And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 148: Ryan Tedder

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

We are excited and honored to welcome back today’s guest to not only talk about the craziness of his last few years but also an upcoming release, NFT’s, blockchain and the future of music. Today��s guest is a 3x Grammy award winning songwriter and producer who has worked with everyone from Adele to Paul McCartney, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, U2, Miley Cyrus and Lil Nas X in addition to being the lead singer, writer and producer of the multi-platinum selling band OneRepublic. Most recently, he was a writer on both Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande’s #1 albums as well as writing and producing the Billboard #1 song “Sucker” for the Jonas Brothers, which was also the most played song in the world in 2019. Our guest wrote and produced the title track for John Legend’s 2021 Grammy award winning album Bigger Love. Currently he is in the studio working with MGK, Lil Nas X, The Jonas brothers, and Miley Cyrus on their upcoming projects. As a producer, he received the Grammy award for “Album of the Year” for Adele’s 21 and 25, and Taylor Swift’s 1989. As a songwriter, he has received the National Music Publishers’ Association’s Songwriter Icon Award, as well as 3 RIAA certified Diamond Awards and has amassed over 450mm in record sales. OneRepublic’s latest album, Human, dropped on August 27, 2021. It includes singles, which combined have over 2.5 billion global streams: “Somebody”, “Run”, “Somebody To Love”, “Wanted”, “Didn’t I”, “Better Days” and “Rescue Me”, which has been certified RIAA Gold. Outside of music, our guest served as an executive producer and judge on NBC’s “Songland” and a producer on Nickelodeon’s “California Dreaming.” And The Writer Is… Ryan Tedder! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey guys, welcome to Ann the writer is. I'm your host, Ross Golan. I've written with hundreds of artists and writers over the years, and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life, the industry, politics, composition, whatever. So this is a journey of learning why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who write the songs.

I'm producing this with the Great Joe London, big deal music publishing, and mega house music management. If you want to listen to the songs we discuss in this podcast, follow us on our socials, find out about special live events, or buy that merch, aka that hat I always wear. Go to our website www. And The Writer is.com. Welcome to And The Update is.

I'm your host, Paige MacDonald, and this is your weekly music industry update. Epic Games, which is the maker of hit video game Fortnite and Unreal Engine, has acquired the online music store and direct-to-fan platform, band camp. Mushroom Group has launched its new talent management division, Mushroom Management. British pop star Duelipa has been hit with a lawsuit for allegedly ripping off a track by a band called Article Sound System for creating her hit single, Levitating.

Levitating was released in 2020 from her album Future Nistalgia and has been streamed over 445 million times on Spotify alone and has been viewed over 475 million times on YouTube. Universal Music Group has acquired the entirety of Neil Diamond's song catalog as well as the rights to all recordings from his career. David Goldsend has been promoted to head of A&R, Australia, and vice president creative at Warner Chapel Music. TikTok is expanding the maximum length of its videos to 10 minutes. Sony Music Entertainment has inked a multi-platform media deal with Jason Owen's sandbox entertainment. Reservoir Media has extended its partnership with Havana hitmaker and previous and the writer is guest, Ali Tamposi. Universal Music Group has surpassed $10 billion in revenues last year.

It's now double the size it was a decade ago. Christine Pepe has joined the Swiss Music Fintech company Utopia Music as its VP business and legal affairs. Tali Parton has become the latest superstar artist to enter the world of NFTs. Jelly Parton has partnered with Fox Entertainment's blockchain creative labs to launch the Dollyverse, which is described in a press release, as an audience-centric web-3 experience. Talent management company YMU has launched its own record label, Amper Sounds. Universal Music Greater China has launched Capital Records China as a new frontline label focusing on signing and developing Chinese music talent.

