June 21, 2023 • 60 mins
The Beatles are releasing their final song as a group powered by AI from Peter Jackson. Could this actually be one of the first tasteful post death uses of AI? While, Joe talks about the plight of Black owned record stores and their fight to stay alive. This and More on The Biztape!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Beatles are making one more record with the power of.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
AI and black owned vinyl shops are in trouble.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to the Biz Tape. Welcome to the biz Tape.
You're all things music, business and media podcasts. I'm your host,
Colin McKay with my host Joseph waz A Leski Coast
(00:31):
to Coast as always, coming live from the Honda as.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Live from excuse me, the Toyota Altlus.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Sorry, thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
All right, all right, well.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I'm sorry, all right. Yeah, I was gonna say that
was some Honda I hate. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
The silence was Joe on Honda days.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Uh now, anyway, Uh, the point is that, Okay, we
gotta stop first. Before we started the show, I wanted
to give a shout out weird thing I never thought
I would have to say in my life. I'm not
for abusing alcohol. Just yeah, I just wanted to throw
(01:16):
that out there. If you guys follow us on our
biz tape. Pretty much everywhere. We talked about gen Z yesterday,
who is now as old as I look. I know
I look old and I'm fat, which is not a
good two things together. But the point is is that
I'm both of those things, and I am twenty six,
so I am in gen Z and I'm here to
tell you, like we did last week, gen Z ain't
(01:37):
drinking that much. If you're interested in that story. And
we did a TikTok about it, and people are like,
what do they think that drinking is good? And I'm
like surprised. When Joe was making jokes about avocado toast,
we were also joking that drinking is bad. By the way,
I want to welcome bud Light, our newest sponsor on
the show.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Oh yeah, yeah, let's welcome mister. But how are you today?
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Oh man, do it mister? But dude, can you imagine if?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Like?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Okay? So we went to a side note before we
start our actual music business news. But I went to
Holiday World and Santa Claus, Indiana this weekend.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Santa Claus, Indiana.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Santa Claus, Indiana, so that is themed after you're gonna
guess it, honkah no Christmas and basically honkah no. But
Santa Claus, Indiana is Christmas themed. They just picked the
name cause from what I was reading. And they have
a theme park there called Holiday World, and we went
there and the reason why I thought the bud light
(02:41):
thing was funny, which I think would be really funny,
is that they have all these holiday characters in Holiday World,
and like they're all themed after different holidays, right, And
we thought, I don't know why we thought this was
so funny. Obviously, like Sanna is the mascot of like Santa,
like you know, Christmas World, right, and then there's Safari San,
who is the mascot of like the water park. Okay, fine,
(03:03):
And then there's a kiddy Clause, which is the cat
that is the mascot of Halloween. All right, cool, you're
sensing a theme here, like alliteration whatever. And then there's
Fourth of July World aka Independence Day World and for
US Americans here and it's just George the Eagle, which
I thought was the funniest thing I've ever seen. In
(03:26):
my wife, they were like, all right, we like somebody
in the board meet and was like, I'll give you
two alliterations with kitten claws and Safari Sam, but you
can't mess with George to the eagle. He's too patriotic, right,
So he's he's straight like right, he's just like George.
George is a nationalist, like they're gonna be like you
(03:46):
come up to him, you're like Eddie the Eagle and
you go, actually, it's George and then you like shakes
your hand and you're like, oh, that was kind of weird. Anyway,
The point is is that that's what I imagined Bud
for bud Light would be, would be like bud bud Light.
Sorry all these mascots anyway, Yes, I'm not for under
each drinking. And I'm sorry to tell you people twenty
six year olds are gen Z. That is like right
(04:06):
on the cusp.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah, you're getting old gen Z.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
And then here's the funniest thing. Here's the funniest thing
about the whole thing too. They go with most of
gen Z can't even drink. And honestly, if you want
me to stop dissing on gen Z, then I can
diss on the other generation, which is that's how crazy
the other generations drink, is that we only have five
years of legal drinking, and they're like this is bad.
(04:30):
Like anyway, let's go to our first story after that
recap of me disavowing drinking, which I was like, I
don't drink that much anyway, So it's really funny to
me So let's go to our first story. Joe is
going to start with me, if you're all right with that.
With this little wacky story. Other than being apparently the
(04:51):
conspiracy man on the show with overall giant conspiracies on
the music business is going right, I am also becoming
a I man. But I thought this story was it's
like Mega man, Yeah, like one of the bosses. I
am a AI man.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Don't have a face, right.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
I'm looking for an investment cycle. But like anyway, AI
man me is gonna talk about another AI topic this week,
so buckle up for that. But this is interesting because
we talked about Grimes last week and more of like
the business model and how the business models intriguing. Right,
But I did admit I was like, Grimes is not
the biggest household name, but you know who is Paul McCartney.
(05:32):
So let's talk about this. This caught my eye last
week too, I just didn't have time to talk about it.
Is that AI is going to be used to create
the new and final Asterix business like Beatles song. Right,
the final AI Beatles song is coming to a you
know streaming near you, which you know some debt.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Oh you're gonna say, Final Dark Souls Boss.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
The Final Dark Souls Boss, Paul McCartney, Sir Paul mccartny
is coming to a game store near you. Anyway. The
point is is that the Beatles have a new recording
that's going to come out, and Paul basically announced it
just the other day and he says he's gonna use
AI to create one final Beatles song and it involves
John Lennon, which is why they need to use the
(06:18):
AI for it. So basically he didn't.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Say or they could find him because he's alive.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
That took yeah, okay, all right, and Paul is dead anyway.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
The point is is that McCartney said, Hey, I'm gonna
put one more Beatles song out there. Ringo has made
no statements, by the way, I guess I should get
that out of there, although I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah right, because he just doesn't want to do it.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
No, that would be great.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Anyway, Paul hasn't named what it is, but a lot
of astute fans have basically called out what they think
the song's gonna be and why they're AI ing it,
and it kind of makes a lot of sense if
you're kind of a Beatles buff like me, or an
annoying teenager like I was, who just looked up a
bunch of stuff about the Beatles stuff. In nineteen seventy eight,
(07:14):
Lennon made this song that was called Now and Then,
and that was like a demo song and it's like
him playing the piano. I remember listening to it years ago.
I actually listened to it before the show and I
was like, wow, blast from the past. But that song
was like on a bunch of cassettes that were labeled
for Paul and Lennon like kind of was speculated that
(07:36):
he wanted to get back with Paul and kind of
reunite the Beatles before his death eventually happened, so like
they were on the way apparently is what it's always
been rumored to have a Beatles reunion. And then, you know,
most people do know this, but I guess gen Z
twenty six year olds. Sorry if you don't know John
when was shot in nineteen eighty I don't know why
(07:58):
that was so funny to say.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
That's so bad, I'm just gonna clip that. That's gonna
be the clip?
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Is that of context? Just John Lennon was shot in
nineteen eighty and that it's just me laughing.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
That's just laughter so bad. Oh okay, god, this is
the most unhinged.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Wait do we get to your story anyway? So basically, yeah,
John Lennon was shot that in nineteen eighty and so
he never got to do this reunion song with Paul.
And then apparently Yoko Ono gave McCartney these like tapes
and was like, hey, these were kinda for you, all right,
important to note, like the song is in like really
(08:40):
bad quality, Like it's recorded on a boombox that would
apparently like sat on John Lennon's piano in his New
York apartment, and it's got like you could find the
recording if you're interested in it, look it up on
YouTube again. It's now and then, and it's got like
a lot of noise in it, and like specifically electrical noise,
which if you've ever done anything with audio, just sucks
to get out, especially if it's not like rhythmic, if
(09:03):
it's not like a sixty cycle hum, it's like the
worst to get out of. It's just random noise. But anyway,
that's kind of what they want to do with the
AI is use this to restore this recording and use that,
and Paul I think is going to complete the song.
He basically got the idea because this Peter Jackson documentary
(09:24):
that a lot of people have obviously heard about, which
is Get Back, which is eight hours long, actually used
a bunch of AI, which got Paul's interest in AI
technology apparently. Quote for the documentary, dialogue editor Emil del
de la Rey used custom made AI to recognize the Beatles'
voices and separate them from the background noise, which is
(09:47):
pretty cool because like I mean, you know, for my
post production people out there, I mean I know about
isotope and how to use isotope a good bit, but
it's like it's still got its problems. Which is a
plugin for non audio people and it's not AI. But like, yeah,
that's a really cool thing is that this AI not
only just like oh, filtered out everything that wasn't human dialogue,
(10:10):
it like knew which beatles each one. So they're gonna
use this technology to hopefully restore the song and like
clear out all that noise I'm talking about and maybe
even re record the piano. Who knows, but they've already
used some of it. I actually was privy to see
Paul McCartney in the last year or so, and one
of the things he's been doing on tour is he
(10:31):
does this thing where he does like a isolated vocal
with John Lennon of like I Got a Feeling, and
they like play the video in the background and John
Lennon singing the song and Paul like does the duet
with him on that song while the band plays. And
one of the things that I really noted on there,
because let's be honest, if you don't know the history
of recording, a lot of stuff is like condensed because
(10:52):
of the track limitations. Right. If you've heard four track
E track, that's literally how many tracks they had, right,
So guess what all of it got combined together there?
It'd be like guitars and vocals and drums and piano,
you know what I mean, stuff like that. So it's
really hard to isolate that stuff. So it's cool because
I got to see that and what it sounds like,
and you can actually look that up too. I got
a Feeling, Paul McCartney, I guess twenty twenty two, twenty
(11:15):
twenty three, and you could see how clean John Lennon's
vocal has been, like ripped out of there from clearly
something that's just caught in the middle of a mix,
you know what I mean. And there's been this technology
for a while, but like there's been issues with like
making it clean and a lot of artifacting and just
kind of dealing with those artifacts. But it seems that
(11:35):
this AI is getting smart enough that it can train
on different sounds, which is really cool to have, especially
for like archival reasons, right, as well as like you know,
you could do stuff like another use they use this
AI for as they use it for surround mixes of Revolver,
and so they could isolate instruments and stuff like that. So,
(11:56):
like I said, they do the thing where it'd be
like four track a track and a lot of this
stuff can't like mono, which means one channel of audio right,
which means all the instruments are all together. And then
they did stereo remasters, which means two channel like a
left and right right, and that a lot of the
time that was just pretty lazy half the time in
the sixties and seventies because they're like we're just stuck
(12:16):
with mono. We basically have to turn this you know,
go kart into a car basically, and they tried their best,
but now we have AI technology that's like, hey, we
can strip all this stuff out actually, which is pretty
cool to be honest. Yeah, one of the like going
back to the song specifically, the song is actually, like
I said, if you're a nerd like me or annoying teenager,
(12:38):
which seems to be a very cross pollinated genre. Basically,
this song has been on the radar of many fans
for years, especially Beatles fans, because like you know that
history I told you about where they were like this
was for Paul from John and they were going to
do it, and then John's life was tragically cut short,
you know. But also the Beatles were supposed to kind
(12:59):
of have a recording session for it in nineteen ninety five,
which is the last time they released new material, which
is pretty interesting, and then they didn't do it, supposedly
because George Harrison thought the song was quote fucking rubbish,
which is the most English thing I've ever heard in
my life, so he didn't want to do it.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Whoa was that Ai? Paul?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah, John, No, Paul would be like fucking rubbish anyway.
