Is AI Replacing Musicians?

In this episode of the Tech Biz Toolkit Podcast, I sit down with music industry expert Stephen Budd to explore how AI is transforming the music world.

We discuss the impact of artificial intelligence on creativity, artists, production, and the future of the industry. Is AI a threat to musicians—or an opportunity for innovation?

If you’re interested in AI, digital transformation, or how technology is reshaping industries, this conversation offers valuable insights from both a business and creative perspective.

🎧 Topics covered:
 • How AI is being used in the music industry
 • The impact on artists and creativity
 • Opportunities vs risks of AI in music
 • What the future could look like

🔗 Explore more: www.techbiztoolkit.com

#AI #MusicIndustry #DigitalTransformation #BusinessChange

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hi Stephen, thank you so much for joining us today on TechBiz Toolkit. I'm so excited to have someone so influential in the music industry join us today. You've had a remarkable career in the music industry. For those that don't know you, I really would like you to explain what first drew you into this world and what keeps you passionate about music even today.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

I start I started in the music business when I was um 16 as a roadie, was my first kind of point of entry. I was obsessed about music, had to be involved in any which way. And um I was involved in a free festival, hippie free festival. One thing led to another, and I got invited to roadie for a band called Motorhead at their very first ever gig. And I then went on the road for two or three years as a roadie, learned a lot about how you know life on the road was obviously changing the guitar strings, setting up the drums, driving overnight to the next shows, doing it all again, getting extremely tired and exhausted, but you know, learning a lot about the day-to-day of the live side of the music industry. Uh, 19, I saved up some money, wanted to start. It was kind of at the moment then there was a lot of independent labels, record labels that were starting, and it was a DIY kind of culture. Um, and I started um putting out seven-inch singles of artists that I really liked. And um uh eventually, um, some of those artists that I had on that little label, things started to happen for them, and I found myself being the manager of some of these artists. So I ended up becoming an artist manager around age 20, 21. So I've been doing that for a long, long time, but that developed into managing record producers and songwriters. I was lucky enough to take on Tony Visconti as my first ever uh producer client. He was David Bowie's producer, so she's still there, it's called Dean Street Studios now. But I learned the art of like, well, I watched the art of record production from afar in the studio with him, but I learned the art of managing record producers, which was quite an unknown thing at that time. There wasn't really anybody doing it, so I found a little niche, and that niche really kind of worked for me. And at that time of the music industry, you know, it seemed to work for the music industry as well. So I built up a client list of quite amazing producers and developed that over a number of years, took on some more artists, then eventually got into the live side of the business when I merged my company with one that had some live music venues, and then I ended up co-owning some music venues in London. We had the jazz cafe and the borderline and the garage and the academy, which was called the Barfly back then, uh, and a few others, and um did that and then started a music festival in India, um, which became very, very successful. It's called the NH7 Weekend, it's still going on today, it's like 15 years later. And then during that period, I hooked up with Damon Alban and we created a project together called Africa Express, which is a musical collaborations project between African artists and Western artists, taking well-known Western artists out to Nigeria, Ethiopia, Congo, Mali, South Africa, recording albums over there, putting together shows of musical collaborations, bringing them back over here, doing Glastonbury, Ross Gilda, various festivals and all sorts of interesting sort of live events that we put on over the years. So, you know, we've been doing that for uh almost almost 20 years. So it's been a busy, extremely busy career. You know, entering into a period in the music business, which is, you know, it's all the music business has always been an extremely fast moving business and one of the the earliest adopters of new technology. And, you know, you could say that the the two businesses that are really at the kind of cutting edge before anybody else really falls in line is the is is the porn business and the music business. You know? I I don't know what's happening in the porn business in relationship to what we're going to talk about, AI, but I I do have an inkling of what's going on in the music business in relationship to it. So we can we can talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Yeah, that that's a good segue to actually my next question. So from your perspective, how is AI currently being used to create music and what excites or worries you most about the shift?