Rebecca Ijioma has been named Senior Vice President Digital Marketing and Content Development for Capital Music Group. Ultra Music Publishing has struck a strategic alliance with Warner Chapel Music. Cobalt has signed songwriter, producer, and artist Lauren Aquilina to a worldwide publishing deal, including publishing administration, Global Sync, and Creative Services. Fred Gillum has been promoted to managing director of UK in Europe at Concord Recorded Music. Sandbox Entertainment president and CEO Jason Owen and Sony Music Entertainment's Premium Content Division have inked a development agreement to produce a slate of original long-form projects across multiple platforms and distributors.

Global music companies are reacting to the Russian invasion of Ukraine by halting or scaling back operations. Spotify has closed its Russia offices indefinitely, although its platform still remains operational and Live Nation has stopped promoting shows. A big thank you to Haley Evans of Megahouse for gathering today's news. Now stay tuned for this week's very special episode of Anne the Writer. is. Welcome to Anne the Writer is. I am your host, Ross Golan. We are so excited and honored to welcome back today's rock star to talk about not just his insane last few years, but upcoming release,

and also NFTs, blockchain, and the future of music. He is a three-timey Award-winning producer and writer who has sold over 420 million records internationally. He has worked with everyone from Paul McCartney, Adele, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Jonas, Jonas, brothers, you two, Miley Cyrus, Lil Nas X. I feel like this is the end of one of those 1980s like mixtape things. Or it's listing all the symptoms that you might have if you take this drug, all while being the front man of One Republic. And since our last chat, he's written some of the most played songs on radio, plus his catalog was very publicly sold. He is a art connoisseur, a history collector, and multi-business entrepreneur. He is always an advocate

for artists and writers. And the writer is board ape owner, my friend board ape owner, my friend, Ryan Teter. That's really funny. Saying board ape owner, there's some...

Oh, I see what you hear. Yeah, board ape owner. There's some phonetic issues there that I feel like all of a sudden just got like a not safe for work. Okay, so If you don't know much about Ryan, you can go back to a previous episode and check that out.

But it's been a while. And I wanted to talk to you about a lot of things. You know, I think, first of all, like, since we've talked, which really wasn't that long ago, I remember as soon as we were done, we were talking. You were like, man, my last year would have been nuts if everything came out that was, that was, I was told would actually come out. God, I remember that. That was like my least favorite. I told that story just the other day to another songwriter. I think all day.

I was working with all day. And we were talking about like the ups and downs of songwriting. You have to have the thickest, thickest skin and kind of detach your emotion completely from even what you think might be the best song you've ever written. You just have to like have this weird separation. And 20, I think it was 2017, I think it was 2017, was the year where like, yeah all those had so many first singles slated to come out and just like one by one watch them just like vanish into thin air not a fun year but even now it's really hard so you can have a lot of first singles and and you you know you try to tell people that it's why it gets into a

numbers game and some of it is because even if you had a shoe in and we can list a bunch of major artists who've released singles that were flops this year yeah yeah yeah You know, like what is a hit now? A hit now, that is the ultimate question. I think there's two layers, or I'd say even three, three types of hits right now. And a hit can happen. You can have a song, you could be an American artist, drop record on Spotify. It blows up overseas, but then never converts in America.

And you can, and the inverse is true as well. And then in the UK, you've got 75% of the records that are hits, are only in the UK, and they are UK-based artists, like Grime-type records and, like, girl groups and stuff. You know, I used to judge a hit by saying, and everybody has different justification. Some people say, Billboard No.1 only. Okay, cool.

But Billboard Number One, there are countless Billboard Number One's that die at radio and don't go anywhere. Yeah, they don't make money. You could have a number one song that you, and you could have number one songs at Hot A.C. that get licensed like crazy. He talked about this, yeah. I mean, Max told me years ago that his, at the time,

his biggest earning song was a pink record because it lived at Hot A.C. For like two years. And I can tell you firsthand, being an artist with Wonder Republic and other songs I've done, that really do well at Hot A.C., that's like the freaking gravy train, man. God bless the Hot A.C. format. Other countries don't have it, but it's like the dream, right? And then if you're Alicia Keys and you have a hit, it's the best thing in the world because you get rhythmic top 40, hot AC, AC, urban AC, like you get like nine formats. But a hit right now, look, 150 million streams is platinum, right? Back in the day, you would say, if you have a song go three or four times platinum, that's a hit. And at least in the context that I would measure it for one republic, a song doing three, four times, five times platinum, that's a hit. You know, now. Now, you can have a song that does a billion streams, which is phenomenal. The label's happy.