But the point is is that anyway, The point is
is that like he didn't want to do it an
important caveat, like I said, is I think Paul is
going to probably finish the rest of the song, literally
becoming probably one of the last McCartney lenin you know,
(13:41):
kind of or Lennon McCartney published tracks ever to be created,
and he's going to do it because obviously you have
the AI aspect of it, right, but also this song
only has a chorus right now, so it kind of
is like songwriting, right, like like old McCartney Lennon songwriting
where it's like he made the chorus and he's gonna
make the verses right anyway, Like I'll put in this
(14:05):
in here. But like McCartney kind of goes on a
bit about like what it was really like inspiring to
him as an artist to deal with, which is that
like he said, Peter Jackson quote was able to extract
John's vocals from a rope little bit of cassette. We
had John's voice and a piano and he could separate
them with AI. Basically he said, quote that's the voice,
(14:26):
this is the guitar. To lose the guitar. So when
we came to what would be making the last Beatles record.
It was a demo that John had made when we
were able to take John's voice, get it pure through
this AI, and then we can mix the record as
you normally would. So it gives you sort of leeway,
which is honestly, like, as much as I crap on
AI is the cool part of AI, right, is the
(14:47):
ability to have this you know, non human aspect that
could have the precision to cut out specific audio samples
or bits right that that is insane. So the technology
is cool anyway, and I think it is and I
can talk a little bit more about that, but let's
get into kind of the ethics of this. Joe, I
(15:09):
was a little bit curious about this. How do you
feel about the idea of like John Lennon being like
I almost resurrected right with this AI, if that makes sense,
Like the idea of being like, oh, okay, let's rip
his vocals out. It is him, it is singing right.
(15:29):
It feels like he maybe intended the song for Paul, right.
But do we get a bad taste in our mouth
from being like, well, they don't get a decision in
this because they're dead.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
I personally don't, because well, first off, I think people
forget that there are dead artists that labels and teams
and families of the artists have put out like songs
and records and whole catalogs of material that they had
(16:00):
banked up that they never would think would see the
light of day. And like the consent aspect of that
is still heavily debated for sure. Like for example, Prince.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Right and the back catalog, Yeah, he has.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
The Prince has literally a whole vault of like I
think I think someone like went through, Like there's like
a person who's like a keeper of the Prince vault.
I'm pretty sure they went through and it's like over
it's like a hundred thousand plus songs, right, It's like something.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Hundred thousand is insane number, but I'm pretty sure it's
it is a ten thousand, it's I think it's somewhere
like that. It's like at least like it's in the
thousands of songs. I know that because the thing with
Prince is that like it's he had the studio in
his basement.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Fill it's enough to fill a room of like material
and and records and stuff like that, And I think,
like he don't, I mean, you tell me if I'm
wrong here, Colin. But didn't he record on tape as well,
like a lot of his recordings, Yeah, a lot of physical.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, And so that's be interesting, right, Like in the
same way, a lot of them are on tape, and
probably they I mean, thankfully Prince was a little bit
more advanced in technology than a cassette that John Lennon
put on a boombox, right, but like, yeah, a lot
of them are would required to be archivally like recovered,
if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
For sure, And like Prince is definitely in a different
position of like he his whole thing was he loved
produced out demos, whereas I think, you know, John didn't
care if he you know, John would be the type
of guy to throw down his iPhone and like this
is an iPhone commercial, now throw down his iPhone and
hit that voice memos, you know, and just like let
(17:45):
it ride pretty much.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
But I could see that.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I think, like I personally don't see a problem with this,
mostly because it seemed like John did want these songs,
I mean, potentially these songs to be made, and I
think like ultimately, like Yoko even understood that like these
(18:09):
were for Paul, right, and so it's up to Paul
if he wants to do this or not. And I
think Paul has I think out of all of like
the post like death releases, this has more consent than
eighty percent of them. That's true, you know, in my opinion,
(18:31):
because of that reason, And like I also think too,
like how many times have we, like through the decade,
it's been like, man, I wish I can make this
vocal sound cleaner, or like in record archival situations, been
like man, I wish that we could like clear up
these historical documents and tapes to figure out what's going on, right,
(18:56):
And now we have the technology to do that.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I definitely think you're right about that. And like, one
thing I want to hit on this is that it
feels more respectful because of the context and the intention, right.
But at the same time, I think one of the
important uses of AI, and one of the distinctions in
this case is that it's AI with a human element.
It's AI as a tool used to help human creativity
(19:22):
and you know, innately technological problems that were you know,
a huge problem still now but also back in the day.
So I think like that's a huge different context here
than being like, Oh, I had this AI scan, I
had like imagine this like going to prints. Right. Imagine
if it's like, hey, we got an AI to scan
(19:44):
all of Prince's like unreleased records, and like we got
all thousand songs and then all the songs that you
already know, and the AI is going to start making
songs in the style of prints. Right. I feel like
that would be way more of a place of like
disrespectful than this, right, because it feels like there was
(20:04):
an intention. It feels like the human element has remained intact,
which is that, Hey, John wants you to sing this
song with him. And I'm sure even you know, if
John was like here today, like let's say you just
magically came from the afterlife down right, Well, first we'd
have to explain a couple things to him. Second, we'd
have to be like, hey, John.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
What would you explain to John Lennon?
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Man? So many things?
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Uh would you explain to him the lore of you?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Gioh because this guy, this is a guy named Kaybo. Right. Anyway,
The point is is that like, no, like we'd have
to explain John Lennon like everything, right. Imagine John Lennon
is here with us. But like, basically one of the
things I think John would probably not like have problems
with if I like assume it's just being like, hey,
(20:56):
we have this magic technology that cleans up your vocals now,
right and makes it sound better, and you already recorded
this thing. Can we still use it? He'd probably be like, yeah,
use the technology to make my voice sound better, right,
Not necessarily like hey, John, we're replacing you with a
giant machine, right, It's more of like, hey, we're going
(21:18):
to take your existing vocals and sweeten them now. I
wonder obviously you kind of get into like a ship
a theseus argument here, which is like how much do
you change before it becomes fundamentally different than what it was,
Like if you add a you know, a plank of
wood to a new ship, how much pieces of wood
(21:39):
do you change out before it's a new ship kind
of thing? In the same way, I wonder if like
it's like you reconstructed John's voice and we made it
better or whatever, and it's like, we, okay, is this
still the same? You know what I mean? I would
imagine that they would keep a lot of the same
human elements there, right, And that that is one thing
with AI that seems like second nature, but you would
(21:59):
be surprised that people a little bit go overboard with
which is like, oh, let's just pitch correct John a
little bit. Hey, let's you know, like maybe change this
phrase a little bit with this technology with.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Ass put auto tune on John, Oh my god, make
him sing a teeth paint song. There is like it's
gotta be so sick.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
There is there's somebody on TikTok. If I find it,
I will shout it out. But like literally it's a
TikTok and it's like if the Beatles made music in
twenty twenty three and it has like the same kind
of Injro as DJ Khaled, but it goes the Beatles
and it's just like auto tuned. And I was like,
that is the funniest thing I've heard. But the point
is it's like, yeah, like I think definitely the way
(22:42):
they handle this is very important as well as just
the objective of the technology, right, Like they are using
this in a restorative fashion. They want they seem to
want to keep John's vision intact. And then Paul, who
is historically his only big co writer, you know what
I mean. I'm sure I know, John's written with other people,
(23:03):
but like, you know, the most notable person that people
would expect, like notice everything about John Lennon. Paul is
the other person writing the other half of the song.
Like this is the most almost respectful we have gotten
with AI yet, right, Yeah, And I just wanted to
hit on like this technology is such a different thing
because I think people are used to and oh my god,
(23:27):
Colin singing the praises of AI, here we go. You're
finally here baby, after like four episodes of me making
fun of it. Anyway, the point is is like this
is a fundamentally different technology from a lot of stuff
that we know and love today, which is like, you know,
we're used to the idea, and I think especially people
were in the EDM community or in the electronic community,
are used to the idea of like, oh, let's take
(23:47):
vocals out of here and spice it and do all
this stuff. Right, That's a skill and it takes usually
a lot of work to like cleanly splice out vocals
out of like a song. Yeah, you can't find the
stems a lot, right, And if you do, a lot
of the stems are derived from trying to separate them
and they're not as clean. And if you want to
(24:08):
know something interesting, and if if you like want to
think about this, if you know songs that are like
heavily sampled, for instance, like has a crap ton of samples,
go find where the samples are in the songs and
where are the samples? Most of the time it's where
that part is alone. And you know why, because they
can't splice out the rest of it, right, Like, Like
(24:30):
Daft Punk's a really good example. Like I was listening
to Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, right, and I forgot that
the thing with harder, Better, Faster, stronger is not that
you know. Usually Daft Punk do a things where it's
like here's a sample from here, here's the sample from here,
here's a sample from here, and they like construct it
all at once. But Herder, Better, faster, stronger is this song? Uh,
(24:52):
it's called Cola Bottle Baby and it's from the seventies
and it's literally that song just like up with maybe
like two samples on top of it. And I guarantee
you when they were making that song, they were probably like,
we could change this part of it or do something,
and they technologically could not, right, which is the interesting
part about this technology is to have the aspect of
(25:15):
an AI a machine that you could train to take
out and remove things from audio, Which is where I
kind of predict that some of this AI technology will
end up eventually. Is I think a lot of people
think all or nothing with AI technology, which I've kind
of hit on before. They think, oh, AI will be
here and it will write and create and make all
(25:37):
new music and you're like, yeah, But also there's like
a middle ground to that. I'm like, I brought it
up before. There's a lot of AI mastering that exists,
for instance, and the mixing process after you send it
to get a master, and so it's all level and
everything that a lot of that is automated. Now another
thing that.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Which arguably is a good thing great.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
I think it gives more to rule is an accessibility
where you don't have to find an expert necessarily and
you could submit a master at three in the morning
and get one back at three thirty. You know what
I mean. Yeah, but that's like the beauty of AI.
And That's what I'm saying, is like I think people
forget and rightfully so in some ways I think people
think AI we should worry about it because it's a
(26:20):
human substitute for different parts of the thing. And I go, well, also,
AI can be just a tool, not a human substitute, right,
In addition to human creativity, it can aid and you
know help. I always said aid in a bet, like
it's a crime. It can aid in a bet human creativity.
But like, yeah, I think this is like one of
(26:41):
the more interesting cases kind of the same way the
grime situation is, where grimes is more about like the
legality of it and how to almost push forward with
AI in terms of a legal like money sense, And
this is more of what I feel like is a
more realistic use of AI that it feels respectful to
(27:03):
the human craft, let's say, right, because it's literally just
aiding Paul McCartney to write with his friend who's you know,
been dead for forty three years, if that makes sense,
which is kind of amazing at the end of the day,
like for me to even be able to say that sentence.
But you know, I think I think that obviously this
(27:24):
is a very cherry picked example. At the same time,
I mean, the Beatles are very well known. The story
of like John and Paul is very well known. The
story of John's tragic death is very well known. I
think there are other more small time and more intricate
examples that could use AI as technology and not as
a human replacement that we haven't even been able to
(27:46):
start yet because of the hubba bloo around AI being like, oh,
we could replace all of humanity with music with AI,
And I'd be like, nah, you know, why don't we
do a little bit of both, because at the end
of the day, the AI has no got to replace
human touch yet in my opinion, And I think Joe
you would agree with that as well.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yes, I would one hundred percent agree. I'd also fully
transparently we use some of these AI tools to help
produce her podcast.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Oh absolutely, Yeah, it's like one of my favorite things
Jesus explored.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, it's like it's it's really fun to kind of
like we kind of both me and Colin use this
podcast as kind of like a testing ground for like
a lot of this new technology, because otherwise we wouldn't
be able to use it for our other projects. And
I have to say, like some of the tools that
we have been able to use have been pretty incredible,
(28:45):
and like it's it's shown me that like personally that
this is very much it's it's a lot different than
the hype around n f ts and uh like a bitcoin,
I feel like because it's like this is something more
tangible that like people are getting something in return, like
(29:09):
like of doesn't feel like we reinvented the wheel, but
like some no, I well, it's hard to say that
because like I do, I do feel like we have
hit a new threshold in human invention. But I don't
(29:33):
know if it's I don't know, you know, like I don't.
