319: The Future of Music with AI: Marcus "Bellringer" Bell's Journey from Producing 15,000 Songs to Creating North America’s First AI Artist
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In the past six months, I've actually created, with the help of AI, over 15,000 songs, which is beyond my wildest dreams and imaginations because it took me a lifetime to create 5,000 songs with no help from AI. Just being able to create and have the extension of my creativity and specialized knowledge with the aid of AI tools has just been completely transformative for me and those people that I've been supporting. ♪

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you're listening. Welcome to AI and the Future of Work, Episode 319. I'm your host, Dan Turchin, CEO of PeopleRain, the AI platform for IT and HR employee service. Our community is growing. We recently launched a newsletter out on Beehive. It is called AI and the Future of Work. We share all kinds of fun tips and facts that sometimes get left on the cutting room floor.

If you want to learn more or meet the guests in a little more detail, I'd encourage you. Go out to Beehive, subscribe. We'll share a link to that newsletter in today's show notes. If you like what we do, please tell a friend and give us a like and a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. If you leave a comment, I may share it in an upcoming episode, like this one from Michael in St. Paul, Minnesota, who's a professor of marketing and listens while gardening.

Michael's favorite episode is that great one with May Habib, the amazing CEO of AI Unicorn Writer, who talked about how AI is helping employees create better content. Michael, glad you enjoyed that one. We learned from AI thought leaders weekly on this show. The added bonus, of course, you get one AI fun fact each week. Today's fun fact.

AI is not a threat to music, according to Steiner Jeffs, an AI researcher at the University of Agder in Norway. Tech Explore Online writes that many side jobs for musicians like creating background music, jingles for radio and podcasts, and music for films, games, and advertising are disappearing. Some use AI as a creative collaborator when writing songs as it gives them the freedom to experiment without the fear of criticism.

Others utilize the errors made by AI as a springboard for new ideas. Jeff says, despite jobs that may be lost, there will always be a need for humans to make music that creates a deep emotional connection.

Also, AI will not take over the concert market. People will always want to experience live music. Jeff is concerned that music could become bland if the next generation of musicians loses touch with the craft, as musicians can now make music without even knowing how to play an instrument. My commentary, we as consumers will vote with our ears and our wallets about whether or not we're entertained and enriched by AI-assisted art in all forms and formats.

All content in the future.

should be assumed to be created or influenced by AI. But you know what? All past content was similarly influenced by other humans. Also, the AI itself reflects the creativity of humans. We shouldn't hand-ring about the death of art. We should celebrate new opportunities to help more creators create more content. We will love, and this is a very germane article to today's great conversation. And of course, we'll link to that one in the show notes.

Now shifting to this week's conversation, Marcus Bellringer-Bell is admired globally as a music producer, songwriter, musician, singer, activist and entrepreneur,

He's marketed and promoted, produced, remixed, and written for an amazing list of celebrities and brands, including Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg, Timbaland, Sony Music, HBO, Netflix, Showtime, Amazon, Warner Brothers, Arista Records, EMI, and Universal Music.

He's also created music for worldwide brands such as McDonald's and General Mills. He is also the CEO of Bellringer Productions, a music sync licensing and production company that operates a catalog of over 10,000 songs and 300 recording artists.

And if that wasn't enough, Marcus published an Amazon number one bestselling book titled Bellringer Branding Bible, the five musician branding principles for singers, rappers, DJs, music producers, composers, writers, and recording artists. Beyonce performed to one of his songs on the run tutor, which was co-headlined with her husband Jay-Z. Gosh, that's a fascinating bio without further ado.

Marcus, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the podcast. Let's get started by having you share a bit more about that illustrious background and gosh, how you got into the space.

