Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
01:14:59 Share

Support for decoder comes from strike. Strike is a payment and billing platform supporting millions of businesses around the world, including companies like uber, B M W and door dash. Stripe is help countless startups and established companies like reach their growth targets, make progress on their missions and reach more customers globally.

The platform offers a sweet of specialized features and tools to fast track growth like stripe billing, which makes IT easy to handle subscription based charges in voices and all recurring revenue management needs. You can learn how stripe helps customers of all sizes make progress. At stripe, that com that strike out, come to learn more, strike.

make progress.

They're not writers.

but they helped .

their clients shape their businesses financial stories. They're not an airline.

but their network connects global businesses in nearly one hundred eighty local markets. They're not detectives, but they work across businesses to uncover new financial opportunities for their clients, their not just any bank, they are city. Learn more at city 点 com。 Ash, we are city.

At C I T. I dot com. Ash, we are city. Support for the show comes from alex partners. If you're in the tech industry, wondering how artificial intelligence is going to affect your business might seem like the new Normal by now. Alex partners is a global consulting firm dedicated to helping you navigate the changing headwinds of AI without getting lost in the noise, learn how your business can navigate AI while making sure your strategic initiatives are aligned by reading alex partner's latest technology industry insights available. A W W W dot alex partners dot com slash box that's W W W dot A L I X partners dot com slash B O X in the face of disruption, businesses trust alex partners to get straight to the point and a little results when IT really matters.

Hello, welcome to you decoder on the lapith l editor in chief of the verge. And decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today i'm talking with Harry Mason junior. He's the sea of the recording academy, the non profit organization that puts on the grammy awards most prestigious words of music and which runs the music cares charity, which helps artists in need. Harvey is a fast any guy.

As a musician and producer, he's worked on projects with destiny child, Britney spears, Michael jack and girls, generation tones more, as well as produced the music in movies like pitch perfect and strain on the content is CEO of the academy. Harry had a lot of work to do sce. He started in january 2。 His predecessor was outed after just five months in the role in a sword scandals.

And the grammy is, along with the mis and the Oscars at that time, facing a reasoning with massive race and gender in equality in the awards. In top of all that, the music industrial itself can do, a crashing hall during the pandemic is life concerts and a world show stopped happening, which made music cares more important than ever. So he's been busy this past few years, and now the world of music is having a moment with some of the biggest tres ever in an entirely newco p of emerging major artists.

The twenty twenty five grammy nominations were just announced, and you can see IT in the list. Chapel road and spring a carpenter are nominated for album of the year right alongside beyond a tao swift. Now here the koto was, you know, i'm always saying that watching how tech changes the music industry is a preview into how tech will change everything else.

Five years and now, and the grammar and the recording academy aren't no exception. See, the way to work for the past fifty years is that cbs pays a huge feet to the recording academi C2Broadcast the gra ms, and the recording academy takes that money and uses that to fund d things like music cares and lobbying for legislation that protects artist rights. This doesn't a secret.

You'll hear harvey laid IT out blunt and say that grammes is where all the money comes from. This all work great in an era where traditional T, V networks had tons of money to spend and commended a huge amount of attention because so many people watched traditional TV. But that era is over, and Harry recently decided to move the grAnnies to disney, started in twenty twenty seven, which will bring the show to A B, C, S, but also potentially to disney class in who, look, if you have been pay attention of the TV industry life T V is increasingly driven by sports and the word shows like the grands.

So I wanted to know how harvey was thinking about this deal, what the possibility of streaming distribution would mean for the show itself, and how much he thought the grandma's needed, the prestige and brand power of a company like disney? Or is the wider distribution of something like we also talked about the grammy awards themselves, what the categories are, how the winners are chosen and who those winners get to be? That's actually in harvey's biggest project, the academy, just completely requalification its pool of voting members of the grammies part of a years long effort, bran Younger voters and more women and people of color.

At the same time, the intern means the very idea. Jon and music has been getting blurrier and blurry for over a decade. I asked Harry to define pop music, and you will hear him think through the answer.

The internet has also created massive fenders and stand culture. And I wanted to know how harvey was thinking about that in the context of awards, which are supposed to be about recognizing art, not just popularity. Of course, Robin, I also talk to an AI, which has posed to disrupt almost every creative industry and which has already caused major lawsuits and controversy.

And music, you'll hear how to explain that he's not a reflection of AI hater. And then he thinks there's a place for some of these tools and music production. In fact, he made the major decision to allow music made with A I to be eligible for the grammar.

But like so many other folks we've talked to, you will hear him to the irreplacable irrepressible benefits of human creativity. And you will also hear him that that he's nervous about at all. And it's sorting IT all out is just going to be complex.

I'll be onto you. This is one of my favorite decoder conversations in a while. As you can probably tell, I love talking about the music industry, and harvey was open to thinking through a lot of these issues out loud on the show. Okay, recording academy CEO Harry Mason junior, here we go.

How we made in genre is a CEO of the recording academy. Well.

consider coder.

I'm excited. Talk to you. As you might know, i'm obsessed with the music industry.

I think paying attention to the music industry is the best way to predict what happens to every other creative industry. Five years now, you obviously have a deep amount of inside into that. And then I hope that we're talking a week before grammy ominous come out.

Always interested in how that works. Are you're thinking about that process that such an important part of the cultural calender every year? And we are talking about there's just an infinite amt of ice.

Everybody's gotto talk about why not us?

Yeah I feel like I I like, I like the readers might throw me off a ledge of every decoder is my or alternatively, if I keep going in my prime, athletic will find out. Let's start with the basics. You've been in this job of co.

Since twenty twenty. There was a big shake up in the recording academy. There was locked down the music in the street, went into hybernation for a minute.

We all did a lot of humor orders now were back into massive tours or a new air of stars emerging. What's start? The very basics, though, tell people what the recording academy is and how IT participates in the music industry.

Well, starts with our show, and most people know us from our show, the grammy show. We've been doing a grammar show for sixty six years. I've been doing them senses you said four years ago as the C.

E. O. But the grammar show celebrates music, lifts creators and showcases all of different generals and music. The recording academy that produces the gram is generates revenue from that show. And we use that revenue, let's paid to us by cbs for licensing fee to do all the programs we do throughout the year.

So it's and because you know, finding for the rights of music people talking about A I, we do have time to stuff in that space, make sure human creators protected other copyright and electronic property protections that we're working on. We spend in millions and millions of dollars every year advocating for the rites of music people. So that's one area.

The other areas, the killing topic h organization that's within the academy called music cares. Music cares is a kind of give back organization for anybody is a musician, you don't have to be a member, but if your professional work in the music industry, you need help. If you are sick, facing a drug addiction, mental health crisis, if you crash your car, someone broken a story guitar, these are things that music care takes care.

And again, millions and millions of dollars. Every year during cover, we give fifty million dollars and aid to music people that need to help. And then we do a lot to our museum education and preservation of music, making sure the next generation of kids is exposed that music can, if I don't have an instrument, my hand, we didn't know about all the different genres and music, I wouldn't have a career.

So making sure we do a lot of work through that. And that's what was funded and financed by our show and our performance. So that kind of structure of the recording.

again, me. So that's really interesting to me. You described some very important film topic.

