Midi Jones: The Greatest Rags To Riches Story, Do Whatever It Takes, and How To Create Success

Episode Transcript
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Austin Seltzer (00:01):
Welcome to the Grounds for Success podcast.
I'm your host, austin Seltzer.
Together we'll unveil the keysto success in the music industry
.
Join me as I explore my guest'slife stories and experiences to
uncover practical insights tohelp you align with your goals
more effectively.
Hey Copy Drinkers, welcome tothe Grounds for Success podcast.

(00:28):
I'm so excited for you tolisten to this episode.
It is with my great buddy, midiJones.
He's the first person I'mhaving on who's just a producer,
so I'm really excited for youto hear his point of view on the
industry, his story, which iscrazy, an amazing hustle come up
story, the total rags to riches, the story of the world, total

(00:50):
rags to riches like blueprint.
And he's the dude who reallyput me on whenever I was.
I was looking to step up mygame whenever I came back into
mixing from a long hiatus, andhe believed in me and introduced
me to my now manager, spencer,and so I'm so excited for you to

(01:11):
hear his story On today'sepisode.
We're going to cover so manygreat topics, but a few of them
are knowing where to put yourenergy, you know.
Should it be into developingartists?
Should it be an artist thathave already made it?
Should it be in pitch sessions,or should it be into yourself,

(01:32):
like taking some time off?
Midi traveled a whole lotwhenever he was younger.
He wasn't able to get a jobanywhere.
Whenever he was here in theStates and ready to look for a
job because one he hadn'tgraduated from high school and
also he wasn't a citizen of theUS, so he had to find all sorts
of other ways to make money tobe able to continue to hustle

(01:54):
and just stay afloat.
He would donate blood everyweek and he's just like at this
ultimate hustler mentality thatI adore about him and it totally
is.
What makes him so successful isthat he's willing to do
whatever it takes and you know,like in good ways, I don't.

(02:15):
His moral compass, as you'llsee, is incredibly strong, but
he does what it takes to make ithappen.
I want to highlight that becausewe have this in common Skrillex
, twelfth Planet and Joker wereall some of his like early

(02:36):
inspiration as to getting intobeing a producer.
I totally resonate with that,and we get to hear about his
story on how he linked up withKeri Gordy.
That story, right there, is socrucial to learn from because it
shows us all the little stepsthat had to happen to make that
introduction successful.
You know, sometimes we getintroduced or we're put in a

(02:59):
position that's, you know, ahuge step up, but we might not
be ready for it, and throughthis podcast, you'll be able to
see exactly why Midi was able todeliver in that huge moment.
We'll also talk about what agreat pub deal looks like and
when you should get a manager,and possibly one of the very

(03:21):
best things that you'll learnabout is money now versus money
later, the long game or theshort game, and how you should
look at that.
All right, let's getcaffeinated.
My boy Midi, my guy Dude, I'mso happy to have you here.

Midi Jones (03:41):
Thanks for having me .
Cheers buddy.

One of one of my friends who gases me up about
my coffee.

Midi Jones (03:49):
It's legit, the best coffee in LA.
Dude Like this is definitelythe best cup of coffee I think
I've ever had.
Like not kidding, like notkidding.
It makes me so happy.

Me too.

Midi Jones (03:57):
It's a good cup of coffee.

What really makes me happy is it's black
coffee Like you're not like yocream that shit, but sugar in it
.
I take my whiskey and my coffee, the same way, dude, just like,
give it to me.

Midi Jones (04:08):
Straight yeah.

I love it.
Dude, thank you for coming on.

Midi Jones (04:13):
Thanks for having me , man.

Yeah, this is this, feels so full circle for
me because, I mean, I've toldyou so many times but I really
really feel like you helped putme.
You did put me on the directionthat I am on now, which I think
is upward.
Happy to hear that man, youdeserve it.

(04:35):
Thank you.
Yeah, well, we definitely haveto dive into like how I met you,
because it's it's funny.
Like it's just so circumstantial, with the same company I was
working for, yeah, but we'll getinto that in due time.
Felt like, felt like Dude.
What does a normal day looklike in midi's world If?

Midi Jones (04:55):
it's an average day, honestly, like wake up, shave
my head, go into my studio, stayin there until it's like an
hour before an actual session,eat something very fast, do the
session work and then try to seemy girlfriend before I go to
sleep.
Like day to day.

I love that.
Wait, so the morning ritual isshaving your head.
Yeah, I do that every morning,every single day.
Yeah, I mean, that's kind ofcool.

Midi Jones (05:23):
It really is.
It's therapeutic a little bit,it's like a nice little routine,
honestly.

So people make their bed in the morning to do
that.
One first goal and you shaveyour head.

Midi Jones (05:30):
Sure, like I wake up , drink a cup of water, shave my
head, like it's weird, becauseI shower to shave my head and
then I got to go to the gym, soI'm kind of like double
showering because like, if myarms are so dead that I can't do
this, it's a problem.

That's true, you're only shaving this one
place because you can't lift itany higher.

Midi Jones (05:47):
That happened to me twice I was like okay.

I got to do this .
That's funny.
But wait, I think at one pointyou told me were you like a
weightlifter, like achampionship?

Midi Jones (06:01):
I was like an amateur bodybuilder for a little
bit when I was like 20.
Oh, bodybuilding, okay yeah,and just did like a couple of
little tiny like things likearound like super amateur, but
yeah, it used to be likeshredded when I was like 20.
I love that.
But wait, how did you get intothat?
Just some homies were like dude, you need to like lose weight
and like I've like worked outfor fun since I was like a
teenager, but never like I likefriendly competition.

(06:23):
Actual competition is adifferent story.
For friendly competition it'sfun.
So we got into that and justlike the lifestyle was kind of
addicting a little bit.
Honestly, and just the way youfeel is awesome, you drink so
much caffeine, yeah.

Yeah that's great, it sounds great, yeah,
wait.

Midi Jones (06:39):
So whenever it's not friendly competition, you get
like real fired up when likeit's not even that, it's just
like there's only so many thingsI truly care about that deep.
And like my friends who likeplay basketball or play like
call of duty, and they're likefor real, like let's play, and
I'm like dude play with somebodyelse because I can't even like.
I've had some homies there'slike a bunch of like volleyball

(06:59):
weekends in LA and they're likecome, like we do the thing and I
know these dudes, I'm like dude, I'll come hang, but like if
you want to play somebody elsebecause you, I won't take it as
seriously as you and you'regoing to get like mad, yeah,
yeah.

I fucking love volleyball.
Yeah.

Midi Jones (07:15):
I'm saying like I'll come hang and like be a good
cheerleader and I'm down forthat, but like I, all of my
competitive energy kind of goestowards my career, otherwise,
like I'm just trying to have fun.

I love that.
I mean you know where to putyour energy, Totally yeah.

Midi Jones (07:28):
Yeah, but yeah, I remember like I think a
Thanksgiving got ruined one timebecause of FIFA and I was like
I just don't care yeah.
It was like a little likeThanksgiving tournament.

I will say, though that sounds more fun of a
way to have Thanksgiving go toshit.
Family drama or whatever 100%.

Midi Jones (07:48):
I'll take that honestly, yeah, cause you can
kind of go where that's nothappening and it's still okay.

For real.
But like whenever there's dramaat the table between like two
people in the family, then itjust like everything goes to
shit, like real shit.

Midi Jones (08:00):
It's not Thanksgiving without a little
bit of passive aggression, justa little.

True, yeah, yeah .

Midi Jones (08:08):
I know this is such a beautiful space, by the way.

Thank you.
I put so much love into thislittle room.
You can tell, yeah, I.
It really came out the way thatI wanted.
You should be proud, thank you.
Did you see this room before?
It was?
Dude, I did, yeah.
Did you see the white blankroom that it was?
I don't think.
I think.

Midi Jones (08:29):
I saw it, when you like, painted before all this
stuff was in here, I think.

Okay, but it was already black in here.

Midi Jones (08:34):
I don't know what kind of it was.
I think it was like literallybuilding it.

Okay, yeah, yeah , cause this was like a, this
was a prison, yeah, I can seethat it was cement floors, white
ass walls, deep, brightestlights fluorescent lights.

Midi Jones (08:51):
Really.

It was like the room that you didn't go in.

Midi Jones (08:55):
It's vibey as hell.

Yeah, you would never know.
Yeah, I know, it's crazy, dude.
All right, I'm going to go allthe way back to the beginning.
Okay, I want people tounderstand your story.
Okay, and what you're, whatyou're willing to, to share on
it but I think, of all thepeople that I know, you have the

(09:18):
best come up Like.
Probably no reason that you, asa kid, should be here right now
with all of the knowledge andwork, drive credits, life,
everything that you have, likeyou fucking forged this life and
I want to dive into that sopeople can can understand a

(09:40):
great come up story.
So nice for that.
And I got you.
Let's do it.
Let's start in the verybeginning.
I'd love to know about yourparents, your your childhood
Sure, sure, sure.
Yeah, the first couple of yearsof life.
What, what did that look?

Midi Jones (09:53):
like I was born out here, like by San Bernardino,
and like I think the first placeI ever like lived at was like
my grandmother's place and likethe Inland Empire for a couple
of months.
And my mom is Austrian, likefrom a small village with like
350 people, 400 people.
My dad is born in the South andgrew up in like South Central.

(10:14):
He's African American.
My mom is like very, veryEuropean and they got together
in their early twenties, like Ithink it was like a hampton
stance meeting, and they gotmarried after knowing each other
for six weeks, like likeimmediately, and like my mom got
pregnant like on her weddingnight, so there was like no time
to back out of that shit at all, which I think is funny.
I have a twin brother, spent thefirst like little bit of my

(10:37):
life out in the Inland Empirewith my dad and my mom.
They split up when I was reallyyoung.
My dad was a.
He wanted to be a musicproducer, which is why I knew it
was like a job, and he did itkind of like amateurly ish, a
little bit like kind of did somestuff.
I don't know if you've everseen the SNL movie the cone
heads or anything.
Growing up, of course, my dadhad the soundtrack song of that

(11:00):
let's go Like.
The main song that plays in theend is my dad's song.
That was his like big claim tofame.
Dude, that shit's iconic.
It was kind of funny.
So I knew that was like a wayyou could make money, like that
was like a thing I saw my dad do.
He had a ton of odd jobs and abunch of like random stuff
growing up.
When him and my mom split shewas a hairdresser.
She took me and my brother backto the small Austrian village
that she grew up in with mygrandmother and all my cousins

(11:22):
and stuff like the middle ofnowhere, which is where I got my
first little bit of like actualmusic music education.
I played it.

How old were you at this time?

Midi Jones (11:32):
I think it was like seven or something like that.
Yeah, Like somewhere aroundthere.
It's like a long time ago, butmy uncle was a orchestra like
band leader and trumpet teacherso he gave me trumpet lessons
and like taught me how to sight,read and how to play with
others and the whole nine, whichis, like, I think, where I get
like my foundation from for themost part as far as like musical
understanding a little bit.

(11:52):
Really, really talented guylike really good teacher and
those fortunate to have himgrowing up.
But my dad had like a bunch oflike music, like recording gear
around.
I would go to like studios withhim as a kid.
Like I think there's picturesof me with like those like drum
headphones, like things where soyou don't like blow out your
ears, and that was always likemy favorite like memory as a kid
.
Like it was always my dream towork at like Paramount Funny

(12:14):
enough give the board andeverything else.

That's crazy.
And how old were you then?
Because, so if your parentsseparated one of you were seven,
you were going around.

Midi Jones (12:23):
Oh, like when I was like little little like a couple
like that very few times I gotto do that.
When I was little.
I moved with my mom.
I was in Austria and told usabout 12 or so and then actually
kind of like ran away funnyenough with my brother.
My parents are like a messydivorce in Austria, especially
at the time it wasn't like howit is kind of now where things

(12:45):
are a little bit more inclusive.
It's a small village in themountains with nothing kind of
going on, and being like anethnically ambiguous person kind
of doesn't go great in placeslike that at times.
So it was a little bit roughfor me and my brother over there
.
It wasn't a lot of acceptanceinto who we were, and even from
my mom it was really toughbecause she kind of left and

(13:05):
came back with like a couplelike not Austrian kids which
really didn't go over well withsome people, but for the most
part, like all my family was sowelcoming and great to be around
, but it was still just like avery difficult place to be, if
that makes sense, and so we kindof just left.
Like I told my mom me and mybrother told my mom we're going

(13:27):
to go visit my dad for Easterbreak when I was 12.
And we didn't go back until Iwas like 22.
Wow, yeah.
And then a very, very littlecontact.
Saw my mom here and there, butvery little contact, yeah.

So did you feel more drawn to your dad, or was
it just that you were drawn awayfrom Austria?

Midi Jones (13:50):
I was definitely drawn away from Austria because
of the nature of how my life waskind of going at the time.
But also my dad was like myhero growing up, like truly like
everything I wanted to be like.
He was a very charming,charismatic dude which kind of I
learned the dangers of thatstuff a little bit later on in
life.

Can you share some of those?

Midi Jones (14:12):
Oh sure, yeah, no, my dad basically convinced like
me and my brother to like movewith him and so we moved and we
just went to Spain with him onthe kind of a whim and didn't
look back and wasn't really inthe system that much, like we
were at one school for a coupleof years and then we just went
to Brazil, didn't get anyeducation.