I don't think we will know until like ten years
down the line, but it does. I mean, all things
are pointing to it. Is it's happening.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, we'll have like the Beatles album me and you
will have to find Sarah Cotter. These are all the
things that are possible in the AI world.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
It's true, it is all possible. I do think that,
you know, it is it's a tool at the end
of the day, and tools can be used for good
and tools can also be used for evil, right, And
I think that I feel like most people are going
(30:18):
to side more with like human creativity, but I also
do think like the the availability of like adding the
like sprinkling AI throughout these like creative endeavors is going
to be really really interesting to see, yeah, and experience
in our lifetimes. And I mean it truly could solve
(30:43):
so many issues with just like so many problems that
we have in the world. Just like I think the
biggest thing is managing data, right, I think that that's
like it's going to be so harshly utilized there. I
think where it gets murky is when you start hooking
(31:06):
it up to military systems perhaps.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
But sure that's under our domain of our podcast.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
We'll just do with net. Yeah, yeah, all hail sky
net records.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
A different podcast is gonna have to deal with sky
Net and we'll have to deal with sky net records. Joe,
tell me about what you've been reading up on.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, so breaking news, everybody breaking news.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
We're anti alcohol. Sorry, I'm gonna hit that into the ground.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Well, but also my winchled wiper fluids are low and
I have just.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Show that the car police. Tell me you were like
in the middle of talking run this is kind of dirty.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
No. I definitely looked, and I looked down and it
was like Winchle wiper fluids needed And I was like, great,
but no, the real story that we were talking about.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Joe needs an oil change anyway, I keep going is.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
That black owned record stores are in trouble essentially, and
what I mean by that is that they've actually been
in pretty harsh decline as of recently. And what's really
interesting about that is the fact that records have come
back so much when it comes to like selling physical
(32:25):
media in music. So this is an article written by
Billboard where they follow a man named Toboggo Tbengo Benito.
I might have butchered that, so sorry. But Benito started
his first brick and mortar record store in Atlanta in
(32:47):
nineteen ninety six, and at the time, he says, quote,
there were about four hundred to five hundred black owned
record stores around the country, and there were a lot
of conferences. When I came in, the senior store owners
took me under their wing and showed me how the
business operated. Benino's still in physical retail, according to Billboard
(33:08):
twenty seven years later, running dbs sounds but the pool
a black owned record stores has been in like decimated, essentially,
falling to around seventy according to his count, So there's
like about eighteen to twenty one hundred independent record stores
(33:32):
in the US, which means that black owned outlets now
represent just a tiny, tiny portion of that. And what
basically the Billboard states is that the biggest thing impacting
the situation is honestly systemic gaps when it comes to
(33:56):
like black businesses in general. It's not just record stores, right,
It's a lot of different situations. The biggest one. Some
of the hurdles quote, some of the hurdles facing black
record stores are systemic, such as the racial wealth gap,
gingrification bias in the loan application process, which I would
(34:19):
actually argue is probably the biggest one right now. And
what's unfortunate now is like getting a business loan, I
feel like today is almost thirty times harder than it was,
like I would even argue like five years ago, just
because the amount of inflation that we've experienced, and also
(34:44):
trying to get a business loan in the music industry,
a lot of banks are not down for it, right.
You kind of need angel investors in a lot of
this stuff, and it's really really difficult. But in two
thousand and one, he joined with more than twenty other
black owned stores to create the FAM's Coalition which is
(35:07):
Forever a music store, and they are intent on gaining
more support from the music industry, and they are basically
trying to get financial assistance as well as advocating for
black owned record stores to get exclusive records. And for example,
(35:28):
the biggest one that helped these stores was actually the
new Beyonce record, which Colin. Did you hear about this
at all, like with the record release of the of Renaissance, No,
it's what's interesting. I didn't hear about it either, but
I feel like it's such an important part of the
(35:50):
story for this record. Basically, Beyonce's team sent the record
early to a bunch of black owned records stores and
allowed them to sell the record a week before the
official launch date of the record.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
So yeah, it was huge they say it. It was
the It was like sent out through the coalition and
it basically had there's at the time, there's twenty six stories.
Now it's at twenty two. But they sold more than
one thousand copies of Renaissance combined, and according to Marquita
(36:29):
Rodriguez quote, that was huge for us. So like these
businesses are very much trying to soak in as much
as of this money as they can, like these vinyl
cells are so essential for their survival. Essentially, Yeah, a
lot of people might consider one thousand records to not
(36:51):
be a lot, but when you do the math and
you're like, oh, this is Beyonce renaissance. Some of these
record stores might have been selling the record for seventy
to one hundred dollars. Some of them probably had box
sets that had a bunch of like three hundred dollars
worth of merch and stuff that you could sell as well.
(37:12):
And so this type of release really kind of sparked
this idea within the coalition, and since then they've been
trying to kind of like approach record labels and artists
teams and being like, hey, you should release this way.
(37:32):
You should give us the ability to sell your record
a week before it's released. It gains a bunch of
hype during that time. It helps us out, it helps
you out, and there you go another interesting situation when
it comes to kind of the music that they are selling.
(37:55):
The problems that a lot of these black businesses are
running into is that when it comes to like R
and B and hip hop, there's a lot of records
that just aren't pressed for vinyl, especially in the rap genre.
And the reason that is is because it's basically, I
(38:18):
don't know, It's like the genre of rap is very
much online based, and they market heavily online, and so
they don't have a lot of physical items and a
lot of times they don't even have a lot of
merch and so when they're trying to build up HiPE,
they're mostly using their money from streaming royalties and appearances
(38:38):
in order to kind of funnel into like music videos
and online content in that kind of thing. But what's
interesting about that, at least from my perspective, is that
a lot of rap shows and we've even covered this
on the podcast, are struggling to get hard ticket sales
and have struggled for like a long time, like really since,
(39:04):
like I want to I want to argue, like the
nineties where like rap was like really really taken off
into the forefront, right, Yeah, eighties, nineties, and like especially
in the live music realm, because that's how you got
to experience that music. And now since like things have
(39:24):
changed and like things have moved online, a lot of
these artists are just really embracing that format, but they're
kind of they're kind of neglecting like a prime target
audience that they could be making money from, because, as
Billboard points out, a lot a high percentage of people
who buy records don't even own a record player.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah, we talked about that artists literally.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
It's yeah, So it's it's kind of insane that a
lot of these records are not like are are like
these these albums are not getting pressed by these creators.
And it Billboard even points out like artists such as
like Tyler of the Creator and Kendrick Lamar have sold
(40:11):
insane amounts of vinyl more than half a million physical
units a piece last year according to Luminate, and many
major rappers still don't release actual LPs. So like in
the exam that, for example, in twenty twenty two had
no physical component, including a pair of Drake releases Little
(40:35):
Dirks and twenty and Polo G's Hall of Fame, Drake
is not making vinyl.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
That is very strange here, I'd never thought of that.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
It's dude, if Drake made vinyl, he would be another billionaire,
I don't know, trillionaire at this point. Like, it's it's
kind of wild that they're not like fully utilizing this
space because people will buy it. People. I mean, like
(41:07):
Kendrick and Tyler both proved that people are willing to pay.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
It's it's interesting because like if you look up by genre,
for instance, what sells the most volume for vinyl, Like
and we can get into this too, is that fifty
one percent of it is rock music, right, and the
second most is R and B and hip hop And
(41:31):
that said around seventeen percent, and that's from twenty to
twenty one numbers, right, So it's not like there isn't
a market, But there is one thing you did point
out to me that I haven't really thought about. It's
like a lot of people that buy vinyl for rapping,
like hip hop. It's like historical vinyl, you know what
I mean, Like I don't like or it's.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Like it's like an old artist or it's.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Weirdly obscure artists, like more obscure than like Drake. Like
I'd be like, oh an MF Doom on vinyl, you
know what I mean? Like Okay, But then like I
don't hear like a lot of being like oh yeah,
let's get Drake on vinyl, but like hit that first
number that that was Honestly, one of the things that
I thought about, like first, when we were talking about
black owned businesses struggling. It's just the just sadly, you know,
(42:18):
the market with it is extremely whitewashed, just because fifty
one percent of it is rock rock music. Fifty one
percent of his rock music, which is his you know,
didn't start out this way, but it's now historically a
whitewash genre, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
But what's so crazy about that, Colin is like it
like we've even it's it's been proven that like rock
indie music right now even is not selling well, it's
not it's not doing as well as it was like
in the early two thousands, uh or even during the
vinyl resurgence of like the twenty tens. And so when
(42:54):
it's we're getting into like modern music and pop music,
it's crazy to see like pop records like adel being
on shelves but then not having a Drake record. Yeah,
well absolutely, and like because it's like Drake is the
biggest rap artist ever.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
I mean, we talked about on the show. Drake was
the artist of Spotify of the twenty tents. He got
more streams than any other artists in the world by far,
like by a significant margin too, and so like it
is weird to be like, why isn't Drake like a
Vinyl king, you know what I mean? Why? I could
totally see some people being like, hey, when we buy
(43:35):
Drake on Vinyl, I'm a really big fan. But I
will say the thing with Vinyl is that, at the
same time very it kind of reminds me of video
game sales a lot of way. Vinyl goes after Wales
a lot. Yeah, And what I mean by Wales is like,
who will spend you know, my Vinyl budget is five
hundred dollars every two months, you know what I mean? Yeah,
(43:57):
And they will cater to those kind of people and
go like, well.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
And those people are the people you want, because you'd
rather have a small group of people paying a lot
than a large number of people paying very little in
some cases.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Yeah, And that's kind of the thing, is like if
you can keep curtailing to this. And I think Vinyl
struggles with some things too, which is that like, Vinyl
has this kind of like thing that I personally disagree with.
It's just different sounding, it's not superior sounding, but there
is this like predicate that it is, And to be honest,
(44:33):
a lot of that community, and you can see it
in the rock numbers here are going to these albums
that are supposed to be like mythically high fi albums, right,
And what's weirder is like what I find is it's
like even rock albums that are like sold today or
like blues albums that like are not They're just regular recordings, right.