You describes some very important working. My music cares I think of is a stabilizing force in the music industry. There isn't a great social service now IT sites. So turing musicians don't have regular jobs that provides essential stability for those folks. There's a lot there that I think is important, but you're very open that the revenue comes from the show and from the licensing, the old cbs.

I'll talk a little bit about where that deal is going and how is changing because you all just announce that you're leaving cbs in a couple years, but stick with the present day for a minute. Do you think the incentives are aligned there? Like if if I look at that in the most broad possible way, it's cbs is paying for A T V show, and that T V show is paying to provide essential stability to turing recording artists. And that might be a little weird. Do ever, ever strike you that that's not all perfectly line?

no. Actually, IT strikes me as being credibly aligned because the idea the show is to benefit created even in just on its face, the show itself. We know the economic impact the show has to create as a sunrise.

Producers, engineers, all the the acceleration are tender, tly connected. People that work in our industry all get a lift from our show. The streaming goes up, the consumption goes up, the ability to tour goes up. So that helps the creative of community.

And then all the revenue we create, and you said most of the revenue is what we put all of the revenue that we put into a country from that show know the major drivers for revenue for the academy are the show other grammar week activities, ticket sales and sponsorships, which really kind of happens during grammy week. So all that money goes back in the certain community. So for me, the only thing that's a little bit missile is a lack of information that the creative community has about why we do the show and that we even do these other thing.

A lot of people to think all the grammar are just the show. And I spend a lot of time and energy, and we've got to do a Better job. This as an academy living, creative creatives and artists produce know.

The reason that the show is so important is because that creates a bunch of money. I hate to be so crass, but it's a cash that we can use and deploy them back into our music community. So the Better the show is, the Better the ratings are, the more money we can generate from that show, more money that comes directly back into our industry.

Yeah, and that's part of the reason I asked the question that we realized that was pretty blunt. But that idea that the show, which is a defining broadcast television production, is the thing that stabilizes the music industry in the way that that, say, music industry, I think, is a little a pic to most people, sounds like it's a pic to some new uucp members.

But IT also seems like a thing you can poke out and say, is this how we should be structured? And some curious, you're new in the role. You're obviously, you've been through a lot of change.

I want to ask you about the TV side of IT, right? Because the idea that broadcast television is a rich source of revenue, imagine you have some perspective on that, is that is changing as well. But this is how should be structured if you could change that.

would you want to diversify that revenue at all thousand percent? And that's one of my big goals for my time here, the academies, to make sure that we're not so reliant on just TV. Having said that, we are expLoring a lot of different opportunities how to best utilize the brand while still supporting music people on doing things within our mission.

We don't want to just go you know sell coffee mugs or just do different random things. We want to make sure it's on brand, on mission, this most coveted award because it's our peers voting for our peers. So we want to make sure we keep that in mind.

It's got to be a part of whatever we do to expand. And I would love time about miss line, and I would love to find an additional way to generate a bunch of money and resources that we could use for our community. But right now, our deal with cbs is a thing that lose the needle most for us and allows us to have the maximum impact within our community.

Let's come back to that in a minute. Let's just continue just habit, the organza structured for one second. How many people are the record academy? What is the the business of click .

on the staff side, roughly three hundred people between our different fillers. As I said, it's um the academy. It's the lattin academy museum and music cares. There are three of people. They are distributed equally.

How many people work on music resources? The show itself, for example.

a IT kind of fluctuates, but the majority of the people work for the recording approach me two hundred people for the academy, and then some split between the light and academy, the museum and music cares.

And how many people are spending all of their time just working on the gram words of year zero?

That's a that's a season of effort. That's something that we do. It's a six months focus on mean, we're always thinking about the shower really directing a lot of our efforts towards the outcomes that will happen on the show.

But the show production is very specific to a few months of the year. The rest of year, the teams working on awards, on membership, on advice and all the things that I talked about throughout the academy. And we have a great staff of the ei department.

We have human people in culture with there's a lot of different departments that are focused on making sure that the academy can have that impact, make sure we are growing the right membership. And we talk about the awards and our ability to monitor ze. Our in lecture al property or gram, is to show we have to have the right awards.

So you can have the right awards department thinking you about that. You have the right membership department, because without the right members, and I can hit the right results in the order to stay relevant, we have to have relevant members. So you just gone through a membership.

Overall, hundred percent of our members have been requalification. We have sixty six percent of our members are all new with the last five years. And we've just add the three thousand new women voters. We've got almost forty percent people of culture or people color. M sorry, those are not the numbers that we had four years ago. So we are all very proud as a staff, and our elected leadership is to the work has been done to change our membership ship, which then, of course, changes the awards, changes our show, changes our ability to generate revenue.

It's interesting. I interviews so many taxi IOS on a show and asked them what their products are and how structure make those products. Give me answers that are broadly familiar, right?

We have a design team. We have a engineering team. We've got go to market team. Your product is the awards IT seems very clear just in talking to just for the first five minutes here, you're very focused on the grammy words as a product.

And what you're describing is we need the right members to vote on those awards and then we need the right team members deciding what those awards should be. So that at the end, when we put on A T, V show, it's the right list of awards, and we come to the outcomes of people want. How much fiddling do you do with that year to year?

Because IT part of the part of, I think, the value of the grammar that IT is an institution. Yeah, right, so that some things have to stay the same and some things I ously have to change as you're describing. Yeah, how much do you think about about.

I think about IT constantly to take the truth. And fiddy is a nice way of or maybe playing way of saying, but it's really the evolution of what we do in iteration around everything in the academy. And that has been a bigger of focus for me in my management team over the last four years because we are sixty six years old is an iconic institution, if I could say so.

And that means a lot to a lot of people, including people, the music community, but also music fans. But so we want to be respectful what that is and what IT has been. But for me, we cannot afford to be staging music moves so fast, and you and your viewers, listeners, no technology in this way.

People are consuming music. And art is evolving so rapidly that we had to evolve as an organization. So I spent a lot of time thinking, how can we adjust? How can we pip IT? How can we see around a corner what's happening next? So a lot of that work, have to say, comes from our membership, because the membership really submits the changes, they summer proposals.

What are we going to honor music this year? What are how we gonna tittle this new category, and what type of what the nomenclature behind this genre of music? And the reason is so important is that the members are the ones that know.

They know Better than I do. They know Better than a lot of the staff use. Our members are music professionals, so they might hear something in the new genre is coming up like, oh, you guys arent catching on.

We have the honest music, and that's how we continue to perpetuate the excEllence of music, so we can show these different things. So it's stant. You got tweet or fiddling with constant fiddling.

Tweet is nice of than fiddling.

No constant fiddling. And that process happens a couple times a year. There are a process of submit proposals, and then they go into the trusty room. We vote. Our staff adopt when they take place next year in the show.

How do you manage the tension between you have a professional organization that creates the awards, you have professional members who vote on the awards, and then you're making the grammies for maybe the most mainstone impossible audience on cbs, which is maybe the most mainstream of the broadcast networks, and all anybody really wants to see is to swift or be once a whenever award. And there is a mismatch right between fandom culture on the one side, particularly music and stand culture on, like to put a more precise name on IT, and then a bunch of music professional saying, actually this join the tests album is the best album of the year, right? Think there's like there is a real baLance there that .

seems hard to manage. BaLance is nice as a collision. Sometimes IT is truly IT can be contentious. IT can be controversial.

But for us, and i'll say for me personally, what I love about and is there is no other word like IT because it's not about popularity. It's not about who got the most dreams or who got the most likes. It's truly about the people that are in the industry.