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Well, I mean, already producers, songwriters are using it as a tool in various ways. You know, obviously it's it's coming up with as a music creation tool in the process, and it's helping speed up the process of songwriting, the process of record production. I don't have issues around that, right? I I think that's healthy. I think um the important thing is for producers, it's it's giving people a range of options and opening up the range of options, an open range of possibilities for creation, which is good. And I don't have personally an issue with with creators using it in their day-to-day processes. Where I have an issue is where people who are perhaps not musician or who are not musicians, right, who are sitting there at home and they're putting in a prompt and using, you know, Suno or whatever, and coming up with a song idea which takes like 15 seconds of a couple of prompts, and then using, you know, chat GBT to come up with a fake image of an artist, and you know, using a combination of different AI tools to create something that's completely fake, right? Yeah, and then lyrics and lyrics, yeah, of course, putting that up on and and you know, some of it can be very creative in a sense, but I have an issue with that stuff being monetized. If it goes up onto Spotify or onto Deezer or whatever, I think it's wrong that that that should be generating payments, which is diluting the pool of money which is available to people who've turned over their lives being yeah, real artists who've turned over their lives to music creation. And I think that is a an issue that is problematic. I've been quite vocal online talking about this, and which has been part of a sort of trend amongst music professionals who want to see Spotify and the other DSPs take action. Some of them have already taken action. Um Deezer have have demonetised, have targeted and demonetized tracks that are 100% AI. We're not talking about tracks that have a partial AI element with tracks that are 100% AI. And I'm hoping that Spotify will meaningfully follow suit in relationship to that. So there are now, you know, tools available that can monitor and track the level of AI that's been a part of the technical creation of a track. Right. So, you know, I'm I'm hopeful that you know, because things are moving at such a pace, I'm hopeful that that that this issue can be minimized over the months to come. And you know, if we're sitting here in a year's time, maybe you know that it's going to be a lesser issue. I think that you know, AI music itself is here to stay, of course.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

And we we will see AI music being used more and more in advertising, in circumstances that was previously the zone of musac, you know.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Um and royalty-free music will kind of have its place in social media, online advertising, where people just pay a very small fee to to to to license that track, or maybe don't maybe it's just free, it goes up free, and people you know. I think the registration of, you know, there will come a time when when some people will be offering a way of registering those kind of tracks so that they can keep a track of how they're being used and whether they can find ways of monetizing them or not.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

Yeah, I was gonna ask you on that actually, Stephen. So obviously we have PRS. How would that work with today's you know, AI music? So are they doing anything at the moment to help with the the new obviously ways of music in regards to AI? Are they monitoring that?

SPEAKER_00 8:37

I'm sure it's a constant conversation, but the thing is that tracks that are a hundred percent AI uh you know shouldn't be able to be, you know, registered as a as a written song, you know, uh in in my in my humble opinion. Uh I'm not quite sure what the PRS scenario exactly is on that. I mean, these d industry discussions are happening on a sort of day-by-day basis. I'm part of the Music Managers Forum. I've I used to be the chair of the MMF, and I certainly know that that there are working groups within the MMF who are in the process of engaging government in conversation. Um, and it's is certainly a uh uh uh uh absolute top-of-the-table kind of forefront conversation within the industry itself about how to address all this. I mean, producers are gonna be using AI for demos and sound design, editing and mixing, all good, you know, no problem with that. That leaves them sort of free to focus more on performances and the f the vibe of of what it is they're producing, and artists are gonna be using it more and more to arrange uh music in a way that perhaps was bit a little bit beyond them before, yeah, but give them a feel and perhaps a template that they can use to direct sort of musicians. But the big sort of shift anyone can make, you know, i anybody can make that kind of music now. So what matters most is really the kind of like the identity and the vibe of of what a musician ultimately will create. Whilst AI is going to get better and better and better, you know, people know when there's real soul involved, you know. I'll be very interested to see if an AI track, you know, there's certain songs, I'm sure it's true for you, and it's certainly G that can bring you to tears. But you hear that emotional connection. You don't know how it's reaching you, but it's reaching you on an emotional level, taking you into a different place. Now, don't know if AI is gonna be able to do that somehow. But we'll see. We'll see. I think we'll see.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Being that I working obviously at technology and I seeing how everything is moving so rapidly, like most people that are really interested in AI, we listen to a lot of um of the creators of AI and even their concerns about how rapidly this is coming into play in a lot of industries. My concern is that the artists, the real artists, are not gonna make any money because maybe perhaps the younger generation, especially, start going towards the AI, like in that type of music, then what does that mean for the future of existing artists? That's always been a thought of mine.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Sure. I mean, you know, obviously one thing that AI is not gonna be able to do, although you can put out sort of like avatars and things, but you know, going and performing live, you know, and and and showing people, you know, just why you as an artist are so special. You know, I went to a lot of festivals this summer, and it's so encouraging for me to see young kids who've never been to a festival before and probably whose experience of music has been, you know, restricted to you know YouTube, yeah, suddenly being exposed to seeing real musicians play real instruments in real time and you know, the jaw-dropping moment when they realise, oh my god, the difference between watching somebody actually play a sax or watching somebody act actually play keyboards and drums in a real way, as opposed to kind of you know, they just haven't had that experience, but when they do, it is like such an overwhelming experience for them that it becomes a real different way for them to experience music and it's a real different way an engagement.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