(44:53):
They're not like Steely Dan, you know, level recordings where
there's some like high five. The people would just assume,
because they're in that genre and they're on vinyl, that
this is the way to listen to it, right, and
they will buy the vinyl because of that. I don't
really see that a lot with R and B and
hip hop, which sucks because, like I mean to be honest, like,
if you want to get in there, I'm gonna piss
(45:14):
some people off here. If you want to get in
the real nitty gritty here, you can get really really
really clean samples from things digitally, way cleaner than recording
a guitar. It sounds way cleaner if you're using a
nice digital sample that's been sampled very well, right, that's
more hi fi half the time. Yeah, so I think
(45:35):
it's interesting that that has not translated to the R
and B and hip hop genre because I to be honest,
in some ways it's a more high fi genre like yeah, well,
and also it's just like there, I feel like it
even kind of would cycle into itself of hip hop
being such a huge mecha for producers as well as
(46:00):
like when it comes to like chopping and sampling things,
like it's such a hard like historically DJs and producers
hip hop producers have like taken these records and like
chop them up and they're vinyl records that they use
on digitally distributed albums.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Literally, it's like it could you could just cycle it
back in And honestly, I'm I'm I'm kinda I'm seeing
a little bit of it, but honestly, I'm and I look,
I I'm gonna get more heat for this.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
I like a good idiom. I like it. I like
a good yeah right. I like it if it's well
mixed and digital stuff. But for me, if you're spinning
vinyl and you're fucking chopping vinyl live, holy shit, that
that is so cool. And so I'm honestly I've seen
(46:53):
a little bit of a resurgence with it, like boiler
room style and everything where people have been chopping vinyl
again more live. But honestly, I hope it continues because
that would maybe be a boost to a lot of these,
uh like black owned businesses especially who have a lot
of the forethought and community to go, Oh, you want
really good samples, here's this obscure commodore's record, you know
(47:13):
what I mean, Like, who have the actual like insight
compared to just like all these like white indie dudes
that are like, do you want pine Grove three? But
like I mean, not no shit against pine Grove, but
just saying like I feel like that's another way that's marketable.
And then lastly, like I said, like rock is fifty
one percent of the genre, like not, I mean be
real with y'all. I mean these might just be a
(47:36):
rock's fifty percent of the genre. It's historically white genre.
This literally might be you know, I'm not even gonna
say might this has systematic racism vibes Like this has
people who are like, oh, I want to go to
my vinyl shop or whatever, but they don't want to
go to a vinyl shop that appears to be quote
unquote too black or something like that, you know what
I mean. So I think that music or yeah or
(47:57):
has a different focus than their like regular rock community,
and like, I'm sure, you know, these stores are fucking great,
you know what I mean. They're well curated, they're well
put together, they know their shit. But then literally they'll
just see, you know, people that don't look like them
who walk into the store, and they'll be like, nah,
I'm not going to shop there, you know what I mean.
And that's honestly probably one of the worst parts of
(48:18):
this whole thing is I you know, in the world
we live in, you cannot rule out the systematic racism
that is a part of this. So I think, you know,
I'm hoping there will be an uptick, especially for it,
because I do think the vinyl community, in my opinion,
is very whitewashed right now. I think I see you
in some ways that we could see diversification. I'm very
(48:39):
glad that these you know, chops are banding together, and
it seems that artists are like Beyonce, are actually trying
to support them in a very clinical and also easy
bonus way to give to these communities, you know, like
to be like Hey, I'm going to give you this
a week early. Right, that's a palpable you know, perk
(49:01):
of shopping at this store, right, is that Like if
I was a big vinyl head and I wanted, you know,
vinyl the day it came out or something like that,
I might be like, after I got Beyonce's thing, I'd
be like, I should stick around here, I should follow
them on social media. Maybe they're going to have another
thing like this, you know what I mean. And that's
how you sell and keeping people's minds is because to
be honest, like, especially with vinyl, there's a lot of
(49:23):
big box stores where people just order vinyl or they
order it from the website of something like that. But
the communal aspect of these record stores is still very
important at the end of the day, and I think
there is a market for it now where we almost
see this counter revolution of wanting the old timey experience
of vinyl itself, but also the community around vinyl. And
(49:45):
there's nothing more communal about a vinyl experience than being
at the record store and talking to other people and
being like, hey, what are you listening to? You know, hey,
what do you recommend? Around the counter? You know what
I mean, what have people when buying that kind of stuff,
and so like that's why it's important to do that
and especially to support people, you know, of every race,
creen color, because that creates diversity in the vinyl community.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
Yeah, I think I think people live. I think a
lot of people, especially vinyl heads, live in a state
of fear when it comes to new things. And I
I really oh got a flag file.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
No.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
I think if you're a vinyl head, to try to
support a black owned vinyl shop if there's one in
your town. Unfortunately, Uh, one of the there's like three
cities that this place named for places that don't have that.
In Nashville is one of them.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Literally, I was gonna say, I don't think I can
name one.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah, it's like it's so horrible because like it just
it would douce I I think think it would do great.
I think if it if it hit the right market
in Nashville, it would really soar. But that is the
biggest thing. And you know, there there is another thing
that you know, this article didn't mention of, like potential
(51:15):
issues that business owners are running into when they're starting
their business up. And I think one of the biggest one,
honestly is land. I think securing land is so difficult
for vinyl shops, like because otherwise you have to take
over a vinyl shop that was already a vinyl shop,
(51:35):
or you're revitalizing a house or something to that extent.
But then you know, con I don't know if you've
had any problems like this, but I mean every time
I'm going to a record store in Nashville or Tennessee
in general, it's always like kind of in the outskirts
(51:56):
of like the its spots, right, you have to like
really track them down. Yeah, And it's it's so difficult
to just have accessible records store.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
The worst part about records it, you know, it's kind
of it's it's weirdly cickle. Goal is that you need
space to storm. You know, they're big things. They add
up very fast than space. I only have a you know,
I maybe have like seventy eighty and I feel like
I'm like, ah, what am I gonna do with all
these Like I gotta place them right, and it's a
(52:29):
lot of space and keep them organized too. You need
more space, so, especially in like a city environment where
you know the rates for a mortgage or any kind
of business. Loan are so high right now and everything,
it's it's not worth it for a lot of them
to try to get this land in an inner part,
you know what I mean of the city that would
be very high traffic. But that's kind of what you
(52:50):
need for vinyl out of the time, or you need
incredibly good advertising, you know what I mean. So yeah,
I I do feel for them. I hope that, you know,
some of these artists can come together and help them,
and I hope this coalition kind of brings to light
more about the need for these record stores to be around,
(53:13):
be a part of the community, and expose culture to
different people of all reads, crisis and color, you know
what I mean, from their background, from whoever's background. You know,
that's the point of these places is to be a
beacon of hope for a lot of people who are like, hey,
I'm not represented in these other places, Like I am
(53:33):
not like there's nothing even related to whatever I've listened
to in my life here at this record store. But
in some of these places it could be like, yeah,
I know exactly what you're talking about. It's culture at
the end of the day, that's what music is. It's culture.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
Yeah, the three cities Birmingham, Nashville, and Charlotte, which unfortunately
is not surprising. Yeah, right, but being that they're all
in the South. But yeah, it's tough. But yeah, don't
shop at Amiba. There's so many other places.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
That's very la.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
Two other things, be your own person, our favorite time
of week. What have you been listening to?
Speaker 1 (54:20):
Well in the world of the way, Honestly, there's arguments
about album artwork, and you're gonna have to follow me
because it will lead me to my pick that I've
been listening to because it's been stuck in my head.
There's been calls for the last like twenty years that
album artwork has been getting thrown thrown, thrown down the
hill because we've gone away from physical media. It's just
(54:42):
a small picture, all that kind of stuff. It's gotten
worse and worse in a lot of the ways. And
I know when it started to get worse, and it's
Creed's weathered. That is one of the worst album pictures
I've ever seen in my life. Basically, it's like if
in my basic photoshop class they told me to make
an album cover for Creed and I did it. Ironically,
(55:04):
but it's two thousand and one. They're not doing it ironic.
They're not doing it ironically.
Speaker 2 (55:10):
It's okay, can I explain what's on here? Sure?
Speaker 1 (55:13):
Tell them what it is.
Speaker 2 (55:15):
So the thing is, there's a lot happening. First off,
it's my favorite, my favorite thing about early two thousands
graphic design.
Speaker 1 (55:25):
It's always orange. It's always orange and brown.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
It's textured. It's overly textured, sharp, gross, grungey, disgusting.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
It's two thousand and one, grunges over.
Speaker 2 (55:37):
Yeah, it's it's it's like orange and gray. That's the two.
That's the color palette we're dealing with with a little
bit of red because the moon behind this tree.
Speaker 1 (55:48):
The blood moon from Zelda is in the background, yep.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
Is in the background. There's a man chiseling their faces
into a tree. But it looks so hideous party that
it's insane.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
You know those like iPhone apps that are like fuse
two pictures. Somebody took like a very sharp textured tree
and then fused three pictures of creed together into the tree.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
Yes, that is what it looks like. Then like badly
color edited everything together. But yeah, it looks like they're
on they're on a very rocky terrain with two trees.
There is a tree in the distance and a man
chopping the tree down. Wow, the blood moon.
Speaker 1 (56:33):
Which would I don't know, may maybe it could be
like a deep observation of like hurting yourself or cutting yourself,
and then you remember it's crete, so it's not that.
But the point is is that I really think it's
like the funniest song I've heard. It got it was
getting big on TikTok and I hadn't heard this Creed
song and it's called One Last Breath, And I think
(56:53):
it's the funniest song because it's just it. All these
songs at this point in they're eight two thousands are
so over dramatic that it's funny. It's like they're seeing
like this feels like this feels like if Creed made
Phantom of the Opera, That's what this song feels like,
where it has the same mello dramaticism as Phantom of
the Opera, where it's like I've seen you for three seconds,
(57:14):
I'm in love with you, you know, and now it's
like hold me.
Speaker 2 (57:19):
Now, I'm six feet on the.
Speaker 1 (57:22):
Ground and you're like, what are you talking about? Anyway?
It's so bad, it's good. I enjoy it. Just the
whole album artwork really sells it. And again I've talked
about it on the show. People keep trying to do it.
Stop trying to make these bands unironically be like but
they're actually good. Though you can enjoy things, that's fine,
(57:43):
they're not good. Same thing with Nickelback. They're not good.
They're funny, they're fun, they're not good. Anyway, thank you
for entering Collins Hate period of the podcast. I've had
like four hot takes in it. Joe, what have you
been listening to? I've been six feet under ground?
Speaker 2 (58:03):
Your my clipped so hard? My ears? I dude, I'm
in such a huge music rut right now. But I've
been listening a lot to uh and I think I
said it last week twin Devendra Banhart super sick track
single for his newest record coming out soon. But also
(58:28):
I've been listening a lot to Everything Perfect, which is
an album by James Ivy. I'm obsessed with this dude.
He makes amazing music. This was an album that I
kind of went into and I was like, I like it,
but it's a little different from his other stuff, So
I'm gonna proceed cautiously, and it just like when you
(58:50):
listen to it over and over, it like really, it's
like a slow burn for sure. It like it hooks
into you just like I mean, honestly they have and
with Phoebe Bridgers for me off for first record, it
just took a lot. It took a lot of lessons
before I was like, this is amazing.
Speaker 1 (59:08):
You were sitting there and you were like, Phoebe, can
you take me? Anyway? That's the next track after that
on that Creed album. Keep going.
Speaker 2 (59:18):
You know, I wouldn't be surprised if Phoebe does a
Creed cover soon.
Speaker 1 (59:22):
My Sacrifice Boy genius. Yeah, god, so bad, but so good. Anyway, Well,
that's cool. I like that. I'm just gonna be in
this Creed hell hole at the same time where I
just think.
Speaker 2 (59:36):
Well, I'm just gonna be in my car calling I
forgot you were in the car the whole time. I'm
just gonna be in my car.
Speaker 1 (59:44):
Guys, thanks for listening to the biz tape. You're all
thinking of music, business and media podcast. We sure do
appreciate you out there. You want to check us out
on our socials at the business pretty much everywhere. As
Joe's hinted, we've been throwing out content pretty much everywhere
on TikTok and Instagram, So if you want to see
more of that in our beauty full faces, follow us
there as well as if you want to support the show,
rate the show, bad good ever helps us out in
(01:00:06):
the end. Be truthful, folks, It's one thing you can
do with this lifetime anyway. Thank you so much for
your support. We appreciate y'all, and we'll see you next time.