And we are working day and day out around music, listening to the records or songs or albums or and the deciding which one they think is the best in its subjective. And we know that there's no not basketball game. It's all up to the interpretation of the listener.

But what makes are so valuable? And as of now, and maybe this isn't always going to be the case, but as of now, the most people television show regards to music is because it's not just about popular, it's not predictable. It's about the voters giving the award for the year to the artist or music that they love. And IT also attracts a different type of participation or attention from the artist community because it's a very desired thing to have your peers tell you you've done something special in that yeah I think is meaningful. So there's an extra gravitas or weight to the grammar, which I think translates to the viewers.

How do you think about that in the context of the criticism that the grammies often gets from the larger public or from listener's, for example, beyond, say, just doesn't win album the year record of the year, these are the awards people want her to win, is one of the major artists in our space. One of the cultural icons of our time is one I don't know what else to say we're heading into nomination season.

I think this conversation again, how do you think about that? right? That's that's what a huge, loud set of consumers wants from you from the show. sure.

And I hear them loud and clear. I would love her to win out of dear. I would also love bunch of other people who went out money here.

I think there is great music. I think it's also subjective. Beyonce a obviously has a ton of very loyal and supportive fans, which I don't lime them for.

Bion's is one a ton of grammy awards. So we really respect her creativity and her artistry is no question about that is a voting body. Uh, there's different things that happened throughout the year that the voters sometimes resonate within certain categories and other categories.

Ah IT doesn't resonate. So it's really hard to predict. I am excited for this year because there has been so many amazing records, there has been great work by us, an amazing artist.

So i'm very optimistic for this year as far as who wins what and who get snob, who's happy and who's mad. I mean, I can't predict that. What I can predict is the voters will do their very best to listen the music, to evaluate the music. The other thing I can say is we also have a very different boating body now. Then we had three years ago, then we had five years ago, then we had ten years ago.

that vote body. right? That's that's the thing you turned over, that this year's big project, you announced the change. You you just said earlier, you requalification one hundred percent of the members. But that's one way to change the outcome, right?

To change voters, the only way, but the other way is to change the words themselves, right? Which i'll come to, I think we can to pursue that on two tracks, but we're going to change who's voting is one way to change them. Did you actively think, okay, we're getting to some of the wrong answers and who wins these awards? We ve got to change .

the membership IT didn't come so much from the answers. Yeah maybe personally did back that. But what I really down from looking at the makeup of our voting body and and looking at the makeup of music creators and who's making IT versus who's consuming IT versus who's voting on.

And we wanted to make sure our membership is representative of our music community. And when I got there, or just wasn't, we didn't have enough people of color. We don't have enough women, didn't have certain representation in certain generals and dance community, rock community country. So we needed to rebaLance or tweet, or can member the word you use, which I like so much fiddle. We needed to fight with a membership.

We need to fiddle that nature that he was aligning with, not just the world, but more importantly, specifically with music and the music community, the genres we had to look at the jonas, what genres are really popular? Do we have enough members in those genres to evaluate and accurate? What are the new journals coming up that we want to make sure that we're able to interpret and vote for and get good outcomes? Well, then if that's a new one we had to make, we have members to support that otherwise having a new category with no nobody that can understand the new answer to find fine points of that genre voting, it's, it's it's a failed concept. And so we want to make sure that the voters align with music and how it's being made and concerned .

here at the end of the process. Now you you requalification one hundred person of people. You've added new members. Do you think you're there? Do you think you have room to grow and changing all further and .

we still have room to grow. No question where where our goals where we said those goals pretty ressie ly. We met them a bit early actually, but i'll continue to be new stretch goals and new things that I want accomplish with our membership and our member ship team is amazing.

They're so um proactive and we have great committees around our membership team and elected leadership. We are really passionate about membership. And as we said, until I hear your ideas for now, that's the way we think we can affect the change in the outcomes and affect the relevance of our wars and continue to grow the grammy brand on the global, global basis.

We have take a .

short break. Will will be a peck.

Support for dakota comes from min to mobile. We've gotten pretty good at knifing out scams that free reise probably isn't free. Your alone almost definitely does have some strings attached, and your neighbor's improve show will not be fun. But when mid mobile offers a deal that sounds too good to be true, they actually minute all mint mobile plans come with high speed data and unlimited talking text to delivered on the nation's largest 5g network。 You can even keep your phone, your contacts and your number IT doesn't get much easier than that to get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless planned for just fifteen bugs a month, you can go to my mobile dot com slash dichotomous mint mobile dot com slash dichotomy.

You can cut your wireless bill to fifteen box a month at mint obble dot com slash decoder forty five dollars up found payment required equivalent to fifteen dollars the month new customers on first three months plan only speeds slower aboo ve 4 bites on unlimited plan additional taxes， fees and strictly apply see my mobile for details support but this show comes from a linked in finding the right candidate for your small business is a little bit like digging for gold. You might sift through piles of rocks and pebble looking for that one glistering nugget that makes IT all worth IT. But most of the time you come back empty handed, linton is here to make that search a little easier, enabling you with the tools you need to find the right candidate fast and for free.

And linked in isn't just a job board, it's your doorway to talent you won't find anywhere else, including top professionals who may not be actively job unting but are open to the perfect opportunity. Plus, linton is consistently rolling out new features to help make your search easier, including a new feature to help you craft job descriptions. Connecting with the right candidates on linked in is now faster and simply than ever, you can post your job for free at linked in dot com slash partner that's a linked in dot com slashed partner to post your job for free.

Terms and conditions apply. Sport for this show comes from ARM. Have you ever thought about the technology that makes this podcast possible to listen to on your phone, in your car or on your laptop? And then there's the data centres that make IT all work.

One company is at the heart of at all. It's the scene company that powered the smart phone revolution and is helping define A I revolution. That company is called ARM. ARM designs compute platforms for the biggest companies in the world so they can create silicon and solutions to power global technology. ARM is proudly nasdaq listed and became a nasdaq one hundred company within a year of its IPO.

ARM touches nearly one hundred percent of the globally connected population, ninety nine percent of smart phones are built on ARM, major clouds run on ARM, as well as all major mobile and pcx. Now arms engineers are tackling the insatiable demand for compute and power efficiency the A I is creating. A I enabled the ARM CPU are able to provide the compute platform for the global AI revolution in the years to come.

But for now, relax and enjoy. This podcast is very likely running on your own armed powered device. Visit ARM dot com slash discover to learn more.

Looking back, i'm talking with recording academy CEO Harry made in junior about his flagship product, the grammy awards right for the break. He is talking about how the academy is shaken up its membership to Better reflect the music industry of today. But now i'm dying to know how he's handling one of the hardest parts of this shower.

So the other way that at least comes to mind for me is the awards themselves. And maybe you disagree, there's the halo ords is record song album. Underneath that, there's just a bunch of category ization best rap album versus best rock album that employs that.

Those journals exist and you can easily sort albums into them. The gram is only just got rid of best urban album recently, right? That is a category with a long and loaded history. Maybe we don't need that anymore, but what the internet has done to music, robes, really black honor, yes, completely, endlessly blurred honor, in ways that are exciting and ways that are Frankly confusing. And maybe the only general lot is country, which is everyone is making a country of this year, because you can just go there and say it's different than what you were doing before you could change those awards or you could just requalification all of the honor's too, and say, here are some hard lines. Do you ever think about that?