(14:33):
While I was there for about Ithink a year or so to came back
to the States when I was like 15with horrible school records,
like just they're like dude,like you didn't go to school,
like what the fuck is this?
Like we just wouldn't go toschool even when I was in Spain,
like I got very little formaleducation.
And then while I was trying todeal with that, like I got put
in like a charter school, allthose different shit, and kind

(14:54):
of dropped out of high school.
At the same time that my dadgot very sick when I was like 16
, 17.
So he ended up gettingdiagnosed with heart failure
because we had black mold in ourapartment and it just made
everybody sick.
But it really hit him very hardand through just a series of
really unfortunate circumstancesthat kind of all happened at
once we like lost our place tostay and we kind of were around

(15:19):
like the LA area just trying tofigure shit out.
For like a while.
I think it was a good year of ustogether, just like bouncing
from place to place like friends, places, ended up staying with
a family friend where Iliterally slept in his closet
and trying to figure shit out.
I couldn't get a job at TacoBell.
I was like I didn't have anAmerican passport or an address

(15:40):
or a high school diploma,couldn't get a job at fucking
Taco Bell and I tried so manytimes and I had no interest in
making music professionally.
If I'm being honest, I did itfor fun.
I thought it was really cooland really sick and I had like a
dream of like going to likeFrance and being like a
recording engineer or some shitlike that.
But it seemed like unrealisticbecause, like, a lot of my
family are like failed musiciansnot failed, but like they

(16:02):
didn't do what they wanted to doand there was always like a
slight sense of resentment tothat.
And my dad was a very liketalented dude, like he could
sing and dance and do the wholenine, but like he never quite
got the success he wanted, and Ithink he was always kind of mad
about it, which kind of likereflected poorly.
But man, it was one of thosethings where I saw people making

(16:28):
some money doing it, and thisis when Depp Step was getting
really big.
And I saw this article aboutlike Skrillex like not having a
place to stay and making hislike big album on like one
rocket eight or some shit likethat At 12th Planet Dude at 12th
Planet's place, and that dudewas a huge inspiration to me
because I'm like oh, this is ablack dude in LA making like
music that he's not technicallysupposed to be doing.

(16:48):
Quote, unquote, absolutely.
Because there was even like athing when I started like making
beats where people were like,let me hear your R&B shit, and I
was like I make fucking EDM,like I'm not.
Like that dude was like my hero, like those studios were my
heroes because, like you canliterally have nothing and do
something that is typically notexpected of you.

Yeah, do it well .
One of the other ones in thereis a guy that I recently became
friends with and I linked youwith is Joker.
Yeah, that was like.

Midi Jones (17:12):
I mean, I was like so star struck is even when that
dude DM me back, was like I wasa big.
I appreciate you for that.
Yeah, I used to listen to thatdude shit all the time, like
really just admiring thesepeople.
Yeah, he's a fucking legend.
Yeah, I mean fully and trulydeserves all the flowers in my
opinion.
Yeah, so I started making likedubstep in this dude's closet on
like a stolen laptop thatsomebody gave me, and I had a

(17:34):
demo of FL studio that didn'tlet you save projects.
This is one of the ways Ilearned how to get faster shit.
So I had to do everything atonce and export all the stems,
because it would let you exportand I would just have the stems
ready to go, which is kind offunny, which is funny.
I've actually never heardsomebody say that that's genius
I used to go to like there waslike Benjans demo sample packs

(17:55):
and black octopus, I would gethis men, I would get his crack
shit.
I didn't even know how to steal, honestly, because everybody
was like here's a crack of this.

I'd know none of that shit.
They also always gave freepacks, too.
That's what I used.

Midi Jones (18:04):
I made like my first like money.
I ever got paid making a songwith all that shit and like
stock FL studio shit, which Ithought was funny as shit.

I love that we.
What you just described feelsnot in a closet, but very much
the same as how I in thebeginning started producing on
FL Huh.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, I did not know what I wasdoing in FL, which I cannot say
that I did not know what I wasdoing in FL.
Like I don't know if I everreally figured that out.

(18:32):
It was like lasting Ableton,that made me move over 100%.
Yeah, same, but free samplepacks.

Midi Jones (18:38):
Free sample packs man Like did the thing honestly,
yeah, massive presets and justwhatever.
All that.
Well, I was huge in like sounddesign because I was like it was
like, at the time especially,it was like if you used presets,
that was like somebody elsewriting your bars If you're a
rapper.
It was like.
It was like whack.
I was using like like Harmerand all this different stuff,
like all those like native, likeFL things, and I was like just

(19:00):
like like massive was great atthe night, it was like insane.

Just trying to rub Swire and Knife.
Party made fun of moderntalking, and then that was the
thing you couldn't do.

Midi Jones (19:07):
It was the thing you could not do, like the little,
like talky base thing.
It was like everybody and theirmom did that shit.
I like loved like at the time,like Madion and all those dudes,
and like Wolfgang Garner, likethe complex you're like chopping
, like making little hits andchopping it up.
That was so fun to do.
Absolutely Mordfesting, exactly.
And then there was nothing elsefor me to do.
So I would just do that shitall day and that's it.
I would even go to like therewas McDonald's next door that

(19:29):
had like $1 huge like cups Idon't drink as much Dr Pepper as
I could because I couldn'tafford Red Bull.
I would just stay up all nightat McDonald's making beats,
which was kind of funnyEventually, like my Godfather's,
one of the people I stayed within this closet, and he would
bring me around these littlelike super, duper, duper, duper,
duper hood studios, like tocall it a studio.

(19:50):
It was a room with shit in it,honestly, and nobody ever wanted
to be the engineer.
And there was this kid whohired me to do his homework at
Lars, like I live recordingschool.
So I knew Pro Tools in theoryI'd never seen it in person
really and I messed around withit a little bit because my dad
had it on his computer but hedidn't know how to use it either
and I was like I'll engineer.
I graduated from Lars.

(20:11):
It's told everybody that shit.
I love that.
So I would just do thesesessions and, like there were
times where I couldn't stay atthe house, I would crash at the
studio and I would just do likea 16 hour session that would
feed me and I would do shit andI would just like make beats
with these guys and have funstuff.
And my godfather was eventuallylike I have like a thing
happening, can you just like aCD of your shit or just send me
some songs?
And he sent it to a dude namedKerry Gordy who, if you know

(20:33):
anything about Motown oranything the dude who made it is
a guy named Barry Gordy who'sone of like the biggest like
music execs of like the 60s, 70s, 80s essentially like Michael
Jackson, stevie Wonder, smokeyRobinson.
None of these people existwithout this dude, barry Gordy
and this was his son, who wasalso Prince's I want to say A&R
manager and like just like a bigexec as well.

(20:54):
Inviting me up to his house inBel Air with a bunch of other
people, I quickly realized thatI was the only person there not
actively in the music industry.
I'm just just like a homelesskid.
I looked like it too and firsttime I've ever been around any
music shit.
Let's do a give the mostterrifying speech I've ever
heard in my life, like OG musicbusiness shit.
I remember this dude said aquote.

(21:15):
He was like if you want to beJimi Hendrix, do that shit on
your own time.
I was like I don't have money,and that was my idol at the time
too, like musically, that'severything I looked up to.
I was like this is scary andthis is like terrifying.

I was like shaking my chair, damn, but that
sounds like the most popmindset, like straight up right
there.

Midi Jones (21:34):
I don't think I would have ever made pop if it
wasn't for that dude, which I'meternally grateful for, honestly
, which is just like this dudetaught me like you can have
artistic integrity and also makemoney at the same time, which
is like it's a fine line to tell.
But they ended up like beinglike who wants to play some
music?
And like my godfathervolunteered me to go up in front

(21:54):
of like music legends that Ihad only read about in like
newspapers and shit like that.
And like the first song Iplayed was the first song I ever
.
They bought it and paid memoney and I was like, okay, you
can actually like make music.
Oh shit, yeah.
And like make money doing thisshit, and it was like it was
like thousands of dollars and Iwas like at the time I got this
like MIDI tattoo on my arm.
I'm sure you've seen it, butone of the reasons I got that is

(22:15):
dude.
I used to sell my blood likethree times a week just to keep
my phone on.
I love that.
Yeah.
But I started to look like I hadlike a problem because I was
getting like track marks,because it was always like
intern nurses.
So I got this to like cover itup.
Essentially, I love that, yeah.

Which is kind of funny.
What is okay?
That's going to go on a, a TikTok clip or something like that,
but that's great, I love that.
Yeah.

Midi Jones (22:38):
I mean, but I saw I was making 35 bucks every time I
did that shit.
So to see like like a severalthousand dollar check for a song
I did in the closet, I was like, okay, I'm going to keep doing
this shit, so we have to slowdown here, because you're going
through like all the big momentshere.

Wait, so the caffeine is going.
That's great dude Okay.
So, I know you to be one of theonly producers, in my mind at
least that literally playseverything.
You play everything.
I'm sure that you program, butI mean your thing is like you
play instruments and you playsynths.

(23:16):
You do all of that.
So whenever you picked up FLand like when was the moment
that you started playing andrecording what you were?

Midi Jones (23:24):
doing so.
I was hugely in the box when Ifirst started off because I
literally had nothing else.
I barely had a computer.
From being honest with you,this thing had like less than a
gig of RAM.
Like you couldn't do shit.
I ended up.
One of the guys I met was astudent named Wah Wah Watson who
was an OG Motown guy who waslike on Car Wash that song.
I don't know if you rememberthat shit.
He also kind of took me underhis wing at the same time as

(23:48):
this dude, carrie did.
These guys kind offundamentally shaped how I think
about music and I was such alittle bass head I loved
anything heavy, all that shit.
That's all I cared about.
And this dude, wah Wah Watson,really drilled into my head.
Like, if you learn afundamental understanding how
each of these genres work, youessentially can make anything

(24:11):
you want, which is the basis ofhow I work today.
I learned that I was lackingvery heavily in the musical side
a little bit.
I literally didn't know how tolike play piano or anything
until I was in my 20s and I juststarted like hitting people up
because I was good at the sounddesign and drum programming
thing.
So I'll trade lessons with alot of homies, a lot of people.

(24:34):
I considered really, really,really good, I guess, the way I
got into the musical instrumentthing, which is skipping ahead a
little bit, I didn't realizethat.

I thought that was gonna go back in time.

Midi Jones (24:46):
That goes forward in time.
That's actually like it's funnyfor what I'm known for now.

Which is kind of hilarious.

Midi Jones (24:52):
Yeah, you're the straight analog Like now, which
is why I actually have somehomies that call me Analog Jones
, which I think is fucking funny.

I do love that actually.

Midi Jones (25:00):
But I ended up getting this friend named Jamie
Silverstein, who was Miguel'sbassist at the time, met the
student super weird way but weended up becoming very, very
close and he introduced me tothe whole band of Miguel, the
guitar player being Drew DiCaro.
I was like, wait, is this whereDrew comes in?
That's where I met Drew DiCaro.
Shout out Drew, I love you.
Shout out Falconry.

(25:20):
And like Jamie gave me a lot ofmy first like here's how you
play bass, like actually, andhere's how.
Like music theory, drew taughtme a ton of guitar lessons and
even like key lessons.
One of my dear friends, johnSaucin, who is currently Casey
Musgraves guitarist, taught meso, so much.
I just got very lucky with myfriends and my mentors with that
stuff.
I took some piano lessons, tobe honest with you, that helped

(25:44):
a lot.
But like how to like actuallylike here's how you write and
here's how you play and here'show you just don't do like
bullshit.
My friends who are like really,really great, and also a lot of
the Motown guys, were just likehere's how you cut fat and
here's how you do like hokeyshit.

Yeah, yeah, okay .
So now we'll try and gobackwards, because I really,
really don't want to believe inluck.
Sure, I do know that there issome ounce of luck, but I really
think that it's gotta be lessthan like 5%.
I think so many things that youdo throughout your life build

(26:20):
you into who you are 100% If youlean into who you are
unapologetically and you do yourbest work and you're a great
person and this, and that thoseopportunities will arise for you
to be lucky.
100% what's?

Midi Jones (26:34):
the phrase Like luck is opportunity meets
preparation.
Yeah.
I was like like unrealisticallyunlucky for a lot of my shit,
honestly, just kept hitting,like I trusted a lot of the
wrong people and like made a lotof like bad decisions as far as
like being like it'll work outand it just didn't a lot.
It's like I think we weretalking about this earlier.

(26:54):
It's just like if you have aconsistent and dedicated mindset
and this idea that I'm just notgoing to stop, it is a matter
of like when, not if, and it'sjust a matter.
I remember like one of my oldmentors was like it's not really
like about anything other thando you feel like you can eat
shit for like a decade, honestly?
And that's where like that comesin when a lot of my favorite

(27:16):
producers are just like I didn'thave a hit until my 30s, or
like a cut until my 30s, oh wow.
I remember like listening tolike an Inker Patrick podcast
where he was like I didn't get acut three years until my first
pub deal.
Like A cut and he was like hewas like, I think he was living
in his parents house until hewas like 29.
Like, I was like that andthat's like one of like the all

(27:37):
time great pop producers in mymind yeah, I'd love to have him
one day.

I've never met him, but Great guy.
What a great story just a threeyear deal, because how many
people did just imagine, onceyou sign that pub deal, the
world opens.

Midi Jones (27:51):
That sounds and even within hearing that, like when
you have like Dua Lipa hits andall this good stuff and like, oh
yeah, like three years isnothing, like go three years
without anyone putting out yourmusic.
It is defeating.
Yeah, I could only imagine.

Yeah, Because you guys are working, like
probably writing or producingmultiple tracks a day.
If you're doing sessions, sure,so that's, it's a lot of no's.
Let's just say even one track aday, you know the working days
out of year, like 250 orwhatever, it is times three,
sure, but it could be times twoafter that, because a lot of the
times you do two tracks a day,you can.

(28:24):
Yeah, that would defeat almostanybody in the world and that's
why only a few make it Sure.

Midi Jones (28:29):
Yeah, 100%.
It is a little bit like I dobelieve in quality over quantity
, but there is something to besaid about just like quantity,
because you can just like donumbers a little bit.

You say that, but I every single day you post
how many sessions you're doing.
Sure, you work.
Sure, but that's cause I likeworking, I know.
But everybody who really makesit sure loves working.
You kind of have to.

Midi Jones (28:50):
I remember when I first met our mutual manager
Spencer, I was doing like a lotof days, like three and four
sessions like every day.
I was also living in a studioat the time, so there's not much
else to do, but yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah , for everybody listening.
Middy introduced me to mycurrent manager, spencer, and I
Shout out Spencer.

