November 16, 2025 • 45 mins
It promised to empower artists and give listeners infinite choice.
Instead, it’s turned music into a disposable commodity, replaced human curation with algorithms, and made it impossible for most artists to earn a sustainable living.
To help us explore the new world of music, we’re joined by Charlie Hooper-Williams, a critically-acclaimed composer, pianist & creative coder, and one of the developers behindmusic-identification app Shazam.
His new album ‘The Book of Fixed Stars’ is out now on The Way Beyond Music.
http://charliehooperwilliams.com
https://www.instagram.com/charliehooperwilliams
https://www.youtube.com/@CharlieHooperWilliams
In this episode, Charlie joins us to discuss his journey as a composer and pianist, the impact of digital technology on the music industry, and the challenges and opportunities presented by streaming platforms.
We also look at the changing landscape of music consumption, the role of algorithms in discoverability, the influence of AI on music creation, as well as advice for aspiring musicians and the future of music in a technology-driven world.
00:00 Introduction to Charlie's Musical Journey
01:31 The Impact of Digital Transformation on Music
02:33 The TikTokification of Music
04:17 The Devaluation of Music as an Art Form
05:32 Streaming Platforms: Exposure vs. Earnings
08:06 The Role of Spotify in the Music Industry
08:51 The Challenges of Discoverability in the Digital Age
12:17 The Evolution of Artist-Fan Relationships
17:52 Technology's Role in Music Creation and Distribution
20:04 Navigating the Modern Music Landscape
22:56 The Art of Live Performance and Technology
25:46 The Role of Algorithms and AI in Music
34:50 The Future of Music in a Digital Age
40:46 Advice for Aspiring Musicians and Creators
Please follow the show, leave a review, or let us know what else you’d like us to look into at https://www.ruinedbytheinternet.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Ruined by the Internet.
I'm Gareth King. Today we're asking, has the
Internet ruined music? It promised to empower artists
and give listeners infinite choice.
Instead, it's turned music into a disposable commodity, replaced
human curation with algorithms, and made it impossible for most
artists to earn a sustainable living.
To help us explore the new worldof music, we're joined by
(00:22):
Charlie Hooper Williams, a critically acclaimed composer,
pianist and creative coder, and one of the developers behind
music identification app Shazam.His new album, The Book of Fix
Stars, is out now on the Way Beyond Music.
Charlie, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the
(00:42):
show. Thank you for having me.
Before we get into it, can you tell us a little bit about what
you do and the journey that's LED you to this point?
Sure, yes. So I'm a composer, pianist and
creative coder. I perform alongside a live
visual system that I've made that listens to what I play and
creates visuals in response. So everything's happening live,
everything I can play spontaneously and the system
(01:03):
will adapt. And because of that I have a lot
of control over how the music isvisualised.
So it's not just sort of one kind of screen savoury thing I
can have each piece has a very precise vision for it that's
then created as I perform. And I know that you've done some
other projects in the past as well, which I'm sure we'll get
into as we go through this episode.
(01:23):
But looking at how the digital world has revolutionised the
whole music industry over the last, let's say, 20 years,
what's been the most surprising thing that's changed in your
opinion? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of
really unsurprising changes, Like, you know, you if you make
music kind of a rental model that obviously has a lot of
knock on effects and this flattening of the the global,
(01:46):
it's great that you can get music from from anywhere.
You're not kind of limited to what would be in stock in a
specific store. I think probably the most
surprising thing for me was thisTik Tokification of like such a
big thing of, you know, getting your song to go massive, not
through a video, not through a music streaming service or a
music, you know, radio or anything, and having record
(02:09):
companies really being focused in in that direction.
It does definitely open up a lotof avenues for people who may
not be as technically gifted to kind of get amongst that world
and and take part in it. And I think that, well, it does
take away some of that gatekeeping.
It's obviously, you know, upended such a huge part of what
was the traditional music industry.
(02:31):
But you mentioned they're the Tik Tokification.
What do you mean by that? Just to clarify for anybody that
might not know. There's a few aspects.
There's one is like nobody has an attention span anymore, so
it's all, can we get here faster?
You listen to songs from the 70sor 80s and the intro is just
got, you know, you're like a minute into the song started yet
and you just can't do that anymore.
And you know, and I'm not, I'm not a pop artist, right?
(02:52):
I'm like a host classical, whatever we call that.
It is a bit more, I think forgiving for some of that
stuff. But I feel that too, where it's
like you can't, not that you can't, but just for a specific
song, I have to choose. Is this an 8 minute long arc for
people when they do have time for it?
Or is this like a 2 1/2 minute kind of playlist type track?
(03:12):
You know, you get in and out quickly.
I think one of the things from that and from this TikTok, it
needing to grab you in 5 seconds, is everybody's trying
to make every song a hit. And so every song does tend to
sound a little bit more similar because there is a way to
structure songs so that it is, you know, it's got all the bits
and a lot of those are great songs.
(03:33):
It's not that we shouldn't do that, but you, you know,
traditionally you wouldn't have every song on an album trying to
be that number one hit. You'd have other songs that do
other things so that in the context of an album it all makes
sense. And I think because everything's
really it's sliced and diced andkind of served in these.
Will you listen to this 5 seconds so that you listen to
the next 5 seconds? There's the sameness that comes
from that. I remember learning about this
(03:55):
stuff when I was in in music class in high school.
You know, certain types of of beats were more less.
I don't know if palatable is theright word for the years, but
your your point there around every song trying to be a hit
now. One of the things that comes up
a lot around the discussion of music and and how it's changed
through the Internet is the factthat a lot of people see that
(04:15):
it's been devalued as an art form.
Now. If you were to say to somebody
every song is trying to be a hitnow, that sounds like it's being
valued. You know what I mean?
Like if you used to buy an albumthat had one or two hits and now
you're getting an album of of 10hits, it sounds like it's going
to be way better quality. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What are you? Doing, you know, yeah, but if
everything's a hit, then nothingis a hit and.
(04:38):
It's like everything's at this level of of kind of the trying
to be the peak and you can't, yeah, totally be peaks.
I don't want to be too like old man yells a cloud.
Music doesn't all sound the same, but I do think that within
a specific genre or within, you know, I think that there are
things that people are trying todo that are more the same than
they used to be. I can put it down to being a
symptom of the way that the Internet treats everything.
(05:00):
It's a battle for that quick bitof attention.
And if you have got to create a 5 second hook to get someone to
go, maybe I'll listen to 30 seconds.
How are you going to get someoneto to listen to 8 minutes if the
way people are enjoying music isbeing completely changed?
Because it doesn't need a huge journey through a piece of
music. It just needs that that earworm
(05:20):
that you can get 110 a million people kind of using and
sharing. That brings kind of the next
logical big argument within the Internet space is obviously
streaming platforms. Now, we've all seen the the
minuscule payouts from from say bands that you might think are
quite large and they'll be like,oh, I made $7.60 for, I don't
know, 2 million plays or whatever it is.
(05:42):
But when I do think about thingslike that, they obviously are
predatory in one sense. But then I try and flip it
around and think about it as they're just another exposure
platform for people who would not have been able to get that
exposure otherwise. Yeah.
You make very little off of streaming, but potential for
(06:03):
discovery. And I think I think with all
these things, there's the two sides.
I mean, one thought going back to the thing of, of trying to
make everything a hit or saying in another way, trying to make
sure you grab people's attentionwith something every 5 seconds.
And I think for example, that's a way of listening that we
probably had before. That isn't necessarily a new
thing. It's just that you didn't have
(06:23):
to, you know, if the record players across the room, if
you're not grabbing someone, youdo have a little bit longer.
But I still, I think it's, I think there is a good thing for
that level of Polish. And even if I'm doing, you know,
an 8 minute track, I try to havesomething tonal, something
textural, something rhythmic, all of these different things at
the beginning as a way of letting people know what the
whole thing's going to be. And I think, yeah, there's a
(06:45):
similar thing with streaming of yeah, you can get listened to.
I mean, I've had things where they'll they'll get on a
playlist and they get hundreds of thousands of streams.
And you don't really make any money off of that.
You are in front of people. I do think there's a thing of
that doesn't necessarily translate to fans.
It can, people will find, you know, if enough people are
streaming at some of those people will then find you and
(07:07):
listen to other things and maybecome see you.
But there's one artist I know who does massive numbers on
streaming and I've been to his shows where there's, you know,
12 people and it is completely not translating to live.
And so for him, there's two options.
Either you just build up the live separately and treat it as
a separate thing, or you just say, well, I'm I'm a stream of
artist. But I think it's because of
(07:28):
that, you know, even getting a million monthly listeners is not
going to pay for you to do musicfull time at that level.
You do start to get some money from it.
Like Spotify, you know, I'm not pro Spotify.
I think that they are like on the one sense.
I think that they are squeezing everything as much as they
(07:49):
possibly can on the other sense,like their business, like you
can't expect them to just voluntarily give up money.
That's not how the world is structured.
So it's going to have to come from somewhere else.
It has to come from either collective action from
musicians, which is very hard todo, or legislation, any per
stream campaign to raise the royalty rate to 1 penny per
stream. I don't know if they've said
(08:10):
what currency that's in, but I would take any of them.
That is so much more than than what we're getting now to, you
know. And if that was legally
mandated, obviously it would change loads of things about the
business model. And when you get into things
like regulation, you will sometimes have these unintended
consequences, but that would radically change how it is to
make money as a small artist. I do want, look, I don't know
(08:31):
the the full back story of Spotify and I wonder whether,
you know, the initial idea had that gigantic monetization in it
or it was just something that happened as it scaled, whether
it's Spotify, whether it's any any other platform.
It's like they've got all the leverage, you know, And so it's
kind of naturally all the cards have fallen their way, as you
said, and. Company Town, it's a you have
(08:53):
to, you have to be on Spotify and, you know, and the other the
other streaming platforms, therewas this thing of, you know,
everybody was just downloading their pirating their MP threes.
And now that was just the Wild West for a while.
And they tried suing the heck out of a few people to try to
scare people from doing that. But obviously that's not a good
look and that's not an OK thing to do.
Yeah. I was just going to say that was
a crazy story because I rememberthe the whole met Metallica
(09:16):
suing, that's the thing. And it's like it wasn't a very
sympathetic case. Do you know what I mean?
If it was a lot of struggling poor artists, I think the
message would have been so much more resonant with people.
But the fact you've got. I think it's being this massive
and well, and and you see this with other lawsuit things where,
you know, the more savvy thing would have been for Metallica to
(09:39):
find some small band and have them be the face of the lawsuit,
even if Metallica is putting their money into it, you know,
because legally, yeah, that's like, it is you're you're
getting this thing for free thatis for sale.