I'm counting and hoping that that will be big enough to stain the ongoing interest in real music.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

I agree, because even when I go to festivals or concerts or private shows, whatever, seeing a live band, the connection you receive is so much more different to when you're in your house listening to music. You know, seeing the artists' facial expressions, even when they sometimes start to conversate with the crowd because maybe they're gonna go into a song and they talk about how that song might have inspired them, for example, all of that sort of thing would be missing with AI. I'm just very concerned for really amazing artists that I know of, especially in the UK. I worry for their future and I really hope that, like you said, people still appreciate real art.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Look, I'm I'm not gonna diminish it. You know, it's harder and harder for musicians to make money anyway, right? Yeah. You know, and and there, of course, there are different levels of musicians. There are those people who want to have a career playing music live, want to make records, and are are happy if they can just sustain themselves enough to do that. And there are those artists who, you know, really are about I've got to work with a major label, it's got to be an international, you know, significant pop success on a very grand and that's what their target is. And you know, it's gonna be interesting to see how AI affects either of those kind of scenarios, you know. I mean, I think that AI can can be useful for artists to help them with like breaking writers' blocks and you know, everybody gets that from time to time. Trying out new sounds that you wouldn't normally have access to and all that kind of stuff. I don't think the danger is AI in in the creation process. It's laziness. I mean, artists who use it to explore and push their own boundaries a bit, I think they're gonna that you know, they they're gonna thrive and it'll be a very useful tool. But those who use it to copy and just you know, then they're gonna fade fast, you know. And I think that um, you know, you'll hear AI music and the AI music I've heard so far always gets bits wrong.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

You know, it kind of I've heard that myself.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

It gets the it gets the mix wrong, it gets certain bits just kind of like don't feel right, uh although, you know, um it's good at you know generating, you know, ideas.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Anyway, you but on that note, why do you think, and talking about the financial aspect, why do you think record labels now are paying for AI artists? Because I saw there was this latest AI artist, it's the same face all over social media. I can't even remember her name because I Yeah I saw that a record label would pay this much money for this for this AI artist. But um why do you think you know they're offering so much money now?

SPEAKER_00 15:19

I don't know how accurate that that uh report was. I mean the press loved to latch onto something, and you know they've done a 10 album deal, you know, when in effect you're you know you're doing a one album deal and there are options. So, you know, that that's been an age-old thing in in hype marketing. I'm not I'm not I mean I saw that, you know, I even clicked on a clicked on a clip of that and watched it, it was you know, it was okay, you know, but why you know there are far superior real musicians out there than than this. I can't speak to that particular project. But you know, if somebody's got particular uh angle, if there's a cartoon-based TV series or something like that, you know, which can be created using AI, and you know, there there's music related to that, and it's an overall package that has, you know, potential uh merchandising aspects of it, you know, then maybe it's it's maybe it's to do with that.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

You know, I I think if a if a human controls the the sort of creative direction, then then they should, you know, keep the rights.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

But if if music's generated entirely by AI, I really don't think uh there should be any sort of copyright involved in that at all.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Copyright should be retained by human beings.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Yeah. Because speaking of that same artist that I'm talking about, I was on TikTok and people were actually talking about her music, and a lot of people were saying they actually felt an emotional connection to her music. What you were saying earlier about that emotional connection. If AI can create that for individuals, what does that look like for the future?