Yeah, well, thanks for having me on Dan. I can respond to those articles that you mentioned early on in your introduction. Cuz I am the owner of a music catalog as well as a content creator with AI and music. But just to give a little bit of context,

I'm a humanist and a technologist. So I deeply care about humanity. I deeply care about empathy and compassion for myself and all others. And I've been fortunate in that I discovered early on what my purpose was. And I know a lot of people

spend a lot of their lifetimes trying to discover what it is that they're here to do. And I'll never forget, I was six years old and I was performing for an event. And I was on stage and before me there were some speakers and the audience just seemed a little bit bored. I was a little bit nervous because I was performing for

one of my original songs, one of my first songs. And I remember getting on the stage and I was playing and singing and then I started playing the saxophone. I had my eyes closed and then when I opened my eyes, the audience was energized. Some people were crying and in that moment I discovered

my purpose. This is what I want to do. I want to bring light to people and help elevate people. And so as a child prodigy musician to now, I've seen a lot of evolution in the music industry. And

As a technologist, which I discovered later on, I was a futurist and a technologist. Once I met some futurists, they're like, Marcus, you're a futurist. I thought it was just, well, I could see what's coming. Whether that's in the music marketplace or whether that's in the business marketplace.

And so I started using AI about 15 years ago before the AI explosion. And I was using it in copywriting for my businesses. But then 10 years ago, I started using it in music production. And when I started using it in music production, I saw, wow, this is just the beginning. And as a result of my openness to

That catalog that you mentioned before of 10,000 songs, in the past six months, I've actually created with the help of AI over 15,000 songs, which is beyond my wildest dreams and imaginations. Because it took me a lifetime to create 5,000 songs with no help from AI. Just being able to create

and have the extension of my creativity and specialized knowledge with the aid of AI tools has just been completely transformative for me and those people that I've been supporting. I think this audience will get to know you when you tell the story of Ravenlight. Can you share the background on who is Raven and how did you come up with this concept? Yeah, so Ravenlight, and that's R-A-V-Y-N-L-Y-T-E, is a creation that...

I got birthed from this seed. Last year I was doing 100 songs in 100 days, every quarter I take on some type of challenge. And this was my first music challenge. And inside of doing 100 songs, I lost my voice.

I didn't want to give up and stop because like one of my albums, I'm unstoppable. So there's no way I'm going to just stop and give up. And I didn't want to just cop out and just start doing a bunch of instrumentals, right? So I said, okay, there has to be a way that I can clone my voice and

keep going. What I discovered in that moment was there were some tools that I could clone my voice. And this was before it became very popular. And so I cloned my voice, my speaking voice, and recorded some meditations. So in that 100 songs, there are about 10 songs that are my AI voice doing meditations with me having music that I created under it.

Well, from that seed, I said, okay, well, what else is possible? I've been in the NFT space for a while. And when Mid Journey, the AI image generator came out, the day that that came out, I started using that to create NFTs. So I knew that a visual representation could be created.

And then I knew from losing my voice that an audio representation of a voice could be created. So I started discovering ways to use my clone singing voice. So I said, okay, well, wait a minute. By accident, I discovered that my clone singing voice could sing in Spanish. And I don't speak Spanish. So

I was working with some Spanish artists and when my voice clone came, I just grabbed some audio that was just on my hard drive. And without paying attention to what I grabbed, I put it into my voice model and it started singing in Spanish.

And I said, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what just happened? Then I realized, oh, this was a woman singer, Spanish singer that I was working with. And now my voice was singing what she was singing. And I said, wow, this is incredible. So that means that I could sing with a woman's voice. Okay, that changes things.

me as someone that has worked with a lot of women in the music industry, different singers. So now all of a sudden I can create demos of what I imagine for them to do. So I said, okay, well, wait a minute. All right, so now we got the audio, we have the visual, and then there are these

video engines where you can create music videos. And so it just occurred to me, wow, this is the recipe for being able to create an AI music artist. And there lies the creation of Raven Light, North America's very first

AI music character that is like, she's an EDM artist, a drum and bass artist. We released our first single in July and she has now over 20,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. She's gone viral with over 200,000 Instagram followers and but

It's not just about the technology and the way we've been using it and my team of incredible women and men music creators and creatives. But she's an artist that stands for something even bigger. She stands for mental health and well-being. And so with her music, we've interjected that

to support people where when they listen to her music over and over and over again, they actually feel better. So that's how Raven Light came to be. Amazing story. And you're going to get a lot more plays on Spotify after this one drops. Now you got the whole audience curious to hear from Raven Light.