That's stealing. But I think we did, I mean,
everybody recognised that nobody's making money off music
if everybody's pirating it. So then we went to this
streaming model. But one of the things with the
(10:01):
major labels being allied with Spotify is that Spotify
guarantees major labels payouts that are higher than this per
stream. So major artists will get their
money 1st and then there's this very low per stream that gets
put out to independent artists. And they've now done this thing
of demonetizing stream songs below 1000 streams, which again,
(10:23):
a lot of people were up in arms about.
As someone who's, you know, a smaller artist, that sucks.
But because it's free to put stuff on Spotify, they're just
inundated with tracks that nobody's listening to.
And if you can put up, so you get with one of the big things
with the Internet is the scale is so huge that there are these
new ways to game the system. So if you can just set up a
(10:45):
script on a computer to make songs, whether they have any
content or at all, and you're just uploading millions of
tracks to Spotify is saying, well, somebody's going to listen
to it at some point and then I'll make some money back.
They do need to defend against that.
So as an artist who people actually do listen to, even if
it's not, you know, these millions and millions kind of
numbers, I think the thousand cap does make sense.
(11:08):
You know, you could have 750 people listen to your track and
you get nothing for it. But when you do crack 1000, you
get paid for all thousand. So it's not that you only get
paid for the first stream beyondthat, it's just that there's a
floor to the monetization. So again, it doesn't sound good
when it's like, oh, we're not pay any time we say we're not
paying you, right? That sounds bad.
(11:29):
But when you think about why they're doing it to to sort of
combat this like slop that basically nobody somebody
listened to by accident, it it does, I am more sympathetic.
It does. It does actually make sense and
I like my brain just went off ina few different directions
there. I was thinking of a case that I
read about a little while ago where some dude used AI to just
make a shit load of songs and then built a tonne of bots to
(11:52):
stream all these songs and endedup, like, getting a pay out of.
Well, he earned earned, we'll say.
I think there's something like $20 million.
Well, obviously they don't want to pay it, but as you said, he's
just gaming the system as it stands.
Yeah. And so I'm not sure where it
ended up. I'm sure he didn't, you know,
the tiny little guy didn't get to keep the $20 million.
But another thing you mentioned a few minutes ago was around
(12:15):
that kind of discoverability. I can think back to when I was
younger and, and discovering music before the Internet was as
much as like you pull out the, the, the album art, the liner
notes and you read what bands are being thinked in here.
Who, who they saying check out these if you find a magazine
article or something, and then that's how you would find new
(12:35):
stuff. So it was a very slow, very
labour intensive process. So if you were a tiny band, it's
completely hype driven how you're getting discovered.
But now, as you said, you can just be served up hundreds of
different things on any given day and be able to kind of just
try everything out very quickly,very fast, see if it's for you,
if it's not, and then find more and more.
(12:56):
So there's obviously so many benefits to having that quick
exposure, but as you said, it's very easy to get buried in
amongst the just the amount of it.
Yeah, Well, yeah, we have this idea of of, you know, oh, you
can listen to anything. But most of the time, and I have
this with like with discovering new music because there's got to
be loads of amazing music out there that I haven't heard.
(13:18):
And it's almost, it becomes thislike eat your vegetables thing
of like, what I want to do is sit down, spend an hour and
listen, you know, really try to discover.
But usually it's like, well, I want to listen to something that
I know I'm going to like. And so then the algorithm right
will serve you basically just stuff you've listened to before
someone was like, the Spotify algorithm seems completely
incapable of recommending anything that I haven't already
(13:41):
listened to because their goal, it's not for you to discover new
music. Their goal is for you to keep
listening, right? And the real goal is for you to
keep spending the money every month.
They actually don't care if you listen or not.
They just want, yeah, yeah, be asubscriber.
That is one of the things I actually find so beneficial
around algorithms. Like if it builds a playlist,
(14:03):
say you listen to one thing, right, and then it will build
you a playlist of things adjacent to that thing.
And so if you're in the mood fora certain type of of music, you
can essentially discover so muchnew stuff in exactly what you're
trying to listen to. And that's been an absolute God
send to me. But, but while we are talking
(14:23):
discoverability, something you've done in the past was
you've worked on Shazam. And, and for me, you know, a
little anecdote time, that thinghas been a lifesaver.
Once, you know, a long time ago when I was living in London, I
was in a little club. It was early hours of the
morning and I just got Shazam onthe phone.
I didn't really know how it worked.
(14:44):
All I knew is you could just kind of open it up if there was
a song that you liked and it would find it.
And so it was a little club, very bad reception, whatever.
And I was holding it up and it wasn't working because there's
not enough signal. But then it finally got there
and got me this song, you know, the result.
And I think this must have been around 2014 and to this day, you
(15:05):
know, we're now nearly the end of 2025.
It's each one of my favourite songs of all time.
So that's just a very happy memory of, of technology and
discoverability that has has, I guess, impacted my life in very
positive ways in terms of other ways of, of using technology,
whether it's to produce music or, you know, whether you're
(15:27):
creating music or whether you'reeven performing it.
Tell us a little bit more about how how you do it and how it all
works. Yeah, yeah.
Well, just to build off that before I go into this, one other
thing I think, yeah, technology is great at automating and
solving problems. And so one of the things is like
content ID on YouTube. Like it can be annoying as an
artist where you, you know, you want to post something that's
(15:49):
like, you can't, but the main use case of someone else can put
my music in a video and then I get paid for it and nobody has,
they don't have to contact me. And that streamlines things a
lot. And you, The funny thing is you
can't actually see where it is. So my wife is also a musician
and she got some money from YouTube and she was like,
somebody has used my song and it's gotten a tonne of views and
(16:11):
I have no idea where it is. Like what, what is this?
So sometimes it can be mysterious when you get, if
something's used on a bigger video, like big enough that you
notice in the payout. It's mysterious, but it is it's
smooth as that journey, right? It's just the computers have
automated it so people don't have to talk to each other.
I mean, that is a separate, you know, downside.
(16:31):
But for something like that, where it would just be
transactional anyway, hey, can Iuse this song that can all just
be automatic. And so that again, any change
like that, it brings its own problems.
But like you know when, when it works, when you go down the
happy path of this is working the way it was designed to, it
can really facilitate a lot of things quickly.
Is there a reason, do you think,why it doesn't tell you who's
(16:52):
used it? I don't know.
It would be great if there was just a link to the video because
it might be cool. Like I don't think anybody's
putting our music on like ISIS videos or anything.
I think it's probably something nice.
I mean, if you were like, you'd put a tune and I don't know, it
was it was a widely appealing tune and there's potential for
someone that you to to be using it in a way that you don't want
(17:15):
to kind of be associated with. I'm I'm quite surprised that
there's no way. Yeah, well, and I think it's all
so much of this is like, who benefits like that doesn't
really benefit YouTube to do that.
You can do you can do a content claim, but it's in terms of as
an artist, your music is either available or not available.
There's not. You can't go in and say, oh, I
don't want it on this site. Do you want it on that?
If you're actually getting licenced for film or TV or
(17:38):
something, then yeah, you can say I have a friend who does
that and he got a brief from I think a cigar company.
And he was like, yeah, no thanks.
Yeah, interesting. And before we jump into the
different ways that that technology can be used across
the whole music industry now, one of the things that we've
seen through the rise of the Internet is, I mean, what what I
would describe it as is the kindof breakdown of a lot of that
(18:00):
star power, you know, Once Upon a time, like, I don't know, you
think about The Beatles, right? Like if The Beatles were
available 24/7 to fans on socialmedia, like do we think
Beatlemania would have happened like it did?
Yeah, there's this lots of mystique, isn't there?
Where it's like you, you want to, because these parasocial
relationships can be really powerful where you people feel
(18:20):
like they know you. And so you're posting like,
here's my breakfast or whatever.And yeah, that can work.
But then, yeah, there's no, there's no mystery.
It would be nice to be able to be mysterious and have people
coming to you, but then when they're not, you sort of go the
other way. And so, yeah, here's my content.
Here's more content for you. You know, when I thought about
this in the context of, say, actors, I think back to before
(18:41):
social media was everywhere. Like actors was someone you saw
on a movie poster in the cinema or maybe a cut out if it was
like Arnie and they were these larger in life people that just
seemed to be in a completely different planet.
Now I could go online and find out what the biggest stars in
the world are basically doing every minute of the day.
And it's like this push for all of these big names to try and
(19:01):
present themselves as the regular person just like you
kind of defeats the entire purpose of being this big star
in this drawer. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, you want to offer this
like peek behind the curtain forpeople who are like, really or
whatever you do. And then there's no there, you
know, it's, it's the Internet. So then it's there for everybody
and just everybody gets the peekat the curtain and there's no
(19:22):
curtain anymore. And I think that as you said,
you can try and attract people through putting out different
pieces of content, et cetera, trying to get them to, to listen
to what you're, you're doing. So you could be someone that's
that's just putting out reels, like the uneven music, and
someone would discover the reel and then discover that you're a
musician and that's how the music can take off.
So, well, it's obviously, yeah. I think we're, I think we're
(19:45):
discovering that people don't dothat very much.
So there's a big thing on TikTokright now where And you know,
labels are turning away from discovering artists on TikTok
because. OK.
You can't get people off TikTok then, right?
It's like if people discover them on TikTok, they might have
millions and millions of streamsbut like nobody is going to go
then do the other. The other thing, like I said,
even streaming doesn't translateto people coming out to see.
(20:07):
You and I think social media doesn't translate even to people
listening, you know, streaming your music.
So I'm trying to not spend too much time because you can become
just a social media person and in some people they find that
that's what they like. They do really well on social
media. That's their thing.
And like with because there's a tech element to what I do, I've
thought about doing reels because people do really well
off of that, but it's like then you become a tutorial person and
(20:29):
I don't that's not my thing. I would like to share what I do,
but like, putting in the effort to really have a following there
then means that I'm not actuallymaking the music.
And that's it's like keeping focus on like, what is what?
Why am I here? What what is my actual thing?
And you have to do some other work.
So yeah, this goes with like thebreakdown of the record
(20:49):
industry, right? Everybody can just make their
home, which in a sense democratises.
And it's great that I can, I record all my stuff just here in
my house and I'm with the label now.
But my initial albums I just putout myself, but it doesn't.