Well, I love to hear your thoughts more. When you talk about hard lines, the goal for the general awards is to try and find some guard rails in which to fit music. And that's a very hard you're talking about, again, art and then someone's interpretation of art and had a couple those in the different buckets so the people can evaluate them compatibly.

So we don't want to see hip hop going against rock because they're so this similar this similar audience. So I think this similar people that are creating but as music becomes more and more um you know blurred together or mashed up, I guess said there will be some conversations around how we're going to title the words, how we're going to include them in different fields and who should be voting on the right now we have different field. So you have you know a rock field number that would be a bunch of different owners of rock, and you have a hip hop field and a classical field.

And the way our voting works is we encourage our voters to vote in three fields. So you don't want somebody doesn't anything about country just going into that category as a favorite artists over there. Or by first, you don't need someone voting in classical that only knows one classical artists.

So the way we try to do is is have qualified voters voting for the music that they like. Now to your point, as music changes and general walls come down, we will be able to open that up a little bit more. But that is again something that will be determined by our professional music community.

Our members also say, hey, are you you know, membership team at the academy? You know, we think rock and jazz sounds like it's coming together. Let's put that in one category. And when that happens, because our members are telling us these things IT will happen and that will change the way we go.

can you just do me a favor and tried to define pop music in twenty twenty .

four about music in twenty twenty four.

There's A I I could define hip hop. yeah. I feel like I could take a run, a defining rock. I don't know that I .

could to find pop music. The pop music is it's a bit of more of this because IT changes from year to you and has something to do with the in the term in the title itself popular. And it's the genre that tends to have, you know the big the courses, the single millions, the ride style production and vote less.

And it's very difficult because there are a lot of records I get lumped into pop. And as a creator, I can create IT and I can show you on a piano and I can sing, sing IT, but is a hard definition to nail down. The voters tend to do a really good job of that and making sure that their voting for music, they feel should be in that category.

And also the way are labels and artists and independent labels submit, they submit their music where they want to be. And so somebody feels like this is a pop record is going to pop in. For the most part, that's where it's evaluated.

I just think something there is something so interesting happening with jona because of the rise and we're well into IT now yeah and Taylor swift out a piece of what the death of janner like ten years ago, I think for the wall street journal. And there just seems to be a chaos and industry that maybe fans have figured out, but the industry itself is still struggling with whether that's little mozart ages ago, whether that's cuboid corner and beyond, say, this year, IT feels like we don't quite want to draw these lies anymore, but we need them in order to have things like to grame awards or have enough awards to give out instead .

of one award for song or music.

And I is that something you're actively talking about as does that come up with, with your members, with the staff, with the recording academy? Where do these arguments really come from?

More of these are you land? They land by saying our members will tell us when it's time. And the members, again, our professionals, there are all the people working in studios, on tours, engineers, right, to produces artists, singers. They are the professionals. And when they say, you know what, we're tired of generals or retire tive new separating people in, putting them in boxes that will evolve, I can promise you that because our organization has never move faster, has never been more fluid, we never listen closer to our members or our music community. So when that starts to happen, we will make sure that things .

are just do you ever think about just doing and of mr. Jones, like we're just going to have a drill award this year, like how do you think about that? Because that's another way you could do IT and you could get more artists in the theater.

You could sell more tickets, you get more ratings. But joe music, IT was a moment. It's now kind everywhere, like you can hear IT, in fact, all of him up.

So this is kind of like devolved and it's not being a microphone or but just being a sound that's gonna come and go like something going to go. The last year, you could have just been like we're going to a drill category and here's the best rollers to the year. And the next year, maybe we won't have that category and will have something else. Is that something that comes up? Is that an option that you've thought about?

Because at me, i've heard proposed yes. And what tense need to happen is, again, the voters need to have an expertise in the genre. So we have enough voters.

That new exactly was gone on the drill, general music. Then they would pop up and say, guys, we're missing a whole group of music here. We need to honor IT. We would create a category. We go up in the next show when they would then vote without that movement, without the momentum behind the genre that sustainable that translates in the members.

We would be popping new owners in the show without the support and kind of the underpinning that IT needs to be relevant, to be active because that we put in a drill category now and we didn't have enough voters and we had the wrong outcomes because just random people started voting, oh, I know this name on me. Work for them. IT would be disrespectful to the creators, and that genre would also be, I think, detrimental to the brand of the academy, and they can to gram me.

So when the time is right for those new generals, like to think that it'll be there. We just add of the best african performance, and we see the rise of on a piano and all the different genres, afra beats. And we had the voters, we had the support they propose award.

It's now in yeah, let me ask you the big decoder question. And then I want to talk about that question. In practice, you obviously have a lot of decisions to make.

What awards are you going to give into? Who is some of the biggest decisions there? What's your framework for making those decisions?

The framework for making decisions around awards is very different than my personal framework around decisions that i'd like. The implemented academic as IT relates to awards is a very straight forward process.

The probability awards or other changes and proposal are introduced by our members, are discussed to appropriate committee, that is, planning in governance, or awards and nominations go to the committee system, they voted up or down, and then goes the voted trustees, and he gets voted up or down. And I don't have a voted those things, they trying to make sure the conversation ago in the right direction. But that really comes down to, or bored in our chair.

Once those things are put in place, and I have to decide how to implement them. And that's a pretty straight forward process around the words. But maybe the brother question you're asking is I had to buy personally ah yeah how do I C E O? How do I make the decisions in my role? And I spend a lot of time listening, to be honest, and not sure what the answer is for some of your other people who even interviewed other CEO, but I don't pretend to know more than I know.

You know, i'm a lifetime learner, not a nower. And so when IT comes time for decision, I I tend to move relatively quickly. I don't sit and do I think in a perfection sometimes can get the way of making progress.

So i'll listen or some of my team, I get the information that I need to make an educated strategic decision, and then all wait. And to this point, my instincts and you know, my my finger is bent on the pull of what our organization wants or needs. And our members seems to be resonating with the decisions that have been happening.

But if my personal taste or feelings fall out of favor with that, then I would really change my decision making process of a lot of what I do is gather the information, decide from here. What I think is right is almost like making music. To tell the truth, that was a song, right, to produce years.

And if you're making music for everybody else, you're trying to guess what's next and you're trying to make people happy, you're going to make the same music and everyone else making me, if you're making music that IT turns you on, that excite you, that you love as a creator, and then you come out as of your taste, are aligned and with the consumers, you'll win. So I feel the same way in the way I like to run our organization. A lot of listening, a lot of collaborating. And trying to make smart, swift thought of decisions and .

feel like a lot of the other I talked to would be well served. They spend some time trying to make some music to just trying to make .

A I everyone will .

come to that though. Let me put that into practice. This week you announced that you're going to leave cbs.

You're going to take the grammar to disney and stream across disney plus floo and abc. You've said IT already C B S represents almost one hundred percent of revenue of the organza. You've been on C B, S.

For fifty years. Yeah, that's a big change. That's a big decision to go to a new partner into new platform as a new distribution. Why make that decision and .

how you make IT definitely see change. Transformational turning point, our organza IT was a very difficult decision to be, honestly, because cbs has been a great partner. They've done amazing work with us, I believe, for fifty four shows.