So you're a humanist and an AI optimist and a technologist, and some would say it's an oxymoron. And like I shared in the Fun Fact article, many in the entertainment industry, media creation, feel threatened by AI. It's been high profile and Hollywood writers strike and that sort of thing. What is Marcus's message to those in the

entertainment industry who feel that AI is coming out to eliminate the role of creatives? Great question. I get this question a lot from many people and many creatives. I was on a panel around new technology at the Recording Academy, the organization that does the Grammys. And in that room, there was a lot of fear around AI. And my goal was

there and with everyone, including your audience, is to go from fear to curiosity. Because when you're curious, it opens up a world of possibility. When I lost my voice, I became curious. Okay, there has to be a way for me to do this. After I did those 100 songs, I said, there has to be a way that I can turn these 100 songs into 1,000 songs.

Right. That's based on my music. When I looked at all the tools and I said, well, I have a nine-year-old daughter. And if I were to pass right now, how would my legacy be passed on to her? So I looked at, from curiosity, how can I become immortal?

And so I took all the interviews that I've done. I took all the books that I've written. I've took all the courses that I've created to support entrepreneurs in fulfilling on their missions to uplift humanity. I took all of the recordings from any presentation that I had given and uploaded it into an engine so that when I pass away,

My daughter Melanie can actually go and have a conversation with me and it'll be based on and trained on my thinking, the things that I care about like that. And so curiosity led me to that. And

Curiosity has led me to basically have all these different tools that I've created and supported others and being able to use through programs like I have, like Wealth and Impact Bootcamp, where I'm helping people with AI tools. And so, yes, there'll be some jobs that are lost. There'll be some people that are

displaced from what they thought their purpose was. And that concerns me greatly. And so it's been my mission to create tools to support people in discovering new purposes. Because what happens is the way most of us have been conditioned is that we associate who we are with what we do.

And because AI is going to empower so much that some of the things that we do will be able to be handled with AI. So if your identity is attached with who you are, with what you do, and that's removed, then what? Then who am I? And so what I learned

like to just say to everyone is that you aren't what you do. You are who you are. And then there are things that you do. And just like there are things that you do that AI can do, there are things that you can do that are just only you can do.

I believe that we're in this very unique period where we're interacting with these technologies that are almost like holding up a mirror to ourselves and forcing us to confront. Who are we? What does it mean to be a human? How am I different from the machine that can talk like me? It looks like it can think like me.

but it's not me. What's your coaching to humans who are having this kind of existential crisis interacting with machines and wondering, who am I? Yes. So I created a tool called the Purpose Finder. And it's a GPT that I train to support people in discovering what it is for them to do, right? And with that tool,

People can just put in what it is that they care about, what they like. And then it'll make a suggestion on what it is that could be your purpose, right? And just to, if you didn't have a tool, right? There's a process that you can go through. You can make a list of all the things that it is that you love to do, right? How you ought to spend your time.

And then out of that list, what are the five things that you're an expert at, right? That people know you for, right? That you're passionate about, that you do for free even, right? And you probably do it for free. And then reduce that down to three. And then out of those three, which of those three can you monetize?

Which of those three would people be willing to pay you the most for, to learn from you? And then reduce that down to one. And then with that one, fully committing to going all in on that one thing, creating your identity in the world with that one thing. Deciding that your purpose is that one thing. See, the thing about purpose is that anyone will do.

