As everyone knows, there are a lot of songs on Spotify, probably more than you can listen to in a hundred lifetimes. I’ve never heard anyone having a problem with that. What we all have a problem with is when AI-generated slop music tracks fill up the pipeline and push legitimate artists out of the […]
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On this week’s episode, you’ll hear how audio plugin developers who assume machine learning is the right tool find the process used by Hannes Andersson and the team at Oeksound genuinely surprising. Hannes is CEO of Oeksound, the creator of Soothe, the dynamic resonance suppressor that became so dominant on Spotify’s Top 50, yet it’s […]
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Song copyright protection for musicians who record ideas with a voice memo at 3am proves nothing in a dispute. That original moment completely unverifiable. On this week’s podcast episode, I speak with Nadim Rahman about Songproof, a dual-blockchain platform that recognizes that musicians needed an irrefutable timestamp at the exact moment inspiration strikes, not after […]
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For the longest time music was placed into pre-determined buckets that pretty much worked. Pop, Hip-Hop, Rock, EDM, Latin, Country, K-Pop, R&B/Soul, Indie/Alternative and Classical have been the buckets that dominated music all over the world. But if you drill down a bit, you see a host of hybrid genres that shows where the excitement […]
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Music industry professionals still betting on major labels to develop artists should know the system has structurally exited that business. On this week’s podcast episode, I break down the data showing UMG and WMG now redirect spending toward catalog acquisitions rather than new careers. . . . . . have made AI licensing deals explicitly […]
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If there’s one thing that most of the music industry agrees on, it’s that songs that are AI-generated should be labeled. The amazing thing is that there’s finally a full industry push to do so. According to the Wall Street Journal, the RIAA and IFPI are leading push to get AI-generated tracks labeled across the world’s streaming services, with […]
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On this week’s podcast episode, mastering engineer Jeff Graves talks about what happens when independent musicians upload masters that are so hot that they lose transient detail the moment streaming platforms apply loudness normalization. Jeff spent two and a half years measuring 214 audio fingerprints across 15 samples per genre to build a 24-stage AI […]
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On this week’s podcast episode, session vocalist Darlene Koldenhoven tells us how her music hit #4 on the Billboard classical crossover chart with no manager or label. The common assumption that a major-label infrastructure is required to chart is exactly what her story dismantles, and she walks through the specific decisions that produced number-one worldwide […]
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We’re all getting tired of the AI slop that’s being handed to us, and it’s even worse when you have to compete with it. One platform where it’s particularly egregious is TikTok, and a new report from Kapwing outlines the problem in detail. We’ll talk about what we’re seeing first, and then I’ll address how […]
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On this week’s podcast episode, I speak with Keith Jopling about what separates artists who last from those who burn out chasing the wrong metrics. Keith spent 25 years inside the business, including time at Spotify, before interviewing 80 artists and bands to write Riding the Rollercoaster. The creative director model he extracted from that […]
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As if artists and bands don’t have enough competition already, AI-generated music has ratcheted the level up to a point that no one could’ve predicted a few years ago. Then the record labels and publishers turn around and sell out their artists by making deals with AI music platforms without the artist’s permission (and not […]
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On this week’s podcast episode, I speak with Dr. Bill Evans, audio scientist, producer, educator, and inventor of the Performance Restoration methodology. Bill believes that drum recording has always involved a painful tradeoff, but it doesn’t have to. Most engineers accept mic bleed as an unavoidable character of a drum sound, questioning whether removing it […]
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Female artists who hire producers risk losing creative control before a single song is released. On this week’s podcast episode, Xylo Aria, founder of Music Production for Women (MPW), tells us how she learned this the hard way, by paying for sessions where male producers overrode her vision, leaving her with music she never put […]
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On this week’s podcast episode, Elliot Easton, guitarist for The Cars and Creedence Clearwater Revisited, takes us through his journey with the band and beyond. Easton looks back at The Cars’ origins, from getting a label deal the old fashioned way, to connecting with famed producer Roy Thomas Baker, to recording the band’s initial albums, […]
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What matters more in the music business, mastering every plugin, or becoming the kind of person people want to hire again? On this week’s podcast episode, I talk with songwriter, producer, engineer, and educator Gary Gray about music licensing, post production, rhythmic integrity, AI, immersive audio, and the character traits that keep people working in […]
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