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August 31, 2024 24 mins
George Howard, noted record label executive, artist representative, media advisor/investor and Berklee College of Music professor, talks with Mike Christian about music licensing, support for the arts, and Berklee’s new licensing application, RAIDAR.
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is What's at Risk with Mike Christian on WBZ,
Boston's news radio. Hi, Mike Christian, here of What's at Risk.
First up on tonight show, we present an encore edition
of What's at Risk with George Howard, noted record label executive, artist, representative,
media advisor and Berkeley College of Music professor. He speaks

(00:25):
knowledgeably about music licensing, support for the arts, and Berkeley's
new licensing application Radar. And in our second segment, we're
happy to welcome back Julie Balky, founder and chief career
strategists with the Boukie Group. She weighs in on how
difficult this environment is for workers who want to find

(00:46):
new jobs and how challenging it is for employers to
recruit and retain quality employees.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
And you put the load right along, right on.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Well, Hello everyone, We're here with George Howard. George is
a professor in Berkeley's Music Business Management Department. He's the
co founder and CIO of ACME Innovation, a media and
entertainment investment and advising company focused on emerging Web three sector.
He's the founder of George Howard Strategic, a consulting firm

(01:31):
that advises a wide range of clients on how to
integrate technology with strategy. Thanks for joining us, George, great
to have you.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
So great to be here. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
You've got a significant and varied background. Maybe you can
just tell our listeners a little bit about your background
and your life path to this point.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Sure, I mean it's significant only just because I'm old,
but I've been in the music industry for over thirty years.
I started in college in the late eighties early nineties
with the record label, and you know, I'm a guitar player,
but I've had this kind of mission my whole life.

(02:10):
It makes more sense in hindsight, but it's pretty clear
to me now that the reason I'm on this planet
is to try to help artists build sustainable careers on
their own terms. And as I say, that started as
a putting music out for my own band and my
friends in college and having some good fortune and good
timing that led to running a relatively storied Massachusetts label

(02:32):
called Reiko disc that I didn't start but had the
pleasure of running that. It was the world's first CD
only label and put out releases by David Bowie and
Frank Zappa and others. Right up in sale in Massachusetts
badly and ran that until it was sold to Warner
Music Group in two thousand and four. I then started
another kind of music tech company called Tuoncore, which is

(02:55):
a music distribution company still around. It's now a public company.
I'm really proud to say that it's paid out over
five billion dollars to artists over the years, so it's
it's made an impact along the way. I've managed artists
like another legendary Massachusetts artist, Carly Simon. I managed her
for some time and others. I do have my law degree.

(03:17):
I've done some music publishing in that capacity, and then,
as you alluded, I now have a holding company and
venture fund that is using new technologies to try to
support artists as well. I was keeping at Berkeley, which
is a real jolli and thrill. I've been full time
Berkeley since twenty eleven. Is that all Georgia or anything else?

(03:39):
I mean, as I say, it's it's you know, it
sounds like I don't know what it sounds like, but
it's just impressive. Let me tell you, well, well, thank
you very much, but it's it's it's really just putting
putting my shoulder into it every day. And and the
thing I'm I'm proud of of anything is just managing

(04:00):
stay in the game. You know, it's it's the music
industry is tricky and ever evolving and ever changing, and
I just feel incredibly fortunate, lucky whatever that I've managed
somehow to kind of continue to be able to do
this thing that I love. It's a it's a lucky thing.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
So let me let me just go back to Richo
Disc for a second, because I think that that was
a fairly innovative company being being the first out with
CDs exclusive CDs. It's almost backwards now because no one's
even using CDs as much anymore, but at that point
in time, it was fairly innovative. You made some acquisitions
to grow that organizations.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, I know, you're You're absolutely right, and you've got
a great memory. And again I take no credit for
the initial inception of Reiko. There were people Don Rothers,
Arthur Mann who had the foresight to kind of see
that the market, indeed in nineteen and eighty four eighty
five did want these new, this new technology compact discs,