And when I came into this role, I realized that we had four years until there will be renegotiation. And I really had a vision in a plan for where I thought the academy needed to go. And partially, that's why they have me in this roles to come figure out what that vision is that makes you are executing on IT, aligning with the board trustees in our executive leadership and the executive committee.

We know what has to happen. And the idea behind who is going to be on a partner to help us get there was a big part of that decision making process. And we met within several people and ultimately ended up going with a different partner because of the fact that is really aligned with our future vision and where we wanted to go and how we wanted to continue to build and grow the new organization, but more importantly, how we could serve more people and execute in our mission and and broader, wider, deeper scale. Uh, so we're really excited about the future.

You have to decide, right? You're for you're you come on to the job. You know you're really negotiating four years deals up.

You got to stick with cbs or you got to go find a new partner after fifty years. IT feels like maybe that default was to say to C. B.

S. And the first decision was they actually going to open this up. How do do you come to that just moment when you thought i've got, I ve gotta make sure I know what my options.

That was really the decision making fact. I wanted to know what our options were and make sure that we were expLoring all possibilities. You know, i'm in this role temporarily for her alone.

I'm here, but i'm really for duce ing a store of the brand. And I think it's an institution that is be protected. It's a not for profit. You know, we're not doing this other than to serve music.

People saw the idea was how can we reach the best deal? How can we find a partner that most lions of the future vision of the organza. So IT was an opportunity to explore the market. I thought that only made sense even with the fifty four year history that we had cbs again being great partners. I think anyone would say if you have the opportunity to see what else is there, you should take a look and and try to find that that right aligned .

doing forward because they are a bit ward. Disney just show up and say, we're going to pay more than everybody else. Did you have other options?

I will say we have other options. Probably we won't go too much deeper than that s out of respect for our partners on both sides. But you know cbs has been amazing to work with, and I also really look forward to seeing was going to come next in our new partnership.

When I think about the value that C, B, S. Brought over that sweep of fifty plus years. The they are one of the three big broadcast networks in united states, the tifany network.

They have a the election broadcast and sightly higher quality. And so I always appreciate about cbs, but they they had a distribution in all way. They were just a nationally broadcast T, V neck k that came into everyone's homes.

They were on every cable system. That's how TV used to work. That is broken, right? Cord cutting is all over the place.

People aren't using over there. Ten is anymore that that just not how works. And the big distribution is in streaming.

Cbs does have some streaming in the mix, right there. There's a whole complicated story to be told, what paramount and all that over there. But this seems a little more it's very complicated.

There's literally the plot of succession is embedded in me just mentioning permit. Disney obviously has disney plus. We've got hou.

Was that where you are looking at? Like this is Better distribution to a Younger audience. It's more stable. This is the future how people don't watch TV because you IT does sound like I need to make a lucrative TV show is the heart of everything your organization does.

We've mailed that. We have to have the right TV partner, not only for the revenue, but also for the future of the brand and the health of the organza and for the good of the music community. What we do is to try and lift music and music creators.

And how can we do on the wider possible scale is something that i'm always thinking about. But as IT relates to you see the essence, they're streaming platform versus abc disney. I just have to say that cbs has been great.

We're going to make two more shows with them. They had a lot of very, very positive aspects of of why we bend with them and why we might consider to go forward. But we also have to look at the future of consumption.

We have to look at the future of how people are going to abroad taking our show. Where does IT need to be seen? How does that need to be seen? These are all considerations that i've been having since I took this role for years ago.

So got a couple more great shows to go with cbs looking forward to february second this year. And then after the next show, we will start to think about what this new deal means. But up until then, I just you know your listeners, your viewers know consumptions changing television is changing digital streaming, even social media, how that all plays into how people are consuming content. Those are all things, as you can imagine, or top of mind. When we started thinking about how we're going to move forward over the next ten years.

when I tell of the ceos of streaming platforms or other kinds of video platforms, the idea that the big catalogue is valuable is things that alive comes up over over again. You can see IT right now in the battles over how much to pay for sports rights. Ferocious battles, because people will tune the sports and they will they will make appointment to watch your service, to watch, to watch sports.

The word shows are right up there in the mix, right? People will watch a word shows. But awards es need something a little different than sports, like they need some prestige. They need some institutional heft and IT feels like putting the grammar on youtube is just not as fancy as being anywhere near abc and disney. Maybe even putting the rain is on netflix is not as fancy as being somewhere near disney and abc to that factor into .

your decision making yeah and all did the heft, as you call the was important that the gravitas s behind the award and words consumed how people are going to watch. There's still something unique and special about network television to allow the consumers to other sets of consumers. They really couldn't care less about that. So there is a baLance or finally that I wanted to make sure we walked with any partner that we we join forces with. But let me push on that just a little .

bit because there is attention there. The biggest dirigo tion you could have is youtube. Everybody has IT.

Maybe you don't even have a choice to have IT anymore. It's just there. Youtube, which is just there. Everybody has IT. If you want to the biggest reach for your work show, you would just put IT on youtube.

I wouldn't give you as much revenue and pri, wouldn't you, as much brand halo versus disney, which is disney. Is that an actual trade off you made? I could get more audience on youtube, but I get more brand halo and perhaps revenue from disney.

They're all trade off to take the truth. And that's the baLance is the juggle that we have to do. How do we reach the most consumers of viewers so that we can monitor ze the show, but also how do we showcase and lift artist of the most people see him?

Ah so IT is IT is a finally if the finally navigated line between those two things and there's a lot of other considerations as well, the history, the brand seen accessibility, different territories around the world where there's presence or focus for us. So there were a lot of factors that went into the characters of deciding where's the right home for us. So hopefully, we feel like we made a good choice, but I guess we'll see in the next ten years.

Yeah, when you think about moving to more internet, native distribution is just a bunch of other stuff you can do. You can make you more interactive. You could cut up on different pieces. Is that stuff you're thinking about to reinvent the concept of an word show in that way?

Thousand percent. We know consumers are changing the way there. They are consuming and their habits are evolving at all time. So we're always going to try and beyond cutting edge of that, but again, balancing that with making sure we're showcasing different answers of music. And it's not just all one shower.

Are you not just seeing only a certain group of creators and also making sure that we are honoring the tradition, history of the brand? So along with trying to innovate, trying to make sure we're meeting viewers where they are and matching their habits with what we're creating or producing is something again, this stuff is not easy. None of IT is is straight forward.

And if I went to have assume the role or taking the rains in the organza is that we're going to do the same thing. We're going to march straight head were going to keep making the same show. I think that would have been the easier out for sure. But we're not doing that.

We're looking at everything, every part of our experience that we part of our show, every part of how we serve our members, how we produce to show, maybe you've seen over the last few years, even how we seat our artists, how we seat the music community, how we celebrate them, how we lift them the tone, and we produce in a loving way. And I know that sounds crazy, but we produce in a way that brings people together, that tries to have comradery or or collaboration between our community. And I think that means something to the view. so. Whether that means that three hours show, three, nine, four hours show go up forward or shorter versions or clips, we're going to be looking at all that doing a lot .

and do things over the coming years. Yeah another question. Brocas television imposes the kind of discipline on TV production, whether it's we're going to have thirty minutes IT comes.

And instead of you know sort of like unless you can look at your phone streaming shows or whether it's boy this, a warshow has gone on for a long time and it's time to rap IT up. There is a discipline that was imposed by the distribution. Streaming just doesn't have that.