Midi Jones (29:13):
Yeah, we love them.

We could tell that story but, before we tell
that story, I would love to talkabout how we met.
But so I want to finish up kindof your come up here Sure, Sure
.
So did you say it was your?
Was it your godfather?

Midi Jones (29:32):
He introduced me to the Gordy family.
Okay yeah, who got me my the?

How did he become your godfather?
That's a real.
He was my dad's best friendgrowing up, yeah, yeah, because
your dad was in music.

Midi Jones (29:43):
He was the son of a famous Motown producer named
Norman Whitfield.
This is his son, Michael, whowas just like really good dude,
nice guy, like funny dude.
Well, there's like OG, likelike character guys who just
like is down to take you underhis wing kind of vibe I can
paint him in my head.
Yeah, just like, like was alwaysdown to have me around, really

(30:04):
nice guy.
You know like I'll run into himto this day, like here and
there, and it's just like 19again, which is nice.
I love that.
Yeah, and he like, honestly, itwasn't for him taking me up to
that house that day, truly don'tknow where I'd be at yeah.

And so I just want to say that here's the look
.
If you hadn't been grinding ina closet and just putting in the
time on your shitty laptop,that probably was dropped.
Well, it was literally droppingsessions because you couldn't
save them.
You, every hurdle that was inyour way, you jumped over it.

(30:38):
Yeah, you produced a trackwithout being able to save you
bounce to stems.
Then you probably worked on itagain in a project you couldn't
save, yeah, so you just kept ondoing this over and over.
You were collecting all of thehours of hard work and then, yes
, the maybe luck part Sure, wasthat you were born to a dad that

(31:00):
had a great relationship.
But if you didn't put in all ofthat work, if you hadn't
basically run away from Romania,Austria, I just said Romania.
I'm Romanian here we go.
We're neighbors, austria.
That's hilarious.
Maybe in a past life I ran awayfrom there.
If you hadn't run away and comeover here and then honestly

(31:24):
probably had your dad talk youinto going here and there and
collecting all of thesedifferent cultures that you got
to.
There's no way that you wouldbe you.
Then you had this laptop andyou put in the hours Just so
that whenever you were in thatroom and you played some beats,

(31:47):
they weren't the first beat youever made.
They were things that you hadbeen working on.

Midi Jones (31:52):
That's the luck.
Sitting in the studio or yourroom or wherever, and just
putting the hours in is superimportant.
Truth be told, I think there'stoo much emphasis on that.
If I'm being completely honestwith you, I know so many
amazingly talented musicians andproducers that no one's ever
heard of because they just stayin that room.
I'd say, yes, you have to beskilled and talented and

(32:16):
diligent, but you also have togo outside.
If it wasn't for me, just goingout and meeting people and just
being down to hang, the hang isalmost more important.
At a certain point you have tobe really good, but I think my
ability to hang out was honestlya huge part of it.

Yeah, I love that.
I think that that's honestlyhow I attribute anything that
comes my way.
I feel like my mixes are prettygood.

Midi Jones (32:41):
Your mixes are fucking great.

Thank you, but I don't know if I'm the greatest
mixer ever, but I feel like Iconnect with people well and I
really like meeting people, andI'm not just there to get work
but, I, really want to hearpeople's story and I want to get
to know them, and that's whatthis podcast is.
It's like I was already havingthese conversations.
I just stuck a mic and a camerain front of it.

(33:06):
Exactly, but I think the hang.

Midi Jones (33:09):
So it's honestly because there's no guarantee
you're going to murder it thefirst time you work with
somebody.
There's just too many factors.
Your own headspace, like wereyou on a show the night before?
Are your ears shot, did youhurt your finger?
And you can't do shit as fast.
Even if you shit the bed alittle bit with an artist, it's
like a great time and you knowthe vibe is there.

(33:29):
They'll come back versussomebody you make a smash with
and they're like I hated thatprocess.
Yeah, like one of the bestpieces of advice I ever got was
from Barry Gordy and he was likeno one will ever hire you
because you're sick and you'regood.
They'll hire you because theylike you and you're good.
Like they have to like you.
It's just part of the job.

(33:50):
There's a lot of likeanti-social producers especially
, which is like a lot of us werereally unpopular in high school
, myself included and we justsat in a room instead of getting
like girlfriends and shit likethat and produced.
But that can also like it didfor me for sure Fucks with your
social ability.
So I made it like my job tolike learn how to make friends

(34:11):
and learn how to like I don'tknow, be empathetic with people
that you just met, which isharder than it sounds.
Absolutely yeah.
Yeah, but but you, your job isto be a lightning rod for an
artist to be able to you have tofeel compelled to say a story
that's going to make you cryyeah, like right now and then
we're going to put chords to it,yeah, and somehow you have to

(34:32):
be able to feel that withempathy and put that into pro
tools.
Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.
I had to think what doll you'rein now?
Sure, he used to be unable to.

Midi Jones (34:43):
Yeah, sneaking back in.

Oh yeah, it's a little bit yeah.
It's a lot dirty to me.
So you play these tracks infront of this room, do they?
It sounds like they've boughtyou out.

Midi Jones (34:59):
They basically like gave me like a production fee.
It's first time that never cameout, but they gave me a
production fee which is like thefirst little bit of money I saw
.
And then I continued to mentorunder carry for a couple of
years after that.
I would go to his house likeseveral times a week and be
brutal, Be like a fucking threeand a half hour like train and
bus ride up there from whereverI was staying at the time oh,
it's always so because it's likethe top of Bel Air, so it's

(35:20):
like hard to get to.
Wasn't staying around there andyeah, they would just have me by
and just work on a bunch ofstuff with a young artist named
Jada Grace who was on Epic atthe time and that was my uh, I
was actually my first majorlabel release was on this girl,
I think one.
She was on Capitol, funnyenough.
But yeah, they, they the Gordyswent to bat for me and the song

(35:41):
that I did with with a friendof mine and it like opened up a
ton of doors and it got me likemy first little deal and it got
me like my first like couple,like looks of things and like
articles and all that good stuffand it was just like it was a
cool way to see and I met a lotof the people that I first
started working with, like atthat house, like all those

(36:01):
people, like guys that I endedup being friends with for a
really long time was like likethey're further kids getting
born and shit like that.
It was like my circle startedthere, basically yeah, yeah.
This dude's intern.
This dude named Ben taught mehow to DJ and would like take me
to like USC house parties andlike, dude, like come DJ, I'm
going to teach you the shit andmeet people.
I like met my like first, likereal girlfriend there.

(36:22):
Dude, like it's like all theshit happened for me going to
that house Like almost everysingle person, including you, I
can kind of trace back to megoing to that house Really yeah.

Wait, how me.

Midi Jones (36:32):
Cause I met this dude at the who taught me how to
DJ who.
I met this other guy throughthat I met this other guy
through who introduced me tothis guy, nick, who introduced
me to Brian.
My gosh, yeah, no like for reallike it's insane.
Like almost every single personin my life.
That's of value I can traceback to.
That.
Can trace back to like somebodyin that house.

That's beautiful .
Yeah, I almost feel like mostguests I've had on this might be
the most like impetus, likeboom this is like this is the
atom bomb experience.
But most people can trace itback to like attract that they
worked on or like somebody thatthey met who changed their
mindset, but this is like yeah,yeah.
This Godfather of yours.

(37:12):
Introduction.
Yeah, no they literally did somuch for me, honestly.
Yeah, yeah, and I just want to.
I want to harp on this one moretime, like for anybody
listening or watching it's, itreally is all about the work
that you put in to make surethat whenever you step up to
that plate, you can deliver.
You got to step up to the plate, like you said, if you never

(37:35):
release a track, you never putyourself out there to get that
hate and that hurt and that,whatever in the beginning, then
you won't be able to have thethick skin later.
Yeah, Like you have to do that,but you have to put in the work.
Yeah, whenever the stakes arelow, 100%, just just do the damn
thing so that whenever you werethere playing those tracks, I'm

(37:55):
sure you were still nervous ashell.

Midi Jones (37:57):
Oh my.

God, yeah, you had to have been, but, yeah, you
played them and people.
They resonated with what youdid, so okay.
So actually I want to know whatwas the first little deal that
you got?
What were you saying there?

Midi Jones (38:12):
Oh man, it was a small same company.
It was a very short lived deal.
I was only in that deal forlike eight months or something
like that, and after the deal Iwas honestly like back to square
one.
To be honest with you, it kindof taught me like what I did and
didn't want out of a deal,basically, and it got me some
cool stuff, like some sinks anda couple of things.
But like I learned that what wewere talking about before, which

(38:35):
is just like you have to work,no matter who's on your team,
like you have to do it.
I did the thing that people do.
It's like you sign your firstdeal and you think like it's
just going to happen and itdoesn't.
So it taught me that no matterwhether or not you're in a deal,
you have to like hustle, likereally hard and at the time,
even like right before I waslike signing this deal, I got

(38:55):
introduced to a dude named SamHook, who was a dude who, like I
, got a lot of my first cutswith yeah, and he was like a
phenomenal songwriter and likejust a good dude, and during my
time in this pub deal hearguably got me way more stuff
than my pub deal did as far aswhat I actually wanted to do and
the things I was looking for.
So it just kind of taught methe value of like maintaining

(39:17):
relationships, because I know alot of people can like self
isolate after they sign a deal,which is also dangerous, in my
opinion.

All right, I know several of those, and I
actually.
In all cases, it's dangerousyeah 100%.

Midi Jones (39:29):
You basically got to act like nothing's changed for
the most part.
You have to keep hustling, youhave to keep doing your thing.

Put that money in some like not a savings
account.
Savings accounts aren't reallydoing so great, but that you
know, don't go out and spend allthat shit yeah.
Like live like nothing happenedand take a little stress off
your shoulders because now youhave some money.
Yeah.
Think about it as like yourrent, but like work.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and andstill grind, go out there and

(39:55):
meet people.
Don't expect like the wholeworld to to change.
Like I know, some ANRs arereally really great at just
scheduling out people.
But yeah, just act like nothingis changed.
Keep on grinding, if not harder.

Midi Jones (40:09):
Honestly, yeah, Well , the thing is when you look up
and you meet your heroes, whenyou get to the point where your
heroes start to become yourpeers.
I remember this was aneye-opening thing and a lot of
guys that I looked up to and afew of them became my mentors,
which I'm eternally grateful for.
But it was a little bitshell-shocking for me to be like
man.
I'm working a lot and thisdude's 50, with hits and a crazy

(40:30):
house, and he's working as muchas me, if not more, and
arguably making better shitfucking terrified me at the time
.
Yeah.
I was like, oh yeah, you get ahit and then you coast.
So I was like, no, not even alittle bit.
It's insane how much outputthese dudes have.
Like the reason these guys areat the top is just like what you
said you have to love what youdo, you have to do it
consistently and you have to doit with like conviction.

(40:53):
Yeah.

I think that there's a, if not more than an
ounce, an ounce of obsession.

Midi Jones (41:00):
No no, no, a fuck ton of obsession yeah.

It's like if you're away for it, like taking
a vacation, like the second dayin, you're like itching to get
back.

Midi Jones (41:14):
I don't know a single dude who I consider to be
successful that doesn't bringtheir laptop with them on a
vacation.

Yeah, I don't know, we all say that we're not
going to touch it.
And then, boom, the next dayyou're just like oh yeah, the
client wants blah, blah, blahand it's like bro, you don't
even need to do that, dude, yeah, but I do.

Midi Jones (41:28):
I went to Vancouver to visit my brother and like I
was like oh yeah, we're going togo out at night and do all this
different stuff.
Me and my brother areeffectively like old souls, so
we don't like when we arechilling, we're chilling.
So he's like let's just hangout tomorrow.
So I was just comping vocalsevery night, like while I was
there.

Yeah, I love that, yeah, okay, so let's move
on a little bit from thereYou've gotten some, some cuts.
You signed the sink deal.
Basically You're out of thesink deal.
Yep, how old are you now?

Midi Jones (42:04):
I'm now about 22.
I want to say I had like boutsof homelessness at this point,
like I'd like one year here, ayear and a half there, just
through, like weirdcircumstances and just like bad
situations.

Essentially, when were you living with
homelessness?

Midi Jones (42:20):
So the first little bit around it was just like
anybody who let me crash with myfamily, and then the second
time around was just kind of bymyself, and so I was just like
this is where I learned how torun sessions essentially.
So like by the time I got tolike the Gordys and stuff like
that earlier on I knew what Iwas doing, but I'd like I would
sleep at like fucking bus stops,dude, and like train stations
and shit like that, which a lotof my family doesn't know, funny

(42:41):
enough.
Really.
Yeah, but I was just likeanywhere possible.
There was definitely a pointwhere I was on Tinder for a bed,
if that makes any sense.
Totally.
Yeah, I've actually never heardthat, but actually pretty
genius.
It's great, made a lot of goodfriends.
Actually, I would be so upfrontabout it, like look, I'm like

(43:02):
legit just trying to like sleepsomewhere tonight.
Down to hang.
Wait, people were receptive ofthat.
You'd be surprised.
Call it like like broken wingsyndrome a little bit.
Please explain.
Oh, it's just like the ideathat somebody wants to nurture a
baby bird and it's cute.
And that was.
That was definitely me where Iwas.
Just like yo, I'm down and out.

(43:22):
No worries, if you don't wantto hang Like you can't come to
my place because I don't have aplace.
But I was like literally likeon like Starbucks Wi-Fi, like
texting girls on Tinder.

Dude, I mean, this is I.
This is why I love you so much.
Like like you're willing toshare this.
Oh I mean that's like a lot ofpeople probably wouldn't share
that, but Really, this is thefabric of who you are and why I
think you are doing so well andso many people resonate with you

(43:55):
.
You've seen all walks of life.
You've been there, you've doneit, you've Absolutely overcome
when you're fucking crushing.
Well, we'll get to the presenteventually, but Damn okay.
So how do we go from?