(04:57):
when at the time the major labels thought it was
it was a fat of course it turned out to
be a fat. It was just like a twenty five
year long fat, but it was it was instructive to me.
You know, I grew up kind of doing two things
as a kid, and one was playing guitar and the
other was writing code and on like a common or
sixty four in the in the early eighties. And and

(05:20):
I've never differentiated between, you know, the various mediums of output.
It's all creativity for me. And I think it's I
think it's really a shame that now there's this weird
segmentation between tech people and artistic people, and I just
don't I don't find that to be true. And you know,
again with Tunecore, it was the same thing where it

(05:41):
wasn't terribly revolutionary that artists needed to get their music
up on CD, I'm sorry, upon streaming services at the time,
it was just Apple iTunes. But we did it from
a very artist centric way, meaning we didn't take any royalty.
So the other there were others before us, but they
would all take a fee and then a back end

(06:02):
percentage of sales. And my co founder and really the
person who deserves all the credit for tune Core, Jeff Price,
we just believed that that was kind of it was
too emblematic of the old ways of doing business, like
you should be paid for a service, but you shouldn't
be in toitled some ongoing thing when you're not doing anything.

(06:23):
It's it's the definition of rent seeking. You're taking a
fee for something and not adding any value. And it
resonated with with the artists population in the same way
that that Reicho discs Ethos did too. Like I mean,
there was a reason why Frank Zapple left his you know,
sold his catalog to Reicho, and David Bowie tried these things,

(06:43):
and there was a reason why Trent Reznor and Chuck
de and others we supported tune core, and so I've
always just been guided by trying to be in the
service of the art. And it's it's increasingly frustrating to
me today and I've seen it come in. It was

(07:04):
like a slow moving, you know storm, just watching Spotify
and others of their ilk build enterprise value on the
back of artists, and the artists are just left with nothing.
And as goes the music industry, so it goes other industries.
And if you look at what's happening with the with
the bright strike and actors strike, those are all pointing

(07:27):
to what's happening, and it's going to happen to the
writers in the same way happened to musicians. It's really
it's a commentary on society, to be honest. I don't
mean to get to kind of peace, love and understanding,
but or harmony or whatever, but like it's really it's
really sad that we as a society are not are
not being more thoughtful about the ways in which we
kind of treat art and artists.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, I totally agree, and I and I went on
that in that little tangent there with with Richo disc
because it reminds me of of the time that we're
at today. I interviewed on this show probably somebody you
know at Berkeley, Jonathan Winer. We were talking about AI
and music and back you know, twenty five thirty years
ago when record discs came up. That was an innovative thing,

(08:10):
all CDs.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
When people talk about AI and you need to be
thoughtful about it, and I have a lot of thoughts
on it, but it's it's not going to replace musicians,
but what it will do is it'll continue to kind
of drive the price down, particularly for licensing of music
into film, TV, etc. Where a challenging kind of enterprise generally.

(08:32):
But if you are a producer of a TV show
or movie or what have you, and you have a
limited budget and you can find music that is maybe
not great but sufficient and it's free or near free,
you're going to do that. And that's that's another blow
to the artists, creator and creators because it's it is
one of the few ways in which you can still

(08:53):
make money as an artist, not just for the licensing
fees originally, but also the ongoing fees you get for
your the performance royalties. And I see this title wave coming.
I'm in a place now where I can maybe do
a little bit more about it. As an investor. I
can am looking for companies that are building out you know,

(09:14):
large language models or what have you for for music
that allows for the artists to keep the royalties in
the copyright. And that's that's completely doable. It's not talked
about enough, but you know, blockchain and AI actually go
together very very well, and so I'm obviously building in
both of those categories.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah, and I can only hope that AI, you know,
becomes a helpful tool for the creative process, not taking
over the creative process completely.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
The problem is, and this has been the historic problem
of the music industry. You have people, business people, technologists
or otherwise building businesses or tools for artists without artists
having a say in it, and they get it wrong
and they and they, whether even by design or just
kind of by circumstance, they end up enriching themselves on