And it was a hit in some places. But a billion streams sounds like a smash. A billion streams is not a smash. That's a hit. I feel like the number keeps moving as more people get on streaming. But I would say that everyone has their own definition. I think that anything that gets beyond like five, six hundred million streams, for me, I go, that was a really successful record. Right. Now, radio, the catch is right now having success in the music industry the reason I said you have to shed any emotional attachment

to once the song's written keep the emotion in the room when you're writing it the moment the song's done you better like cut off that umbilical cord because you will be tortured with the hit songs that you your manager your publisher your your band your whatever your mom knows and swears as a hit record

and you're going why is this not getting cut? Why is it not coming out like what it's you know so and so already cut it you know and they're sitting on it like i know bieber cut it what's like when's it coming you know and you'll kill yourself with that stuff Spotify streaming in general and social media has democratized has ripped the gates off and democratized music uh almost to a point not almost to a point where i think music has suffered a little bit um i had a vice president of a major record label say to me a few months ago for the first time in my career I cannot say that the best song always wins.

And he was telling a story about how in a label meeting, they were having songs from one of their artists that nobody liked, that converted to streaming monsters and smashed because they got picked up on TikTok, turned into a meme, and like just took off, right? And I'm not going to name the artist or the song, but he told me and I was like, oh my God, you're right. Like, that song's not actually good.

He's like, it isn't, but it's smashing. Because the videos that are associated with that lyric on TikTok have gone viral. And so therefore the song is now streaming. Yeah, it makes you end up writing songs where it's like a drop on the word like margarine. And then everyone like grabs a stick of margarine and like does like a meme with it.

And it's made 10 times more than that heartfelt record that you wrote with Adele or something like that. You have to, you know, I'm lucky that I'm, and I mean this, like I consider myself lucky and extremely fortunate that I still am able to have hits. And to any degree, for me still, because I'm old school, a true hit, unless you own the masters or participating in the master's streaming royalties, like you have a deal with a label where you co-own your songs, whatever, unless you're one of those lucky few, radio, and you know this is still, at the end of the day, it's what paid for this studio that I'm sitting in.

You know, this streaming didn't pay for this. I know I try to explain that to younger audiences. When we, you know, we had that thing, the pact that came out where we were talking about not giving publishing to artists who don't write. And part of the issue that we found, younger writers were like, well, what's the point? What's publishing worth anyway? And that is so, and then you're talking about this generation of writers who've sold parts of their catalog. which we can talk to about in a second. And they're not connecting that value to what they're doing in a studio.

So they don't mind giving 20% of their 20. When that artist's like, it's just 5%, but it's 25, that one writer has 25%. And it's not, it's 20% of that writer's share. And that writer's not even thinking about it because like, well, who cares? Let's give it. It gets us a record on this big album.

It's, look, there's a, there's something to be said for making records with your friends. That's what I get to do every day. I love doing it. I had a bunch of sessions with Lewis Capaldi back in December, November, December. And it occurred to me. It occurred to me. And I talked about this on the first time we did this podcast. I'm also started long enough ago writing songs.

I'm one of the lucky few who, I wasn't, it was just me. So I was like a lot of my biggest hits were 100% me. Like there was no co-writers. I came from the Diane Warren School of Songwriting. I thought that's what everyone. I literally thought in Oklahoma, oh, so you sit down and you write a song by yourself. Like I had no clue that there were like all these other writing, like famous writing partners that were smashing it. And I didn't have any brothers or sisters I was living with.