The Beatles are making one more record with the power of.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
AI and black owned vinyl shops are in trouble.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to the Biz Tape. Welcome to the biz Tape.
You're all things music, business and media podcasts. I'm your host,
Colin McKay with my host Joseph waz A Leski Coast
(00:31):
to Coast as always, coming live from the Honda as.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Live from excuse me, the Toyota Altlus.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Sorry, thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
All right, all right, well.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I'm sorry, all right. Yeah, I was gonna say that
was some Honda I hate. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
The silence was Joe on Honda days.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Uh now, anyway, Uh, the point is that, Okay, we
gotta stop first. Before we started the show, I wanted
to give a shout out weird thing I never thought
I would have to say in my life. I'm not
for abusing alcohol. Just yeah, I just wanted to throw
(01:16):
that out there. If you guys follow us on our
biz tape. Pretty much everywhere. We talked about gen Z yesterday,
who is now as old as I look. I know
I look old and I'm fat, which is not a
good two things together. But the point is is that
I'm both of those things, and I am twenty six,
so I am in gen Z and I'm here to
tell you, like we did last week, gen Z ain't
(01:37):
drinking that much. If you're interested in that story. And
we did a TikTok about it, and people are like,
what do they think that drinking is good? And I'm
like surprised. When Joe was making jokes about avocado toast,
we were also joking that drinking is bad. By the way,
I want to welcome bud Light, our newest sponsor on
the show.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Oh yeah, yeah, let's welcome mister. But how are you today?
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Oh man, do it mister? But dude, can you imagine if?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Like?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Okay? So we went to a side note before we
start our actual music business news. But I went to
Holiday World and Santa Claus, Indiana this weekend.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Santa Claus, Indiana.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Santa Claus, Indiana, so that is themed after you're gonna
guess it, honkah no Christmas and basically honkah no. But
Santa Claus, Indiana is Christmas themed. They just picked the
name cause from what I was reading. And they have
a theme park there called Holiday World, and we went
there and the reason why I thought the bud light
(02:41):
thing was funny, which I think would be really funny,
is that they have all these holiday characters in Holiday World,
and like they're all themed after different holidays, right, And
we thought, I don't know why we thought this was
so funny. Obviously, like Sanna is the mascot of like Santa,
like you know, Christmas World, right, and then there's Safari San,
who is the mascot of like the water park. Okay, fine,
(03:03):
And then there's a kiddy Clause, which is the cat
that is the mascot of Halloween. All right, cool, you're
sensing a theme here, like alliteration whatever. And then there's
Fourth of July World aka Independence Day World and for
US Americans here and it's just George the Eagle, which
I thought was the funniest thing I've ever seen. In
(03:26):
my wife, they were like, all right, we like somebody
in the board meet and was like, I'll give you
two alliterations with kitten claws and Safari Sam, but you
can't mess with George to the eagle. He's too patriotic, right,
So he's he's straight like right, he's just like George.
George is a nationalist, like they're gonna be like you
(03:46):
come up to him, you're like Eddie the Eagle and
you go, actually, it's George and then you like shakes
your hand and you're like, oh, that was kind of weird. Anyway,
The point is is that that's what I imagined Bud
for bud Light would be, would be like bud bud Light.
Sorry all these mascots anyway, Yes, I'm not for under
each drinking. And I'm sorry to tell you people twenty
six year olds are gen Z. That is like right
(04:06):
on the cusp.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah, you're getting old gen Z.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
And then here's the funniest thing. Here's the funniest thing
about the whole thing too. They go with most of
gen Z can't even drink. And honestly, if you want
me to stop dissing on gen Z, then I can
diss on the other generation, which is that's how crazy
the other generations drink, is that we only have five
years of legal drinking, and they're like this is bad.
(04:30):
Like anyway, let's go to our first story after that
recap of me disavowing drinking, which I was like, I
don't drink that much anyway, So it's really funny to
me So let's go to our first story. Joe is
going to start with me, if you're all right with that.
With this little wacky story. Other than being apparently the
(04:51):
conspiracy man on the show with overall giant conspiracies on
the music business is going right, I am also becoming
a I man. But I thought this story was it's
like Mega man, Yeah, like one of the bosses. I
am a AI man.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Don't have a face, right.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
I'm looking for an investment cycle. But like anyway, AI
man me is gonna talk about another AI topic this week,
so buckle up for that. But this is interesting because
we talked about Grimes last week and more of like
the business model and how the business models intriguing. Right,
But I did admit I was like, Grimes is not
the biggest household name, but you know who is Paul McCartney.
(05:32):
So let's talk about this. This caught my eye last
week too, I just didn't have time to talk about it.
Is that AI is going to be used to create
the new and final Asterix business like Beatles song. Right,
the final AI Beatles song is coming to a you
know streaming near you, which you know some debt.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Oh you're gonna say, Final Dark Souls Boss.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
The Final Dark Souls Boss, Paul McCartney, Sir Paul mccartny
is coming to a game store near you. Anyway. The
point is is that the Beatles have a new recording
that's going to come out, and Paul basically announced it
just the other day and he says he's gonna use
AI to create one final Beatles song and it involves
John Lennon, which is why they need to use the
(06:18):
AI for it. So basically he didn't.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Say or they could find him because he's alive.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
That took yeah, okay, all right, and Paul is dead anyway.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
The point is is that McCartney said, Hey, I'm gonna
put one more Beatles song out there. Ringo has made
no statements, by the way, I guess I should get
that out of there, although I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah right, because he just doesn't want to do it.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
No, that would be great.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Anyway, Paul hasn't named what it is, but a lot
of astute fans have basically called out what they think
the song's gonna be and why they're AI ing it,
and it kind of makes a lot of sense if
you're kind of a Beatles buff like me, or an
annoying teenager like I was, who just looked up a
bunch of stuff about the Beatles stuff. In nineteen seventy eight,
(07:14):
Lennon made this song that was called Now and Then,
and that was like a demo song and it's like
him playing the piano. I remember listening to it years ago.
I actually listened to it before the show and I
was like, wow, blast from the past. But that song
was like on a bunch of cassettes that were labeled
for Paul and Lennon like kind of was speculated that
(07:36):
he wanted to get back with Paul and kind of
reunite the Beatles before his death eventually happened, so like
they were on the way apparently is what it's always
been rumored to have a Beatles reunion. And then, you know,
most people do know this, but I guess gen Z
twenty six year olds. Sorry if you don't know John
when was shot in nineteen eighty I don't know why
(07:58):
that was so funny to say.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
That's so bad, I'm just gonna clip that. That's gonna
be the clip?
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Is that of context? Just John Lennon was shot in
nineteen eighty and that it's just me laughing.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
That's just laughter so bad. Oh okay, god, this is
the most unhinged.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Wait do we get to your story anyway? So basically, yeah,
John Lennon was shot that in nineteen eighty and so
he never got to do this reunion song with Paul.
And then apparently Yoko Ono gave McCartney these like tapes
and was like, hey, these were kinda for you, all right,
important to note, like the song is in like really
(08:40):
bad quality, Like it's recorded on a boombox that would
apparently like sat on John Lennon's piano in his New
York apartment, and it's got like you could find the
recording if you're interested in it, look it up on
YouTube again. It's now and then, and it's got like
a lot of noise in it, and like specifically electrical noise,
which if you've ever done anything with audio, just sucks
to get out, especially if it's not like rhythmic, if
(09:03):
it's not like a sixty cycle hum, it's like the
worst to get out of. It's just random noise. But anyway,
that's kind of what they want to do with the
AI is use this to restore this recording and use that,
and Paul I think is going to complete the song.
He basically got the idea because this Peter Jackson documentary
(09:24):
that a lot of people have obviously heard about, which
is Get Back, which is eight hours long, actually used
a bunch of AI, which got Paul's interest in AI
technology apparently. Quote for the documentary, dialogue editor Emil del
de la Rey used custom made AI to recognize the Beatles'
voices and separate them from the background noise, which is
(09:47):
pretty cool because like I mean, you know, for my
post production people out there, I mean I know about
isotope and how to use isotope a good bit, but
it's like it's still got its problems. Which is a
plugin for non audio people and it's not AI. But like, yeah,
that's a really cool thing is that this AI not
only just like oh, filtered out everything that wasn't human dialogue,
(10:10):
it like knew which beatles each one. So they're gonna
use this technology to hopefully restore the song and like
clear out all that noise I'm talking about and maybe
even re record the piano. Who knows, but they've already
used some of it. I actually was privy to see
Paul McCartney in the last year or so, and one
of the things he's been doing on tour is he
(10:31):
does this thing where he does like a isolated vocal
with John Lennon of like I Got a Feeling, and
they like play the video in the background and John
Lennon singing the song and Paul like does the duet
with him on that song while the band plays. And
one of the things that I really noted on there,
because let's be honest, if you don't know the history
of recording, a lot of stuff is like condensed because
(10:52):
of the track limitations. Right. If you've heard four track
E track, that's literally how many tracks they had, right,
So guess what all of it got combined together there?
It'd be like guitars and vocals and drums and piano,
you know what I mean, stuff like that. So it's
really hard to isolate that stuff. So it's cool because
I got to see that and what it sounds like,
and you can actually look that up too. I got
a Feeling, Paul McCartney, I guess twenty twenty two, twenty
(11:15):
twenty three, and you could see how clean John Lennon's
vocal has been, like ripped out of there from clearly
something that's just caught in the middle of a mix,
you know what I mean. And there's been this technology
for a while, but like there's been issues with like
making it clean and a lot of artifacting and just
kind of dealing with those artifacts. But it seems that
(11:35):
this AI is getting smart enough that it can train
on different sounds, which is really cool to have, especially
for like archival reasons, right, as well as like you know,
you could do stuff like another use they use this
AI for as they use it for surround mixes of Revolver,
and so they could isolate instruments and stuff like that. So,
(11:56):
like I said, they do the thing where it'd be
like four track a track and a lot of this
stuff can't like mono, which means one channel of audio right,
which means all the instruments are all together. And then
they did stereo remasters, which means two channel like a
left and right right, and that a lot of the
time that was just pretty lazy half the time in
the sixties and seventies because they're like we're just stuck
(12:16):
with mono. We basically have to turn this you know,
go kart into a car basically, and they tried their best,
but now we have AI technology that's like, hey, we
can strip all this stuff out actually, which is pretty
cool to be honest. Yeah, one of the like going
back to the song specifically, the song is actually, like
I said, if you're a nerd like me or annoying teenager,
(12:38):
which seems to be a very cross pollinated genre. Basically,
this song has been on the radar of many fans
for years, especially Beatles fans, because like you know that
history I told you about where they were like this
was for Paul from John and they were going to
do it, and then John's life was tragically cut short,
you know. But also the Beatles were supposed to kind
(12:59):
of have a recording session for it in nineteen ninety five,
which is the last time they released new material, which
is pretty interesting, and then they didn't do it, supposedly
because George Harrison thought the song was quote fucking rubbish,
which is the most English thing I've ever heard in
my life, so he didn't want to do it.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Whoa was that Ai? Paul?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah, John, No, Paul would be like fucking rubbish anyway.
