the afternoon, like peak Broadway time. Sun's beating down. It's beau- windows are open, money. And everybody's at the bar. I was like, "What the fuck is going on? Why is... This band's all crushing it." I've never heard this song before, but it was cool. It was kind of like it sounded a bit emo, I guess, but it was definitely country, twangy. I was like, "What the fuck?" Anyway, this dude is partway through the bridge of this song, and he grabs a shot, puts the shot in the air, and everybody in the room, uh, like, uh, like they were part of a cult, lifts a shot up as well. I was like, "What the fuck is going on?" Like, it was like... Was... Is there an email that went out that I wasn't a part of or something?

Rick Beato 1:08:40 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:08:40 It was the song Tequila by Dan + Shay.

Rick Beato 1:08:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:43 And there's a bit where it does a... It goes like a full step up.

Rick Beato 1:08:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:46 Or there's a little change-

Rick Beato 1:08:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:47 ... as it goes into the final verse. Uh, the final chorus, sorry. And, uh, when I taste tequila, everybody knock their shot back. The room explodes. I was like, "I am fucking moving to this country. Consider me sold." And then I got to... It, it turns out that, uh-

Rick Beato 1:09:02 You're friends with those guys, right?

Chris Williamson 1:09:03 He, he's a fan of the show, so I got to go and see them, and I got to catch up, and got to see this ridiculous bus setup he's got. "Oh, yeah, the way that we put the bus together, it's the same way that Taylor Swift's got hers, 'cause if you put the, the bed at the back of the bus, you can actually have more width, and it's over the back wheel, which means it's a..." So I was like, "This is fucking insane." But I mean, it's... They're superstars, right? It's super, super production. And, um, I, uh, s- saw kind of in that moment, I was like, "This sounds so familiar to me as somebody that hasn't listened to that much country." And that summer, the summer of, uh, 2019, uh, Luke Combs massive album, uh, Hardy with like Rednecker.

Rick Beato 1:09:43 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:43 Um, you know, we had this, uh, bro trip playlist, and I think about all of that music, and I remember listening to it at the time and coming back to the UK, and, you know, I had maybe three years before I finally moved to America after that, like two y- two and a half years. I'm like, listening to this music, w- I mean, like, "Why the f- Like, this seems like a really, really good scene." So it kind of does make sense to me that we've got to the stage now where someone who was open to alternative music but not into country found fuck boy country, if that's what you wanna call it, or easy access country, I suppose, pop country.

Rick Beato 1:10:21 I could see that country music was moving that way the... When I s- got involved, uh, in the scene in the, you know, in the teens, um, it was during the bro-country era. The bro-country era lasted for a few years. Uh, and then... But the, the era of the track guys, there were people moving to Nashville, uh, you know, starting in 2015, 2016, and then Nashville just blew up. And then the music started to change in style, and, um, and it, um, it just... I started noticing my friends that used to listen to rock changed over and started listening to country. I think part of it is that there were, there were guitars in country, and there was no rock on the radio that, that, uh, that they connected with, 'cause they didn't necessarily connect with the me- metal bands that were, were going on in the, in the, you know, in the mid-teens. And, um-

Chris Williamson 1:11:26 I don't think people know just how much the country music industry is built on the back of former scene kids and metal guitarists. Like, all pa- all rep- I think all of Jelly Roll's band, uh, ex, you know, s- suicide something or Amity the something... You know what I mean? Like, everyone was part of some very black-wearing, like, death metal band in the 2000s and then grew up to do this. But yeah, Jelly Roll, massive pivot. Post Malone, massive pivot. Beyonce, massive pivot. I guess Taylor Swift pivoted away, but you... I-

Rick Beato 1:11:56 Well, she moved to New York, and, and, uh, and she changed her music. And, and she... Her thing was that she was dominating the charts, and then she started... She's like, "Okay, how do I broaden my appeal to, to start hitting..." Uh, you know, pop radio 'cause it was a different thing back when she did in the... In the... whenever it was. 2012 when she started work- working with Max Martin and other outside songwriters like that. Max Martin and Shellback, and, um... And then she started having massive worldwide hits. So, um, the... It's just, you know, I, I look at this stuff, Chris, and I think, it's just tough for, for musicians to, um, uh... They're just... It's so hard to connect with the audience, even in the era when it's so easy to connect with people.