You really could have ten grammy award shows a year. You could have a all day long grain ward show, show people highlights later. But the companies in the discipline of this is a show what IT begins and ends that lends some tension to IT, lends some stakes to IT. I know you're saying that kind of open and you're thinking about IT, but that seems important to preserve me.

A you are a smart guy. You're asking me all the questions that I asked myself, and i'm going to come you to work with me, you know how to think about this stuff. But IT is really, really top of mind for me and for our team as to how do we continue to be relevant. Because if you do the same thing over over again, it's not cool. It's just that no one's gna take IT, no one's going to be excited about IT.

So the hard part of IT is is and I hate to be again super basic about IT, but is revenue making sure we're balancing being forward looking, picking about what's next help people are consuming with how can we continue to monetize the brand and the show? Again, not because we want to make profit, that's not the motivation. The agenda is to generate more revenue so that we can push IT back into the industry, back into the community.

For us, it's about the health and uplift of music. I mean, this stuff is important. Music is so dying, important, especially right now, maybe more than ever, with the way the countries gone on, the worlds gone with so many desperate ideas and opinions.

But i've seen IT when I travel, when I see other parts, the world, listening to music, listen to artists, we might have a crazy disagreement, but when the music comes on everybody, he's like dancing and club and and singing and IT just opens up people's minds in their eyes. And so because of the power music, and because of my belief and the academy belief in the power music, we can do everything we can to try and make sure that we're supporting IT. We're lifting IT up for showcasing and given a chance to do what IT does. And if that means shorting the show will do that, if that means anything to show more artist, less artist, different genres, more about. We're going to continue doing that work to change and evolve every day so that we can keep doing what we need to do to left music people.

We have taken on a quick break. I'll be back in a minute.

Support for decoder comes from strike payment management software isn't something your customers think about that. Often they see your product, they wanna buy IT and then they buy IT. That's about as complex as a gets.

But under the hood of that process, there are a lot of really complicated things happening that have to go right in order for the sale to go through. Stripe handles the complexity of financial infrastructure, offering a seamless experience for business owners and their customers. For example, strike can make sure that your customers see their currency and preferred payment method when they shop, so checking out never feels like a chore.

Stripe is a payments and billing platform supporting millions of businesses around the world, including companies like uber, bmw and door dash. Stripe has help countless startups and the establish companies alike reach their growth targets, make progress on their missions and reach more customers globally. The platform offers a sweet of specialized features and tools to power businesses of all sizes like stripe billing, which makes IT easily handle subscription based charges, invoices and all recurring ing revenue management needs.

Learn how stripe helps companies of all sizes make progress at strike that com, that strike that com. To learn more strike, make progress. Support for the show comes from toyo.

Ta, for many of us, driving is just what you need to do to get from point a to point b. But why not think of IT is a reward. Instead, make IT an experience that captivates the senses by driving a toyota.

The toyota m family comes with the quality and reliability that toyoy is known for. Along with bold and elegant exterior styles, the toyota round sedan has an available hybrid d max power train with up to three and forty horse power and comes with an available byte. One exterior finished to help you stand out on the road, and the toyota nia gives you the space you d expect from an S U.

V. With a stylish design unlike any other, whether you're a daily commuter or we can road warrior, you can make any drive a thing of beauty with a toy to crown. You can learn more at toyota com slash toyota ground family, toyota.

let's go places.

Support for the .

show comes from alex partners. You already know artificial intelligence will be transformative. Beyond that, there might be a little bit of a mystery as A I opens the tech industry. Alex partners is dedicated to making sure your business knows what really matters when IT comes to artificial intelligence because disruption brings not only chAllenges but opportunities in these pivotal moments change alex partners is the consulting firm chief executives can rely on with clarity, direction and most importantly, implementation. Alex partners provides a steady hand for your business needs when decisive leadership is vital.

Alex partner spoke with nearly three hundred and fifty tech executives from across north amErica and europe to dig deeper into how tech companies are responding to these changing headwinds. You can see the results and learn how you can turn digital disruption into growth by reading alex partner's latest technology industry insights available at W W W dot alex partners dot com slash box. That's W W W dot A L I X partners dot com slash V O X. In the face of disruption, alex partners are who businesses trust to get to the point and to get things done when IT really matters.

Well, mac, i'm talking with Harry min, junior, C E. O, the recording academy, about the absolute biggest elephant in the room right now, the disruptive potential of general .

AI on the music industry.

Let's sockwell what's what's going on with music and where the money comes from in this industry, because that seems under a lot of pressure as well.

And IT doesn't seem like anyone knows the answer, which is why like paying so much attention to the music industry, we went through the napster revolution where at what feels like a plata in streaming, everyone has more distress ing that we understand that the economics work that seems stable for a minute ops, here comes A I and that might up and everything. Once again, there's a lot of work in A I in music. And now there's a lot of controversy.

There's some pretty distracts made with A I last year resort d media's gomaa kochi came on decoder and he said he is on a collision course the music industry and she's buying catalogues left right but she's she's doing IT and she's that this is a collision course you last year said music with AI generated elements would be grammy eligible, right? So this is an important checkmark. Okay, we're going to allow some of this in here. Where do you think we are right now where we've gone through b bl drizzle, we've gone through some other generated beats. There's a handful of pieces of legislation maybe that we should talk about, but where do you think the state of players right now.

the state of player is so much uncertainty? And i'm concerned because AI, as IT relates to human creativity, scares me to death. I know IT has a lot of power and potential to and and amplify human creativity, but right now we don't have guard drill in place with how many systems or processes set up so that human creators can be protected.

So the state of play is is like we gotten get to work as an industry. And I know a lot of the smartest people are investing in AI, which I totally understand, because this is so powerful, so is so much potential. But for me, as a musician, as someone who also represents twenty five thousand members and music people from around the world, I want to make sure human creativity protective, for all the reason I just said, the importance of music and the ability for us to tell stories and change hearts and minds.

I think the human component to that is really, really damning, important. So a little nervous that we haven't got IT sort of out, but i'm also optimisti C2Be hon estly you lik e bec ause hum an cre ators are not lik e com puters. You, we we take the chaos and the uncertainty in life, the stuff that that A I hates, and we make incredible art from them, and we are able to dig down deep and like some of our most creative spaces, and pull out the next amazing thing and make great art that I don't think any computers gona matter as much as we are nervous and we worry about.

I don't think you can tell me that A I can create souls and the key life or never mind or in matic or those I don't see IT happening. So I want to make sure we're able to use A I and i'm not A A I hater. I think it's got great potential i've been using for ater and nine years in different forms.

I've always been early adopted a new tech. So with IT, I get IT. But we have to make sure human creativity protected and we have a chance to you make sure we're remitted properly, we have proper approvals and make sure it's credit IT properly. These are the things that are really important. me.

So I look at the industrial now there about bb l jersey. I think that beat was made with uo, which is one of the AI sung tools video. And then its competence, know were sued by a bunch ch record labels because they just adjusted a vast catalogue of music in order to build those tools and train on that seems like a commit that's going to hit the earth, right? That that also will get resolved one or the other and will all live inside of that framework. Why let the people using those tools when no one knows how the money works, or even if their appropriate illegal, be eligible for grammies? Now, before the industry is sorted out, the morality economics of those tools.

same way that we let music that have stamp es be chargeable, or we let music that has synthesizers or art or protons ls be eligible, it's a technology, an evolution, that is allowed people to do more, create differently, think differently, make sounds we have never heard before. So for us to draw line in the sand and say if you used artificial intelligence, you are ineligible would be, I think, short, excited.