But the point is is that anyway, The point is
is that like he didn't want to do it an
important caveat, like I said, is I think Paul is
going to probably finish the rest of the song, literally
becoming probably one of the last McCartney lenin you know,
(13:41):
kind of or Lennon McCartney published tracks ever to be created,
and he's going to do it because obviously you have
the AI aspect of it, right, but also this song
only has a chorus right now, so it kind of
is like songwriting, right, like like old McCartney Lennon songwriting
where it's like he made the chorus and he's gonna
make the verses right anyway, Like I'll put in this
(14:05):
in here. But like McCartney kind of goes on a
bit about like what it was really like inspiring to
him as an artist to deal with, which is that
like he said, Peter Jackson quote was able to extract
John's vocals from a rope little bit of cassette. We
had John's voice and a piano and he could separate
them with AI. Basically he said, quote that's the voice,
(14:26):
this is the guitar. To lose the guitar. So when
we came to what would be making the last Beatles record.
It was a demo that John had made when we
were able to take John's voice, get it pure through
this AI, and then we can mix the record as
you normally would. So it gives you sort of leeway,
which is honestly, like, as much as I crap on
AI is the cool part of AI, right, is the
(14:47):
ability to have this you know, non human aspect that
could have the precision to cut out specific audio samples
or bits right that that is insane. So the technology
is cool anyway, and I think it is and I
can talk a little bit more about that, but let's
get into kind of the ethics of this. Joe, I
(15:09):
was a little bit curious about this. How do you
feel about the idea of like John Lennon being like
I almost resurrected right with this AI, if that makes sense,
Like the idea of being like, oh, okay, let's rip
his vocals out. It is him, it is singing right.
(15:29):
It feels like he maybe intended the song for Paul, right.
But do we get a bad taste in our mouth
from being like, well, they don't get a decision in
this because they're dead.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
I personally don't, because well, first off, I think people
forget that there are dead artists that labels and teams
and families of the artists have put out like songs
and records and whole catalogs of material that they had
(16:00):
banked up that they never would think would see the
light of day. And like the consent aspect of that
is still heavily debated for sure. Like for example, Prince.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Right and the back catalog, Yeah, he has.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
The Prince has literally a whole vault of like I
think I think someone like went through, Like there's like
a person who's like a keeper of the Prince vault.
I'm pretty sure they went through and it's like over
it's like a hundred thousand plus songs, right, It's like something.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Hundred thousand is insane number, but I'm pretty sure it's
it is a ten thousand, it's I think it's somewhere
like that. It's like at least like it's in the
thousands of songs. I know that because the thing with
Prince is that like it's he had the studio in
his basement.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Fill it's enough to fill a room of like material
and and records and stuff like that, And I think,
like he don't, I mean, you tell me if I'm
wrong here, Colin. But didn't he record on tape as well,
like a lot of his recordings, Yeah, a lot of physical.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, And so that's be interesting, right, Like in the
same way, a lot of them are on tape, and
probably they I mean, thankfully Prince was a little bit
more advanced in technology than a cassette that John Lennon
put on a boombox, right, but like, yeah, a lot
of them are would required to be archivally like recovered,
if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
For sure, And like Prince is definitely in a different
position of like he his whole thing was he loved
produced out demos, whereas I think, you know, John didn't
care if he you know, John would be the type
of guy to throw down his iPhone and like this
is an iPhone commercial, now throw down his iPhone and
hit that voice memos, you know, and just like let
(17:45):
it ride pretty much.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
But I could see that.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I think, like I personally don't see a problem with this,
mostly because it seemed like John did want these songs,
I mean, potentially these songs to be made, and I
think like ultimately, like Yoko even understood that like these
(18:09):
were for Paul, right, and so it's up to Paul
if he wants to do this or not. And I
think Paul has I think out of all of like
the post like death releases, this has more consent than
eighty percent of them. That's true, you know, in my opinion,
(18:31):
because of that reason, And like I also think too,
like how many times have we, like through the decade,
it's been like, man, I wish I can make this
vocal sound cleaner, or like in record archival situations, been
like man, I wish that we could like clear up
these historical documents and tapes to figure out what's going on, right,
(18:56):
And now we have the technology to do that.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I definitely think you're right about that. And like, one
thing I want to hit on this is that it
feels more respectful because of the context and the intention, right.
But at the same time, I think one of the
important uses of AI, and one of the distinctions in
this case is that it's AI with a human element.
It's AI as a tool used to help human creativity
(19:22):
and you know, innately technological problems that were you know,
a huge problem still now but also back in the day.
So I think like that's a huge different context here
than being like, Oh, I had this AI scan, I
had like imagine this like going to prints. Right. Imagine
if it's like, hey, we got an AI to scan
(19:44):
all of Prince's like unreleased records, and like we got
all thousand songs and then all the songs that you
already know, and the AI is going to start making
songs in the style of prints. Right. I feel like
that would be way more of a place of like
disrespectful than this, right, because it feels like there was
(20:04):
an intention. It feels like the human element has remained intact,
which is that, Hey, John wants you to sing this
song with him. And I'm sure even you know, if
John was like here today, like let's say you just
magically came from the afterlife down right, Well, first we'd
have to explain a couple things to him. Second, we'd
have to be like, hey, John.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
What would you explain to John Lennon?
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Man? So many things?
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Uh would you explain to him the lore of you?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Gioh because this guy, this is a guy named Kaybo. Right. Anyway,
The point is is that like, no, like we'd have
to explain John Lennon like everything, right. Imagine John Lennon
is here with us. But like, basically one of the
things I think John would probably not like have problems
with if I like assume it's just being like, hey,
(20:56):
we have this magic technology that cleans up your vocals now,
right and makes it sound better, and you already recorded
this thing. Can we still use it? He'd probably be like, yeah,
use the technology to make my voice sound better, right,
Not necessarily like hey, John, we're replacing you with a
giant machine, right, It's more of like, hey, we're going
(21:18):
to take your existing vocals and sweeten them now. I
wonder obviously you kind of get into like a ship
a theseus argument here, which is like how much do
you change before it becomes fundamentally different than what it was,
Like if you add a you know, a plank of
wood to a new ship, how much pieces of wood
(21:39):
do you change out before it's a new ship kind
of thing? In the same way, I wonder if like
it's like you reconstructed John's voice and we made it
better or whatever, and it's like, we, okay, is this
still the same? You know what I mean? I would
imagine that they would keep a lot of the same
human elements there, right, And that that is one thing
with AI that seems like second nature, but you would
(21:59):
be surprised that people a little bit go overboard with
which is like, oh, let's just pitch correct John a
little bit. Hey, let's you know, like maybe change this
phrase a little bit with this technology with.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Ass put auto tune on John, Oh my god, make
him sing a teeth paint song. There is like it's
gotta be so sick.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
There is there's somebody on TikTok. If I find it,
I will shout it out. But like literally it's a
TikTok and it's like if the Beatles made music in
twenty twenty three and it has like the same kind
of Injro as DJ Khaled, but it goes the Beatles
and it's just like auto tuned. And I was like,
that is the funniest thing I've heard. But the point
is it's like, yeah, like I think definitely the way
(22:42):
they handle this is very important as well as just
the objective of the technology, right, Like they are using
this in a restorative fashion. They want they seem to
want to keep John's vision intact. And then Paul, who
is historically his only big co writer, you know what
I mean. I'm sure I know, John's written with other people,
(23:03):
but like, you know, the most notable person that people
would expect, like notice everything about John Lennon. Paul is
the other person writing the other half of the song.
Like this is the most almost respectful we have gotten
with AI yet, right, Yeah, And I just wanted to
hit on like this technology is such a different thing
because I think people are used to and oh my god,
(23:27):
Colin singing the praises of AI, here we go. You're
finally here baby, after like four episodes of me making
fun of it. Anyway, the point is is like this
is a fundamentally different technology from a lot of stuff
that we know and love today, which is like, you know,
we're used to the idea, and I think especially people
were in the EDM community or in the electronic community,
are used to the idea of like, oh, let's take
(23:47):
vocals out of here and spice it and do all
this stuff. Right, That's a skill and it takes usually
a lot of work to like cleanly splice out vocals
out of like a song. Yeah, you can't find the
stems a lot, right, And if you do, a lot
of the stems are derived from trying to separate them
and they're not as clean. And if you want to
(24:08):
know something interesting, and if if you like want to
think about this, if you know songs that are like
heavily sampled, for instance, like has a crap ton of samples,
go find where the samples are in the songs and
where are the samples? Most of the time it's where
that part is alone. And you know why, because they
can't splice out the rest of it, right, Like, Like
(24:30):
Daft Punk's a really good example. Like I was listening
to Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, right, and I forgot that
the thing with harder, Better, Faster, stronger is not that
you know. Usually Daft Punk do a things where it's
like here's a sample from here, here's the sample from here,
here's a sample from here, and they like construct it
all at once. But Herder, Better, faster, stronger is this song? Uh,
(24:52):
it's called Cola Bottle Baby and it's from the seventies
and it's literally that song just like up with maybe
like two samples on top of it. And I guarantee
you when they were making that song, they were probably like,
we could change this part of it or do something,
and they technologically could not, right, which is the interesting
part about this technology is to have the aspect of
(25:15):
an AI a machine that you could train to take
out and remove things from audio, Which is where I
kind of predict that some of this AI technology will
end up eventually. Is I think a lot of people
think all or nothing with AI technology, which I've kind
of hit on before. They think, oh, AI will be
here and it will write and create and make all
(25:37):
new music and you're like, yeah, But also there's like
a middle ground to that. I'm like, I brought it
up before. There's a lot of AI mastering that exists,
for instance, and the mixing process after you send it
to get a master, and so it's all level and
everything that a lot of that is automated. Now another
thing that.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Which arguably is a good thing great.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
I think it gives more to rule is an accessibility
where you don't have to find an expert necessarily and
you could submit a master at three in the morning
and get one back at three thirty. You know what
I mean. Yeah, but that's like the beauty of AI.
And That's what I'm saying, is like I think people
forget and rightfully so in some ways I think people
think AI we should worry about it because it's a
(26:20):
human substitute for different parts of the thing. And I go, well, also,
AI can be just a tool, not a human substitute, right,
In addition to human creativity, it can aid and you
know help. I always said aid in a bet, like
it's a crime. It can aid in a bet human creativity.
But like, yeah, I think this is like one of
(26:41):
the more interesting cases kind of the same way the
grime situation is, where grimes is more about like the
legality of it and how to almost push forward with
AI in terms of a legal like money sense, And
this is more of what I feel like is a
more realistic use of AI that it feels respectful to
(27:03):
the human craft, let's say, right, because it's literally just
aiding Paul McCartney to write with his friend who's you know,
been dead for forty three years, if that makes sense,
which is kind of amazing at the end of the day,
like for me to even be able to say that sentence.
But you know, I think I think that obviously this
(27:24):
is a very cherry picked example. At the same time,
I mean, the Beatles are very well known. The story
of like John and Paul is very well known. The
story of John's tragic death is very well known. I
think there are other more small time and more intricate
examples that could use AI as technology and not as
a human replacement that we haven't even been able to
(27:46):
start yet because of the hubba bloo around AI being like, oh,
we could replace all of humanity with music with AI,
And I'd be like, nah, you know, why don't we
do a little bit of both, because at the end
of the day, the AI has no got to replace
human touch yet in my opinion, And I think Joe
you would agree with that as well.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yes, I would one hundred percent agree. I'd also fully
transparently we use some of these AI tools to help
produce her podcast.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Oh absolutely, Yeah, it's like one of my favorite things
Jesus explored.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, it's like it's it's really fun to kind of
like we kind of both me and Colin use this
podcast as kind of like a testing ground for like
a lot of this new technology, because otherwise we wouldn't
be able to use it for our other projects. And
I have to say, like some of the tools that
we have been able to use have been pretty incredible,
(28:45):
and like it's it's shown me that like personally that
this is very much it's it's a lot different than
the hype around n f ts and uh like a bitcoin,
I feel like because it's like this is something more
tangible that like people are getting something in return, like
(29:09):
like of doesn't feel like we reinvented the wheel, but
like some no, I well, it's hard to say that
because like I do, I do feel like we have
hit a new threshold in human invention. But I don't
(29:33):
know if it's I don't know, you know, like I don't.