I think in addition to realisingthat people won't switch
platforms necessarily, there's this re interest in gatekeepers
(21:13):
because everybody can do everything and the algorithm is
a really unsatisfying way to discover stuff.
And I think we're missing the fact that some people actually
do have really good taste. And having that be essentially A
profession I think is really valuable.
Obviously when the gatekeepers are gatekeeping you, that's
frustrating. Like that's, that's so
(21:33):
interesting to hear. I, I think you can use it to get
your, you to ask like, how can Imake what I'm doing better so
that it interests who these people are?
I think if you make music just for the gatekeepers, that's a
mistake. Just like I think making a song
that is just aiming to hook people for five seconds so they
don't scroll away is a mistake. But I think saying right here's
this piece that I've written that I'm happy with
(21:55):
artistically, how can I make every 5 second chunk exciting
through production or whatever in a way that doesn't take away
from what what I'm trying to do artistically?
How can I make that as good as it can possibly be and, and get
through to that I think can actually be helpful.
I think sometimes that little bit of adversity can actually
make you a better artist. No, absolutely.
And and there's a couple of things that you you said through
(22:17):
that bit there that all kind of connect things to me.
It's like 1. You don't want to be known as a
tutorial person. That's just one part of the
wider Charlie world and the way that technology is allowing you
to create a much more complex, Iguess, piece of art that's not
just that recorded music. Now obviously everyone can make
music, but now also with technology, there's so many more
(22:38):
avenues for different people anddifferent skill sets to kind of
find their way into being part of the of the music industry in
different forms. Now you personally do a bunch of
different things. Tell us about how you go from
the music all the way through tothe entire live performance.
How does that process come about?
Yeah, so my live show has this tech element, and people will
(23:01):
often say, yeah, what comes first?
Does the music come first or do the visuals come first?
First? And generally, the music comes
first. And I write in a very
traditional way, if I'm right, like I'm just sitting at the
piano playing the piano. And then when something works, I
write it down. And then sometimes I'll record
it as a voice memo and then liketranscribe it later.
And then, you know, I'll put it into the computer, work through
(23:22):
that way. And then at, at some point I
start thinking, what does this, what should this look like?
And people will ask sometimes ifI have synesthesia, which is the
thing where you, you will see found, or you'll sometimes, you
know, taste of shape or, or whatever, you know, you have
this kind of mixing 3 modes. And I, I very much don't have
that. So for me, it's more what should
this, what should the journey ofthis piece?
(23:42):
How should it be represented? And for me, a lot of it is about
what I call like the architecture of the piece, like
the structure of the piece more so than just individual notes.
And I'll start, I'll start building that.
Sometimes you write a piece really quickly and it's, you
know, it's done in an hour and it's amazing.
And sometimes you write a piece and it's done in an hour and
you're like that one can just stay in the file.
(24:04):
And similarly, there's pieces that I've spent ages on and then
if they finally get there and they're great.
And then sometimes you spend ages and you get to the end and
you're like, and the same with visuals.
I'll have one of my most successful pieces of visuals, I
think is for this track Emma, where there's just you see this
massive building and there's lights coming on from the
different notes. And it's, it took very little
(24:26):
time to do because it's the concept that's carrying the
weight that rather than the, I'mnot doing something fancy
algorithmically. And then there's other ones,
there's a piece I play called Conversant that has this motion
graphics kind of retro thing. And that just took so long to
get right. And I'm really happy with it.
But it was just ages and ages oftweaking.
And then yes. So that's, there's essentially
(24:47):
an algorithm for each piece. And then I just have a computer
with me that listens to what I'mplaying and, and that to a
projector. And then I have these light
towers as well that are, it's 6 towers that have these colour
LEDs on them. And I can treat that like,
almost like a sliced up screen. So you have this, these things
in the room with me that are these kind of sculptures that
(25:09):
also do the, the light and the visuals and then me performing.
And that's another thing that I I kind of realised toward the
beginning is how much of the show, how much of A visual
element of the show is me playing.
I would kind of make these visuals, but almost leaving
space for the fact that people want to see me playing, You
know, because there's you've gotlike Max Cooper, who's great.
(25:32):
He's got really cool visuals, but like he's in the show, He's
not, you don't want to look at him.
He's just, you know, he's deejaying and you can do stuff
as a DJ to be a a bit more visually interesting.
But let's like you just watch the thing and he does the, you
know, he DJs do it. And playing the piano is, is
different. It's a lot more kinetic than
that. So kind of leaving, leaving
space and almost composing the visuals in a way that I'm, I'm,
(25:55):
I am a thing that's happening inthe performance.
Yeah. Well.
That's, that's kind of exactly what I was thinking.
Now it's not so much there's a performer on stage.
It's like the entire immersive experience with all the
technology that we have. It's things to be considered.
I think having all of those big screens does add an entire new
dimension to it. And as you're saying too, like
(26:16):
the screens for you is 1 component.
The lights are one component andthen you're another component.
So these are a whole cohesive world.
And, and one thing that I find quite interesting in the way
that performers operate now is how they use the, the
incorporation of technology in different ways to enhance the
music in, in ways that you mighthave just had, you know, a
banner unfill Once Upon a time, or maybe some lights or maybe
(26:39):
some pyro if you were like supersuccessful.
But one thing I did see recentlywas was massive attack.
Oh, the massive attack. Yeah, with the facial
recognition stuff, yeah. And I'm sure there was some
deeper meaning behind it. I'm sure there's some statement
knowing them, but when I saw it,I was like, this is just another
level of fan artist connection and making the fans feel like
(27:01):
they're part of the show. And then I think it does still
feel a little bit dystopian and,and then.
Yeah, I, it's super cool. I, I love that because, yeah, it
makes you a bit uncomfortable. And so it is showing that this
face tracking software exists and is easy to set up and you
can just point a camera at a crowd and track individual
people. And, you know, if you move
(27:22):
around, you're still, it's stillyour face up there.
And that, I mean, that's the thing that ties in with one of
the things that I'm trying to doof, of taking things that exist
in our lives. So we're surrounded by
algorithms, right? Life is just the sea of
algorithms we're moving through.But most of the time it's trying
to sell us something or surveil us or influence an election.
And I think algorithms get a badname because of that.
(27:44):
But the algorithm itself is, is neutral.
It's a tool. And there's a person or people
who are using the algorithm to sell you stuff or influence and
elect or surveil you or whatever.
And algorithms. So I'm using algorithms to make
art and that's another thing they can do.
And so kind of separating that out of I'm a bit of a
(28:05):
technophile. I feel like I, I kind of want to
defend the, the, you know, the kind of digital realm, not
everything that's been done withit, of course, but like, you
don't solve these problems by going back, you know, by sort of
banning computers or whatever, or, or say, you know, where I, I
think AI, there's AI don't know what's going to happen with AI,
(28:27):
but it's finding ways to, to control and monitor and band
together to say what's acceptable and what's not.
And how do we build a society that works for everybody
together? Yeah.
Look, I mean, as we've discussedthroughout this, there's
obviously been a whole bunch of of negatives that have come
(28:47):
through technology, but so many positives as well, whether it's
democratisation, creation, performance, you know, all sorts
of things. But you just touch on something
I'd love for us to, to move intonow, which was around algorithms
everywhere and now AI and how these can potentially be
changing music. Now I know a little while ago
we, we briefly mentioned someonegaming the system by using AI to
(29:11):
create all these songs and earn $20 million or whatever it was
as a payout being being a technophile as you are.
Like I'm also, I think aware enough to be able to comment on
this stuff. But it's like, as these tools
get better and better, you know,I've played around with stuff
before and I've written a promptand I'll say, I don't know, make
me a black metal song about cooking a meat pie or something
(29:35):
like that. And, and it just makes stuff and
it's so bizarre that you know, you, what would usually have
been a gigantic project, get your friends or maybe if you're
super talented, you can do it yourself Now, you can just do it
with a, with a prompt super quick.
How do you think that as AI getsmore sophisticated, how do you
reckon it's going to play out in, in not only music creation,
(29:56):
but then also distribution and, and performance?
Where? Where do your hypotheticals go
with this? Yeah.
I mean, there's the there's the good potential things and the
bad potential things. And I think the like it's
completely screwed illustrators,for example.
And I think when it started there is, oh, I think, I think
with anything you end up with this pipeline problem where all
(30:18):
the low level stuff gets taken over by AI.
And so anybody who is doing illustrations on Fiverr or like
you're trying to get started in the industry, nobody's there's
no work for them. If you're a big name illustrator
and people are going to you because they want the thing you
do, they'll they'll still go to you.
Maybe that changes in the future, but there's there's now
(30:40):
this who are going to be the theNext up and coming illustrators
if nobody's able to start as a junior.
And there's a similar thing happening in coding.
So I still do some coding work and you can go twice as fast
with AI helping you code, but you basically you need to be
kind of at more at the senior level where you'd know how to
architect the thing. You know how to keep the AI on
(31:02):
track and you know, you need to know what's happening and when
the AI goes off the rails, whichthey do, you need to just be
like, OK, now clear all of that.We're we're starting over.
So there's like these limits to vibe coding, but it's like how
if you're a junior developer trying to get your first job,
everybody's like, no, we're not hiring juniors anymore.
We have AI so. I think there's just a.
Lot of of that kind of thing. And probably the same with
(31:23):
mastering. You know, AI mastering is not
going to replace any mastering engineer that you would know by
name and go to because you like their style.
But if you're like, oh, I don't have budget for this, I might
just hire this guy locally and pay him £50.
You know, somebody's just going to put it, put it through the AI
mastering plug in because it's going to sound.
(31:44):
Yeah, no, totally. And I think.
Yeah, what's going to happen in 20 years when the current names
have all retired and nobody had a chance to do this stuff?
It's very funny that this exact discussion, we've just kind of
touched on it in the creative kind of industries like like my
background is in, in you know creative industry as well.
But what I am seeing a lot more of is there is a lot of push
(32:07):
back now, you know, like we've I've seen certain big brands
that should know way better haveway more money than to be just
getting someone to write a prompt to make big, you know,
marketing campaigns are putting out just obvious AI stuff with
those errors that you need the skilled engineer or the skilled
coder to actually be able to recognise.
(32:28):
And then that's happening acrosseverything, you know, you're
seeing in corporate world as well.
It's like there's no, no junior jobs.
So it's going to be just this entire talent vacuum once those
seniors retire. So that's maybe there's
something in there that's going to be the new thing is figuring
out how to do it. But back to music, he said.
Like AI engineers, I've not really heard of that before.
How are people doing that? Yeah, well.