And I think we would also cut down on a lot of the music that's being created and submitted also, where would you draw the line? There's A I and so much of the software we use now for even analyzing and doing mixes and sound design, not even just a general AI is making music. But the final point is that we will allow A I to be utilized. But we're not onna honor AI in the sense that if A I is performing a song is in our rules, we will not give the performance in a world. If a eyes writing the song, we will not give an award for the song writing components.

So if, for example, if you rote a song, IT was a beautiful composition is the best way bess music best core progressions and you had A I saying IT, you can submit it's not going to win for singing IT could win for song writing and conversely, if you had A, I just write a song as a great song, but some vocs saying IT or wrapped on IT and they perform the heck out IT i'm not going to penalize the human creativity that went into that. So i'm not going to give him an award for the sorry, but I will give him an award for the performance. And that's the where our rules are currently. I'm sure it's going to change this step is movement so quickly. But for now, that's how the economy moving.

You are a song writer. Am confident that some of your work is in some of these train database. How do you feel about that?

I believe there needs to be an understanding of what these models are training on and not sure exactly to what level IT will come down, whether there's compensation, payment or crediting. But I do think something has to change. And I don't believe that people's personally copy written material should just be a used or access by everyone to do anything they want with. So we have to come to bottom, understand this fairly, train miles out also, whether the licensing groups of music or catalogues to train on. And I think that's a good place to start, but it's a lot to talk about this try whole of the show that we could die a little deeper into.

Yeah, I mean, i'm just looking in your list of credits. I mean, you've got destiny's child, you've got britany spears. It's all it's all in here. Do you think that, that stuff be compensated if sono media were using IT to train their walls?

It's a it's a complicated subject. So I think .

there is some some real .

like some real talks that need to happen around that should not be compensated. On the training side, at least we need to know what it's training on, how much of us being used. So there's a lot of new answer that question.

by the way, for the listener, you should just go look at heart is work in pedia page because I named two out of like five hundred brand name artist that you is an incredible is actually just been asking about that the whole time.

The way that you would solve this problem economically and the framework of the law that we have right now as you would assign ownership to something like your voice or the way you sound or your likely they are recording at academy um was in support of a bill that passed in tennessee called the elva sac which is a great name that adds voices to likely protections by read some of the coverage of that bill and IT says, hey, there's no car out in here for Elvis and personators, right? We're going to solve the AI problem and we might have just made all of some personators so legal intended. See how do you see that baLance? That's tough.

There is no perfect solution or magic bullet. Tiny staff, especially the speed at which is moving we are really proud of. The legislation has been introduced in past in a couple of different states, but now we're pushing for federal legislation with the no fax, no process in the house, in the senate.

It's but it's dangerous is to make another .

percent federally legal how .

how you write that to say a robot like obvious but this guy can yeah again.

there's a lot of new ones. There's no perfect bill. None of these bills are exact. Everyone is trying to compensate and accommodate the needs of a lot of people that have concerns and fears.

Of course, we don't want to prevent someone from in percent Elvis, but we do want to prevent people from impersonating artist singers and using their voice without any form of payment or approval uh, or the right crediting. And these bills are starts. I'm sure they'll be revised.

I'm sure y'll be new bills, new things and acted. But right now we've got bad parties. And by camel support, there needs to be some legislation that supports and protects human creativity, human artistry. So dresses is the first step.

But even those two things you said, right, we don't want to stop over some personnel who we don't want people to use artist voices without compensation. Yeah, I mean, the obvious persons have to pay like just that, that little basic thing don't use my voice to. That in personation does IT matter to you whether it's A I or whether it's an obvious personator or does.

But also, laws protect certain a usage of other people's voice. Even if it's another human doing that, you can tend to be an artist and then go monetized that in certain ways. So there's laws in the books to arty prevent that from .

happy is the money moves around the music industry. We've tried to solve that problem in different ways. So streaming rates went down.

And now we all argue about song writing credits to make sure some of the penis compact to the original artists, because the stream makes and paying those artists. I'll give you an example only just because Olivia atti goes, gets tour movie, just hit netflix. So I saw bunch coverage this again.

Taylor swith came, took a credit on asia of controversial i'm i'm playing with fire. Now the two findings are going to come for me, but that's the thing that happened very controversial. And then Alice, cosla was one of my favorite artists ages ago, came out and said, okay, it's I agree that.

Olivia and brutal sounds a lot like pumped IT up. And then his quote was, this is fine by me. That's how rockin role works.

You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand ney toy. That's what I did. I did not find any reason to go out for them legally for that because I think you would be ludicrous. Other people clearly felt differently about songs on that record.

So we've now created a scenario where it's like the artist choice, whether they go after other artists for using things like cord progressions or loud bridges, like how do you see that resolving in the world of A I? Like it's already chaos without A I. And now we're using A I to all seeing the answer to A I is to create more ownership of things like voices and core progressions and sounds.

It's all gonna ue to be a mess until we sorry out because yes, it's difficult .

one of the most and answers yeah.

I think that's the best I can give you because as you said, certain artists tend to claim ownership differently than others are. Also, artists sometimes have publishers or record companies that own pieces of their catoe get tend to be more aggressive then some artists might naturally be.

But as you started to introducing A I, unless we can understand where it's coming from, what it's replicating or learning from and trying to simulate, it's going to really dangling hard to figure out where the money needs to go or how the money can flow. Tell you one story. I met with the head of the copyright of shoes, an amazing woman.

He came to my studio actually, and we started to pulling up some of the generate AI platforms. And I was showing her how IT works, as describe eight months ago, he had really been exposed. A lot of, I typed in a few words, and we made IT a track, a song, and I said, is that copywriters SHE does not? It's not, has have human interaction or human involvement.

I said, why typed in the problem? Is that going, Harry? That's not? That's not enough. So I took the same track and I typed a response. I said, will change the key, change the tempo and change these three lyrics.

And I sent IT back to the platform and sent back a new size, said I was that talk right? Table SHE says, now it's going close about, think it's enough. So I did another prop.

So I did three rounds of proms to came back. IT was slightly different song, and he is okay. I think that's right. I think that's human interaction. So none of this is figured out in the head of the copyright office, who I thought was amazing and incredible. And I love the fact that he was interested, cared enough to counter my studio, but the fact that we don't have an understanding of how this smooth forward and how we protect creators, whether that's the song, right? As you mentioned or people that just had catalogues for twenty years ago, we're not going to have good cleaning answers until we get those understandings.

But those understands come from litigation, right? I mean, that's we're going going to go fight this that sometimes going to see the copyright at office, someone to one artist, is you have to see another, the laws to sue the best forms.

if we can advocate properly and loudly enough, even within the tech platforms, throughout the labels and publishers, journalists, podcast host, so we can talk about this enough, come to an understanding of how this needs the function, confusing. And that might be we can start to manage some internally. You know, some same things happen when we started happening.

Other people's records out of budget, hit records and include other people's samples. And that ran its course. We kind of figured out how I needed to be treated and handle.