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Who knows? I don't have an answer to that. What I do think is that AI got trained on real music, and you can bet your ass the people that it tr got trained on are not gonna see a penny of that.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Right? So, you know, that that to me is is kind of immoral in a sense, you know? Yeah, I think a lot of tech does not like copyright. It doesn't like it doesn't like protecting it. You know, from what I understand, a lot of the AI models were trained on out of Chinese library sites which don't respect copyright. So, you know, kind of, yeah, anyway, I just think that's wrong.

SPEAKER_02 17:41

Yeah, it's exactly it's like getting an AI agent and training it on somewhere like Timberland, for example, you know, big music producer in the US, and then they're able to churn out music just like his, a lot faster and more rapidly than a human, you know, that was will be in their own uh proper studio creating music from scratch. Yeah, it's it's it's interesting, isn't it? And if you were in a position to make a decision how people get paid if they're using AI, as you said, whether it's a tool or using a whole song as you know an AI creation, how would you think payment should be made to those individuals that are using AI? Well, I mean a normal a normal artist.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Sure. I mean, look, if it's being used in a t as a tool, like I said, yeah, I don't I don't have an issue with it. I remember when synths started becoming ubiquitous in music production. I mean, back in the 80s, you know, there was a lot of guys who were members of the musicians union at that time who were throwing their hands up in horror, going, synthesizers are going to replace us. There was a lot of um specifically by the musicians unit at that time to to ban synths being used. Same with drum machines, etc. etc. But I mean, look, you can't stop progress. What I do think, and as I said before, I don't have an issue with producers, songwriters using it in there uh as a tool. Um but it's it's where I my pure negative issue is with those people who are just creating a hundred percent AI-driven tracks. Yes, yes, and then trying to get those m monetized on DSPs that would normally feature just normal mus normal artists, normal musicians, and that's diluting the pool of money that gets to everybody. So if there's hundreds of thousands of tracks coming in, which are fake tracks, you know, I mean how many of them are gonna get gonna get many, many listens is another matter, but it is it's clogging up the system.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

I agree with your your way of thinking. I always say on this um podcast, I've said it to many people, AI is a tool, use it cautiously. I do get a bit peeved when I am online and I'm hearing tracks that sound like Drake and it's hundred percent AI creation. I think it's a damn right liberty if you ask me to be fair. But I don't know if I'm biased because I'm you know, I love music and stuff. So um I do used to do music production, so my mindset would be a bit different. I've got young nieces and nephews, and they're they'd listen to anything. Anything that just kind of gives them the buzz or there's some lyrics in there that they can relate to. They just were like, Oh, I I like that song because it says this and I can relate to that.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

And you know, you have a personal relationship with the artist, you know. When you become a fan of that artist, it's like you, you know. I mean, the most extreme examples being, you know, Taylor Swift or the, you know, all the Korean, you know, K-pop artists or whatever, you can see the absolute visceral connection. But, you know, I mean, there I was last night in the palladium in London, seeing an artist who's in their 70s who I grew up with as a kid, who to me is an absolute hero, and I'm having a very emotional bonded experience with that artist. That, you know, cannot be re replicated by AI. And but we'll, you know, we'll maybe we will all be marrying robots in years to come. Who knows?