(32:50):
Just like there is, if you're doing the kind of the mastering
step, you know, you can have your track and there's one built
into logic where it'll analyse and then it just makes a
mastering chain based on what your track sounds like.
And it's, it's all right, it's good.
It's you know, and, and that sort of thing like I would you'd
never master your draught mixes normally, right?
(33:12):
Like having that on your work inprogress.
That's great. But then I will definitely still
go to an actual mastering engineer for the final.
It needs to be somebody who, whohas taste and, and all of that.
But there's this constant movingof goal posts with AI right now.
We're like, Oh, they I could never have taste, but like, can
(33:33):
it in five years? Like it's all moving so fast.
I think we, we might get to a point where it can do everything
better than us. And then the question is, which
things do you really want a human for?
And I think like you consume artbecause you want to interact
with another human mind. Like even if an AI could write a
better one, like I want music and visual art and novels that
(33:55):
it comes from a person. Even even if AI gets to the
point where it's not doing this sort of idiotic.
AI, it's just you just want thatsoul behind it, you know?
Yeah, yeah, I think that's part of the human condition that you
want to empathise and relate to to people through different
means. You see all these, I can show
you how to shut down the entire Hollywood studio for like $50
and this new video creation software, it's like, can you,
(34:17):
will you? You know, they don't think
that's going to fly for too muchlonger, but we've been talking
around the uneven playing field as well within music that's been
created through technology and this kind of TikTok vacation,
whether that's a kind of a race to the bottom or not, depending
on who you are and how you look at it.
What would you say like from here on out, a fair digital
(34:40):
music market would look like foreverybody involved?
And do you think that there's a way that we can potentially
reverse any of the damage that'shappened over the last, say, 20
years? Yeah, I mean, it's a lot to try
to change anytime you like, change society or change a
massive system like that. I think one of the things is,
well, I think that like the penny per stream campaign, I'm
(35:02):
super in favour of that. It is where almost everybody
listens. I think this as people are still
in the process of returning to live shows post COVID, there's
still a difference in ticket sales.
But as people come back more, I will have people buy ACD or a
vinyl that shows and say, I'm not really going to listen to
this, but I will not feel guiltywhen I stream your music now.
And that's great, you know. So the awareness I think really
(35:24):
helps because people will say I want to support you.
Streaming you isn't really supporting you.
So if I if I support you in someway, then great.
I've like done my bit that's amazing.
Stream me forever. If you bought, I mean streaming
anyway, it's fine. I'm not anti people streaming my
music, but that's great when people care enough to say, oh,
I'm I am going to put my money toward this smaller artist.
(35:45):
It really helps just yeah, make everything work.
I think the other thing though, is people the because the
Internet shows you whoever is ontop the entire world makes
everything kind of need to be atthat level.
So if you put out a track and itgets 5000 streams, there are
people who are like, oh, that's nothing, you know, because
you're comparing it and it's like, well, the 5000 people
(36:08):
listen to something that I've made.
That's great. There's there's this thing of
you need to keep the attitude ofyou do spend some time being
your local musician. That is like doing really well
locally. You're not immediately going to
get up to this, like you might never get to the stratospheric
layer that there are these different levels of success.
And I think people see that even, you know, inside music,
(36:30):
you, you have that as a musicianwhere it's like you want
everything to have millions of streams and sell millions of
copies. And it's like, well, that, you
know, you can be successful and not have that.
And I think it's, I don't know if this happens more with
musicians or if I just see it more as a musician.
People will kind of not think that you're a professional
because they haven't seen you onATV show or that you're not
(36:53):
playing stadiums or something like that.
They will assume that you're like waiting for your big
Brexit. Oh, no, I'm, I'm doing the
thing. I'm making money music.
I'm a friend, professional musician, you know, yeah,
obviously you want to have career progression.
But if you're a scientist, nobody's like, oh, you're not a
real scientist until you, you know, have a noble prize.
It's like, no, you, you are a real scientist as soon as
(37:16):
someone is paying you to do science.
And it's, there's a similar thing here of enjoying that, not
seeing that as this substitute for the real thing.
Like I get to play music. People connect with it.
People say when they like it. That's amazing.
That's that's what you know, I think you need to be able to
enjoy all the all the steps and not be not kind of only see this
(37:39):
like global fame level as being a real thing because you always
see the algorithm is always going to show you those people.
And I say it's like you people get this body image issue with
TikTok. You're seeing like 100th of a
percent hotness people all the. Time.
There's a really huge shape withTikTok.
You can be really funny looking on TikTok or extremely
attractive, but if you're just kind of a normal looking person,
(38:01):
there's not as many of those. And and I think people have that
too where they go on there and they're just like, I don't look
like any of those people. That is like, well, no, of
course you don't. You're normal and normal person.
And that doesn't even necessarily mean like 50th
percent that you could be a verytalented musician, you could be
a very attractive person, whatever.
Like you, you know you. You don't.
(38:22):
You're still in that the middle of the bell curve there.
It's not, yeah, it's not healthyto compare yourself to the top,
you know, 100% globally. Yeah, look, that's that that
makes me think of another point there that we've seen through
the rise of especially social media.
You know, it's like fame is the goal, not creating, not doing
something, not testing yourself,you know, all these different
(38:44):
things. You know, you hear so many like
younger people than now, like I want to be an influencer, I want
to be famous. I don't care how like that's
that. That doesn't matter.
Like the the end goal of the fame is what you're actually
trying to do. And yeah, well, and.
I mean, we're social creatures. We like status and.
And you can convert that into other things, right?
(39:06):
If you're super famous and you decide, oh, I'd like to write a
book or be in a movie or launch a perfume line, like all of that
becomes easy if everybody knows who you are.
It makes sense that people wouldwant that.
But you do. Yeah.
You need to decide what is the thing you do.
And if what the thing that you do is is be famous, then cool,
(39:26):
focus on that. But I'm a big Rick Rubin fan and
I think his, a lot of what he says, it's very centering and
grounding about like you really have to make honest art.
If you aim for fame, you might get that, but it's going to be
flash in the pan. Like if you really focus
everything that you're creating on just catching a bunch of
(39:48):
eyeballs or ears or streams or whatever, you might get that.
But if it's not a really honest reflection of you one, if you
get that, it'll feel fake and hollow because it's not you
you've you've put on this like mask.
But also there is people do respond to honesty in whatever
they're they're. Yeah, I mean, Rick Ruvin is such
a great example that he he doesn't claim to know know what
(40:11):
he's doing across all of this stuff.
He's just got this innate ability to identify what is
going to be great within his hiskind of perception and realm.
And then that makes me think back to what we're saying a
couple of minutes ago. It's like if you're a great
engineer, like you've just got the year, you know, if you're a
great performer, you've just gotthe ability to do that.
(40:31):
But you were talking there around people kind of doing
things in their own way. What would you say then is, is
one piece of advice you'd offer anyone interested in getting
into, say, music or technology or even combining both, whether
it's a hobby or whether it's something that they want to do
as a career? Now, you've obviously built a
lot of different things into connecting with each other, so
(40:52):
you've seen the entire gamut. Like, what advice would you give
to steer somebody down a positive path?
Yeah. One of the things that someone
said to me early on that I I really think about all the time
is that you can't create anything without a community.
Like even if it's a solo project, like you need to be in
dialogue with other people. If if you don't, if none of your
(41:15):
friends are writers, like how are you going to even know how
to write a book? Like you might, you will be able
to write a book. And I think like I celebrate
like amateur creation. If you're just somebody and you
just want to do a thing, just dothat thing, that's great.
But if you want it to be really good, like you need to listen to
your own taste. That's very important.
But you also need to be in like in a mix of other people who are
(41:37):
also doing these creative things.
That'll be inspiring, but it will also then keep you like
there's an aspect of creative honesty where things are moving
in this this group with other people.
And then I think the other thingis it's kind of goes with like
you just have to make stuff. One of the things I really love
about both tech and music is nobody cares if you have a
(41:59):
degree in it. Nobody cares credentials you
have like can you do the thing? So in in tech, if you want to
get started, you, you can teach yourself stuff.
You can learn a lot. You, you can go study it at a
university or whatever. But if you've built a thing,
then people will respond to that.
So when I've been in hiring, it's like if you have an
applicant and they're like, Oh, I've made this app, it has 1000
(42:21):
users. Amazing.
That puts you way ahead of somebody who has, I've gone to
some fancy school, but like I just kind of have my coursework.
And it's the same with music. If you record an album and your
first one is probably not going to be the best work you ever do
and you share it, you don't haveto put it out for the whole
world. So there's a a friend's daughter
who's a teen and she's like starting to write and she's
(42:41):
really good. So we did a little bit of work
together and I was my task for her was you need to write 10
terrible songs. Don't worry about making it
good. They just, they need to be done.
And then when you've done 10, maybe some of them you will fail
at making a terrible song. It'll be a good song.
That's fine too. But like you just, you need to
get over the thing of having, oh, I've written these two songs
and I'm really kind of feeling precious about them.
(43:03):
And so I think, yeah, this thingof, of you, you just, you do it
with whatever. You don't have to wait until you
have, you know, X like this piece of kit or whatever.
You can only. You know, if you make a thing
and you're like wow, this microphone I used is terrible,
the sound is not good. OK, maybe then you go get a
microphone. Maybe you re record some of
that. Maybe it's just for the next
thing, but you have to keep going and not get hung up on
(43:24):
things. No, that's, that's great advice.
And I think that, as you said, doing stuff is so much better
evidence than what you could hypothetically do because you've
got that piece of paper and thatform of education.
And I hear that across lots of different things.
Just to finish up then what What's making you hopeful about
the future of how the Internet and technology and music
(43:46):
collides? I think one of the things is the
like the discourse around it, the fact that people are, I
think generally people have, people have really terrible hot
takes sometimes. But as we work through what is
this, what's going on? You know, it might be like on a
10 year time scale, but people are having these conversations
about streaming, not supporting artists.
People are having conversations about how are we going to handle
(44:08):
AI and this, you know, all the things that's that's happening
there. And we're not necessarily going
to, we're almost definitely not going to figure it out in time
to not have problems. But I think we do eventually
figure stuff out and move forward.
And I think the thing that we need to do for any of those
things is to limit the power of these kind of entrenched powers
(44:30):
so that there isn't this asymmetric thing.
So that when people do kind of group cultural decision like
this thing should be better in this way that we can do that.
Because I think we are actually pretty good at coming to the
right decision eventually. Fingers crossed, fingers
crossed. Thanks Charlie.