Same thing was streaming their thing that people put in music over the internet on streaming services. And we've gone to a place where we're slightly Better still work to do there. I believe we'll come to some solutions around A I and how we can all equally or equitably participate in the .

revenue can actually make the comparison that to sampling and how that played out because you lived IT very directly. I watched IT as a Young copyright lawyer. And IT seemed like the thing that got us through that was this is a pretty close decoy stem.

There's only so many producers, there's only so many labels. And the number of label s is just getting smaller. There's only so many clearing houses and there's just really fundamentally only so many artists that are gonna to clear sample right there with many matters, managers and layers.

So all those people could talk right and you could say anything clear the sample or right? Or in the case of some very famous songs, forget. And then someone could show up and get out money, which has happened more times than not, right? But it's a closed ecosystem, very different than A I.

You're right, right? And A I is just a massive open ecosystem. And at the top of IT is marked as occur bird in search cha, google in sam altman, who just don't seem to give a shit, right.

Like you hear some lawyer for some artists and you tried to roll up on samm alt men. He's a look I still scarred to hands voice like what you're going to do to me is that is that going to play out the same way as I going to mess here? Because IT seems like there no one has any leveraged with these companies.

I'm sure to be messer because this is such a wider reaching issue. But I do think there is a way maybe i'm overly optimistic and rose color glasses, but I think people realize the importance of music, maybe broader, the importance of art and AI has an impact to cross all the different disciplines of of artistry.

And if we can continue to emphasize the value and the importance of IT and point out that this has a potential to really be harmful to IT, I have to believe in my human heart that anybody would want that to be addressed. And I would want to come up with a solution that made sense, whether the guys you mentioned or in the heads of other companies. I just think there's a way to do IT.

I know everybody y's trying to do their build their companies, make a value for their investors and shareholding. There's a lot of levels to this, but at the base is music. Man IT is music.

We can't have wild, wild west around copyright and ownership and intellectually property protections. Stuff needs to be done properly so that we can continue to tell these stories to to have these emotions in the heart and soul behind these songs. Otherwise, what what do we do IT? We're just going to have the computer make everything. Now you look at A I for other things that are talked .

the same element, because I might be his answer.

I'm hoping to, but I I have to. But he has a favorite artist. I know he does. He has a band.

He grew up listening to his whole life in his bedroom while he was program in some computer. He loves somebody, or he read a book that matter. And we saw piece of art that moved to everybody, has only not everybody, the most people.

So all that to say, I believe in human creativity. I believe in A I, in the power that IT has in hands and amplify human creativity. And there's a way that they can coexist.

I believe a theme of this conversation for me is the attention you have between your members or professional musicians in part of that community and the audience of consumer tion fans. Whenever we write about AI the parts of our audience that our professional creatives are furious, i'm pretty sure that we got more responses to my interview with the city over dobe that basically added up to you should have arrested him.

Any other episode of the code we've ever done because people are just mad. There's general day. I in photoshop.

What do your members say about this? Is are they as upset? Are they as furious?

Our members are split. There's a lot of members that say, AI is the devil, don't be lived in the house and they are fearful rightful. So and then there's another group of our members that are really excited about the power, the potential of A I.

And they're all in they're creating using IT. They're doing everything they can using A I. And neither, all aside is wrong. And again, the beauty of of music or arked or creativity, everybody creates differently. So my role is a difficult one, is to try and serve our membership and our music community fairly and in a way that allows for a bright future for our creators.

Whether that's using A I or whether that's limiting A I or make sure guidelines around AI, it's to be determined but might focus when I wake up as to make sure our human creativity is healthy, allowed to endure. And we continue to make a living. We have a whole group of people who make their money, their living, they pay their renter, take care of kids by creating art.

And we have another generation is coming up that wants to do the same thing because they know how we express ourselves. We know how music can sometimes heal and unite people. Sometimes people be, as I was with the on a plane the day, and there was a woman sitting academi C2Couple she ets ove r on a l ap top.

She's crying. I thought he was like typing a letter to somebody. SHE was programing in logic on her keyboard, crying.

So this is therapy. This is a expression. This is a human emotion.

And so I want to make sure that we're realizing that. And we're realizing, yes, A I is a part of that. How can I be integrated in a way that's responsible and reasonable .

and how very little you go. But I can't let you go that asking one question dying ask whole time who is a Young artist on the come up that people should be paying attention to because I know you have a full view of this industry.

I do. I have a view of some of the cools and best new artist. And music is one of my favorite ts of the job is getting to meet these craters. But i'm going to ruin the question because IT would be irresponsible with me to tell you good the next person where there's somebody that I love because there is just so many and I don't want I don't want you to see as if it's an academy endorsement.

But I will say this, I think there is more new creators making music, making great art than in the history of music, because of the access, because of the technology, because of the Young woman I saw on the plane programing on a laptop like this, because of the fact that you can put music out without their keepers, without barriers to entry. Um you know the amount of songs that is being created in a release, it's astronomic and it's prolific. And so I will say to your question, there is a great new artisan hiphop.

I've now heard a new. Crop of incredible rock bands, which I think we've had a little of a shortage of. I had obviously that the move into country in the popularity there's some great new artist. I love how you're seeing genre bending artists creating different types of music in those genres uh, jazz a revert around jazz and I love and i'm really excited about. So I mean, I don't like you kick out all down on music and new music, but this is a topic that I I love to talk about great music, great new artists and how we're going to celebrate them.

I did my best. That was the harder question, I think I should say for the end. I'm not have to find you when have to talk about music some other time.

Just one out. Thank you. I love IT.

I'd like to think hard remains, junior for taking the time to join me on the coder. And thank you for listening. I hope you enjoy that you'd like the last know we thought about the subset.

Really, anything else? Drop this line. You can email us a decoder at the virtual come. We really do read all the emails, as many of you have discovered recently. You can also me up on threads and reckless trophy, and we have to check out to O, D. You like decoder.

Please share with your friends and subscribe where we are, podcasts, decoder expression, the verge and part of the boxing to pocket network our produces are k cox next that our editor is Kelly, right? Or supervising producers in James that a coder. Music is my breakfast. Later, sooner we will see you next time.

Support for the show comes from alex partners. You don't need us to tell you that A I is reshaping how business is done, but during critical moments of disruption, IT can be hard to figure out how to leverage cutting edge technology with a focus on clarity, direction and effective alex partners provides essential support when decisive leadership is crucial, you can discover insights and learn how to convert digital disruption into revenue growth by reading the twenty twenty four digital disruption report.

A ww dot alex partners dot com slash box that's W W W dot A L I X partners dot com slash B O X. In the face of disruption, businesses trust alex partners to get straight to the point and deliver results when IT really matters. Support for the show .

comes from a new york magazines. The strategist, the strategies, helps people who want to shop the internet smartly, its editors or reporters, testers and obsessives, you can think of them as your shop holic friends who Carry equally about function, value, innovation and good taste. And their new feature that gives out, takes the best of their reporting and recommendations and uses that to surface gives for the most hard to shop.

For a people on your list, all you have to do is type in the description of that person, like you are a parent who's swear they don't want anything, or your brother in love who's an attack janki, or your need with a sweet and the gift scout was. Can through all of the products they're rn about and come up with some relevant suggestions. The more specific you make your request, the Better even down to the a range every single product you'll see is something they write about so you can be confident that your gift has the strategist iller approval. Visit the strategist outcome, slash gifts out to try IT out yourself.