Midi Jones (44:11):
So when I got out of this deal I was effectively
like broke a shit like again,like so I was homeless for a
while, got like like thesecouple cuts and couple things
moved into a apartment with somehomies.
I got like a job as like anengineer at like a studio in
like once.
It was like to look a lakearound there and met my first

(44:33):
manager there, who introduced meto a lot of first people but
also just got me enough money tobe able to get a place with
some friends that I met at thishouse was it like salary from
engineering?

It was like it was a salary gig, yeah.

Midi Jones (44:45):
And then they found out that I made beats
Effectively this is like beforemy pub deal, by the way so like
just like where that came intothere and how I got off of being
homeless and stuff like that.
Mm-hmm, that job kind ofallowed me to get like I was in
a three bedroom with sevenpeople.
That shit sucked.
But these are all great friendsand cool people so it was a
good time Ended up getting likea studio, like it was like four

(45:06):
people to like a room that waslike a fourth of this size.
Oh wow, yeah, it was likeinsane.
I would.
We would be my one partner, mybuddy, who we got our first
major label stuff with.
We'd have 9 pm To 9 am Slot.
So we did that shit for acouple years.
Oh man, yeah.
But that's where I got like alot of my first work and that
like let me like also liketransition from being like an

(45:28):
Engineer into a producer.
One of the guys at the studio,like I was saying a second ago,
it became my manager for alittle bit met a bunch of
friends that guy, jamie, throughthis manager too.
So that's the dude.
Jamie's really the guy who,like, introduced me to a lot of
the people that ended up makingmy pop career career start to.
But, um, yeah, the after thedeal happened, when I was like

(45:49):
with the Motown guys, got myfirst cut, got this deal out of
the deal, super broke To thepoint where, like, I lost my car
in my apartment again, soldeverything I owned and just paid
off my studio room for a yearand Just grinded holy shit a lot
.

No, plan B literally like.

Midi Jones (46:06):
Truly no plan B like the most humbling thing in my
life was going back to thatblood bank.
It's just so blood Wow.
I didn't know you had a fullcircle moment dude.
I like got and lost everythinglike three or four times I
fucking love that dude.

You just keep going.

Midi Jones (46:21):
That's the.
That's the motto, that's mydad's motto.
From when I was a kid.
There used to be like all thesesigns, before we moved to
Europe, in my house where ourfamily motto was you don't give
up, like no matter what it is.
That's the whole thing,unboxing to it.
It's like it's not literallyabout how many times you get hit
or like that you hit somebodyso much, how much you can get
hit and still stand.
You know, that's that's mydad's whole philosophy.

(46:43):
If you keep getting up, nothingcan stop you from doing shit.
So it just like fucking kepthappening, like over and over
again, and I was just trustingthe wrong people, like over and
over again.
I'm a little gullible at leastI was.
When I was younger and I was inthe studio, I was working on a
bunch of shit.
I was working with Sam at thetime and a bunch of people and I
just had this like Come toJesus moment, which is like I

(47:05):
got to stop betting on everybodyelse, hoping that people are
gonna take care of me withinthis shit.
And I made like a goal in mystudio which was like I want to
have a certain amount of moneysaved.
I want to get a major placement.
I want to get a plaque, I don'twant to get a manager, and
until I get those things, Icannot move out of this room.
I'm gonna work as much ashumanly possible and this was

(47:26):
the year that you paid for.

This is the year that I paid for it at a small
kind of like sold everything andyou paid off here Literally had
nothing outside of what was inthis room.
Were you living in that room?

Midi Jones (47:36):
Oh yeah, it was a studio that a homie I went to
years before I knew he livedthere and it was like it's a
super illegal thing to do yeah,like you can't do that's like
slumlord shit.
But everybody in this placelived there.
Like like more than half of thetenants live there.
So I knew that they were likekind of cool about that.
So I went there and a lot ofthe guys who were there are now

(47:58):
like Multi-platinum producers,like with like murder beats and
shit, all good homies, all likegreat people, and it was like
cool, like all of us live thereand all of us kind of got like a
little come-ups at the sametime, which is nice.
Yeah and at the time I wasasking every single person I
knew and this was my whole thingI took any little bit of money.
I was doing like indie gigs forso many people as much as I

(48:19):
could for like less than athousand bucks.
Like I'll do your whole thing,I would offer people free songs.
Like I'll do a whole song, mixand master it, produce it,
record you everything For free.
If you want to put it out, we,and you don't want to do like a
bunch more songs, you don't wantto pay for it, we'll split it.
If you want to do like moresongs, you'll pay me a rate.
And so that money I would goand just take people out all the

(48:40):
time sushi, drinks, whatever'scovered.
You want to hang like peoplewho I like thought were like
Impressive in the music industryexecs, producers, anybody like
let's hang.
And I would ask everybody thesame question Do you know a
manager?
And I would tell them mysituation, which is like I'm
living at the studio looking forsome shit down to do whatever
work.
Here's some shit I've beendoing like.
If you like the work, let meknow what's up.

(49:01):
One of these homies was a dudenamed Josh cocktail who was a
really like talented dude, kneweverybody in their mom and One
day he was like hey, what areyou doing like right now, come
get tacos with me.
And he was one of those kind ofdudes where you just don't ask
questions, you kind of just doit.
And I had worked a little biton a project for a dude and his

(49:22):
manager's name was Spencer andSpencer was at this taco dinner
and and he was like Spencer memade a mini meet Spencer.
And then he was just likeSpencer, you should manage many
you guys like go from here.
And then you just kept eating.
So that's how I met Spencer.
No way, yeah, and Spencer was anartist manager at the time and
he was very open with me aboutbeing like I want to be an

(49:42):
artist manager more than I wantto be a producer manager, but
let's see what can happen and westarted working on a couple
things together and it workedreally well, really quick, and
everybody just kept coming backand he just kept putting me in
rooms and Eventually there was akid named Omer Fetty who was a
poppin producer now great guy,known him for a long time.
He was on a song called nakedfrom LMA which I got a little

(50:04):
bit of a cut of, and that shithelped me out a fuck done, which
is what kind of got me my firstlittle platinum record.

Really.
Yeah, I didn't know that.
Mm-hmm.

Midi Jones (50:13):
Yeah, that's really cool story Totally, and this is
a kid that everybody knew fromlike jump is gonna be super
talented and successful.
So like tried to introduce himto everybody and he made his own
rounds and I was just fortunateto be able to be like.
This is a cool kid and I thinkI don't know the people aspect
of this industry kind of becamemore apparent to me when I was
just like okay, being good isn'tenough.

(50:34):
I got you have to actually besmart about how you move and the
people you keep around, mm-hmm,and I tried to like just hang
around people that I thoughtwere like good people you know,
and like if somebody I thoughtwas good recommended me to
somebody who I thought was good,I would trust that.
Yeah, I think that's animportant thing.
It's just like be around peoplewho you trust their taste and
people.
That's that's really big somepeople have like a terrible

(50:56):
taste and people we don't know,that one friend who just can't
stop dating the wrong person youknow absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, I can think of a couple of
producers who.
I'm like my god, you're so good, but the people that you
surround yourself.

Midi Jones (51:07):
I don't understand that will stop people a lot of
the times there.
It's truly like an understatedcrutch of just like not being
willing to let go of the wrongpeople.
Mm-hmm.
Honestly, I think that shit.
If it wasn't for that, Iprobably would have been further
along in my career at anearlier age.
Yeah, yeah, just truly didn'twant to let go of the wrong
people.

You would not have the wisdom, though Sure you
, of all people I know just have, I can bring up any scenario
and you won't just give me likea wise answer, you'll give me
like an actual scenario that youknow.
Sure, either happen to you orhappen to a friend.
Yeah and I think that all ofthat comes because you are

(51:47):
willing to take a chance onpeople and yeah, yeah.
Yeah, wow, there's so manythings in there that I didn't
know.
Yeah, that that was great.
So what?
You keep on talking about a pubdeal that you had and it have
you.
Are you in a pub deal?

Midi Jones (52:06):
No, no, that was the only pub thing I've ever had a
little sink thing yeah it waslike a very short stamp.

Yeah, yeah, yeah , I can see that you're very
into.
I Don't know if it's breakingan artist which I'm sure that
everybody is interested in, butI I definitely see in you
Finding people that have crazytalent, but not just that like
everything in place to really dosomething.

(52:31):
But they need Either a great EP, they need a great ear a great
producer something and you arevery interested if, if you're
passionate about 100%.

Midi Jones (52:40):
I, more so than like anything.
I just like to vibe with people.
If your music is awesome, likea truly great, and I don't enjoy
the process of thinking it withyou Like it's, it's a, it's a
done deal for me, honestly, like, if we can vibe and you can be
an empathetic person as well,because I find a lot of times
that only goes one way,especially with, like, a lot of

(53:00):
artists that I've met in thepast, because it is it's one of
those things where I Needartists to have a certain amount
of like delusion.
If I'm being honest with you,yeah, I want you to believe that
you are destined to be thenumber one artist in the world,
with zero evidence to back thatup, because if you don't believe
that, why would I believe that?
You know?
Yeah, but it's also the thingthat can make creating a little

(53:21):
bit difficult at time, becausethe the Sort of like I don't
know, the sub awareness can kindof not be there to like take it
like a little step back fromyour own perspective, yes, which
can make you know, workingdifficult.
Yeah, so like the ability tokind of like step out of that
mindset for a quick minute inorder to create a song or, to
like, finish the song.
More importantly Is a vitalpiece of the puzzle for me

(53:43):
personally yeah, yeah, otherwise, it's a job.

I mean we have mutual.
I Think we've we've hadexperiences together where there
are people like that and andalso a talk that we had the
other night over some killerJapanese food.
It was like it.
You need artists to have, likeArtists who want to be at the
top, they need to have this,something that makes them very

(54:06):
tough to hang out with.
Yeah, 100%, they need to havethat.
Yeah, I don't know, it justrubs you the wrong way, but it's
not bad, it's not like Iwouldn't.
Isn't that my kind?

Midi Jones (54:16):
of person, a lot of my favorite artists that I like
damn.
I love your shit so much.
I love look, I love youraesthetic, I love your
personality, I love the music.
I never want to meet you likeso many of my favorite artists,
honestly, yeah, because I, it'sjust part of it.
There should be a certainamount of Undertainability, in
my opinion for a superstar atleast, absolutely but I feel
like that is starting to changea little bit.

(54:37):
I feel like a lot of like Stars, of what, at least what I
consider a star at this point.
There is a relatability thatpeople really do respond to, and
I feel like that's just, youknow, inevitable due to like
social media and like you are ifclick away from your favorite
person and you can interact withthem.

Yeah, yeah, but the the interesting thing on
that topic is, today's star isso much different, mm-hmm.
Then you know, even five yearsago star hundred percent the
difference, I see mm-hmm is astar before we could be talking
about an, an actor and a musicartist, whoever, mm-hmm.
If.
They put on a show, a Seriousamount of fucking people go,

(55:18):
yeah, still to this day.
And the weird thing aboutpeople who are below up on
tiktok yeah, and then stream,actually stream.
Well, which is a difficultthing, to get it over different
yeah.
They cannot sell out even a 500400 cap room.
I saw this thing.

Midi Jones (55:35):
I saw an article not that long ago.
This is one like that SteveLacey hit was long enough, yeah.
And there was this article thatwas like who is Steve Lacey and
how did he come up out ofnowhere?
And I was like dude, this guywas in a super sick band for a
decade before this.
It was like he was wellestablished in the music
industry and at a certain point,it's just like you're not the

(55:55):
tiktok thing.
And the issue with the tiktokthing, in my opinion, is that
you're not truly creating a fan.
You're creating a fan of noteven a song, a specific moment
of that song which is like willlead to a bunch of streams for
people to listen to that onepart, but the moment that's done
, it did it, so doesn't pour itover mm-hmm, which is like
difficult for For the artistsmore than anyone.

(56:19):
In my opinion, it's good forthe producers and writers who
are part of the song.
It's good for the label who isa part of the song, anybody else
who is a part of the song, butI've seen almost every time this
like identity crisis come withit after the fact.
Yeah, I see that too.
Yeah, because it's like if youhave a upward trajectory that's
going up and then you spike andthat's all it is it really?
A lot of times it's just aspike because of this one viral

(56:39):
moment.
People don't look at the factthat you're still on that up, if
anything.
It goes like spike up and thenyou're here and then you're up.
It's still Higher than whereyou were.
All people see was thatdownward from the spike, and
that's tough and I don't thinkit's really fair.
Honestly it's not fair to theartist, I should say yeah, it's
not fair to the artist.

a lot of them get Signed to a major deal, yeah
, and then they get dropped fromyeah major deal, and it's got
to be a blow to your ego,because that's the one thing you
need your whole set of beingyeah.
Yeah, you need this thing as anartist.

Midi Jones (57:14):
It's a little counterintuitive in my opinion.
Like, here's a person before amajor deal blew up doing
something that they just did.
Naturally, put him in a deal.
We're gonna put you in themachine.
That didn't work for you in thefirst place.
You had to do like your fanswant to see if that you do have
fans, what you were doing before.
A lot of times people getIntroduced into the world
through a major label, but ifyou don't, you kind of have to

(57:37):
look at how you were introducedto your audience.
That's really important thansomething we don't talk about.
And if you don't stay true toyour roots at least and it's
fundamental way that you do it,it's tough, it's hard to rebrand
, it's I'm not saying it doesn'twork, but it's a very hard to
like just pivot and also, likemost people just aren't even
like familiar with how thatworks.
Right.

(57:57):
So you're doing this superforce thing that seems Insanely
inauthentic because it kind ofis, but you just trust the
process because, like, these areveterans and these are guys,
have been in the industry for solong.
But when it doesn't work, it'sreally no skin off their teeth
because you're one of a fuckinghundred artists.
But this is your life and thenyou don't know what to do right,
yeah, yeah, we're taking peoplewho are incredibly DIY.

Yeah, I mean, tiktok is all DIY.

Midi Jones (58:20):
That's the whole video of it.