(10:04):
the back of the artists. And that's that's just got
to end, or it's it's it's gonna all blow up.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Yeah, I totally agree. It always reminds me of that
quote about the music business a cruel and shallow money tracks,
a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free
and good men die like dogs.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
I love that quote. I love that quote too, and
and I'd love for that to have been something that
he actually said, because I've got a hundred Thompson poster
on my wall. Apparently he never said that, but it is.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
I never heard that. It's always been attributed to him,
so I know it.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Well.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
We had a long prelude to our actual topic today,
which is music licensing, and and you know, I'll be honest,
it's it's a it's a very murky area from my perspective,
and I touch on it a little bit with this
radio show and the PUTT and the podcast that comes
along with it, because I like to integrate music into,
as you know, very thematically into the show and into

(11:04):
the content of the show. But it's very difficult to
do that today. I can, I can find some things,
royalty free things, there's certain things to do, but it's
you know, when I used to do the show, I
had far less restrictions. However, that's on the other side
of the area that you're looking at, which is really
rewarding the artists for the work that they've done and
the creative process that they've gone through. And so it's interesting.

(11:28):
And I think the licensing process with music, although our
listeners might be a little familiar with it, it would be
great if you could just give them maybe a one
or two minute primer on where we are where we
are today with licensing for music.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, of course, so it's it's a really byzantine thing
and I'll try to try to make it simple. The
trickiest thing that most people don't understand is that every
song has two copyrights and so The analogy I'll Always
use is because most people are familiar with it, the
thong I Will Always learn You. That was written by

(12:01):
Dolly Parton, but it was really made famous to most
people by Whitney Houston on the Bodyguard soundtrack. And so
if you, for instance, wanted to use I Will Always
Love You as written by Dolly Parton, but as recorded
by Whitney Houston as background music to your podcast, for instance,
you would have to get approval from both Dolly and

(12:26):
her publisher to use it, and Arista Records, which is
the label that released Whitney's version, and either one of
them can say no, either one of them can name
whatever price they want. And so just that in and
of itself like tracking these people down. And then imagine,
you know, many songs today have dozens of writers. If

(12:49):
you if you look at the credits, which is hard
to do in a kind of post physical world, but
if you look at the credits of like a Beyonce
song or something, you'll find sometimes twelve, thirteen, four teen
or more writers. Each one of those writers, in theory
at least has the right to agree to or deny
a license. Now, typically there is a so called administrative

(13:12):
publisher that will speak for them. But it's really murky,
and it's not like there's this easy kind of like
I'll go just google who the publisher is and call
them up right. I Mean, the analogy I always use
is that licensing music in twenty twenty three is akin
to booking travel in like nineteen seventy five. It's just
who do you call, who are the right people, how

(13:32):
are the parts and so, and then you know, you've
alluded to the fact that you use music on your
radio show and in your podcast. The rules for that
are different, right, And you can use music on your
radio show because whoever the broadcaster of your radio show
is paying a what's known as a performance public performance
license to as KAP or BMI, so that's relatively easy.

(13:57):
But the moment you then take that song and stick
it to a podcast, it's a different set of licenses
and there isn't that kind of blanket license. So again,
you know, just me explaining that trying to explain it
simply right now shows how complex it is. And to
your point also, you said, well, you know, I can
find royalty free things, et cetera. But for the most part,

(14:18):
those are suboptimal, they're not great, right, And it's really
it's a it's a problem without a villain, right, And
by that I mean the artists and the publishers actually
do want you to license their music, and they certainly
don't want you to just use it without the appropriate rights.