Chris Williamson 1:12:55 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 1:12:56 It's so hard to get any type of a, um, uh, of momentum going, right? With, with a song that... Or with, with any type of artist to get to that 100 million plays, you know, talking about the-

Chris Williamson 1:13:11 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 1:13:12 ... Bring Me The Horizon song that's, uh-

Chris Williamson 1:13:15 500 million now.

Rick Beato 1:13:16 ... seven s- what's that?

Chris Williamson 1:13:18 How much is it, 500 million?

Rick Beato 1:13:19 720 million plays.

Chris Williamson 1:13:21 Shit.

Rick Beato 1:13:22 It's insane, right? If... To get over 100 million plays on a song, 100 million plays is... I was talking about this this morning actually, it is about, um, $300,000, I think it pays?

Chris Williamson 1:13:34 (laughs)

Rick Beato 1:13:35 Something like that. No, $3 million? Three... Oh, geez, I just, uh, no, $300,000. I think a bil- yeah, a billion play song is, is about three to $5 million, depending.

Chris Williamson 1:13:47 Can you imagine if me or you had a billion play video? (sighs)

Rick Beato 1:13:51 It'd be like Baby Shark (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 1:13:54 (laughs) Yeah, it is. That's what you should do next.

Rick Beato 1:13:56 I was gonna make this video series, is this song better or worse than Baby Shark?

Chris Williamson 1:14:01 That's a, that's a pretty good barometer.

Rick Beato 1:14:04 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:14:04 Is this song better or worse than What Does The Fox Say?

Rick Beato 1:14:06 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:14:07 Uh, okay, we need to talk about AI artists.

Rick Beato 1:14:10 Yeah. AI artists, uh-huh.

Chris Williamson 1:14:12 What's going on? What's going on? AI bans, AI everything. What's happening?

Rick Beato 1:14:18 Um, I think that, um, that one of the AI companies is testing whether people will accept AI music. I mean, Spotify has AI music that they're already pushing in playlists that, um, uh, that, that are... that get millions of views. A lot of it is kind of light jazz or atmospheric music and things like that. But now, they have this thing I just made a video on about this band, The Velvet Sundown, that's a f- purported to be a fake band that has AI-looking pictures and AI-sounding songs. I always s- have said in my videos every ti- 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 gr-

Chris Williamson 1:15:28 About music?

Rick Beato 1:15:29 No, this is about AI.

Chris Williamson 1:15:30 Right, okay. I was gonna say-

Rick Beato 1:15:31 But my-

Chris Williamson 1:15:31 ... I don't, I don't think I care about Elon's-

Rick Beato 1:15:33 ... They invited me in, in-

Chris Williamson 1:15:34 ... music taste.

Rick Beato 1:15:34 They, they invited me in with all the people, SAG-AFTRA, um, Spotify people, people for all these dif- that worked at all, you know, all, all, basically all different interest groups, right? And then me, 'cause I had made a lot of big videos on AI music. And one of my things that I said is that I don't, didn't believe when they asked, asked me questions, the senators asked me questions, is 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, uh, to go and put AI music out there to make money on it. If Spotify can put out AI fake artists and people stream it and they're perfectly okay with it, and then not pay artists that are getting streamed as well, because they're... And then they, then it just increases the incentive for them to fill their playlist with fake artists.

Chris Williamson 1:16:30 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 1:16:31 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, uh, and they have another record coming out in two weeks, a second record.

Chris Williamson 1:16:52 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 1:16:53 And no one's coming forward saying, "It's us." Now, if this was a, a marketing ploy, this is actually a very smart thing. But people are saying in the comments on the video I just made yesterday, "Well, these are all bots that are on here." It's got um, over 600,000 followers now on Spotify. In a week-

Chris Williamson 1:17:16 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 1:17:16 ... went from zero to 600,000. It's crazy, right?

Chris Williamson 1:17:19 Is the song any good?

Rick Beato 1:17:21 Well, there's a whole record there.