Any purpose you decide will do, and you will discover along the way whether or not you're on the right purpose path or if there's another purpose path for you to pursue. But if you just pick one, it's a good beginning. That's a great way to frame it. So let's say you're having a conversation with Melanie, your nine-year-old daughter. Yeah. And she says, Daddy, what should I study? I want to find my purpose, but-

You know, maybe a nine-year-old, maybe she's a little younger. You're talking to my girls. My girls are 15 and 17 or college kids, right? And they're saying, you know, gosh, it seems like all this stuff I was planning to study, you know, I'm not sure that, you know, I'm the best one to be that knowledge vessel. What's left for me? You know, what should I study if my objective is to be, you know, the best human I can or contribute to society? What skills are innately human?

You lead me to this thought, I'm going to answer that question. I'm going to take the long road. I was on a call about AI and I was working with my team developing some AI tools to support some organizations. And that night I got invited to this event and it was a gathering here in California.

of some incredible singers and musicians and so forth. So I left the world of AI and technology and futurism and all of that and drove to the valley to this event where there was nothing but acoustic instruments in the room and a circle and gathering of incredible singers and musicians. And the first person picked up a guitar was a guy named

His name is Colin and Colin picked up the guitar and started singing this song about his kids and being separated from his kids and his emotions. He sang his pain, he sang his grief and there was not a dry eye in the room. That is human, that is human.

For those that are pursuing music, the value of that, the value of being able to take your emotions and express it to other human beings, that value has now been raised exponentially. And for those that are like your daughters, your kids who are trying to figure out what to do now,

Because I was just on a call yesterday with an engineer who codes. He has a company that codes for different organizations, right? And he was expressing his concern that Claude codes as good as any of the people that he's been using and was really,

seeing the impact that is gonna have one, the thing that he spent his whole life training for. Cuz there was this period like everyone should learn how to code. But I would say this, we're going to be in a both and world, a both and world. So just like there'll be AI doctors who will be able to do surgeries, there are some that are able to do surgeries. There are some technologies that do that.

There's still gonna be the need for humans to be able to do surgeries as well. And there's still gonna be the need for human to control the robot that does the surgery, right? There's still gonna be the need for a musician that has an incredible musical vocabulary to be able to engineer a song with AI.

I've created some of the best music I've created in my life because of all those decades of training that I've had in music creation. And so it's empowered me to be an incredible prompt engineer in music, to be able to deliver

some incredible music that is now starting to be released through vehicles like Raven Light and other vehicles, right? And so if you have in your mind, well, what is it that I should be focusing my energy and attention on? They're the skills of things like communication. Can you be an effective communicator? Because are you a good storyteller?

Because if you're able to tell great stories, it doesn't matter what profession you're in. Because if you can tell a good story,

You can tell the story that can get investors. You can tell a story that can gain customers. You can tell the story that will open people's hearts up and make a change in their lives. You can tell a story that can have people take action that is helpful for humanity. You can tell the stories that can put people in office. You can tell the stories that can really help

elevate consciousness. So become a great storyteller. In great storytelling, you can sell things, you can deliver messages, you can carry forth your ideas and ideals. So there's that. And then there's just the human connection. There's the ability and capacity to hold compassion for others. So I believe that the more compassionate we are, and compassion is something that can be

Developed as a skill, right? Through practice. I'm a practitioner of that. Sometimes I'm more compassionate than others. I'm faced with opportunities to increase my capacity for more compassion for myself and others. That's a human skill. That's a human skill. And there are others. There are others. I've asked versions of that question so many times. That's the most poignant, most

impactful answer I've heard. It's about emotion and passion and meaning and empathy. I share a version of that answer with my kids and I'm going to force them to listen

to this discussion because i think everyone growing up in an ai first era should be really comfortable understanding what it means to be a human when our collaborators our our partners our influencers may be machines it doesn't decrease the importance of being a human and it doesn't diminish the contributions we can make to society in fact i i think it makes us superhuman and that and

You and I are AI optimists, and we think that way, and I want more people to embrace what we can become when we partner with machines. So that was wonderful. I really appreciate you sharing that, Marcus. Yeah, thank you. And I will add this about the machines. Here in California, and I don't know what other parts of the country they've created this, but there's this AI autonomous vehicle called Waymo, I think.