SPEAKER_02 20:53

I won't be, certainly not, but yeah. We'll see a lot of people that we probably think wouldn't will be marrying robots, to be fair. I know we spoke a lot about AI. You've really covered a lot, so thank you very much. It's so good to have an insight from someone that's been in the industry and has your expertise. One of the things I wanted to kind of touch on now was moving on to real music, and I'm gonna call it real music, as in real artistry. What do you think the next genre that's going to be big is? I love Afrobeats. I saw how Afrobeats came into play, everyone jumped on it. Do you think there's gonna be another genre, the next sort of trend? And if so, what do you think that might be?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

I've noticed I mean, this I mean, there's several things going on at the same time. I mean, obviously the rise of sort of Spanish influenced music is incredible, you know, and you've had the bad, all of that kind of stuff. I think that's gonna go wider and bigger and deeper, right? So I think you know, we we will see a lot more of that coming through over the next five years, right? I also think that funny enough, drum and bass is gonna have a resurgence. It's already you can see it sort of bubbling at festivals, and there's A lot of young drum and bass, especially women drum and bass producers and artists coming into the into play. And I think that's going to raise up over the next couple of years.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

Wow, I didn't know that. This is great.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Absolutely. There's half a dozen, maybe a dozen female drum and bass artists coming through, and that's kind of, you know, from near near archives and people and Sherelle and people downwards. It's kind of, you know, it's it's it's it's right gathering pace in it in popularity. But the other one I think that is has been over the last five, six, seven years, has really kind of picked up pace. It's kind of where jazz meets hip-hop, where jazz meets RB, you know, the kind of uh the Jordan Rakhais of this world. You see that kind of musical influence, you know, coming into new albums by people like Dave, Jayhaas. I wouldn't be surprised, Kano. I wouldn't be surprised if you know Stormsey's next album has more jazz on it. You know, you're seeing that kind of like vibe really influencing. But there's a whole kind of scene, particularly London, Leeds, Glasgow, Bristol, Brighton, uh, where small little jazz venues opening up, underground jazz venue, young kids playing it. Really exciting. You know, I go to lots of clubs in London, you know, every single week where I'm seeing, you know, artists in front of like a couple of hundred people, and it's a fifty-f mixed audience, a mixed race audience, if you like, which is which I think is brilliant. And you know, the art the artists are being inspired by some of the sort of jazz greats. And when I say jazz, I don't mean like kind of like you know, smooth kind of jazz FM type. I mean a bit more sort of experimental and a bit more danceable and a bit more kind of like out there and in your face.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

So it's yeah, that's interesting. So that that's kind of coming through. And I think and you know, on the other hand, as well, I think with guitar music, I think that's been very quiet for the last five years, hardly any kind of rock coming through, but I think that's gonna change. The last dinner party being a good example of a an English all-female rock band. Um I think we're gonna see more kind of women-led bands coming through.

SPEAKER_02 24:16

That's brilliant. And that's actually inspirational. It's it's so good to see women really taking their artistry as a musician seriously and progressing with it and getting seen finally. Um, because I know a lot of great female producers doing great things behind the scenes, but not everyone might know their name, like many songwriters. In regards to artists in the UK, what artists do you think people need to look out for next?

SPEAKER_00 24:41

You know, I would listen out to the the forthcoming Nubian Twist album. Trust me, and I'm very biased. I might have some involvement. Um I would listen to that. I I think that's um, you know, particularly exciting. Gosh, um, I wish I prepared for that question because there's so many young, really, really y interesting young artists kind of coming through, you know. Um again, I kind of focus a lot. I mean, uh Yasmin Lacey's new album is absolutely brilliant. I would check her out if you don't know her already. She's uh a young black jazz singer from the Midlands who's based out of London, but the music she's creating is kind of Shardet-esque, you know? Oh vibe. And I think you know, a lot of people will respond to that. I think you know, she's a she's a big tip. Another girl who is creating really special music is an artist called Momaco Gill. She's she's again coming from that kind of kind of jazz thing. You know, I mean I I I like Olivia Dean, but everybody knows about her already, you know, so she's yeah certainly kind of like exploded in a really healthy way. But I mean, there's no there's no shortage of of really exciting talent that's kind of like just kind of getting on the tracks now.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

Yeah. What advice would you give a new artist that wants to get into the game right now, today? What advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_00 26:07