Chris Williamson 1:17:22 Mm-hmm.

Rick Beato 1:17:24 And, um, uh, it's... I don't think it sounds good, to me. Not, nah- it doesn't, uh...

Chris Williamson 1:17:35 People are voting with their ears, though-

Rick Beato 1:17:36 That's right.

Chris Williamson 1:17:36 ... did you not say earlier on that-

Rick Beato 1:17:37 Ultimately.

Chris Williamson 1:17:38 ... the meritocracy here-

Rick Beato 1:17:39 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 the, with the voices of the, uh, you know, young Paul McCartney or young John Lennon, whatever. And I said eventually, there's gonna be the Beatles and the Beatles AI, and Prince and Prince AI, and Michael Jackson and Michael Jackson AI. There will be songs that are trained on their music on the 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 gonna hap- that will happen. There are gonna be people that like AI music and they're perfectly fine with it.

Chris Williamson 1:18:26 Should there be protections in place for artists to avoid AI bands, AI artists coming in and s- taking place? Do you think that Spotify should ban AI music?

Rick Beato 1:18:41 Um... Should they ban it? Um... Well, there's so many workarounds with this. I mean, you can, you can create your song via A- have AI, a completely AI prompted written song, and then just recut it. And then, it's you doing it, it doesn't have all the artifacts, you have all the independent tracks and everything, and-And then who sues you, the Suno or Udio or whoever owns the... Saying, "Hey, that's our music."

Chris Williamson 1:19:19 (laughs)

Rick Beato 1:19:20 Like, "Wait, wait. No, no it's not. I prompted it myself-"

Chris Williamson 1:19:23 Yeah.

Rick Beato 1:19:23 "... and then I covered it."

Chris Williamson 1:19:24 Yeah. It's like the Sp- it's like the Spider-Man meme.

Rick Beato 1:19:26 I don't even know what... You know, this, this... I don't know what's gonna be done with it. I don't know how they can, um-

Chris Williamson 1:19:35 I, I, I think this is a great take. I think that's a really interesting one, 'cause 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-

Rick Beato 1:19:51 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:19:51 ..."Write 60,000 words, with 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 pum- 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, I've become very obsessed with the idea of plagiarism versus inspiration, because very few ideas come from real first principles. You, oh, 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.

Rick Beato 1:20:37 Right. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:20:37 Right? Like, you know, you, 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 ways. 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, what... And oh, that made me think about this thing." So there's a, a wonderful line from William James that says, "Originality is just undetected plagiarism." And what we are seeing now is the veil being lifted on detectable plagiarism, right, which is not only is this a direct copy of something else, but it's a direct copy of something else masquerading as something original because it's been reconstituted by a, a, an AI. Um, I'm gonna piss every musician off by saying this. If AIs are able to create better music than you as an artist can, I think it's a very difficult argument to make to say that they should be held back given that this is supposed to be a meritocracy. Because all of the graphic designers for whom Midjourney just came 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 1:22:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:22:04 ... and it will create a pretty listenable podcast that explains-

Rick Beato 1:22:08 Notebook LM, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:22:09 Notebook LM is, is really good if you like learning-

Rick Beato 1:22:11 Yeah, very good.

Chris Williamson 1:22:11 ... if you like learning stuff through-

Rick Beato 1:22:12 They have the ums, they have all the... It sounds-

Chris Williamson 1:22:14 "Oh, it's interesting, with the way that we..."

Rick Beato 1:22:16 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:22:16 "Yeah, you're so right, Rick." You know? Um, and if Notebook LM gets to the stage where it is able to produce a better podcast than the one that I can, then I either need to up my game to be able to compete, or I'm gonna, I'm gonna be defeated by the fucking robots.

Chris Williamson 1:22:33 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, uh, ear real estate from the audience is that the barrier to entry in order to be able to create music is so high. Anybody can do a podcast. They can be very bad, but anybody can do a podcast.

Rick Beato 1:22:56 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:22:56 Anybody can draw anything. It 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 1:23:06 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:23:06 Right? So the level of investment, the moat that has typically protected musicians for a very long time, not just from being able to play the, the, the instrument, but from understanding musical form, from being able