And I was in a conversation with a friend of mine who has been using that service. And it's just for a designated area here in LA. And he was talking about how he felt safer in that car that was driving itself, that was driving him, than being in an Uber, than being in a taxi, than driving himself.

Because the way they designed that machine is that it's able to see above and see over, right? So it has more awareness than we have as human beings because it can see more of what's happening in the road. And it can know that Tulane's

across is empty. Well, we may not be able to see that and it be able to maneuver itself there. I mean, the thought of

Me using that vehicle and spending more time with my daughter Melanie, as opposed to driving her to elementary school. But us sitting in the back of that vehicle and having whatever conversations we have, right? Whatever it is that she's interested in, I'm interested in, right? To be able to have that time with her while being driven safely, right?

That's just a new paradigm for parents, for us as people that deeply care about others and being able to share time with others without some of the constraints that we have now. That's a metaphor for the future. That ability of machines to quote figuratively and literally see above, right? And keep you safe and give you time to be present with Melanie, ones you love while you're

relying on ai to do things that machines do better than humans i love that yeah so let me take you on a thought experiment here so the content that you're producing it's augmented by ai the ai was trained on people who influenced you humans who created content and you know inspired you and now all of that um

That knowledge was captured in the form of these pattern matching algorithms turned into models that you can consume. How do you feel about the extension of that when, whether it's Ravenlight or Marcus Bell's content is fed into similar models and

Raven Lighter, Raven Light 2 is inspired or some might say a copy or derived from Raven Light that is your brainchild. How do you feel about your music being used in derivative ways? Yeah, my music is in the machines already, right? Some of the songs and hits that I've created and so forth are in the machines.

And it knows who Marcus Bell is and all of that. And it can only know that because I'm in there, right? And I look at it from a place of abundance, right? I'm not going to be here forever. I intend to live until at least 150.

Some people say, all you gotta do is live long enough to live long enough. So I'm in that category. I wanna live long enough to live long enough cuz I wanna know 100 years from now what life is gonna be like. I wanna be a participant in that creation. I feel like I'm contributing to the creation of the world that is going to exist 50 years, 25 years from now, 100 years from now.

But when my time expires here and all of our time is going to expire, well, part of what I'm leaving behind is my music, my writing, my voice, my image, and as much of my essence as I can. And so I look at this more from a place of abundance, not scarcity, not from, oh, I have to control everything.

what happens with what I've created. Although I recognize some of the things that I've created can go in directions that I wouldn't want, right? And I believe that the essence is going to do more good than harm. My essence is going to do more good than harm. And I would assert that anyone within the sound of my voice

Your essence is going to do more good for the world. And if we are operating from a place of abundance, then the stresses of, I gotta control this copyright. I've got to, right? Now, I have some lawyers that are hired to do whatever it is that they do their jobs, right?

But I'm just saying from my perspective, I know, hey, I'm not gonna be here. And what's gonna happen to my stuff when I'm not here? Well, it's my contribution to humanity. And so as a contributor to humanity's canon, if you will, I wanna give so much of what I've learned and experienced

whether it's on YouTube or whether it, let the algorithms get trained on whether I want to put so much content out that the algorithms get it right. Mentality of abundance. I think that's a good framework within the bounds, of course, of what's legal and what's ethical. But I share your perspective. I hope more people start to appreciate that if we think from

first principles perspective mentality of abundance, then a lot of these questions get answered pretty quickly. Yeah, and I gotta say it hasn't always been that way. I haven't always thought from this lens. I think about songs that I've created in the past that were, you know, and friends upon. I think about,

All of that and it used to tie me up in knots. I used to, being faced with a decision, do I pursue some legal action and put energy into going after someone that's taking something from me and all of that? Or do I just create something else? And it took something for me to say, you know what? I'm just going to create something else. There are more hits than me.

Right? And maybe that infringement helps support a family that wouldn't have been supported before. You just never know what people are going through or what they're having to deal with that has them take the actions that they do. And oftentimes what I've discovered is when more context is provided and why someone does something, all of a sudden that's when my empathy kicks in.