I think the one of the oldest bits of advice that I ever heard, and maybe I even invented it myself, I'm not quite sure, is you know, everything in the music business, right, revolves around one thing to get it going, right? And that one thing is the chorus. Okay? So if you don't have a chorus, you know, that people can attach themselves to, or you don't have a melody line if you're an instrumental artist, if you know, it's you know, it's about the chorus, you know, get that right. And you can build so much around that. Careers get built off the back of choruses. You know, there's so many songwriters out there who can write a great song with a great verse, but when it comes to the chorus, it's like that's the thing that people are gonna kind of identify with, emotionally attach themselves to. So don't forget to focus really on getting that chorus right. If you get that right, so much else in your musical career can fit together around that, right? I mean, obviously, you know, the learnings that are available to artists now are far greater than they've ever been. You know, online resources, organizations such as the Featured Artists Coalition, you know, the Musicians Union, you know, PRS Foundation. There are dozens of organizations, help musicians is another one, who are set up to support and give information, learning, teaching and guidance to to musicians that never existed before. So there's a there's a lot that you can do yourself. You know, there will come a time as an artist when you're gonna want to find a good manager. That a good manager and creating a team around you, you cannot possibly do everything yourself. So you're gonna have to create a great team. And you know, you have to learn how to trust people, but also you have to learn how to be savvy about picking the kind of people that you're gonna have to trust. So that's it that that's extremely important. That hasn't changed. You know, every artist is gonna have to build a team around them. Sure, you can self-release, absolutely, and the more clever you are around that, but the more likely you are to succeed in terms of like think if you're good at thinking up marketing, innovative ways to reach people through social media, whatever. It's a level playing field on that level. You know, you may or may not need a record label, depending on what kind of artist you are, what your position in the marketplace is, who you're trying to reach, you know. If you're a pop artist, you probably do need a record label, you know. But if you're sort of more left field indie artist or working in a very specific genre, then maybe you don't need a record label, and maybe you can figure out how to r find and reach your audience yourself. But you certainly are gonna need more team members though, that's for sure. Doing it on your own out of your bedroom is it's hard, hard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:57

Yeah, I agree, it's very hard, and I do think a lot is around this to be honest, marketing as well, because there's so much competition out there. Taking your point about people making sure that they have a really good chorus when they're writing their music, it's so true. Because me and my friends went out to a festival in the summer, and I remember we were all singing along to this song. None of us could even say any of the words in the verse, but when it comes to the hook, we knew the hook.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

So we were like, yeah, we're like, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

There you go. So it's so true.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

The hook is so essential.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

I think that that is an age-old phenomenon around pop music, you know, people can remember the chorus, but can they remember the verse lyric? Probably not.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

Exactly. Showing off our ages, isn't it, Steven? So is there anything else that you think people should be aware of in the music industry that maybe is not being highlighted at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Anything more that you think you could educate us all on?

SPEAKER_00 29:59

That's not being highlighted at the moment. Um you know, I just think that the importance of live music, I cannot overestimate what that means to the future of artists who want a career in the music business, you know. Um I think live music and that real kind of connection is gonna rise in value, right, for artists as AI has an effect in on the recording side, which is gonna like diminish the value of recorded music. I don't mean that people won't love well recorded music. I just think that you know that there's gonna be so much music. I think, you know, it's like will people still be prepared to pay um, you know, whatever it is,£15 a month for, you know, a good level Spotify subscription? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. You know, I I think you know, I think but but they will be prepared to pay£150 to go and see an artist they absolutely love, you know. And if you can build your career and up to a point where you can sell really meaningfully priced concert tickets and sell enough tickets to make it worth, you know, to make it successful, then that that is, you know, a substantial career for you.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

Yeah. I remember when I was growing up and I was trying to get into the industry music industry, the two things that people used to say, this is the way that you're gonna make money if it was songwriting and live performances concerts, as you're mentioning now. In regards to the songwriting, what does that look like today? Is that still a a good way of people making money, would you say?