What's coming up for you and andwhere can people follow what
(44:52):
you're up to? Yeah, so I have this album
coming out in November, which iscalled The Book of Fixed Stars.
I just got the finals yesterday and they look so beautiful.
It's awesome. It's so good to see that.
So it's like they've done clear vinyl and the artwork is great
and I'm really happy with how itsounds.
So there's CDs, you can get it on band camp.
So the main first place if you just want all the links is my
(45:14):
website is Charlie Hooper williams.com.
And then that's I'm Charlie Hooper Williams on, you know,
Instagram and band camp and all those things.
You can just look me up and havea go.
I will ship to Australia for your Australian listeners and
good to know. Yeah, awesome.
Charlie, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
(45:36):
For more info on what we've discussed today, check out the
show notes. If you enjoyed this one, you can
subscribe to Ruined by the Internet on your favourite
podcast app and help spread the word by sharing this episode or
leaving a review. I'm Gareth King, see you next
time.
Welcome to Ruined by the Internet.
I'm Gareth King. Today we're asking, has the
Internet ruined music? It promised to empower artists
and give listeners infinite choice.
Instead, it's turned music into a disposable commodity, replaced
human curation with algorithms, and made it impossible for most
artists to earn a sustainable living.
To help us explore the new worldof music, we're joined by
(00:22):
Charlie Hooper Williams, a critically acclaimed composer,
pianist and creative coder, and one of the developers behind
music identification app Shazam.His new album, The Book of Fix
Stars, is out now on the Way Beyond Music.
Charlie, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the
(00:42):
show. Thank you for having me.
Before we get into it, can you tell us a little bit about what
you do and the journey that's LED you to this point?
Sure, yes. So I'm a composer, pianist and
creative coder. I perform alongside a live
visual system that I've made that listens to what I play and
creates visuals in response. So everything's happening live,
everything I can play spontaneously and the system
(01:03):
will adapt. And because of that I have a lot
of control over how the music isvisualised.
So it's not just sort of one kind of screen savoury thing I
can have each piece has a very precise vision for it that's
then created as I perform. And I know that you've done some
other projects in the past as well, which I'm sure we'll get
into as we go through this episode.
(01:23):
But looking at how the digital world has revolutionised the
whole music industry over the last, let's say, 20 years,
what's been the most surprising thing that's changed in your
opinion? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of
really unsurprising changes, Like, you know, you if you make
music kind of a rental model that obviously has a lot of
knock on effects and this flattening of the the global,
(01:46):
it's great that you can get music from from anywhere.
You're not kind of limited to what would be in stock in a
specific store. I think probably the most
surprising thing for me was thisTik Tokification of like such a
big thing of, you know, getting your song to go massive, not
through a video, not through a music streaming service or a
music, you know, radio or anything, and having record
(02:09):
companies really being focused in in that direction.
It does definitely open up a lotof avenues for people who may
not be as technically gifted to kind of get amongst that world
and and take part in it. And I think that, well, it does
take away some of that gatekeeping.
It's obviously, you know, upended such a huge part of what
was the traditional music industry.
(02:31):
But you mentioned they're the Tik Tokification.
What do you mean by that? Just to clarify for anybody that
might not know. There's a few aspects.
There's one is like nobody has an attention span anymore, so
it's all, can we get here faster?
You listen to songs from the 70sor 80s and the intro is just
got, you know, you're like a minute into the song started yet
and you just can't do that anymore.
And you know, and I'm not, I'm not a pop artist, right?
(02:52):
I'm like a host classical, whatever we call that.
It is a bit more, I think forgiving for some of that
stuff. But I feel that too, where it's
like you can't, not that you can't, but just for a specific
song, I have to choose. Is this an 8 minute long arc for
people when they do have time for it?
Or is this like a 2 1/2 minute kind of playlist type track?
(03:12):
You know, you get in and out quickly.
I think one of the things from that and from this TikTok, it
needing to grab you in 5 seconds, is everybody's trying
to make every song a hit. And so every song does tend to
sound a little bit more similar because there is a way to
structure songs so that it is, you know, it's got all the bits
and a lot of those are great songs.
(03:33):
It's not that we shouldn't do that, but you, you know,
traditionally you wouldn't have every song on an album trying to
be that number one hit. You'd have other songs that do
other things so that in the context of an album it all makes
sense. And I think because everything's
really it's sliced and diced andkind of served in these.
Will you listen to this 5 seconds so that you listen to
the next 5 seconds? There's the sameness that comes
from that. I remember learning about this
(03:55):
stuff when I was in in music class in high school.
You know, certain types of of beats were more less.
I don't know if palatable is theright word for the years, but
your your point there around every song trying to be a hit
now. One of the things that comes up
a lot around the discussion of music and and how it's changed
through the Internet is the factthat a lot of people see that
(04:15):
it's been devalued as an art form.
Now. If you were to say to somebody
every song is trying to be a hitnow, that sounds like it's being
valued. You know what I mean?
Like if you used to buy an albumthat had one or two hits and now
you're getting an album of of 10hits, it sounds like it's going
to be way better quality. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What are you? Doing, you know, yeah, but if
everything's a hit, then nothingis a hit and.
(04:38):
It's like everything's at this level of of kind of the trying
to be the peak and you can't, yeah, totally be peaks.
I don't want to be too like old man yells a cloud.
Music doesn't all sound the same, but I do think that within
a specific genre or within, you know, I think that there are
things that people are trying todo that are more the same than
they used to be. I can put it down to being a
symptom of the way that the Internet treats everything.
(05:00):
It's a battle for that quick bitof attention.
And if you have got to create a 5 second hook to get someone to
go, maybe I'll listen to 30 seconds.
How are you going to get someoneto to listen to 8 minutes if the
way people are enjoying music isbeing completely changed?
Because it doesn't need a huge journey through a piece of
music. It just needs that that earworm
(05:20):
that you can get 110 a million people kind of using and
sharing. That brings kind of the next
logical big argument within the Internet space is obviously
streaming platforms. Now, we've all seen the the
minuscule payouts from from say bands that you might think are
quite large and they'll be like,oh, I made $7.60 for, I don't
know, 2 million plays or whatever it is.
(05:42):
But when I do think about thingslike that, they obviously are
predatory in one sense. But then I try and flip it
around and think about it as they're just another exposure
platform for people who would not have been able to get that
exposure otherwise. Yeah.
You make very little off of streaming, but potential for
(06:03):
discovery. And I think I think with all
these things, there's the two sides.
I mean, one thought going back to the thing of, of trying to
make everything a hit or saying in another way, trying to make
sure you grab people's attentionwith something every 5 seconds.
And I think for example, that's a way of listening that we
probably had before. That isn't necessarily a new
thing. It's just that you didn't have
(06:23):
to, you know, if the record players across the room, if
you're not grabbing someone, youdo have a little bit longer.
But I still, I think it's, I think there is a good thing for
that level of Polish. And even if I'm doing, you know,
an 8 minute track, I try to havesomething tonal, something
textural, something rhythmic, all of these different things at
the beginning as a way of letting people know what the
whole thing's going to be. And I think, yeah, there's a
(06:45):
similar thing with streaming of yeah, you can get listened to.
I mean, I've had things where they'll they'll get on a
playlist and they get hundreds of thousands of streams.
And you don't really make any money off of that.
You are in front of people. I do think there's a thing of
that doesn't necessarily translate to fans.
It can, people will find, you know, if enough people are
streaming at some of those people will then find you and
(07:07):
listen to other things and maybecome see you.
But there's one artist I know who does massive numbers on
streaming and I've been to his shows where there's, you know,
12 people and it is completely not translating to live.
And so for him, there's two options.
Either you just build up the live separately and treat it as
a separate thing, or you just say, well, I'm I'm a stream of
artist. But I think it's because of
(07:28):
that, you know, even getting a million monthly listeners is not
going to pay for you to do musicfull time at that level.
You do start to get some money from it.
Like Spotify, you know, I'm not pro Spotify.
I think that they are like on the one sense.
I think that they are squeezing everything as much as they
(07:49):
possibly can on the other sense,like their business, like you
can't expect them to just voluntarily give up money.
That's not how the world is structured.
So it's going to have to come from somewhere else.
It has to come from either collective action from
musicians, which is very hard todo, or legislation, any per
stream campaign to raise the royalty rate to 1 penny per
stream. I don't know if they've said
(08:10):
what currency that's in, but I would take any of them.
That is so much more than than what we're getting now to, you
know. And if that was legally
mandated, obviously it would change loads of things about the
business model. And when you get into things
like regulation, you will sometimes have these unintended
consequences, but that would radically change how it is to
make money as a small artist. I do want, look, I don't know
(08:31):
the the full back story of Spotify and I wonder whether,
you know, the initial idea had that gigantic monetization in it
or it was just something that happened as it scaled, whether
it's Spotify, whether it's any any other platform.
It's like they've got all the leverage, you know, And so it's
kind of naturally all the cards have fallen their way, as you
said, and. Company Town, it's a you have
(08:53):
to, you have to be on Spotify and, you know, and the other the
other streaming platforms, therewas this thing of, you know,
everybody was just downloading their pirating their MP threes.
And now that was just the Wild West for a while.
And they tried suing the heck out of a few people to try to
scare people from doing that. But obviously that's not a good
look and that's not an OK thing to do.
Yeah. I was just going to say that was
a crazy story because I rememberthe the whole met Metallica
(09:16):
suing, that's the thing. And it's like it wasn't a very
sympathetic case. Do you know what I mean?
If it was a lot of struggling poor artists, I think the
message would have been so much more resonant with people.
But the fact you've got. I think it's being this massive
and well, and and you see this with other lawsuit things where,
you know, the more savvy thing would have been for Metallica to
(09:39):
find some small band and have them be the face of the lawsuit,
even if Metallica is putting their money into it, you know,
because legally, yeah, that's like, it is you're you're
getting this thing for free thatis for sale.
That's stealing. But I think we did, I mean,
everybody recognised that nobody's making money off music
if everybody's pirating it. So then we went to this
streaming model. But one of the things with the
(10:01):
major labels being allied with Spotify is that Spotify
guarantees major labels payouts that are higher than this per
stream. So major artists will get their
money 1st and then there's this very low per stream that gets
put out to independent artists. And they've now done this thing
of demonetizing stream songs below 1000 streams, which again,
(10:23):
a lot of people were up in arms about.
As someone who's, you know, a smaller artist, that sucks.
But because it's free to put stuff on Spotify, they're just
inundated with tracks that nobody's listening to.