I don't think we will know until like ten years
down the line, but it does. I mean, all things
are pointing to it. Is it's happening.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, we'll have like the Beatles album me and you
will have to find Sarah Cotter. These are all the
things that are possible in the AI world.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
It's true, it is all possible. I do think that,
you know, it is it's a tool at the end
of the day, and tools can be used for good
and tools can also be used for evil, right, And
I think that I feel like most people are going
(30:18):
to side more with like human creativity, but I also
do think like the the availability of like adding the
like sprinkling AI throughout these like creative endeavors is going
to be really really interesting to see, yeah, and experience
in our lifetimes. And I mean it truly could solve
(30:43):
so many issues with just like so many problems that
we have in the world. Just like I think the
biggest thing is managing data, right, I think that that's
like it's going to be so harshly utilized there. I
think where it gets murky is when you start hooking
(31:06):
it up to military systems perhaps.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
But sure that's under our domain of our podcast.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
We'll just do with net. Yeah, yeah, all hail sky
net records.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
A different podcast is gonna have to deal with sky
Net and we'll have to deal with sky net records. Joe,
tell me about what you've been reading up on.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, so breaking news, everybody breaking news.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
We're anti alcohol. Sorry, I'm gonna hit that into the ground.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Well, but also my winchled wiper fluids are low and
I have just.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Show that the car police. Tell me you were like
in the middle of talking run this is kind of dirty.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
No. I definitely looked, and I looked down and it
was like Winchle wiper fluids needed And I was like, great,
but no, the real story that we were talking about.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Joe needs an oil change anyway, I keep going is.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
That black owned record stores are in trouble essentially, and
what I mean by that is that they've actually been
in pretty harsh decline as of recently. And what's really
interesting about that is the fact that records have come
back so much when it comes to like selling physical
(32:25):
media in music. So this is an article written by
Billboard where they follow a man named Toboggo Tbengo Benito.
I might have butchered that, so sorry. But Benito started
his first brick and mortar record store in Atlanta in
(32:47):
nineteen ninety six, and at the time, he says, quote,
there were about four hundred to five hundred black owned
record stores around the country, and there were a lot
of conferences. When I came in, the senior store owners
took me under their wing and showed me how the
business operated. Benino's still in physical retail, according to Billboard
(33:08):
twenty seven years later, running dbs sounds but the pool
a black owned record stores has been in like decimated, essentially,
falling to around seventy according to his count, So there's
like about eighteen to twenty one hundred independent record stores
(33:32):
in the US, which means that black owned outlets now
represent just a tiny, tiny portion of that. And what
basically the Billboard states is that the biggest thing impacting
the situation is honestly systemic gaps when it comes to
(33:56):
like black businesses in general. It's not just record stores, right,
It's a lot of different situations. The biggest one. Some
of the hurdles quote, some of the hurdles facing black
record stores are systemic, such as the racial wealth gap,
gingrification bias in the loan application process, which I would
(34:19):
actually argue is probably the biggest one right now. And
what's unfortunate now is like getting a business loan, I
feel like today is almost thirty times harder than it was,
like I would even argue like five years ago, just
because the amount of inflation that we've experienced, and also
(34:44):
trying to get a business loan in the music industry,
a lot of banks are not down for it, right.
You kind of need angel investors in a lot of
this stuff, and it's really really difficult. But in two
thousand and one, he joined with more than twenty other
black owned stores to create the FAM's Coalition which is
(35:07):
Forever a music store, and they are intent on gaining
more support from the music industry, and they are basically
trying to get financial assistance as well as advocating for
black owned record stores to get exclusive records. And for example,
(35:28):
the biggest one that helped these stores was actually the
new Beyonce record, which Colin. Did you hear about this
at all, like with the record release of the of Renaissance, No,
it's what's interesting. I didn't hear about it either, but
I feel like it's such an important part of the
(35:50):
story for this record. Basically, Beyonce's team sent the record
early to a bunch of black owned records stores and
allowed them to sell the record a week before the
official launch date of the record.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
So yeah, it was huge they say it. It was
the It was like sent out through the coalition and
it basically had there's at the time, there's twenty six stories.
Now it's at twenty two. But they sold more than
one thousand copies of Renaissance combined, and according to Marquita
(36:29):
Rodriguez quote, that was huge for us. So like these
businesses are very much trying to soak in as much
as of this money as they can, like these vinyl
cells are so essential for their survival. Essentially, Yeah, a
lot of people might consider one thousand records to not
(36:51):
be a lot, but when you do the math and
you're like, oh, this is Beyonce renaissance. Some of these
record stores might have been selling the record for seventy
to one hundred dollars. Some of them probably had box
sets that had a bunch of like three hundred dollars
worth of merch and stuff that you could sell as well.
(37:12):
And so this type of release really kind of sparked
this idea within the coalition, and since then they've been
trying to kind of like approach record labels and artists
teams and being like, hey, you should release this way.
(37:32):
You should give us the ability to sell your record
a week before it's released. It gains a bunch of
hype during that time. It helps us out, it helps
you out, and there you go another interesting situation when
it comes to kind of the music that they are selling.
(37:55):
The problems that a lot of these black businesses are
running into is that when it comes to like R
and B and hip hop, there's a lot of records
that just aren't pressed for vinyl, especially in the rap genre.
And the reason that is is because it's basically, I
(38:18):
don't know, It's like the genre of rap is very
much online based, and they market heavily online, and so
they don't have a lot of physical items and a
lot of times they don't even have a lot of
merch and so when they're trying to build up HiPE,
they're mostly using their money from streaming royalties and appearances
(38:38):
in order to kind of funnel into like music videos
and online content in that kind of thing. But what's
interesting about that, at least from my perspective, is that
a lot of rap shows and we've even covered this
on the podcast, are struggling to get hard ticket sales
and have struggled for like a long time, like really since,
(39:04):
like I want to I want to argue, like the
nineties where like rap was like really really taken off
into the forefront, right, Yeah, eighties, nineties, and like especially
in the live music realm, because that's how you got
to experience that music. And now since like things have
(39:24):
changed and like things have moved online, a lot of
these artists are just really embracing that format, but they're
kind of they're kind of neglecting like a prime target
audience that they could be making money from, because, as
Billboard points out, a lot a high percentage of people
who buy records don't even own a record player.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah, we talked about that artists literally.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
It's yeah, So it's it's kind of insane that a
lot of these records are not like are are like
these these albums are not getting pressed by these creators.
And it Billboard even points out like artists such as
like Tyler of the Creator and Kendrick Lamar have sold
(40:11):
insane amounts of vinyl more than half a million physical
units a piece last year according to Luminate, and many
major rappers still don't release actual LPs. So like in
the exam that, for example, in twenty twenty two had
no physical component, including a pair of Drake releases Little
(40:35):
Dirks and twenty and Polo G's Hall of Fame, Drake
is not making vinyl.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
That is very strange here, I'd never thought of that.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
It's dude, if Drake made vinyl, he would be another billionaire,
I don't know, trillionaire at this point. Like, it's it's
kind of wild that they're not like fully utilizing this
space because people will buy it. People. I mean, like
(41:07):
Kendrick and Tyler both proved that people are willing to pay.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
It's it's interesting because like if you look up by genre,
for instance, what sells the most volume for vinyl, Like
and we can get into this too, is that fifty
one percent of it is rock music, right, and the
second most is R and B and hip hop And
(41:31):
that said around seventeen percent, and that's from twenty to
twenty one numbers, right, So it's not like there isn't
a market, But there is one thing you did point
out to me that I haven't really thought about. It's
like a lot of people that buy vinyl for rapping,
like hip hop. It's like historical vinyl, you know what
I mean, Like I don't like or it's.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Like it's like an old artist or it's.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Weirdly obscure artists, like more obscure than like Drake. Like
I'd be like, oh an MF Doom on vinyl, you
know what I mean? Like Okay, But then like I
don't hear like a lot of being like oh yeah,
let's get Drake on vinyl, but like hit that first
number that that was Honestly, one of the things that
I thought about, like first, when we were talking about
black owned businesses struggling. It's just the just sadly, you know,
(42:18):
the market with it is extremely whitewashed, just because fifty
one percent of it is rock rock music. Fifty one
percent of his rock music, which is his you know,
didn't start out this way, but it's now historically a
whitewash genre, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
But what's so crazy about that, Colin is like it
like we've even it's it's been proven that like rock
indie music right now even is not selling well, it's
not it's not doing as well as it was like
in the early two thousands, uh or even during the
vinyl resurgence of like the twenty tens. And so when
(42:54):
it's we're getting into like modern music and pop music,
it's crazy to see like pop records like adel being
on shelves but then not having a Drake record. Yeah,
well absolutely, and like because it's like Drake is the
biggest rap artist ever.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
I mean, we talked about on the show. Drake was
the artist of Spotify of the twenty tents. He got
more streams than any other artists in the world by far,
like by a significant margin too, and so like it
is weird to be like, why isn't Drake like a
Vinyl king, you know what I mean? Why? I could
totally see some people being like, hey, when we buy
(43:35):
Drake on Vinyl, I'm a really big fan. But I
will say the thing with Vinyl is that, at the
same time very it kind of reminds me of video
game sales a lot of way. Vinyl goes after Wales
a lot. Yeah, And what I mean by Wales is like,
who will spend you know, my Vinyl budget is five
hundred dollars every two months, you know what I mean? Yeah,
(43:57):
And they will cater to those kind of people and
go like, well.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
And those people are the people you want, because you'd
rather have a small group of people paying a lot
than a large number of people paying very little in
some cases.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Yeah, And that's kind of the thing, is like if
you can keep curtailing to this. And I think Vinyl
struggles with some things too, which is that like, Vinyl
has this kind of like thing that I personally disagree with.
It's just different sounding, it's not superior sounding, but there
is this like predicate that it is, And to be honest,
(44:33):
a lot of that community, and you can see it
in the rock numbers here are going to these albums
that are supposed to be like mythically high fi albums, right,
And what's weirder is like what I find is it's
like even rock albums that are like sold today or
like blues albums that like are not They're just regular recordings, right.
(44:53):
They're not like Steely Dan, you know, level recordings where
there's some like high five. The people would just assume,
because they're in that genre and they're on vinyl, that
this is the way to listen to it, right, and
they will buy the vinyl because of that. I don't
really see that a lot with R and B and
hip hop, which sucks because, like I mean to be honest, like,
if you want to get in there, I'm gonna piss
(45:14):
some people off here. If you want to get in
the real nitty gritty here, you can get really really
really clean samples from things digitally, way cleaner than recording
a guitar. It sounds way cleaner if you're using a
nice digital sample that's been sampled very well, right, that's
more hi fi half the time. Yeah, so I think
(45:35):
it's interesting that that has not translated to the R
and B and hip hop genre because I to be honest,
in some ways it's a more high fi genre like yeah, well,
and also it's just like there, I feel like it
even kind of would cycle into itself of hip hop
being such a huge mecha for producers as well as
(46:00):
like when it comes to like chopping and sampling things,
like it's such a hard like historically DJs and producers
hip hop producers have like taken these records and like
chop them up and they're vinyl records that they use
on digitally distributed albums.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Literally, it's like it could you could just cycle it
back in And honestly, I'm I'm I'm kinda I'm seeing
a little bit of it, but honestly, I'm and I look,
I I'm gonna get more heat for this.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
I like a good idiom. I like it. I like
a good yeah right. I like it if it's well
mixed and digital stuff. But for me, if you're spinning
vinyl and you're fucking chopping vinyl live, holy shit, that
that is so cool. And so I'm honestly I've seen
(46:53):
a little bit of a resurgence with it, like boiler
room style and everything where people have been chopping vinyl
again more live. But honestly, I hope it continues because
that would maybe be a boost to a lot of these,
uh like black owned businesses especially who have a lot
of the forethought and community to go, Oh, you want
really good samples, here's this obscure commodore's record, you know
(47:13):
what I mean, Like, who have the actual like insight
compared to just like all these like white indie dudes
that are like, do you want pine Grove three? But
like I mean, not no shit against pine Grove, but
just saying like I feel like that's another way that's marketable.