Yeah, it's all raw.
Yeah, like even though that alot of them are edited well.
The ones that seem to pop likereal hard are just like a
transition, sure, or somethingthat obviously is DIY it came
out of somebody's head.
Yep, and now we're putting theminto a machine and I think,
whenever, like majors have tofigure this out at some point,
just like, allow them to just bethe person that they are.

(58:42):
That that's.

Midi Jones (58:44):
The one thing I care about personally and I feel
like this resonates with a lotof people Musical talent is, of
course, important and, liketaste, even more important than
that, but more than anything Iwant to see is someone being
their truest self, the mostauthentic versions of themselves
, creatively, their content,everything about it.
I don't need even need to be afan of yours to be able to

(59:06):
appreciate that you are trulyyourself.
Hmm, you know.
I think people can hate likelike.
For me, like Lil Yachty is avery divisive Artists where you
either love them or you hatethem.
Yes but no matter what, you cannot say that there is.
You can't say there's anotherLil Yachty, there's just one.
You can't even be like.
You know when people are likeif you like artists like this,
that's the most you should come.
There's not even one for LilYachty, because he's just him.

(59:28):
I totally agree, honestly, andI love that.
I love when it's just like.
I can't even imagine someoneelse being you.

That's my favorite shit.

Midi Jones (59:35):
Yeah, I think that whenever it's like you either
love or hate this, yes, you'rein, you're in the perfect spot,
do I saw this quote that waslike if everyone likes your shit
, you're doing things wrong.
Yeah, you're never gonna begreat if everyone likes your
shit.
If people don't hate your shit,it's like you have to.
What is it?
You get love for free.
You have to earn hate.
I love that shit.
That's a great quote.
I think it's great.
I think it's awesome.
I think you have to be yourselfProgetically, and I think

(59:58):
that's what a lot of kids do ontiktok, and then they get to
something that they're not yeah.
It's the inauthentic inauthenticity that rubs people
the wrong way, because all of asudden you have a better
recording budget, you're workingwith better producers, you're
working with better writers,your shit sounds immaculate, it
sounds great.
Maybe that's not the vibe.

Austin Seltzer (01:00:14):
Yeah, you know that I think more now than ever.
That's not the vibe, maybestill for radio, it's the vibe
Sure, which is so very importanta very important.
Yeah yeah, I.
So at this point I kind of wantto.
Can we take a pee break beforewe totally should?
Yeah let's do it.
Okay, so I wanted to talk abouthow we met mm-hmm.
Yeah, I was working at a sinkcompany and I Think you had

(01:00:39):
already.
I don't.
Were these like throwawaytracks, like I'd all.
All of those were already done.

Midi Jones (01:00:46):
So I used to going back a little bit to that, my
friend Jamie and Drew Carl.
We had this thing that was likea we, me, him, the three of us
started this weekly meetup thatwe called skyscrapers.
That was like every Tuesdaywe'd link up at first it was a
Jamie, sometimes one, but endedup being a Drew's like nice ass
house with a studio in it whenwe'd link up once a week and we

(01:01:08):
were all trying to be like EdmDJs almost, because this one,
like flume, was like the king ofthe world to and we'd have to
bring a track.
It was expressly to get betterand We'd each bring a track and
like criticize it and we had acouple rules which is like you
can't say anything about thetrack and you have to, you know,
just basically take thefeedback.
It's purely just like aInformative, like let's get

(01:01:31):
better together kind of vibe andeventually grew to like 20
people in this fucking littlegroup.
Oh wow, we link up everyTuesday and the deal was like if
you didn't bring anything oryou gave an excuse or you gave
like a disclaimer, you owedinner for the for the ground.

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
I love that yeah single that's not mixed yet like
you can't do work in our,because you know what you can't
do that to an anr.

You shouldn't do that to an anr Because the
disclaimers and this is like ahuge thing, I learned the hard
way the disclaimers you give ona song before Someone's heard it
is going to negatively affecttheir opinion on it the moment
you play it, no matter what itsounds like.
Yes, every single time youalready said something's wrong
with this.
This isn't done.
You've told them that and,funny enough, a lot of the times
of things that you hate about arecord or sometimes people's

(01:02:11):
favorite things.
So let people make their ownopinions and then go from there.
There's a thing that like allthe snares fuck, don't listen to
it.
No, that shit.
Some people be like I love thatfucked up snare, like you just
don't know.
So it taught us how to do that,but almost all of those tracks
were tracks I did for that hangamazing.

So that was one of the huge nuggets.
I hope people take away thedisclaimer and just never give
it.
Death to the disclaimer dude,please, the amount of people
that I have over that, show meyeah tracks and stuff and say,
hey, man, you know this isn'tfinished, but I'm like I'll be
able to hear that.
Just let me hear the track.

(01:02:49):
Sorry, I'm a mix engineer.
I literally only listened tounfinished music.
Facts, I mean for real they arenever finished.
That's my job.
I do that.
So yeah, I love that.
Please.
I hope anybody listening andwatching like that's huge Mm-hmm
.
Just Disclaimer that 100% sowow, really cool.
Another nugget people shouldreally get a group like that.

Yeah, no, support groups are Everything.
Yeah, honestly.

I, I guess, whenever I was at the Blackbird
Academy, I guess that was kindof that.
I mean, it was like aMentorship of a bunch of people,
that that's what we were doing,and I kind of had that, but I
didn't, as I I moved on fromthere.
I have never had that andthat's.
I think that that's great.
I just remember reaching out,maybe I don't know.

(01:03:39):
Just a touch base Mm-hmm andthen I reached out to say hey, I
want to remix these tracks andthen.
I to show you and blah, blah,blah, but fast forward, mm-hmm.
I Want to say that I just kindof got off Facebook, mm-hmm.
But then I randomly one daythought about you and I just
messaged you and I was like dude, we should meet up, like yeah.

(01:04:00):
I remember that been so longyeah and it was because I had
left or Very strange, I like Iguess I got fired but I just
asked for a big raise because Iwas asked to do a lot more work.
Sure, sure, and it wasmid-pandemic and it was just
like, ah, we can't afford thiskind of thing.

(01:04:21):
So I was great, I got let go,which means I got to have
unemployment for a minute.
Nice but in all actuality, onlylasted a month, because I
started up my company, which isnow.
Cells are sounds to mix and,yeah, realistically, I was just
reaching out because I was likeyo, mitty is doing some cool
stuff.
I really want to work with thisguy because I didn't know you,

(01:04:42):
right?
Yeah, I didn't know you, but Iwas like this guy's doing cool
stuff and you never posted onFacebook but whenever you did,
it was like a Fucking bomb drop.
It's like yo like that's a bigsong.
Yeah so I reached out.

We didn't meet up and I saw you with Josh at
fucking Jesse and friends.

Yeah, yeah, that's where we actually met up.
So I at that time, I think Ihad mixed the first two Maggie
singles.
Yeah, she knows it.
And then how could you do thisto me?
Mm-hmm and I'd never met Josh.
I Saw him there.
I was like yo, that's Josh Iwent up to him like, hey, man,
it's great to meet you.
And then I was like, oh fuck,midi.

(01:05:23):
Oh, what's up.
But the funny thing is is, wehad only met so briefly once
yeah but that interaction feltso warm.
I was like yo, this is it, thisis a real friend.
I was like but he's not even afriend, but he feels like I've
known him forever and yeah, thenmaybe the next week.

(01:05:44):
Yeah, we hung out.
Yeah, you had me over to yourstudio Mm-hmm.
We walked to Starbucks andmakes me cringe.
Now, I'm just kidding Nothingon this.
Yeah, I'm just kidding.
Yeah, we were at your studioand you showed me at me it's
fucking amazing spot.
And yeah, we I Don't know wejust had immediate heart to

(01:06:05):
heart like it was like we werejust like already close and
basically I had a conversationabout the managers I had at the
time and I didn't know who totalk to.
But I knew that you had been inthe game for a while and you
know everything was Seeminglygoing great for you.
I'm sure that behind the scenesthere was Difficult this and
that, but I was.

(01:06:26):
Yeah, it looked good from thesurface.
So I asked you and we justBasically the advice that I got
was it seems like you reallyalign with them as people, but
on the business side they arenot understanding what you need.
No, and that's okay, you know,but you should move on.

(01:06:47):
And I totally agreed greatpeople Just like my.
For me personally, they justweren't the right people and
you're like look man, you'redoing some cool shit and I can't
promise you anything, but youshould talk to Spencer.
If nothing more, it'll be agreat conversation.

That was a huge pivoting point for me as well.
When I first met Spencer and westarted working together, it
was like A having a bufferbetween you and your clients I
feel like is insanelyundervalued, especially like
within the DIY music community.
That's kind of like flourishing.
At the moment, there can be alittle bit of like too much
personal overlap, in my opinion,where, like, the manager really

(01:07:26):
comes into play and, like whatyou said, like having someone
else represent you too, like theuptick in business I got from
getting a manager the rightmanager specifically like
changed my life.
Like that alone, aside from thebig projects and stuff like
that, I think we had like thefirst year me and Spencer worked
together, we got like 50released indie cuts which, like

(01:07:47):
helped me get out of that spotand do all the different shit.
It was just like, aside fromthe major labels, it just like
the regular stuff.
It was great.
Yeah, I find there are a ton ofparallels to working in this
industry and dating.
Funny enough, there's a lot ofthings you have to treat people
with like respect and be likemindful of your feelings.
If you dismiss people.
It's sensitive industry.

(01:08:09):
Everybody.
Creatives are sensitive people.
You have to be, you can't beempathetic with all the other
side of the coin, which issensitivity.
So if you dismiss that anddismiss some of these feelings,
thoughts and how you talk tosomebody, it's a problem in my
opinion and a lot of people dothat, especially a lot of like
suits that I know because it'sbusiness.
It's like we're here to getshit done and we're here to make

(01:08:30):
money and we're here to like,make sure it happened, but you
can end up making people feelundervalued and almost
dehumanized at times if youdon't watch it.
So having a manager that hasalmost better people skills than
you, I think is a huge plus.
Honestly, all of this shit isrelationships, literally.
It's so.
Much of my work has camebecause I was drinking buddies

(01:08:52):
with somebody.
Honestly, like it's a reallyundervalued thing.
Good taste, good people skillsHonestly, those are like the top
two for me.

Yeah, yeah, that's great stuff.
When do you think you're readyfor a manager?

Honestly, when you feel like you are at a point
where you can sell your product,like quality wise, I do believe
in development and stuff likethat, but with production it's
one of those things where, untilyou can have somebody vouch for
you, it's tough, like ifsomebody can't stay behind your
product, like that is the whole,like sitting in the studio and
doing your shit.

But do you think like as soon as you have a
viable?

product, you don't need one.
The problem is is withoutrevenue, there's little
incentive for a manager to doanything for you, and this, as
much as this, is like do it forthe love of the craft and all
that stuff.
People tend to forget thebusiness side of the music
business.
People have to live.
People have to have a reason towant to invest in you.
Incentivizing people to want towork with you is probably the

(01:09:53):
biggest thing you can learn howto do from like not just like a
people perspective, but likeletting people know like, hey,
if you get me a gig, you willhave equity in this and I will
take care of you.
I was so upfront with everybodyeven before Spencer.
Like anything you get me, I'llgive you a cut, like anything.
And whether it was like anengineering gig or like, oh yeah

(01:10:13):
, go to this guy's place andjust record him doing this, or
like, produce this thing out forthis person, I'm gonna break
you off, you're gonna getcompensated, I'm gonna take care
of you.
I think if you incentivizepeople, they'll be incentivized
to do things for you and you canhave friends and this stuff.
But again, it is a business andwhy would somebody work for you
just because I don't expectanyone to do that for me
necessarily.

Yeah, yeah, yeah , I don't either.

And like I was back to like putting in your time
beforehand because I had workedwith Nico on a project for this
dude named Slush Puppy and hewas mixing Slush's stuff and I
would go over to his house andwe'd open up his session and
like mess with stuff and I knewhe was like a nice, receptive,
easy to work with dude who didgood work.
So when you were like do youknow anybody?
He was like the first kid whohonestly came to mind Shout out

(01:11:00):
Nico, you're gonna be listeningto this.
No, it goes with it.
But if I would have went to hishouse and he would have been
super weird about me havingnotes or like having any kind of
like attitude, like or made mefeel uncomfortable with like
being like hey, can we adjustthis?
Which people do all the time?
Unfortunately, because therewas a little bit of pride
wrapped up in your work, becauseit's a personal extension of

(01:11:22):
yourself a lot of the times Himbeing receptive and being open
to it, like.
If it wasn't for that, I wouldnot have recommended him, no
matter how nice his work was youknow?

Yeah, as someone who's not in a pub deal, I'm
really curious what somebodyshould look for in a pub deal.
And are you interested ingetting a pub deal, and what
would it take?

Sure, First question , what you should look out for.
In my opinion, the two mostimportant things are the deal
points, like the actualstructure of your deal, and then
the person signing you.
Like your point person, yourdeal is truly only as good as
the person who's gonna beworking with you, no matter how
much money you get.
If you meet somebody who trulybelieves in you and is going to

(01:12:05):
push you the way you wanna go,that's worth more than it's
weight in gold.
In my opinion, having achampion is more important than
anything at any company you goto.
In my opinion, I know peoplethat have signed pub deals and
the person that really believedin them left the company a week
after signing and then they justgot stuck in a deal with nobody
to look after them.

Yeah, so should you always ask for a key man
class, which for the listenersjust means like when?

they go, I go.

yeah, I'm signing this deal because of
this person and if they move on,the deal is.

You can ask for it.
But the biggest thing it's theL word.
That's hard to get.
You know, leverage.
That's hard to get in yourfirst pub deal unless you get
like a mega hit or likesomething, or somebody truly
believes in you and is willingto give you the leverage that
you want.
It can be hard to get a key manclass.

Yeah, whenever I said that, I was like that
would be so tough.
They're handing you this?
Much money and Sure, then theyhave to keep that person there.
Yeah, so you don't leave.