That's when it's like, oh, okay, well, this person was really going through something, right? And, you know, like that. So context is decisive. In 1928, it took the infringement of an animated character called Mortimer Mouse by an animator named Walt Disney to inspire the creation of Mickey Mouse.

And at the time, to what Marcus Bell's philosophy on life is, rather than being mad at the world because of what he lost, Walt Disney decided that there was more animation, more storytelling, more inspiration inside of him. And he used that to fuel his passion, which became the Walt Disney Company. So similarly, I think it's a theme that...

has its roots in history. Probably all the great creators have had to face that kind of moment of, do you get angry or do you get proud? And do you double down on your passion? I'm so glad. I'd never heard that story before. But I imagine that all creators that have that fear around infringement and so forth, just imagine that you're going to be creating your own Walt Disney. Well said, brilliant.

Hey, Marcus, we're way over time, but I'm not letting you off the hot seat without answering one last important question for me. Okay. I've heard you tell your story in other formats, other interviews, and it's fascinating. You talked about, you know, six-year-old, you know, you got on stage, you're a singer, a musician, you know, you're producing music. You just have this boundless energy, you know, that's with you today and will be, you know, until you're 150 at least.

Can you tell us about your backstory and kind of what gives you energy and where do you drive inspiration? Yeah, well, I grew up in one of the most impoverished areas in Virginia, in Norfolk, Virginia. And I didn't realize how impoverished that area was until I moved to other areas. So it's funny how location and exposure changes everything.

changes of view and my worldview expanded the more exposure I got. And so, but my mom was a national tennis champion and Carolyn Bell, she was Carolyn Williams back in the 60s and she played in the US Open and she was a civil rights activist.

And she toured the country. It's funny, when she passed away, I found all these newspaper articles that said Ash and William. So she used to train with Arthur Ashe. Those of you that know tennis, you would know Arthur Ashe's name. And I learned so much from her because

She was a tennis prodigy and she recognized I was a music prodigy. So I started playing piano when I was two years old. So she noticed that I had some abilities. And so she supported that and my family supported me pursuing music. But one of the things that she did

She was raising a lot of money for different nonprofit organizations. So she became a grant writer and she was just a prolific writer. She could write anything. And I would say that I saw her become

a field expert in so many different things. Because when she had to write a grant, she had to do all this study and research and gather all that information and so forth. And so one of the things that I learned from her was what I now call intentional imbalance.

And that is when you basically, instead of trying to balance life with everything, relationships and spirituality and politics and work and money and career and knowledge and education and all these different areas or conditions of life, some would call it that. You focus on one area or no more than three areas, right?

And go all in in that particular area and read all the books, watch all the videos, all the YouTube videos, find a master in it, do all the study and training. And so I've been doing that my entire life. And as a result, I've become a polymath. And so I've

acquired specialized knowledge in many different domains like entrepreneurship, music, obviously, and other domains. And now AI fits in that category as well. Fascinating story. Thanks for sharing that one. We're out of time, but this one has been just really a pleasure. Appreciate you coming and hanging out and really hope we get more time together.

Yeah, I look forward to our next conversation. Thank you so much for engaging and inspiring some of the ideas that have come out of our conversation. Where can the audience learn more about you and your work? The best way for people to find me and connect, I love connecting with people, is going to marcusbellringer.com. M-A-R-C-U-S-B-E-L-L-R-I-N-G-E-R.com.

And by going there, you'll get to click on all the different things that I've created that have been designed to support people in their journey, whether it's in AI or whether it's in finding their purpose or whether it's in music or whether it's in entrepreneurship. Or you just want to connect with me on LinkedIn like that. Brilliant.

You're a good human. And I hope that you and Raven and your work go on to inspire millions more. And please do take me up on the offer. Come back and we'll do another version of this sometime. Sounds like a plan. Much love and light. You bet. Well, guys, that's all the time we have for this week on AI and the future of work. As always, I'm your host, Dan Turchin. And of course, we're back next week with another fascinating guest.