And then lastly, like I said, like rock is fifty
one percent of the genre, like not, I mean be
real with y'all. I mean these might just be a
(47:36):
rock's fifty percent of the genre. It's historically white genre.
This literally might be you know, I'm not even gonna
say might this has systematic racism vibes Like this has
people who are like, oh, I want to go to
my vinyl shop or whatever, but they don't want to
go to a vinyl shop that appears to be quote
unquote too black or something like that, you know what
I mean. So I think that music or yeah or
(47:57):
has a different focus than their like regular rock community,
and like, I'm sure, you know, these stores are fucking great,
you know what I mean. They're well curated, they're well
put together, they know their shit. But then literally they'll
just see, you know, people that don't look like them
who walk into the store, and they'll be like, nah,
I'm not going to shop there, you know what I mean.
And that's honestly probably one of the worst parts of
(48:18):
this whole thing is I you know, in the world
we live in, you cannot rule out the systematic racism
that is a part of this. So I think, you know,
I'm hoping there will be an uptick, especially for it,
because I do think the vinyl community, in my opinion,
is very whitewashed right now. I think I see you
in some ways that we could see diversification. I'm very
(48:39):
glad that these you know, chops are banding together, and
it seems that artists are like Beyonce, are actually trying
to support them in a very clinical and also easy
bonus way to give to these communities, you know, like
to be like Hey, I'm going to give you this
a week early. Right, that's a palpable you know, perk
(49:01):
of shopping at this store, right, is that Like if
I was a big vinyl head and I wanted, you know,
vinyl the day it came out or something like that,
I might be like, after I got Beyonce's thing, I'd
be like, I should stick around here, I should follow
them on social media. Maybe they're going to have another
thing like this, you know what I mean. And that's
how you sell and keeping people's minds is because to
be honest, like, especially with vinyl, there's a lot of
(49:23):
big box stores where people just order vinyl or they
order it from the website of something like that. But
the communal aspect of these record stores is still very
important at the end of the day, and I think
there is a market for it now where we almost
see this counter revolution of wanting the old timey experience
of vinyl itself, but also the community around vinyl. And
(49:45):
there's nothing more communal about a vinyl experience than being
at the record store and talking to other people and
being like, hey, what are you listening to? You know, hey,
what do you recommend? Around the counter? You know what
I mean, what have people when buying that kind of stuff,
and so like that's why it's important to do that
and especially to support people, you know, of every race,
creen color, because that creates diversity in the vinyl community.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
Yeah, I think I think people live. I think a
lot of people, especially vinyl heads, live in a state
of fear when it comes to new things. And I
I really oh got a flag file.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
No.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
I think if you're a vinyl head, to try to
support a black owned vinyl shop if there's one in
your town. Unfortunately, Uh, one of the there's like three
cities that this place named for places that don't have that.
In Nashville is one of them.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Literally, I was gonna say, I don't think I can
name one.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah, it's like it's so horrible because like it just
it would douce I I think think it would do great.
I think if it if it hit the right market
in Nashville, it would really soar. But that is the
biggest thing. And you know, there there is another thing
that you know, this article didn't mention of, like potential
(51:15):
issues that business owners are running into when they're starting
their business up. And I think one of the biggest one,
honestly is land. I think securing land is so difficult
for vinyl shops, like because otherwise you have to take
over a vinyl shop that was already a vinyl shop,
(51:35):
or you're revitalizing a house or something to that extent.
But then you know, con I don't know if you've
had any problems like this, but I mean every time
I'm going to a record store in Nashville or Tennessee
in general, it's always like kind of in the outskirts
(51:56):
of like the its spots, right, you have to like
really track them down. Yeah, And it's it's so difficult
to just have accessible records store.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
The worst part about records it, you know, it's kind
of it's it's weirdly cickle. Goal is that you need
space to storm. You know, they're big things. They add
up very fast than space. I only have a you know,
I maybe have like seventy eighty and I feel like
I'm like, ah, what am I gonna do with all
these Like I gotta place them right, and it's a
(52:29):
lot of space and keep them organized too. You need
more space, so, especially in like a city environment where
you know the rates for a mortgage or any kind
of business. Loan are so high right now and everything,
it's it's not worth it for a lot of them
to try to get this land in an inner part,
you know what I mean of the city that would
be very high traffic. But that's kind of what you
(52:50):
need for vinyl out of the time, or you need
incredibly good advertising, you know what I mean. So yeah,
I I do feel for them. I hope that, you know,
some of these artists can come together and help them,
and I hope this coalition kind of brings to light
more about the need for these record stores to be around,
(53:13):
be a part of the community, and expose culture to
different people of all reads, crisis and color, you know
what I mean, from their background, from whoever's background. You know,
that's the point of these places is to be a
beacon of hope for a lot of people who are like, hey,
I'm not represented in these other places, Like I am
(53:33):
not like there's nothing even related to whatever I've listened
to in my life here at this record store. But
in some of these places it could be like, yeah,
I know exactly what you're talking about. It's culture at
the end of the day, that's what music is. It's culture.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
Yeah, the three cities Birmingham, Nashville, and Charlotte, which unfortunately
is not surprising. Yeah, right, but being that they're all
in the South. But yeah, it's tough. But yeah, don't
shop at Amiba. There's so many other places.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
That's very la.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
Two other things, be your own person, our favorite time
of week. What have you been listening to?
Speaker 1 (54:20):
Well in the world of the way, Honestly, there's arguments
about album artwork, and you're gonna have to follow me
because it will lead me to my pick that I've
been listening to because it's been stuck in my head.
There's been calls for the last like twenty years that
album artwork has been getting thrown thrown, thrown down the
hill because we've gone away from physical media. It's just
(54:42):
a small picture, all that kind of stuff. It's gotten
worse and worse in a lot of the ways. And
I know when it started to get worse, and it's
Creed's weathered. That is one of the worst album pictures
I've ever seen in my life. Basically, it's like if
in my basic photoshop class they told me to make
an album cover for Creed and I did it. Ironically,
(55:04):
but it's two thousand and one. They're not doing it ironic.
They're not doing it ironically.
Speaker 2 (55:10):
It's okay, can I explain what's on here? Sure?
Speaker 1 (55:13):
Tell them what it is.
Speaker 2 (55:15):
So the thing is, there's a lot happening. First off,
it's my favorite, my favorite thing about early two thousands
graphic design.
Speaker 1 (55:25):
It's always orange. It's always orange and brown.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
It's textured. It's overly textured, sharp, gross, grungey, disgusting.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
It's two thousand and one, grunges over.
Speaker 2 (55:37):
Yeah, it's it's it's like orange and gray. That's the two.
That's the color palette we're dealing with with a little
bit of red because the moon behind this tree.
Speaker 1 (55:48):
The blood moon from Zelda is in the background, yep.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
Is in the background. There's a man chiseling their faces
into a tree. But it looks so hideous party that
it's insane.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
You know those like iPhone apps that are like fuse
two pictures. Somebody took like a very sharp textured tree
and then fused three pictures of creed together into the tree.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
Yes, that is what it looks like. Then like badly
color edited everything together. But yeah, it looks like they're
on they're on a very rocky terrain with two trees.
There is a tree in the distance and a man
chopping the tree down. Wow, the blood moon.
Speaker 1 (56:33):
Which would I don't know, may maybe it could be
like a deep observation of like hurting yourself or cutting yourself,
and then you remember it's crete, so it's not that.
But the point is is that I really think it's
like the funniest song I've heard. It got it was
getting big on TikTok and I hadn't heard this Creed
song and it's called One Last Breath, And I think
(56:53):
it's the funniest song because it's just it. All these
songs at this point in they're eight two thousands are
so over dramatic that it's funny. It's like they're seeing
like this feels like this feels like if Creed made
Phantom of the Opera, That's what this song feels like,
where it has the same mello dramaticism as Phantom of
the Opera, where it's like I've seen you for three seconds,
(57:14):
I'm in love with you, you know, and now it's
like hold me.
Speaker 2 (57:19):
Now, I'm six feet on the.
Speaker 1 (57:22):
Ground and you're like, what are you talking about? Anyway?
It's so bad, it's good. I enjoy it. Just the
whole album artwork really sells it. And again I've talked
about it on the show. People keep trying to do it.
Stop trying to make these bands unironically be like but
they're actually good. Though you can enjoy things, that's fine,
(57:43):
they're not good. Same thing with Nickelback. They're not good.
They're funny, they're fun, they're not good. Anyway, thank you
for entering Collins Hate period of the podcast. I've had
like four hot takes in it. Joe, what have you
been listening to? I've been six feet under ground?
Speaker 2 (58:03):
Your my clipped so hard? My ears? I dude, I'm
in such a huge music rut right now. But I've
been listening a lot to uh and I think I
said it last week twin Devendra Banhart super sick track
single for his newest record coming out soon. But also
(58:28):
I've been listening a lot to Everything Perfect, which is
an album by James Ivy. I'm obsessed with this dude.
He makes amazing music. This was an album that I
kind of went into and I was like, I like it,
but it's a little different from his other stuff, So
I'm gonna proceed cautiously, and it just like when you
(58:50):
listen to it over and over, it like really, it's
like a slow burn for sure. It like it hooks
into you just like I mean, honestly they have and
with Phoebe Bridgers for me off for first record, it
just took a lot. It took a lot of lessons
before I was like, this is amazing.
Speaker 1 (59:08):
You were sitting there and you were like, Phoebe, can
you take me? Anyway? That's the next track after that
on that Creed album. Keep going.
Speaker 2 (59:18):
You know, I wouldn't be surprised if Phoebe does a
Creed cover soon.
Speaker 1 (59:22):
My Sacrifice Boy genius. Yeah, god, so bad, but so good. Anyway, Well,
that's cool. I like that. I'm just gonna be in
this Creed hell hole at the same time where I
just think.
Speaker 2 (59:36):
Well, I'm just gonna be in my car calling I
forgot you were in the car the whole time. I'm
just gonna be in my car.
Speaker 1 (59:44):
Guys, thanks for listening to the biz tape. You're all
thinking of music, business and media podcast. We sure do
appreciate you out there. You want to check us out
on our socials at the business pretty much everywhere. As
Joe's hinted, we've been throwing out content pretty much everywhere
on TikTok and Instagram, So if you want to see
more of that in our beauty full faces, follow us
there as well as if you want to support the show,
rate the show, bad good ever helps us out in
(01:00:06):
the end. Be truthful, folks, It's one thing you can
do with this lifetime anyway. Thank you so much for
your support. We appreciate y'all, and we'll see you next time.
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