(14:38):
And you want the music and the performers need it
for exposure. But so what we really have is just
a marketplace problem, right. It's just not an easy place
to find it. So when I conceived of Radar, it
was to address exactly your podcast problem, Like you don't
need our help with respect to your radio show and music,
but for your podcast and anybody else that has a podcast,

(15:00):
or anybody that's making a film, or anybody that's making
a video game or any of the various uses of
music that don't have these so called blanket licenses, you
have to negotiate with the rights holders directly, and they're
impossible to find. And like I mentioned, I used to
publish and manage Carly Simon. You know, there's a threshold
price that if it's under that, it's just not worth

(15:23):
my time. So if somebody comes and says, look, I
want to use you're so vain in my podcast, and
I have a budget of one hundred dollars, Like, I'd
love to do that, but I can Papering that contract
costs me more than it's worth. It's not going to
get Carly Simon more promotion, So just kind of ignore
those things. But so it occurred to me that with Berkeley,

(15:44):
you have a collection of artists that are just kind
of you know, by the fact that they're at Berkeley,
they're great musicians, right that they may not be making
music for everybody's taste, but collectively it's a staggering both
amount of talent and output looking for a place to go.
And they're creating these works and they desperately need exposure

(16:08):
and revenue from them, and yet there's no marketplace. So
Radar is a gesture to address that problem, where Berkeley
students and alums can upload the works that they control.
In other words, they're creating their own works. And then
the goal of it is is for people like yourself
who have a need for music and high quality music

(16:29):
to be able to find it, license it with one click,
pay a reasonable amount of money for it that is
fair for both someone like yourself and for the artists
and off we go, and it's incredibly doable because Berkeley
has this massive amount of high quality music and there's

(16:50):
this need in the market to do it. And then
we are yes leveraging new technology most dominantly called blockchain technology,
and very simply blockchain is a ledger, a record of
transactions that occur, but unlike non blockchain ledgers, it's not
owned by any one particular entity. It's what's known as

(17:13):
decentralized right It's hosted by lots of different servers, in
the same way the Internet. Is. One of the reasons
that I'm motivated to work in the blockchain space is
that I've recognized over the decades that a lot of
the actual creators of music don't get the credit for it,
you know, most notably, much of popular American music was

(17:35):
written by black people but then kind of appropriated by
white people, and the black people that get the credit
or the money and credits really currency in the music business.
You talked, and you're very kind about my long career.
It's only because I've been able to do a handful
of things that people are able to say, yeah, he
did that thing, maybe he can do something else. If

(17:56):
you don't have that if you're a musician and you
write something but nobody knows you did it, your opportunities
go down. So having that permanent record is really really important.
And the last but not least, blockchains allow for transactions
to occur without a middle person. Right So, right now,
if you're going to license music, there are typically any
number of people between you trying to license it and

(18:19):
the person that has the music that they're trying to license,
and that could be attorneys, it could be record labels, publishers,
and all those people take a percentage of the money
of the transaction, and oftentimes the actual creator is left
with very little. But because of the technology that's kind
of native to blockchain, you can write rules on the

(18:39):
actual asset itself. So if you say I want to
use this song for my podcast and I will pay
the X number of dollars, as soon as you do that,
it self executes and you have the right to use it.
The artist gets paid, and there's no one in the
middle right to take money, including Berkeley, right so, right
now we're doing this purely without any type of remuneration

(19:01):
back to Berkeley. It's just a service, and I think
it's the right service Over time, you know, we will
find ways to allow it to kind of continue to
self perpetuate, but we build it from a grant from
a blockchain protocol called Near Foundation. And you know, we're
in early days of blockchain, so there are companies and
institutions out there that want to get the flywheel going

(19:23):
and I'm taking advantage of that. But that's the description
of raedom.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, thank you. And who developed the technology? George? It
was your idea or you with a collaborative team came
up with the idea. And then yeah, who actually developed
the technology?