And if you can put up, so you get with one of the big things
with the Internet is the scale is so huge that there are these
new ways to game the system. So if you can just set up a
(10:45):
script on a computer to make songs, whether they have any
content or at all, and you're just uploading millions of
tracks to Spotify is saying, well, somebody's going to listen
to it at some point and then I'll make some money back.
They do need to defend against that.
So as an artist who people actually do listen to, even if
it's not, you know, these millions and millions kind of
numbers, I think the thousand cap does make sense.
(11:08):
You know, you could have 750 people listen to your track and
you get nothing for it. But when you do crack 1000, you
get paid for all thousand. So it's not that you only get
paid for the first stream beyondthat, it's just that there's a
floor to the monetization. So again, it doesn't sound good
when it's like, oh, we're not pay any time we say we're not
paying you, right? That sounds bad.
(11:29):
But when you think about why they're doing it to to sort of
combat this like slop that basically nobody somebody
listened to by accident, it it does, I am more sympathetic.
It does. It does actually make sense and
I like my brain just went off ina few different directions
there. I was thinking of a case that I
read about a little while ago where some dude used AI to just
make a shit load of songs and then built a tonne of bots to
(11:52):
stream all these songs and endedup, like, getting a pay out of.
Well, he earned earned, we'll say.
I think there's something like $20 million.
Well, obviously they don't want to pay it, but as you said, he's
just gaming the system as it stands.
Yeah. And so I'm not sure where it
ended up. I'm sure he didn't, you know,
the tiny little guy didn't get to keep the $20 million.
But another thing you mentioned a few minutes ago was around
(12:15):
that kind of discoverability. I can think back to when I was
younger and, and discovering music before the Internet was as
much as like you pull out the, the, the album art, the liner
notes and you read what bands are being thinked in here.
Who, who they saying check out these if you find a magazine
article or something, and then that's how you would find new
(12:35):
stuff. So it was a very slow, very
labour intensive process. So if you were a tiny band, it's
completely hype driven how you're getting discovered.
But now, as you said, you can just be served up hundreds of
different things on any given day and be able to kind of just
try everything out very quickly,very fast, see if it's for you,
if it's not, and then find more and more.
(12:56):
So there's obviously so many benefits to having that quick
exposure, but as you said, it's very easy to get buried in
amongst the just the amount of it.
Yeah, Well, yeah, we have this idea of of, you know, oh, you
can listen to anything. But most of the time, and I have
this with like with discovering new music because there's got to
be loads of amazing music out there that I haven't heard.
(13:18):
And it's almost, it becomes thislike eat your vegetables thing
of like, what I want to do is sit down, spend an hour and
listen, you know, really try to discover.
But usually it's like, well, I want to listen to something that
I know I'm going to like. And so then the algorithm right
will serve you basically just stuff you've listened to before
someone was like, the Spotify algorithm seems completely
incapable of recommending anything that I haven't already
(13:41):
listened to because their goal, it's not for you to discover new
music. Their goal is for you to keep
listening, right? And the real goal is for you to
keep spending the money every month.
They actually don't care if you listen or not.
They just want, yeah, yeah, be asubscriber.
That is one of the things I actually find so beneficial
around algorithms. Like if it builds a playlist,
(14:03):
say you listen to one thing, right, and then it will build
you a playlist of things adjacent to that thing.
And so if you're in the mood fora certain type of of music, you
can essentially discover so muchnew stuff in exactly what you're
trying to listen to. And that's been an absolute God
send to me. But, but while we are talking
(14:23):
discoverability, something you've done in the past was
you've worked on Shazam. And, and for me, you know, a
little anecdote time, that thinghas been a lifesaver.
Once, you know, a long time ago when I was living in London, I
was in a little club. It was early hours of the
morning and I just got Shazam onthe phone.
I didn't really know how it worked.
(14:44):
All I knew is you could just kind of open it up if there was
a song that you liked and it would find it.
And so it was a little club, very bad reception, whatever.
And I was holding it up and it wasn't working because there's
not enough signal. But then it finally got there
and got me this song, you know, the result.
And I think this must have been around 2014 and to this day, you
(15:05):
know, we're now nearly the end of 2025.
It's each one of my favourite songs of all time.
So that's just a very happy memory of, of technology and
discoverability that has has, I guess, impacted my life in very
positive ways in terms of other ways of, of using technology,
whether it's to produce music or, you know, whether you're
(15:27):
creating music or whether you'reeven performing it.
Tell us a little bit more about how how you do it and how it all
works. Yeah, yeah.
Well, just to build off that before I go into this, one other
thing I think, yeah, technology is great at automating and
solving problems. And so one of the things is like
content ID on YouTube. Like it can be annoying as an
artist where you, you know, you want to post something that's
(15:49):
like, you can't, but the main use case of someone else can put
my music in a video and then I get paid for it and nobody has,
they don't have to contact me. And that streamlines things a
lot. And you, The funny thing is you
can't actually see where it is. So my wife is also a musician
and she got some money from YouTube and she was like,
somebody has used my song and it's gotten a tonne of views and
(16:11):
I have no idea where it is. Like what, what is this?
So sometimes it can be mysterious when you get, if
something's used on a bigger video, like big enough that you
notice in the payout. It's mysterious, but it is it's
smooth as that journey, right? It's just the computers have
automated it so people don't have to talk to each other.
I mean, that is a separate, you know, downside.
(16:31):
But for something like that, where it would just be
transactional anyway, hey, can Iuse this song that can all just
be automatic. And so that again, any change
like that, it brings its own problems.
But like you know when, when it works, when you go down the
happy path of this is working the way it was designed to, it
can really facilitate a lot of things quickly.
Is there a reason, do you think,why it doesn't tell you who's
(16:52):
used it? I don't know.
It would be great if there was just a link to the video because
it might be cool. Like I don't think anybody's
putting our music on like ISIS videos or anything.
I think it's probably something nice.
I mean, if you were like, you'd put a tune and I don't know, it
was it was a widely appealing tune and there's potential for
someone that you to to be using it in a way that you don't want
(17:15):
to kind of be associated with. I'm I'm quite surprised that
there's no way. Yeah, well, and I think it's all
so much of this is like, who benefits like that doesn't
really benefit YouTube to do that.
You can do you can do a content claim, but it's in terms of as
an artist, your music is either available or not available.
There's not. You can't go in and say, oh, I
don't want it on this site. Do you want it on that?
If you're actually getting licenced for film or TV or
(17:38):
something, then yeah, you can say I have a friend who does
that and he got a brief from I think a cigar company.
And he was like, yeah, no thanks.
Yeah, interesting. And before we jump into the
different ways that that technology can be used across
the whole music industry now, one of the things that we've
seen through the rise of the Internet is, I mean, what what I
would describe it as is the kindof breakdown of a lot of that
(18:00):
star power, you know, Once Upon a time, like, I don't know, you
think about The Beatles, right? Like if The Beatles were
available 24/7 to fans on socialmedia, like do we think
Beatlemania would have happened like it did?
Yeah, there's this lots of mystique, isn't there?
Where it's like you, you want to, because these parasocial
relationships can be really powerful where you people feel
(18:20):
like they know you. And so you're posting like,
here's my breakfast or whatever.And yeah, that can work.
But then, yeah, there's no, there's no mystery.
It would be nice to be able to be mysterious and have people
coming to you, but then when they're not, you sort of go the
other way. And so, yeah, here's my content.
Here's more content for you. You know, when I thought about
this in the context of, say, actors, I think back to before
(18:41):
social media was everywhere. Like actors was someone you saw
on a movie poster in the cinema or maybe a cut out if it was
like Arnie and they were these larger in life people that just
seemed to be in a completely different planet.
Now I could go online and find out what the biggest stars in
the world are basically doing every minute of the day.
And it's like this push for all of these big names to try and
(19:01):
present themselves as the regular person just like you
kind of defeats the entire purpose of being this big star
in this drawer. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, you want to offer this
like peek behind the curtain forpeople who are like, really or
whatever you do. And then there's no there, you
know, it's, it's the Internet. So then it's there for everybody
and just everybody gets the peekat the curtain and there's no
(19:22):
curtain anymore. And I think that as you said,
you can try and attract people through putting out different
pieces of content, et cetera, trying to get them to, to listen
to what you're, you're doing. So you could be someone that's
that's just putting out reels, like the uneven music, and
someone would discover the reel and then discover that you're a
musician and that's how the music can take off.
So, well, it's obviously, yeah. I think we're, I think we're
(19:45):
discovering that people don't dothat very much.
So there's a big thing on TikTokright now where And you know,
labels are turning away from discovering artists on TikTok
because. OK.
You can't get people off TikTok then, right?
It's like if people discover them on TikTok, they might have
millions and millions of streamsbut like nobody is going to go
then do the other. The other thing, like I said,
even streaming doesn't translateto people coming out to see.
(20:07):
You and I think social media doesn't translate even to people
listening, you know, streaming your music.
So I'm trying to not spend too much time because you can become
just a social media person and in some people they find that
that's what they like. They do really well on social
media. That's their thing.
And like with because there's a tech element to what I do, I've
thought about doing reels because people do really well
off of that, but it's like then you become a tutorial person and
(20:29):
I don't that's not my thing. I would like to share what I do,
but like, putting in the effort to really have a following there
then means that I'm not actuallymaking the music.
And that's it's like keeping focus on like, what is what?
Why am I here? What what is my actual thing?
And you have to do some other work.
So yeah, this goes with like thebreakdown of the record
(20:49):
industry, right? Everybody can just make their
home, which in a sense democratises.
And it's great that I can, I record all my stuff just here in
my house and I'm with the label now.
But my initial albums I just putout myself, but it doesn't.
I think in addition to realisingthat people won't switch
platforms necessarily, there's this re interest in gatekeepers
(21:13):
because everybody can do everything and the algorithm is
a really unsatisfying way to discover stuff.
And I think we're missing the fact that some people actually
do have really good taste. And having that be essentially A
profession I think is really valuable.
Obviously when the gatekeepers are gatekeeping you, that's
frustrating. Like that's, that's so
(21:33):
interesting to hear. I, I think you can use it to get
your, you to ask like, how can Imake what I'm doing better so
that it interests who these people are?
I think if you make music just for the gatekeepers, that's a
mistake. Just like I think making a song
that is just aiming to hook people for five seconds so they
don't scroll away is a mistake. But I think saying right here's
this piece that I've written that I'm happy with
(21:55):
artistically, how can I make every 5 second chunk exciting
through production or whatever in a way that doesn't take away
from what what I'm trying to do artistically?
How can I make that as good as it can possibly be and, and get
through to that I think can actually be helpful.