SPEAKER_00 31:39

Speaking of somebody who manages songwriters, you know, yes, if you have a hit, but once upon a time when a lot of these records were made up on the wall behind me, you know, the business model was that they would write a lot of songs, they'd be continually writing songs, maybe they'd be getting album cuts, maybe they're getting B-sides of singles, and every once in a while they'd have a s a track which was a single, and with luck it would be a hit. Now, you could do that, you know, once a year, twice a year, and that would be enough to sustain you as a songwriter because you're getting cuts on albums, and people were buying the album and it's got ten tracks on it, you know, only two of them are the s or three of them are singles, right? The other seven tracks are album tracks, but you're being paid as a songwriter equally on those album tracks if people are buying the album because it's divided by ten. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a sustainable business model. Nowadays, because of streaming, people tend to stream the and only the singles. They're not streaming albums, right? So whilst there's a healthy vinyl market, and I'm sat here in a room with 7,000 albums, vinyl albums, or dotted around this room, which I'll show you later, whilst that is still and and a growing, it's come back into fashion and more and more people like to have something physical. Nevertheless, the vast, vast, vast majority is just streaming, right? And you know, unless you have a single streaming multi-multi-million times, you're really not earning much money as a songwriter off the back of that, you know. If you are, you're lucky enough to be that songwriter who has that single that's streaming multi-multi million, then you can earn a lot of money off the back of that as a songwriter. But it is it is tough, tough, tough, you know, and everybody's looking for that lucky break.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

Yes, yes. So, what advice on that note would you give songwriters, specifically just songwriters that are coming into the industry now? Would it be don't have expectations, don't think you're gonna be a superstar and a millionaire overnight, basically. You know?

SPEAKER_00 33:41

Just I mean, be a you're gonna need you're gonna have to have a strategy for keeping yourself alive financially and on the pitch long enough before you have your first hit, right? The you know, if you're a pure songwriter and not the artist, the money from that hit will take a while to come through to you. You know, I mean, publishing royalties don't instantly appear in your bank account, they take a while to come through. So you need to have a strategy around how you're gonna support yourself whilst you're attempting to create writing sessions with people, and you're gonna need to figure out how you can reach out to artists that you can write with, how you can get in the door with them. That's the real challenge, you know, for any songwriter coming in the industry is how can I get in the door with meaningful artists, you know. And you know, you have to think creative ways of doing that, whether it's hitting people up to individually on Instagram and trying to follow things through or work spreading your uh risks out in relationship to uh you know uh working with a lot of baby artists and then hoping one of those baby artists comes through and establishes themselves. Also, how how are you gonna do this? Have you got a studio which you can work in, you know, as a songwriter? Can you play the music as a songwriter? Or you are you a top-line person who's gonna w need to work with somebody who can create the tracks, you know? And how do you find that so there's lots of different angles, you know, for song songwriters who have different sets of skills, you know, it ain't easy, it's a very crowded market. You're gonna have to be very prepared to experience the school of hard knocks, right? Because it's brutal out there. But for those who've got it in their blood and whose the music is just kind of bubbling within them and can't be contained, for those kind of people, they've got to do it. They've got no choice, they just gotta get on with it.

SPEAKER_02 35:32

That's right. Yeah, agreed. You know, they can't stop. And I believe with anything in life, if that is your dream and your passion, just go for it and don't give up. I just have one last question if that's okay, and it's a bit of a cheeky one. Why haven't you written a book?

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Um buy it.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

It's been on the list, and I actually started one about ten years ago, uh, and then kind of got waylaid when I was recording lots of different stories into a voice recorder. Where was I? Antigua. And w I was by the beach and one day I stupidly left the recorder and it got washed out to sea, and I was like, you know what, I'll leave that for a few years. There's a lot of people asking me to do that, and there's a lot of stories that need to be told. And watch this space. Perhaps that's going to happen in the next two or three years.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

Some of us have a lot of wealth of knowledge in a certain subject or field. And I just think, why wouldn't we share that with more people? And I know you do interviews, and I know you have a lot of artists and musicians. You always support them by going to all the gigs and everything. I've known that you've done that for many, many, many, many years. I just think now you should just tell your story because I think you your book would be could be an easily number one bestseller. I think you're under selling yourself now. Just saying.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Much, much appreciated, Michelle. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

You're most welcome. Just to say thank you so much. I really am so shocked by all I'm hearing around AI. But I do appreciate your thoughts around people using it as a tool. A lot of musicians are gonna really appreciate this podcast. They can learn so much. So that's why you need to write that book, Stephen. But anyway, I just want to say thank you. Okay, so many people.