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, so the tech, I mean I sort of wireframed
it out. But then there are people far smarter than I,
both at Berkeley as well as at the Near Foundation,
that are actually kind of writing the code.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
And the students had input into it here.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Since had tremendous input. So I wrote a book about
blockchain in the Arts some years ago, and then that
has become a course at Berkeley called Music plus Web
three and I use Radar to be a teaching tool
for that class has to teach copyright law, and I
find radar to be the very best way to teach

(20:14):
copyright because it takes something that's inherently intangible and makes
it very real.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
And is Radar a functional and app now and being
used by the students.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
It's in very early beta, probably alpha, so it's closed off.
We are currently uploading music and finalizing some of the technology,
but it will launch the spring semester.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
And so if I as a as a podcaster, let's say,
and you're absolutely right, the broadcasting part of this we're
on WBZ is the easy part, and I have a
broad based license and that's easy. The podcast is work
go sideways in terms of the royalties and the licensing.
So will let's just use me as an example in
the spring, can I go download them?

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Only you? But I'm going to be hitting you up
and because like that, that'll be the challenge. Like where
it's we will not have challenge putting a student getting
students put music up there. There's so much created In
order for this to work, we need people like yourself
and others to see the value in it and to
utilize it. And I believe that will happen. I think

(21:21):
it will take some time, but there's a real need
for this.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
Yeah, and I think it's so much needed right now.
You're in the music industry. So you know, there's so
many musicians out there, they mostly make their money from
playing live. They don't they don't get royalties or licensing
fees very often. But to take out the middleman and
use use an application, use technology in this in this
way is really meaningful to that group of musicians, which

(21:46):
is most of the musicians. They're not all the Dolly Parton's,
you know, the most very small sliver of musicians that
actually make money off the royalties.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
It's harder than ever. So it's in post COVID. As
you alluded, touring is revenue generative, but in a post
COVID world it's very very hard. Customers habits have changed,
and then as I mentioned earlier about AI generated music,
that's going to really be a threat to the licensing
revenue as well. So we have to be constantly reinventing

(22:19):
ourselves using technology and seen as an opportunity and really
having a Artists need a seat at the table when
it comes to how and what we build things. And
I think Berkeley is just unbelievably well positioned to define things.
But I as someone that's got a few miles under
my road, I've seen what's happened in the past, and
I can kind of have a good sense of what's

(22:39):
coming in the future. So I'm just trying to tune
my students into those things and lead by example.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, I agree, having the Berkeley impromter on it really
validates it in a really meaningful way.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
I think that's not to say that there aren't really
talented musicians everywhere, but Berkeley has a brand. They have
a wonderful brand where if you know someone like yourself,
if you've got various licensing opportunities, if you see the
Berkeley and promoter are there, you're gonna probably take a
chance on that more than you would one that doesn't

(23:11):
have the brand equity that the Marble does.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Right, You've been successful in the music business, So I'm
guessing I know what the answer to this question is
going to be been an ask it anyway. Do you
see this becoming somewhat of an industry standard?

Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yes, undoubtedly, And nobody likes hearing about it now because
we just went through this, this terrible kind of market crash.
But blockchain's not going away. Nmts will be called something
different as we move forward, but digital assets they're not
going away, right, And so yes, it will be an
industry standard radar, you know. I'm hoping it will find

(23:45):
its niche. If we don't create new opportunities for revenue
for musicians, it's over right, and artists will be like poets,
something that they just do as a hobby but with
no expectation of generating any real money. And that would
be a tragedy right in a real genuine sense of tragedy.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
But the timing is good, especially with the looming shadow
of AI upon us and threatening to root into the
creative process. I think you couldn't have better time. Given
our stressing times right now, it's certainly fertile ground for
having a renaissance of creativity and supporting artists. For sure.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
The music is really an empathy machine, so it's bigger
than just kind of trying to find sustainability for artists.
But if you don't do that, you certainly don't have it. Look.
I've been tilted windmills all my career. Every once in
a while I hit one.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
There you go, George, I can't thank you enough. That
was very insightful. Really appreciate all your comments, and it
was educational too for our listeners, So thanks so much.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
No, that's my pleasure, Mike.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
We'll be right back after the news at the bottom
of the hour
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