It's kind of a gamble.
You can it kind of.
There's a lot of fear that goesin the signing of pub deal and
sometimes there's a lot ofcavalierness that can also go
into it.
There's this idea that is gonnachange your life and it might
sometimes, but you kind of justhave to act like it won't,
honestly and just like do thework and work with your team as
much as you possibly can, makeit as easy on yourself as you
humanly can.
Honestly, I think once you havethe leverage and you meet

(01:13:22):
somebody that you like, I thinkit's.
I've said no to enough dealsthat I would have been out of by
now, you know.
So to a certain extent you canbe overly cautious too, and I
know a lot of people that haveweighted themselves out of their
pub deal options and stuff likethat.
I would definitely sign a pubdeal, for sure it's to the right
A&R person.
Yeah, I don't know.

(01:13:43):
I still to this day I thinkmentorship is more valuable than
anything.
So I would either.
For me, I want the ability tosign people Like I want to sign
people like pretty bad, becauseI have, like I do say no to a
ton of work and it would be niceto like bring people on and
like help out with that, but Idon't think that's a responsible
thing to do until I have aninfrastructure set up for it.

(01:14:05):
I don't want to sign somebodyand they're like, how do I
collect my money?
And I'm like, oh, you need apub deal.
That would be shitty.
That's why I think, personally,attorneys are more important
than managers.
At first, because you can get apub deal offer before you get a
manager.
And then what do you do?
Yeah, yeah.
So, it's just being aware ofthat.
And again, it is a little bitdifferent today than when I
first started.
I don't think people are thatwilling to accept a standard

(01:14:30):
deal as they used to.
I think the idea of thestandard deal is changing a
little bit too.
I think it's just about doingwhatever's good for you.
Yeah Cool, yeah Good foreverybody involved.

Okay.
So I feel like a really, reallyhot topic recently has been
crediting.
I feel like a really, reallyhot topic recently has been
crediting.
Credits are a difficult thing.
We were talking the other nightabout, I guess, a Demi Lovato

(01:15:03):
track that you don't have aproducer credit on.
That you worked on right.

Worked on this tune with a good friend of mine,
mitch Allen.
He brought me in to play abunch of things and a lot of
credit.
I got like I think he got melike eight credits or nine
credits on that thing Pianoplayer, guitar player, bass
player and I didn't get anofficial producer credit on it,
but I posted on Instagram.
I thanked Mitch, I was likevery happy to be a part of this
and honestly and this is kind ofthe thing about it Spotify

(01:15:28):
credits and all that stuffreally do matter.
But dude, like so much musicit's like uploaded every day.
The Instagram post helped me somuch and also everybody involved
being like great job on thepost.
You know what I mean.
As long as you get yourvalidation, that was a credit
that really helped me out a lot.
Honestly, even though I didn'tget co-production and Mitch did
a great job and everybodyinvolved was like awesome with

(01:15:50):
it, I still was able to takeadvantage of that and I think I
was talking to a couple ofhomies about this.
Recently, a good friend of mineworked on a really big tune and
he was a vocal producer on it.
So he's like I'm not gonna postabout it.
I'm like dude, that fuckingInstagram post will make you a
lot of money If people know thatyou're working on stuff that
they enjoy like I've never hadanyone be like oh, you're not a

(01:16:12):
producer on Demi Lovato's thing.
It was like I worked on it, so Iposted about it.

Yeah, I mean.
I will do the same service foryou that I did on that, yeah,
and the reason that I brought itup is yeah, I mean, of course
we'd love to get credited, Ofcourse I'd love somebody on
Spotify to be able to go througha track and see that I mixed it
.
That would really help me out,but Instagram for me as well,

(01:16:39):
like posting and then on stories, just reposting, the day of
that something comes out.
The people that I know thathave come my way from seeing
posts is 10, if not 100, foldfrom what a Spotify credit would
do.

Dude, I'm guilty of it.
I'll check credits every nowand again, honestly, whenever
it's like who did this, which isgreat, but, like I get most of
my news via like social mediaand also just like management
stuff, like, honestly, I thinkit's good for people who are
like on the come up andobviously, if there's like a
huge song, it's really reallyimportant for your name to be on
there and I think you shouldlike do what you can for that

(01:17:20):
stuff.
But, dude, so much of this isword of mouth, like, so so much
of this you know.
Yeah, and also the shout outsare really important too, even
if you don't get the officialcredit, because sometimes it is
a little bit more complicated,unfortunately, On the
engineering side, I think it'slike kind of ridiculous that
there's no engineering creditson Spotify.
If I'm being honest, I love thattitle does it, which helps you

(01:17:41):
a lot If you can do it, put iton title, you can put it on
music and you can post it there,which helps a lot, which is a
little bit of a workaround, yeah.
But, dude, even on the DemiLovato thing, like Mitch and
Blush and everything like theyall gave me like shout outs,
which was great, that shit helpsa ton, I think, as long as
people know you're on somethingthat it's important for you to

(01:18:01):
like, advertise those aspects,even if it's not as simple as
upload my credit to Spotify.

You know, yeah, yeah.
And I mean, are you comfortablesharing the number that you
told me that you think from thatpost, how much money that
brought in?

Oh dude, so much money Like six figures worth of
revenue from that one song.
Just from like this Instagrampost of people being like I like
your work, yeah, like I likeyour stuff.
You know, it is also just likea bit of a childhood dream to
like hear like one of myfavorite singers and like the
first thing you hear is meplaying piano.

Dude her voice is unreal.
Yeah, shout outs, yeah, unreal.

Yeah, dude, like it's not as easy sometimes
because this again is arelationship driven industry.
I had no relationship.
I had no business really beingon that song.
If I'm being honest with you,like I got like given a shot and
I'm very grateful for that.
But it's not as simplesometimes, unfortunately, to
just be like yeah, just likethis is this is what you think

(01:18:59):
you should get, so this is whatyou're gonna get.
Like it is a little bit morecomplicated than that at times,
but that doesn't mean you'regetting like screwed over.
Necessarily.
It doesn't mean that you'relike not getting what you
deserve.
Sometimes it's just like yougotta figure out how to get to
that like advantageous positionwith in that Cause.
It's just like the relationshipitself is always like.
This is where I find people likemess up a lot.

(01:19:20):
Will it be like I didn't getcredited right on this thing or
I didn't get that, or I didn'tget that?
So I'm gonna like talk shitabout that person or fuck that
guy, and I just think that's thewrong way to go about it.
If I'm being completely honestwith you, I'm so grateful for
all of the credits that I have.
However, I have them.
If I'm being completely honestwith you.
There's so many amazinglytalented people in this industry
that don't even get that.

(01:19:41):
So if you can, just if youlearn how to navigate within the
system, if you wanna change it,once you're at the point where
you can change it, do that.
But you can't complain aboutthe game while trying to play it
.
If that makes any kind of sense, it totally does.
So if I see people that arelike doing like real strides to
try to like make the change theywanna see, you know which is
really really really great, andthen it's you know Jackson is

(01:20:03):
doing awesome, which I know likeLouis Shorl and his wife are
really behind that, and they'revery like down to like get into
the trenches within the fight oflike let's credit people
properly and stuff like that.
But I've kind of learned too.
It's just like if you make ityour job to like expand your
network and to like people aregonna know that you worked on
things because you're around.

(01:20:24):
You know, dude, I had like anA&R pull up with a bunch of
songs that I hadn't heard in sixyears, that didn't even come
out, and he's like I've lovedyour shit for like a while.
Oh, wow, yeah, like songs Iliterally forgot I did, and it's
just like.
Sometimes it just takes thetime I think that's the
important thing to realize isjust like there are certain
guidelines, some of them youmight not deem, like you know,

(01:20:45):
the most favorable in the world,but like if you learn how to
play within them.
Every artist complains abouttheir A&R, every single one.
Everybody complains about theirmanager, everybody complains
about their agent.
But if you take that like, lookat it logically, a lot of the
times not so much in this likeartistic bubble of like this is
what I want.

(01:21:05):
If you just look at it fromlike the standpoint of like just
like admin, like if I was in abusiness, how would I handle
this?
It tends to make the creativeside a little easier, in my
opinion, because then you're notjust bitter.
That's how we get bettermusicians and better engineers
and everybody else like that, Ithink, fight for your credit.
If you can't get it, do whatyou can honestly, but like we

(01:21:26):
should all be advocates foreverybody getting credited
properly.

Absolutely, but I think the point of this point
is that Instagram or somethingon social media where the world
can see, is way more valuable100%.
And then now you go to a littleshow at you know blah blah,

(01:21:51):
blah place and you run intoso-and-so.
Hey bro, I saw that post theother day.
You worked on so-and-so mankiller track.
I've got this thing that'scoming up.
I think you'd be great on it.
100% Right there.

That's it.
So much work, so much work justfrom Instagram and like DMs and
stuff like that.
It's truly like the first thingwhenever I'm like hey, is it
cool if I bring a buddy into oursession?
When I text somebody, the firstthing they ask me.
They don't say who's theirmanager or what's up with this,
what's their IG.
Oh yeah, it's the first thing,it's like LinkedIn for like
musicians.

(01:22:21):
Yeah.
I told you.

Yeah and it actually kind of cracks me up
whenever people want me to mixsomething or they ask, like what
I've worked on.
I'm like, damn, there are somany ways to find what.
Like every thing I work on ison my Instagram.
Yeah, Like it's all right there.
Sure, I say what the track is.
If it's on an album, I'll saywhat tracks it is.

(01:22:43):
The LinkedIn bio has literallyeverything that I've worked on.
I mean, I try and keep it asreadily available as possible
100%.
But my Instagram dissing onFacebook I never get on there.
No professional mixing work hasever come from Facebook 100%
Instagram DMs like every singleday I will get something like,

(01:23:05):
and generally it'll be somebodythat I don't end up working with
for one reason or another, butthere's so many people that will
reach out like bro, you killedthis mix.
I love what you did there.
I'm working on this and I thinkyou'd be great.
I think that this whole pointis that that post is worth so
much Dude.

I've even made a bunch of good friends, like
producer homies I work withconsistently because they DM me
and be like hey, dude, I likeyour shit.
We should link up sometime.
Like networking on Instagram istruly great too.
I know a lot of people whosewhole career started off
Instagram.

Yeah, one of my best producer relationships came
off of a cold DM that I sentHudson Mohawk.
Yeah good, I sent him a cold DMand was like dude, I fuck so
hard with the stuff that you do.
Mm-hmm.
I would really love to do aspec mix for you just to see if
we vibe yeah and me and Rosswork together all the time now.

(01:23:57):
I mean legend that dude hasworked on some insane stuff 100%
, I think.

personally, this is where, like, the negligence of
Instagram can really get in yourway a little bit because, like,
even like, if you do get theSpotify credit, I'm like great,
now I know who worked on that.
I have no idea how to get ahold of this dude, whereas it's
a little bit more reachable whenyou can go somewhere else and
be like okay, I see where youdid this shit.
Very cool, let me text youabout it, you know.
Yeah yeah, I love that.

(01:24:22):
Mm-hmm.
I feel like you're a really goodexample of all of those points,
of just like everything wetalked about, which is like
being personable and like goingout and making relationships
while simultaneously likeputting in your 10,000 hours and
like hone your craft.
I think you're a great exampleof everything you should try to
be in the music industry.
Honestly, wow, thank you.

I got you.
Yeah, I'll tell you.
I put in all of my hours atthat same company.
Yeah.
I may have worked once upon atime for you know a very famous
person, big mixer as anassistant.
You don't learn what your soundis.
You don't learn your workflow.
No, you learn how to makethings flow as easily for

(01:25:05):
somebody else as possible 100%.
But what flows for them doesn'tflow for you.

You just have to figure that out through trial
and error, like as many times asyou humanly can.
Yeah.
That's the funny thing aboutall of this stuff is like the
way it reads on paper on howsomething works, and how it
actually works is usually verydifferent.

Yeah, that's why YouTube videos and stuff are
very difficult.
You can learn really cool tipsand tricks, but you have to
implement them into whateverworks for you.
Yeah.
Yeah, that company.
Over three years, I think, Imixed I mean well over 2000
songs.
It's easy and just like I'msure at the beginning it was
trash and yeah, I just I learnedwhat I like, what my ear likes

(01:25:46):
what my workflow should be howto use plugins to get the
optimal thing that I want.

Yeah, the thing about staring, especially when
you're first starting, in myopinion, of like a blank canvas,
is that the thing that's reallydaunting is the infinite
possibility of what you can doLike, especially like you're
first sitting down to write asong.
You're first sitting down tomix a song, produce a song you
can do.
If it's no pressure, you can dowhatever you want when you're
first starting.
That's like decision fatigueimmediately before you, like you

(01:26:16):
don't even know what decisionto make, which is especially
daunting when you have tighttime constraints.
Your privilege of being able tomake any decision kind of goes
out the window, which is, Ithink there is such a beauty and
limitation to be like, hey, youhave to mix like 10 songs in
the next like two days and it'slike okay, I really don't even
have the time to wonder what EQis best for this.

(01:26:37):
Let me just go with somethingthat I've you could even do,
like I read this is great, letme try it.
Yeah.
Same thing with Sink.
I used to do bumpers, like whenI first started out, like for
the Kardashians.
If you're a really horribleorchestral Dev step song while
they're having a fight, that wasyour boy for a long time.
Get hundreds of those things,but like I would get, like you
need to do 20 by, like tomorrow,and I would have timers.

(01:26:58):
Do not underestimate the timer.
In my opinion, that's probablythe one thing that made me like
not overthink.
Shit was like I have like athird party one that's like not
even on my phone, so don't gettempted that I still work with.

Like a Tamiya Do timer.

Kind of it's like a digital timer that you can like
put a ring around, like in, likeup to like 90 minutes or
something like that.
But I used to have likechallenges with homies.
Even like, let's see, you canmake a doper beat in an hour,
and what it does is just like,if you need to make something
sound good, how do I do itquickly?
So like, even if you go backand change it, like you have to
be able to put in the hour toknow what does and doesn't work
for you, and that's continuouslyevolving.