I think sometimes that little bit of adversity can actually
make you a better artist. No, absolutely.
And and there's a couple of things that you you said through
(22:17):
that bit there that all kind of connect things to me.
It's like 1. You don't want to be known as a
tutorial person. That's just one part of the
wider Charlie world and the way that technology is allowing you
to create a much more complex, Iguess, piece of art that's not
just that recorded music. Now obviously everyone can make
music, but now also with technology, there's so many more
(22:38):
avenues for different people anddifferent skill sets to kind of
find their way into being part of the of the music industry in
different forms. Now you personally do a bunch of
different things. Tell us about how you go from
the music all the way through tothe entire live performance.
How does that process come about?
Yeah, so my live show has this tech element, and people will
(23:01):
often say, yeah, what comes first?
Does the music come first or do the visuals come first?
First? And generally, the music comes
first. And I write in a very
traditional way, if I'm right, like I'm just sitting at the
piano playing the piano. And then when something works, I
write it down. And then sometimes I'll record
it as a voice memo and then liketranscribe it later.
And then, you know, I'll put it into the computer, work through
(23:22):
that way. And then at, at some point I
start thinking, what does this, what should this look like?
And people will ask sometimes ifI have synesthesia, which is the
thing where you, you will see found, or you'll sometimes, you
know, taste of shape or, or whatever, you know, you have
this kind of mixing 3 modes. And I, I very much don't have
that. So for me, it's more what should
this, what should the journey ofthis piece?
(23:42):
How should it be represented? And for me, a lot of it is about
what I call like the architecture of the piece, like
the structure of the piece more so than just individual notes.
And I'll start, I'll start building that.
Sometimes you write a piece really quickly and it's, you
know, it's done in an hour and it's amazing.
And sometimes you write a piece and it's done in an hour and
you're like that one can just stay in the file.
(24:04):
And similarly, there's pieces that I've spent ages on and then
if they finally get there and they're great.
And then sometimes you spend ages and you get to the end and
you're like, and the same with visuals.
I'll have one of my most successful pieces of visuals, I
think is for this track Emma, where there's just you see this
massive building and there's lights coming on from the
different notes. And it's, it took very little
(24:26):
time to do because it's the concept that's carrying the
weight that rather than the, I'mnot doing something fancy
algorithmically. And then there's other ones,
there's a piece I play called Conversant that has this motion
graphics kind of retro thing. And that just took so long to
get right. And I'm really happy with it.
But it was just ages and ages oftweaking.
And then yes. So that's, there's essentially
(24:47):
an algorithm for each piece. And then I just have a computer
with me that listens to what I'mplaying and, and that to a
projector. And then I have these light
towers as well that are, it's 6 towers that have these colour
LEDs on them. And I can treat that like,
almost like a sliced up screen. So you have this, these things
in the room with me that are these kind of sculptures that
(25:09):
also do the, the light and the visuals and then me performing.
And that's another thing that I I kind of realised toward the
beginning is how much of the show, how much of A visual
element of the show is me playing.
I would kind of make these visuals, but almost leaving
space for the fact that people want to see me playing, You
know, because there's you've gotlike Max Cooper, who's great.
(25:32):
He's got really cool visuals, but like he's in the show, He's
not, you don't want to look at him.
He's just, you know, he's deejaying and you can do stuff
as a DJ to be a a bit more visually interesting.
But let's like you just watch the thing and he does the, you
know, he DJs do it. And playing the piano is, is
different. It's a lot more kinetic than
that. So kind of leaving, leaving
space and almost composing the visuals in a way that I'm, I'm,
(25:55):
I am a thing that's happening inthe performance.
Yeah. Well.
That's, that's kind of exactly what I was thinking.
Now it's not so much there's a performer on stage.
It's like the entire immersive experience with all the
technology that we have. It's things to be considered.
I think having all of those big screens does add an entire new
dimension to it. And as you're saying too, like
(26:16):
the screens for you is 1 component.
The lights are one component andthen you're another component.
So these are a whole cohesive world.
And, and one thing that I find quite interesting in the way
that performers operate now is how they use the, the
incorporation of technology in different ways to enhance the
music in, in ways that you mighthave just had, you know, a
banner unfill Once Upon a time, or maybe some lights or maybe
(26:39):
some pyro if you were like supersuccessful.
But one thing I did see recentlywas was massive attack.
Oh, the massive attack. Yeah, with the facial
recognition stuff, yeah. And I'm sure there was some
deeper meaning behind it. I'm sure there's some statement
knowing them, but when I saw it,I was like, this is just another
level of fan artist connection and making the fans feel like
(27:01):
they're part of the show. And then I think it does still
feel a little bit dystopian and,and then.
Yeah, I, it's super cool. I, I love that because, yeah, it
makes you a bit uncomfortable. And so it is showing that this
face tracking software exists and is easy to set up and you
can just point a camera at a crowd and track individual
people. And, you know, if you move
(27:22):
around, you're still, it's stillyour face up there.
And that, I mean, that's the thing that ties in with one of
the things that I'm trying to doof, of taking things that exist
in our lives. So we're surrounded by
algorithms, right? Life is just the sea of
algorithms we're moving through.But most of the time it's trying
to sell us something or surveil us or influence an election.
And I think algorithms get a badname because of that.
(27:44):
But the algorithm itself is, is neutral.
It's a tool. And there's a person or people
who are using the algorithm to sell you stuff or influence and
elect or surveil you or whatever.
And algorithms. So I'm using algorithms to make
art and that's another thing they can do.
And so kind of separating that out of I'm a bit of a
(28:05):
technophile. I feel like I, I kind of want to
defend the, the, you know, the kind of digital realm, not
everything that's been done withit, of course, but like, you
don't solve these problems by going back, you know, by sort of
banning computers or whatever, or, or say, you know, where I, I
think AI, there's AI don't know what's going to happen with AI,
(28:27):
but it's finding ways to, to control and monitor and band
together to say what's acceptable and what's not.
And how do we build a society that works for everybody
together? Yeah.
Look, I mean, as we've discussedthroughout this, there's
obviously been a whole bunch of of negatives that have come
(28:47):
through technology, but so many positives as well, whether it's
democratisation, creation, performance, you know, all sorts
of things. But you just touch on something
I'd love for us to, to move intonow, which was around algorithms
everywhere and now AI and how these can potentially be
changing music. Now I know a little while ago
we, we briefly mentioned someonegaming the system by using AI to
(29:11):
create all these songs and earn $20 million or whatever it was
as a payout being being a technophile as you are.
Like I'm also, I think aware enough to be able to comment on
this stuff. But it's like, as these tools
get better and better, you know,I've played around with stuff
before and I've written a promptand I'll say, I don't know, make
me a black metal song about cooking a meat pie or something
(29:35):
like that. And, and it just makes stuff and
it's so bizarre that you know, you, what would usually have
been a gigantic project, get your friends or maybe if you're
super talented, you can do it yourself Now, you can just do it
with a, with a prompt super quick.
How do you think that as AI getsmore sophisticated, how do you
reckon it's going to play out in, in not only music creation,
(29:56):
but then also distribution and, and performance?
Where? Where do your hypotheticals go
with this? Yeah.
I mean, there's the there's the good potential things and the
bad potential things. And I think the like it's
completely screwed illustrators,for example.
And I think when it started there is, oh, I think, I think
with anything you end up with this pipeline problem where all
(30:18):
the low level stuff gets taken over by AI.
And so anybody who is doing illustrations on Fiverr or like
you're trying to get started in the industry, nobody's there's
no work for them. If you're a big name illustrator
and people are going to you because they want the thing you
do, they'll they'll still go to you.
Maybe that changes in the future, but there's there's now
(30:40):
this who are going to be the theNext up and coming illustrators
if nobody's able to start as a junior.
And there's a similar thing happening in coding.
So I still do some coding work and you can go twice as fast
with AI helping you code, but you basically you need to be
kind of at more at the senior level where you'd know how to
architect the thing. You know how to keep the AI on
(31:02):
track and you know, you need to know what's happening and when
the AI goes off the rails, whichthey do, you need to just be
like, OK, now clear all of that.We're we're starting over.
So there's like these limits to vibe coding, but it's like how
if you're a junior developer trying to get your first job,
everybody's like, no, we're not hiring juniors anymore.
We have AI so. I think there's just a.
Lot of of that kind of thing. And probably the same with
(31:23):
mastering. You know, AI mastering is not
going to replace any mastering engineer that you would know by
name and go to because you like their style.
But if you're like, oh, I don't have budget for this, I might
just hire this guy locally and pay him £50.
You know, somebody's just going to put it, put it through the AI
mastering plug in because it's going to sound.
(31:44):
Yeah, no, totally. And I think.
Yeah, what's going to happen in 20 years when the current names
have all retired and nobody had a chance to do this stuff?
It's very funny that this exact discussion, we've just kind of
touched on it in the creative kind of industries like like my
background is in, in you know creative industry as well.
But what I am seeing a lot more of is there is a lot of push
(32:07):
back now, you know, like we've I've seen certain big brands
that should know way better haveway more money than to be just
getting someone to write a prompt to make big, you know,
marketing campaigns are putting out just obvious AI stuff with
those errors that you need the skilled engineer or the skilled
coder to actually be able to recognise.
(32:28):
And then that's happening acrosseverything, you know, you're
seeing in corporate world as well.
It's like there's no, no junior jobs.
So it's going to be just this entire talent vacuum once those
seniors retire. So that's maybe there's
something in there that's going to be the new thing is figuring
out how to do it. But back to music, he said.
Like AI engineers, I've not really heard of that before.
How are people doing that? Yeah, well.
(32:50):
Just like there is, if you're doing the kind of the mastering
step, you know, you can have your track and there's one built
into logic where it'll analyse and then it just makes a
mastering chain based on what your track sounds like.
And it's, it's all right, it's good.
It's you know, and, and that sort of thing like I would you'd
never master your draught mixes normally, right?
(33:12):
Like having that on your work inprogress.
That's great. But then I will definitely still
go to an actual mastering engineer for the final.
It needs to be somebody who, whohas taste and, and all of that.
But there's this constant movingof goal posts with AI right now.
We're like, Oh, they I could never have taste, but like, can
(33:33):
it in five years? Like it's all moving so fast.
I think we, we might get to a point where it can do everything
better than us. And then the question is, which
things do you really want a human for?
And I think like you consume artbecause you want to interact
with another human mind. Like even if an AI could write a
better one, like I want music and visual art and novels that
(33:55):
it comes from a person. Even even if AI gets to the
point where it's not doing this sort of idiotic.