Yeah, yeah.
That's one of the big takeawaysthat I got from.
The person that I worked forfor a while was like speed for
mixing is everything If you arenot second guessing.
Nobody cares about the littleminutia of a frequency of this
blah blah blah.
It's like how does everythingfeel?
Yeah?
More importantly, yeah, how dowe get there as quick as

(01:27:53):
possible?
Because if you go too long thenyou lose the inspiration of the
track.

Yeah, I think the hardest thing, one of the
hardest things to do in anyindustry really, but especially
in creative industries, is howto break through plateaus Like
that's like.
For me that was a really bigchallenge, cause I always kept
feeling like they kept hittingmy ceiling like quickly,
essentially, and then it wouldjust stick at this one point.
One of my mentors, who was adude named John Levine, who was
like an amazing guy and broughtme in on a lot of my first big

(01:28:20):
stuff.
I was fast, but I didn't knowhow to slow down, if that makes
any kind of sense.
When it was time to make a slowdecision, I didn't know how,
which is kind of funny.
So there was this really longand he taught me.
He just like break it down toits fundamental components and
build it up from there.
You have to learn how to gofast, but you also need to know
how to improve from there, whichcan also be very challenging,

(01:28:42):
in my opinion, cause it's likedude, like this is the quick way
I do it, like if it's slow,it's like practicing fast and
when you slow it down, you can'tdo it.
I think it's like this reallyhealthy medium of when, of how
to execute quickly and how topractice slow.
I think that's like the mostimportant thing I learned Whoa,
yeah, that's cool, yeah.

One of I guess one of the last points that I
want to ask you about.
I want people who are listeningand watching, who may not
understand, or they want to getinto being a producer Like this
is their goal.
I want them to understand twodifferent things here.

(01:29:23):
One, how many songs it takes,how many songs you write and
produce, or just produce equalto how many get cut, then how
many come out?

How many come?

out Sure.
And then what standardproduction fees look like for
different tiers of producers?
Sure, and kind of like what ittakes to get there.
So let's start with generally,just for, like, a producer who's
a professional, it doesn't haveto be a top tier producer.

(01:30:01):
We're talking about yourworking professional.
Sure, sure, sure.

How many tracks If you're a mid tier producer.
Everyone has a different numberhere, but I think for me at
least, cause that's basicallyall I can really talk about I
know some guys they'll do liketwo sessions a week and they'll
try to like get that done.
I know a lot of guys that willdo like several sessions a day
and shit like that.
Where I'm at now, I try tofinish around 150 to 250 demos a

(01:30:27):
year with artists.
Out of that.
Like I usually do artistsessions, like I have very few
pit sessions in my career.
Just because like the Say whatthat means.
So a pit session would be likelinking up with a bunch of
writers and producers or whoeverwriting a song and then sending
it to an artist to record it.
Most of my sessions are withthe actual artist in the room,

(01:30:50):
being like what do you want todo today?
Let's make a demo, and I try toget that pretty far close to
done before I send it out.
So basically I'm trying tofinish that amount of songs.
So I, within that, what thatdoes is it basically gets me a
ton of cuts and cuts being likesongs where the artist is
actually on the record.
Cause until the artist isactually on the record, it's

(01:31:11):
just like kind of potentialWithin that, like every year is
different.
I've had certain years where,like, I'll have 60, 70 releases,
which is like very abnormal,and then some years where I'll
get like 10, which is closer tolike normal.
So it's just like it's a rollercoaster.
It ebbs and flows a lot.
I think most people do thatwhere it's like I'll write 250

(01:31:35):
songs to make a hundred demos,to get 25 cuts, to get 10
releases, and it's just, it'slike concentrate.
It's like how that kind ofworks and you better hope that
you like the songs that you workon, cause those 10 that come
out, like you know, you kind ofnever know what's going to come
out and then what's going towork, you know.
So it's like I saw I waslistening to this podcast with
like Ross Golan, like, and thewriter is, and I think he was

(01:31:57):
saying like even when thosesongs that do come out, then
they have to be successful whichis a completely different thing
and it's one of those few jobswhere you just go in and like
pretty much expect for it not towork.
It's like like when it does work, like meaning it's a commercial
success.
In my opinion, he was sayingthat if you get one song a month
that does well, that issuccessful, that's deemed

(01:32:19):
successful, you're the biggestsongwriter in the world.
If you just do it once a month,you're the biggest songwriter
that ever lived.
Honestly.

What a crazy world.
And at what point do you getpaid?

Well, that's also like situation to situation.
There's some gigs like usuallyif they're not on a label where
at this point in my career I'mlike I need half upfront if
we're going to work on somethingon label stuff.
And, funny enough, all my stuffbefore I met Spencer, none of
it, except for a couple ofthings, were on a label.
All of it was just indie stuffthat I thought was cooler, like

(01:32:54):
people were down to work on.
After I met Spencer and wepretty much fully transitioned
and this is when I was living atthat studio to doing trying to
just hit major label stuff.
I was lucky I was alreadyhomeless, because that would
have been because it takes solong to get paid, as once you're
in the system and stuff likethat.
Like there's stuff that I didthat's been out for a year, that

(01:33:14):
I haven't been paid for and itjust takes time.
Like it's just back and forthin negotiations, technicalities
and like all the stuff that goes, but I'm owed so much money at
any given time.
It's like farming the same way.
It's like the first year youstart farming you have an empty
field and seeds and you can'teat seeds, so you better have
some food stock piled up and youjust keep doing that Like I'm

(01:33:36):
not.
The session I had yesterdayisn't for me to get paid this
week, it's for me to get paidwithin the next year.
You know, like I don't expectto see a dime from that, I had a
song come out in Korea that Idid three years ago, like like
literally done three years agojust been sitting there.
You just have to store it, likeyou just never know.

(01:33:57):
So it's one thing to keep inmind when you transition.
Sometimes it happens verynaturally.
But, like personally, I madethe conscious decision, without
any kind of real success thereyet, to try to focus on major
label stuff and almost wreck me.

Yeah, yeah, and you only get paid on songs that
are released.

Not necessarily.
Okay.
Best piece of advice anyone'sever told me is that precedents
are overrated.
There's what you suggest andpropose and there's something
that people say yes or no to,and that's it.
If you say yes to it, let's go.
If you say no to it, let'sfigure out a middle.
You know there are songs I'vemade six figures off of songs

(01:34:37):
that never came out, never gotteased, you know, never even
wanted to mix.
So it depends.
And there's songs that havebeen out that I never got paid
for it.
Truly, the precedent that ispreferred is you can either do
half upfront with a producerdeck, which can be tricky
sometimes because it'll tie upyour song with that artist If
you get paid before the song'scome out.

(01:34:58):
If the song doesn't come outand you don't get paid, you can
do whatever you want with thesong afterwards, as long as
everyone is in agreement.
But that's a good way.
You can get half of your moneyupfront if you're willing to
just like let the artist havethe song effectively.
So it can sometimes be yougiving your song away for half
the price.
So you have to be aware of that.
Depends on what your reach is,honestly, and your ability to
pitch songs.
But yeah, there is no realstandard that actually exists in

(01:35:24):
my opinion.
There's like what you kind ofset as a precedent.
So when I met Spencer, my feewas like less than a thousand
and I think the most I've madefrom a song is like $30,000
thanks to him.
And then once you set thatprecedent like this is what I
get paid, that can be yournegotiating point.
Very few people have $30,000 topay for a song.
You know, especially likemid-level artists, but like you

(01:35:46):
can use 30 in order to get 15.
Like that's my half my rate, oreven be like I'm giving you a
super deal of 10.
Or like you know my indie rate,because my label rate is 30, I
can charge you 12 as an indierate.
You don't have 12, I can do 75.
You know, like it's negotiatingpoints.
Yeah, sometimes we get way morethan that.
So, yeah, it's literally justwhat you can get and what you

(01:36:09):
can offer as a service to like Ihave a bit of a one-stop shop.
You come to my studio, all youhave to do is pay for your Uber.
I have snacks, coffee,recording booth with a great mic
.
I have a telephone can mic withall the chain that you would
get if you were going to likeEast West.
I have the same thing.
I have the great converters.
We're not skimping.
So within that, you save a lotof money by being able to have

(01:36:32):
the luxury of trying whateveryou want to try and then, when
you're willing to commit, pay memy rate.
So, which is harder to negotiate, it's like, well, we want to
pay you your rape.
We had to, like you know, get astudio, we had to hire
musicians and we had to do allthis different stuff.
You know.
Whatever you, however, you canmake your leverage.
Leverage is the biggest thing.
It's also just personalrelationships.

(01:36:53):
I don't charge artists forstudio time directly because I
want them to feel like they cancome and not feel like they're
on the clock.
Yeah, so it depends on how youwant to do it.

That was very eloquent.
There are several hugetakeaways.
Wow, yeah, you said that sowell.
Thanks, yeah, I thank you forthat.

Gotcha.

Let's move on to the second part of that
question.
We'll wrap up here the.
I'd like to know differenttiers of producers at what they
can charge, which I know youjust said it's all negotiable
but like label versus indie, andI haven't really talked about
this because I don't entirelyknow.
But as far as mixing goes, youknow it can vary from either a

(01:37:39):
spec, yep, you want to work withsomebody and we do this for
free and if you like it, you pay.
I don't know what the lowesttier mixers like, yeah.
In the low hundreds.

I guess.
Yeah, I've met people who do$50 mixes, okay so $50 mixes to
last year, I think, beforeSpencer.

I think we are doing like five and $600 mixes.
And this is where the value ofone a career, that's one year
later getting great projects.
Yeah, the Maggie Lindemannproject really just changed
everything for me, Thanks toCody.

(01:38:24):
He, he was like dude, I think.
You, you got to spec it.
I really think that you couldbe the guy and we'd never worked
together, we'd barely even hungout.
I'm so glad that I got.
She knows it.
But now it's, it's sitting atpretty much 1500.
And we can go down to athousand.
Sure, it's the same thing.

(01:38:45):
Yeah, and major, we cangenerally get 2000.
Yep, but I'll come down ifnecessary.

That's the game.

Yeah, that's my world.
And then we've got like I thinkI think the standard pro pros
are like three to three and ahalf.
That's what it seems like.
It's kind of like right aroundthere.

Three to three and a half for all the guys who were
doing like pretty damn good shit, and then the guys who were
like okay, yeah, fuck, thosedudes charge up to like six and
seven.

Dude, yeah.
But then you've got theserbians and mannies who are 10,
eight and a half to 10.

Dude and that's a different kind of.
I remember working with thisgirl who wanted certain.
She wasn't very good, but shewanted serbians, so bad.
And she had a pit of money andthey offered Serbians.
I think it was like 11K andlike six points and he said no
and I was like fuck that's sick.

Yeah, it's just such a different world.
Yeah, you could take no fee anda weekend track and you'll make
a bazillion more Also saw hisMuzo.

He has like 400 billion streams yeah.

I mean, nobody will ever touch him.
Yeah, it's just, we talkedabout it the other night, he
just he came up in a differenttime.
Yeah.
Aligned with I mean definitelythe most successful producer of
all time.

Totally totally.

Yeah, max Martin , but so that's.
I feel like that's the scaleWith mixers, of mixers.

So with producers and this is like not a route
that everybody needs to take orshould take.
But this is usually like, in myopinion, lowest tier, too high
as tier.
You have the I just started outand I want to produce shit and
that is basically you chargenothing and you split the master
with whoever you're doing shitwith.
And the thing that's toughabout the master these days is

(01:40:22):
people have kind of wise enoughthat it can be worth something.
So a lot of times, like it'shard for you even to get the
actual master, you'll get what'scalled net receipts, which is
you getting money after the songmakes back the money that it's
spent, so once it recoups andshit like that.
So a lot of times you'reeffectively doing it for free
because most songs don't recoup.
I think I saw this thing thatwas like.
It was like over 10,000 songsget uploaded to Spotify a day,

(01:40:46):
every day, and 98% of songs onSpotify 100,000.
Is it 100?
I think it's 100,000.
A ridiculous amount of songs.
And then 98% of the songs onSpotify have less than a
thousand streams.
So, and also, we all know whata thousand streams will make you
on Spotify, which is less thanlike a fucking ham sandwich.
So it's just like you're neverreally gonna see any money from
that at first.
What you said about Maggie wasa key point, and this is when

(01:41:08):
you start charging more, whichis you get a little bit of clout
there.
I put gigs into two categoriespersonally, now money and later
money.
Now money is always like youknow, it's about like what you
expect to get.
You know, I did a song.
If you're brand new, I gotnothing, but then, oh shit, it's

(01:41:29):
got to look on TikTok and theartist attached to it got to
look on TikTok or something likethat, or like it kind of is
doing a thing on Spotify, eventhough I'm not getting paid for
it.
It got this cool, it got onlike you know, lorem or some
shit like that, but like we gotsome crazy stuff.
Then bump it's like key momentbump.
That's really, I think,important.
It's important to move with theebbs and flows of your career

(01:41:50):
and with these moments and Ithink a lot of people put like a
lot of it it's important to getpaid.
You have to pay for your billsand your gear and all this
different stuff and I'm a biggearhead myself, you know.
So I'm trying to buy shit, butthe things that advance my
career along aren't reallyusually the things that pay me
the most, if that makes any kindof sense.
You know the first, like coupleof things I did that did good

(01:42:11):
shit.
I don't have literally anythingon, I just got the credit,
which was usually spelled wrong,my name, like most of the time,
and I still posted about it.
Those posts and the validity ofthose posts really posts really
helped me like grow and move onand move up, and move up and
move up.
Sometimes this people justtaking a chance on you.

(01:42:32):
A lot of times in my specificinstance, which I don't
recommend that people kind offelt like they could take
advantage of me to a certainextent and I'm kind of okay with
that Cause I got the thingsthat I needed to move up and
move on you know, my first majorlabel cut really is what helped
me be like, okay, this guycould do competitive work and
people believe in that.
And I wrote those, that wheel oflike I have a major label cut

(01:42:55):
with a music legend, like Iwrote that shit until the wheels
fell off, dude.
Like I used it with everything,like sometimes it could be even
like, hey, I'm under thisperson, I'm working with this
guy.
Like, oh, you're working withhim, you must be good For your
working on that project, youmust be good.
And then you're like okay, nowmy rates 500 bucks and this many
master points.
And then you continue to dothat, because that's what.

(01:43:16):
My rate was a lot and I workedwith a lot of indie people.
And then I got the next bigthing and then it was a thousand
and then it was 2000.
And then I met Spencer whostarted asking for numbers.
That made me uncomfortable.
And then you get people whowere like okay, I see your
growth, I see what you're doing.
You have to have a product thatbacks this up, but you just
have to move.
With these little bumps, maggie, is the thing that really
helped you go from three to fourfigures, which, the next thing

(01:43:39):
will help you go from likedouble.
That.
It's always about these littlemoments of being like fucking
great shit man.
You know it's if you can be apart of the finding moments.
That's what really makes youlike a legend.
I was talking to like I don'tknow if you know who Omos Keith
is.
I don't.
He effectively created FrankOcean's whole like first album.

(01:43:59):
He was the EP Okay, so I'mgonna have a party once and he's
like a legend.
I admire his work a lot and Iasked him like what would you
give advice wise to somebodylike in my position, like an
upcoming producer?
And he had a great point whichis like if you wake up today and
you get Rihanna's next single,your life won't change.
Your year will change, but yourlife won't change.

(01:44:20):
If you create Rihanna, you areforever a legend Because he's
like.
When you think of huge producers, specifically, and writers as
well honestly, mixers too Ithink anybody in this industry
really anybody attached to a bigsong gets a nod.
But the greats are attached tostars.
When I think of Quincy Joneswho, like my name, is Midi Jones

(01:44:42):
because of Quincy, I don'tthink of a particular song.
I think of Michael Jackson andFrank Sinatra.
When I think of Timbaland, Ithink Missy Elliott and JT.
When I think of Omos, I thinkof Frank and like Caliuchis, and
he said the coldest lineanyone's ever said.
He's like I don't really careabout making hits, I make stars
and I was like fuck.

Damn.
Yeah, you had the pop mindset.
I keep on coming back to thatbecause it's just a different
mindset, completely Like it'sthose short and sweet little
tidbits like that that you'relike oh fuck.

And it's the thing, oh damn.
Do you see that video with?
I think it was either Tyler thecreator talking to Pharrell or
vice versa.

Yeah, spencer made me take it down.
I reposted it and it used the Nword and I was like oh shit,
that's funny.

I mean, that's him that you didn't say it, but it's
a thing.
When he said that, like JimmyIovine told Pharrell that, he
said that Jimmy only works onhouse music, oh, oh, oh.
This is a different one.
This is amazing.
I was like I didn't see that one, there was another one though,
when he said that he only workson house music and he was like
what do you mean?
He's like I work on musicthat'll buy me a house.
Yes, for Anna.
That is not everyone's goal.
A lot of people that I knowjust want to make art that they

(01:45:44):
personally resonate with andthey feel like people resonate
with.
I know a lot of people that Idon't want to say they want to
be martyrs for their art, butthey are down to like kind of
like hustle until they're donefor the art's sake.
But I don't know.
I feel like the.
I have this one guy I was areally huge fan of, who's now a
good friend of mine.
But a lot of people are likeyou should sign this kid to this

(01:46:06):
guy who's not my friend.
And he met with me kind ofchanged my perspective in a huge
way.
And I sat with him and he waslike what do you want to do in
this kind of career?
What's like, what are your lifegoals?
And I paused for like 10seconds to think about it and he
was like I'm going to stop youright there.
You don't even have to play meanything, I'm not going to sign
you.
I was like, and I was like myheart likes that.
I was like huge fan of this guy.
I was like fuck, because I kindof ask why he's like, because

(01:46:28):
you don't know what you want.
He was like I, he's like Iimplore you to go home and have
that answer ready at all timesand ask yourself that question,
really what you want, and forsome people it's like I want to
make sure that truly makes mehappy.
I want to like go down thisgear hole.
I want to like mix for otherpeople.
I want to, like you know, belike the indie God.
Some people want to do whatever, and I found that I want to

(01:46:51):
make as many people here mymusic is humanly possible and
resonate with as many people ashumanly possible, which means
getting on the radio.
So that's my goal.

Yeah, yeah, damn .
I love that story about notwanting to sign somebody off of
that.
Your goal is the exact goal ofmine.
I want to be one of the biggestmix engineers in the world.
I don't have to be the biggest,I want to be one of the biggest
.
And how I define that is I wantthe music I work on to affect

(01:47:20):
as many people as possible in agreat way 100%.

That's it, dude.
I remember the first time Iused to have a sound cloud.
I remember the first time I gotlike a hundred hits on a song.
I was like, fuck, a hundredpeople are my shit.
Yeah.
And I think I had to take amoment the other day because I
like get those music, musicnotifications.
I was like you just passed abillion streams on Spotify and I
was like, oh, that's neat.
And I was like, damn, I reactedso much better when there were
six less zeros on this, no, likeseven.

(01:47:44):
And I was like I had to take amoment to like you have to keep
your goals and your dreams andperspective, because it's so
easy, even especially once youstart getting shit, to become
complacent and jaded and itturns into a business and a job
that you don't necessarily enjoy.
Yeah, so keeping your goals inthe forefront of your mind.
I had a ponytail a shittyponytail too for like seven
years because I hated my hair,but the whole point of it was I

(01:48:08):
wasn't going to cut my hairuntil I hit these goals, because
I'm going to do something thatevery time I look in the mirror
it's going to remind me what I'mdoing every single day.

Oh, shit, I had no idea.
I love that, that's why I hadthat yeah.
So cool.
I actually love that, dude.
You're just dropping thefucking nuggets.
Wait, I got two more questionsnow because I can't.
I can't let you stand upwithout giving it all.

I got you.

Yeah, I have to ask a question for myself,
because I do turn to you foradvice.
I think that that's what'sspecial Like if people don't
realize watching or listening tothis, that you are pretty much
the dude that I go to for solidadvice outside of Spencer of
course, and friends, but ofcourse I do have to be a part of

(01:48:56):
cultural changing events.
But what is going to take mefrom the level I'm at right now,
which I think 99.999% of peoplewould like to be where I'm at,
and I am so fucking thankful Iget to mix and do what I do, but
I'm at, like, the 1.5 to twoarea and everything's not about

(01:49:20):
money.
But the projects that I want tobe working on do have a higher
budget and they go to peoplethat are in the three to three
and a half range.
That's just the way.
It is 100% or realistically.
They go to Serban, Spike andManny.
Yeah Right, that's what allmixers are chasing is those cool
projects Totally.
What is going to take me fromthe 1.5 to two-ish area to the

(01:49:42):
three to 3.5 area in youropinion?

In my opinion, one of two things or both the next
Maggie project, where everyone'slike, fuck, this is really cool
, who worked on this?
Or just like mega smash.
I mean like a big hit, like ahit, like something that goes on
the radio, something thatpeople are consistent with, like
this is getting a lot of looks,but that's like the now versus
later money conversation, likethat one cut you were telling me

(01:50:08):
about, with the big producerwho we're not going to mention
the name, like that coming outbumpy shit, like that's sick.
So you work on cool shit.
The funny thing about big stuffand this is funny a lot of big
stuff is deemed culturally kindof corny, which I'm not mad at.
I'm a corny motherfuckerpersonally.
I super don't mind that.
I love like, call me maybe ismy jam dude, I love that shit.

(01:50:30):
But I also like my favoriteartist right now is probably
Dejan.
I would do pretty much anythingfor any kind of money to work
with the people that I truly,truly think are cool.
Those are usually the thingsthat get you like the next bag.
In my opinion, all my homieslike came up.
It wasn't doing.
It's what we were talking aboutbefore with the Rihanna thing.

(01:50:52):
It wasn't doing really big shit.
It was doing cool shit thatpopped.
Being a party shit that pops isinfinitely cooler.
It's like, dude, no matter what, if you and I tomorrow like I
produced Beyonce's next singleand you mixed it and it's
literally you and I and Beyonceon the credits, that literally
doesn't do that much for ourlives, because Beyonce's Beyonce

(01:51:14):
.
People are gonna be like ofcourse it's Beyonce, but, dude,
you like the next thing.
Holy shit, dude.

Yeah, what an interesting perspective that.
I love that.
It will make your year, but itwon't make your life 100%,
because it is true, that is athing.

It was like, oh man, good for him that he got on
that project, versus like, dude,he did that shit.
My homies that develop shit,dude, it's great, like you know.
I know like Jared SolomonAfonik and Remy Wolfe who like
came up together and did allthis shit together.
Those guys are disgusting withit, and they were before they
had any kind of real success andthey were great and they had

(01:51:47):
this synergy and then theypopped off together.
You know and like all myfavorite artists.
Favorite artists is like Remyand like that's all the shit
that Jared did, you know.
So it's like those guys did itthe right way and they just
focused on what they had tofocus on.

You know, yeah, mitty.
Thank you so much, dude.
Thanks for having me, buddy,all right.
So now that you've listened tothis podcast, just like me, I'm
sure that Mitty is one of yourfavorite people now.
Dude has so much knowledge.
He's young, but just throughsheer determination and meeting

(01:52:24):
people and going through boutsof homelessness and tough times
and the highs and the lows, he'slearned so much, and I really
hope that you are able to learna couple of really great things
from this podcast, some that Itook away from it.
Of course, he is a hustler.
He makes it happen.

(01:52:47):
I wrote down, you know, that henot only donated blood, he had
three hour train rides just toget to sessions.
He dealt with bouts ofhomelessness, staying at bus
stops and train stations, andnone of this made him give up on
his dream.
Whenever producing went from ahobby to how he was paying bills

(01:53:11):
, he did whatever it took tomake it to sessions, to give the
best work possible, to continuemoving forward, and I know that
that's why he's having the hugesuccess he's having.
I thought another great pointwas figure out what kind of
producer you want to be.
Do you wanna be a producerworking on really big pop songs

(01:53:34):
big hits, or do you wanna beworking on cultural shifting
music that may be much moreindie or alternative or
something that's not sostructured Like?
Figure that out.
And then the little sentencethat he was told I mean it's
pretty powerful is "'If youwanna make Jimi Hendrix shit, do

(01:53:57):
that on your own time.
I'm here to make money'".
Now that might not align withyou, but the principle makes
sense.
If you are trying to make bighits, come ready to write those
type of tracks, come ready todeliver on that.
And if you're trying to deliverthe greatest alt record that

(01:54:21):
really shapes the underground,then go into that session with
that mentality of you're gonnacultivate something special and
it doesn't need to fit inside ofa box, but really come to the
table with your head on straightas to what you wanna make
happen.
No one will ever hire youbecause you're sick at what you
do.
They'll hire you because of howawesome you are as a person.

(01:54:45):
I truly I know that that's thecase.
If you're able to be a greathang and people like being
around you, then of course, yes,you need to be great at what
you do, but you don't have to bethe very best.
You have to be somebody thatpeople like spending time with
and they know that they cantrust you to do a great job.
But if you are not an awesomeperson to be around, it makes it

(01:55:09):
so simple for people to go tosomebody else that they trust
more.
Somebody that they knew doesbetter work, somebody that they
know that that's just going tobe.
They're gonna be able to bearound that person for long
periods of time.
Music isn't made instantaneously.
It's something that you have tosit down and work at with
somebody for a while.

(01:55:30):
It might be revisions, it mightbe just the creation process.
Whatever it is, if you're easyto be around and an awesome hang
, you're going to get hired.
You're going to continue to gethired.
So be an awesome person to bearound.
The last two points here kind ofrun together and I do think

(01:55:51):
that they might be the mostimportant thing to take away
from this podcast.
One create a group of friendsin your city or on the internet
or whatever, who all have thesame goal of making great music.
They don't have to be the exactsame genre.
They need to be like I want tobe at this level of work.

(01:56:14):
I want to be working with thislevel of artists, whatever it is
.
You need to want to elevateyour craft and then come up with
some kind of game where youguys have to deliver tax amount
of tracks in a week, or you haveto set a timer and create a
track in under an hour and thenshare with your friends what you
come up with.

(01:56:35):
It's going to continue to raisethis bar for you guys as to
like how good your work is andhow quickly you can get to that
idea and then, ultimately,please take this away.
I'm telling you that this makesa huge difference, a huge
difference.
Stop giving disclaimers.
Whenever you play somebody,your music, okay, for multiple

(01:57:00):
reasons, it's going to make theother person think negatively
immediately about the trackyou're about to show them, even
if it's not mixed, even if it'snot finished, no matter what.
Just show people the music anddon't tell them it's not mixed,
it's not done.
We're going to do this.
I'm going to add that Let themcome to their own conclusion.

(01:57:21):
Most people in music alreadycan tell if something is
finished or not, and maybe theywill like the things that you
think that you need to fix.
So whenever you give adisclaimer, somebody immediately
on the other side of thatdisclaimer already thinks
negatively about your music.
So stop giving disclaimers.
I promise it's going to be thegreatest thing that you've ever

(01:57:43):
done.
All right, so hope you love thisepisode.
Hope you love MIDI like I do,and I'll catch you on the next
one.
Thanks for listening to theGrounds for Success podcast.
I want to thank all of thepeople who work on this podcast
and help me out.
My team is everything to me,and without them, I couldn't
bring these to you every singleweek, I couldn't post on social

(01:58:06):
media with all of the clips thatwe have, and so I thank you
guys so much.
I want to also thank all of myclients on the Mixing and
Mastering side, because withoutyou, I could not have Grounds
for Success.
So thank you so much.
If you're enjoying the Groundsfor Success podcast, please
follow, like and subscribe onwhichever platform you're
listening or watching on.

(01:58:27):
It helps us out a ton and Iwant to keep getting this
content to you in whichever wayyou listen or watch.

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