AI, it's just you just want thatsoul behind it, you know?
Yeah, yeah, I think that's part of the human condition that you
want to empathise and relate to to people through different
means. You see all these, I can show
you how to shut down the entire Hollywood studio for like $50
and this new video creation software, it's like, can you,
(34:17):
will you? You know, they don't think
that's going to fly for too muchlonger, but we've been talking
around the uneven playing field as well within music that's been
created through technology and this kind of TikTok vacation,
whether that's a kind of a race to the bottom or not, depending
on who you are and how you look at it.
What would you say like from here on out, a fair digital
(34:40):
music market would look like foreverybody involved?
And do you think that there's a way that we can potentially
reverse any of the damage that'shappened over the last, say, 20
years? Yeah, I mean, it's a lot to try
to change anytime you like, change society or change a
massive system like that. I think one of the things is,
well, I think that like the penny per stream campaign, I'm
(35:02):
super in favour of that. It is where almost everybody
listens. I think this as people are still
in the process of returning to live shows post COVID, there's
still a difference in ticket sales.
But as people come back more, I will have people buy ACD or a
vinyl that shows and say, I'm not really going to listen to
this, but I will not feel guiltywhen I stream your music now.
And that's great, you know. So the awareness I think really
(35:24):
helps because people will say I want to support you.
Streaming you isn't really supporting you.
So if I if I support you in someway, then great.
I've like done my bit that's amazing.
Stream me forever. If you bought, I mean streaming
anyway, it's fine. I'm not anti people streaming my
music, but that's great when people care enough to say, oh,
I'm I am going to put my money toward this smaller artist.
(35:45):
It really helps just yeah, make everything work.
I think the other thing though, is people the because the
Internet shows you whoever is ontop the entire world makes
everything kind of need to be atthat level.
So if you put out a track and itgets 5000 streams, there are
people who are like, oh, that's nothing, you know, because
you're comparing it and it's like, well, the 5000 people
(36:08):
listen to something that I've made.
That's great. There's there's this thing of
you need to keep the attitude ofyou do spend some time being
your local musician. That is like doing really well
locally. You're not immediately going to
get up to this, like you might never get to the stratospheric
layer that there are these different levels of success.
And I think people see that even, you know, inside music,
(36:30):
you, you have that as a musicianwhere it's like you want
everything to have millions of streams and sell millions of
copies. And it's like, well, that, you
know, you can be successful and not have that.
And I think it's, I don't know if this happens more with
musicians or if I just see it more as a musician.
People will kind of not think that you're a professional
because they haven't seen you onATV show or that you're not
(36:53):
playing stadiums or something like that.
They will assume that you're like waiting for your big
Brexit. Oh, no, I'm, I'm doing the
thing. I'm making money music.
I'm a friend, professional musician, you know, yeah,
obviously you want to have career progression.
But if you're a scientist, nobody's like, oh, you're not a
real scientist until you, you know, have a noble prize.
It's like, no, you, you are a real scientist as soon as
(37:16):
someone is paying you to do science.
And it's, there's a similar thing here of enjoying that, not
seeing that as this substitute for the real thing.
Like I get to play music. People connect with it.
People say when they like it. That's amazing.
That's that's what you know, I think you need to be able to
enjoy all the all the steps and not be not kind of only see this
(37:39):
like global fame level as being a real thing because you always
see the algorithm is always going to show you those people.
And I say it's like you people get this body image issue with
TikTok. You're seeing like 100th of a
percent hotness people all the. Time.
There's a really huge shape withTikTok.
You can be really funny looking on TikTok or extremely
attractive, but if you're just kind of a normal looking person,
(38:01):
there's not as many of those. And and I think people have that
too where they go on there and they're just like, I don't look
like any of those people. That is like, well, no, of
course you don't. You're normal and normal person.
And that doesn't even necessarily mean like 50th
percent that you could be a verytalented musician, you could be
a very attractive person, whatever.
Like you, you know you. You don't.
(38:22):
You're still in that the middle of the bell curve there.
It's not, yeah, it's not healthyto compare yourself to the top,
you know, 100% globally. Yeah, look, that's that that
makes me think of another point there that we've seen through
the rise of especially social media.
You know, it's like fame is the goal, not creating, not doing
something, not testing yourself,you know, all these different
(38:44):
things. You know, you hear so many like
younger people than now, like I want to be an influencer, I want
to be famous. I don't care how like that's
that. That doesn't matter.
Like the the end goal of the fame is what you're actually
trying to do. And yeah, well, and.
I mean, we're social creatures. We like status and.
And you can convert that into other things, right?
(39:06):
If you're super famous and you decide, oh, I'd like to write a
book or be in a movie or launch a perfume line, like all of that
becomes easy if everybody knows who you are.
It makes sense that people wouldwant that.
But you do. Yeah.
You need to decide what is the thing you do.
And if what the thing that you do is is be famous, then cool,
(39:26):
focus on that. But I'm a big Rick Rubin fan and
I think his, a lot of what he says, it's very centering and
grounding about like you really have to make honest art.
If you aim for fame, you might get that, but it's going to be
flash in the pan. Like if you really focus
everything that you're creating on just catching a bunch of
(39:48):
eyeballs or ears or streams or whatever, you might get that.
But if it's not a really honest reflection of you one, if you
get that, it'll feel fake and hollow because it's not you
you've you've put on this like mask.
But also there is people do respond to honesty in whatever
they're they're. Yeah, I mean, Rick Ruvin is such
a great example that he he doesn't claim to know know what
(40:11):
he's doing across all of this stuff.
He's just got this innate ability to identify what is
going to be great within his hiskind of perception and realm.
And then that makes me think back to what we're saying a
couple of minutes ago. It's like if you're a great
engineer, like you've just got the year, you know, if you're a
great performer, you've just gotthe ability to do that.
(40:31):
But you were talking there around people kind of doing
things in their own way. What would you say then is, is
one piece of advice you'd offer anyone interested in getting
into, say, music or technology or even combining both, whether
it's a hobby or whether it's something that they want to do
as a career? Now, you've obviously built a
lot of different things into connecting with each other, so
(40:52):
you've seen the entire gamut. Like, what advice would you give
to steer somebody down a positive path?
Yeah. One of the things that someone
said to me early on that I I really think about all the time
is that you can't create anything without a community.
Like even if it's a solo project, like you need to be in
dialogue with other people. If if you don't, if none of your
(41:15):
friends are writers, like how are you going to even know how
to write a book? Like you might, you will be able
to write a book. And I think like I celebrate
like amateur creation. If you're just somebody and you
just want to do a thing, just dothat thing, that's great.
But if you want it to be really good, like you need to listen to
your own taste. That's very important.
But you also need to be in like in a mix of other people who are
(41:37):
also doing these creative things.
That'll be inspiring, but it will also then keep you like
there's an aspect of creative honesty where things are moving
in this this group with other people.
And then I think the other thingis it's kind of goes with like
you just have to make stuff. One of the things I really love
about both tech and music is nobody cares if you have a
(41:59):
degree in it. Nobody cares credentials you
have like can you do the thing? So in in tech, if you want to
get started, you, you can teach yourself stuff.
You can learn a lot. You, you can go study it at a
university or whatever. But if you've built a thing,
then people will respond to that.
So when I've been in hiring, it's like if you have an
applicant and they're like, Oh, I've made this app, it has 1000
(42:21):
users. Amazing.
That puts you way ahead of somebody who has, I've gone to
some fancy school, but like I just kind of have my coursework.
And it's the same with music. If you record an album and your
first one is probably not going to be the best work you ever do
and you share it, you don't haveto put it out for the whole
world. So there's a a friend's daughter
who's a teen and she's like starting to write and she's
(42:41):
really good. So we did a little bit of work
together and I was my task for her was you need to write 10
terrible songs. Don't worry about making it
good. They just, they need to be done.
And then when you've done 10, maybe some of them you will fail
at making a terrible song. It'll be a good song.
That's fine too. But like you just, you need to
get over the thing of having, oh, I've written these two songs
and I'm really kind of feeling precious about them.
(43:03):
And so I think, yeah, this thingof, of you, you just, you do it
with whatever. You don't have to wait until you
have, you know, X like this piece of kit or whatever.
You can only. You know, if you make a thing
and you're like wow, this microphone I used is terrible,
the sound is not good. OK, maybe then you go get a
microphone. Maybe you re record some of
that. Maybe it's just for the next
thing, but you have to keep going and not get hung up on
(43:24):
things. No, that's, that's great advice.
And I think that, as you said, doing stuff is so much better
evidence than what you could hypothetically do because you've
got that piece of paper and thatform of education.
And I hear that across lots of different things.
Just to finish up then what What's making you hopeful about
the future of how the Internet and technology and music
(43:46):
collides? I think one of the things is the
like the discourse around it, the fact that people are, I
think generally people have, people have really terrible hot
takes sometimes. But as we work through what is
this, what's going on? You know, it might be like on a
10 year time scale, but people are having these conversations
about streaming, not supporting artists.
People are having conversations about how are we going to handle
(44:08):
AI and this, you know, all the things that's that's happening
there. And we're not necessarily going
to, we're almost definitely not going to figure it out in time
to not have problems. But I think we do eventually
figure stuff out and move forward.
And I think the thing that we need to do for any of those
things is to limit the power of these kind of entrenched powers
(44:30):
so that there isn't this asymmetric thing.
So that when people do kind of group cultural decision like
this thing should be better in this way that we can do that.
Because I think we are actually pretty good at coming to the
right decision eventually. Fingers crossed, fingers
crossed. Thanks Charlie.
What's coming up for you and andwhere can people follow what
(44:52):
you're up to? Yeah, so I have this album
coming out in November, which iscalled The Book of Fixed Stars.
I just got the finals yesterday and they look so beautiful.
It's awesome. It's so good to see that.
So it's like they've done clear vinyl and the artwork is great
and I'm really happy with how itsounds.
So there's CDs, you can get it on band camp.
So the main first place if you just want all the links is my
(45:14):
website is Charlie Hooper williams.com.
And then that's I'm Charlie Hooper Williams on, you know,
Instagram and band camp and all those things.
You can just look me up and havea go.
I will ship to Australia for your Australian listeners and
good to know. Yeah, awesome.
Charlie, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
(45:36):
For more info on what we've discussed today, check out the
show notes. If you enjoyed this one, you can
subscribe to Ruined by the Internet on your favourite
podcast app and help spread the word by sharing this episode or
leaving a review. I'm Gareth King, see you next
time.
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