So it was like, okay, I'm just going to do this. Now, cut to call it 2010-11, the songs that started smashing radio in the. the charts had an average of five writers on them, four or five writers, right? Sometimes more. Kanye and hip hop, nine writers, right? You look at like more recently, what's the smash? A stay. Phenomenal record, Bieber Leroyden. There's nine riders on it. Now, they might not be split equally, but if it is, then that's rough, because those percentages get hacked. Yeah, you're getting 11, you know, you're getting whatever it is, 11.1 cents, you know, per- It changes to records get handed off, and then someone does a little bit, someone does a little bit, someone does a little bit, and it goes 5%. I'm dealing with it right now. We have a lot. I did Portugal demands, lead single that came out today. And the record was over a six-month process touched by so many people that you're going to see more names than you're used to on that song for a Portugal record. And it's so one person did something that was really significant. Okay, that's worth 5%. The thing is I'm not going to cut people off at the knees when they actually contribute.

And then you have stuff like where it truly is, four or five people walking into a room. And you can honestly say everyone really did it. Little Knod's X, his current single, that's what I want. That was me, Blake, K. Bezzi, all in the room, Slackkin, everybody firing on all cylinders. And literally, if you were, if you filmed the whole thing, you would say those five dudes wrote that song and everyone contributed. And but there are so many times where that's not the case. I mean, you read, you watched Get Back, right? I'm sure you did, the Beatles one.

And, you know, you're seeing, if that, if the Beatles came out today, there'd be nine writers on those songs. You'd have the four guys and then you'd have, you know, at least one producer, if not two, plus the engineer. And then you have these random guys being like, what about this chord change or what about that lyric? Even the guy who is the, basically the stenops. who was writing down the lyrics for everything would probably claim that he was in the room if this was 2022. And, you know, and let it be is not Lenin McCartney. Let it be all of a sudden. I've had to, people can smell blood in the water.

And because what the reason that you're seeing these splits happen the way they are. One, when it started with, you know, guys like Kanye, who everybody admires, having 18 credited writers on a song or producers. You have young up-and-coming writers looking at that going, well, Kanye is rich. He puts out songs with 18 songs, with 18 writers. And they correlate those two things. They think, well, clearly he's still making enough money. Newsflash, like, no one makes money off those songs. Like, you probably end up negative when you actually do the math.

But he makes great art. Wait, you should say that again. If you're part of a song that has 10 writers. You are not, you were, if you were part of a song that has 10 writers, unless it is, let me use a great example, unless it is the single biggest hit song in a three or four year period, you're not making enough money to buy a house. You're not, you're not, don't go, don't go get that McLaren. Don't go get that Aston Martin because that is all the money you're making. You'll make enough to buy the Aston Martin, but that's it. Like you're not going to, like, you want to get the nice whip and you want to get like some go to Gucci and shop for a day, knock yourself out. That's all. You're spending all of it. So, and let. It's so. It's. It's so. It's. It's. Unless you're selling the futures on it. The reality is there's only maybe two songs a year, any given year, that become lifetime evergreen copyrights, that have true intrinsic annuity value for the next 20, 30 years. You can't predict what songs those are.

Typically, they're the songs that achieve the most airplay because that means they have the least burn. And there's something about them that people just can't stop listening to it. And that tends to become, you know, endemic. last forever. Perfect example. And by the way, the Hot 100 number one songs are not, like the biggest Hot 100 of the year is not the song that's going to last forever, like, despite which popular belief. Prime example, play that funky music, White Boy, I think peaked at number six or seven the year it came out, 78, 79, whatever year it was. When I used to be back in the day, when I first got signed to Sony A TV for a co-pub deal for One Republic, I remember the

the lady that ran it back then, Kathleen, told me, I said, what's the most valuable song, a licensed song in Sony ATV? She said, you're not going to believe it if I tell you. And she's like, guess. And I started naming obvious records, right? She goes, play that funky music white boy. I was like, what? She goes, that song makes like millions every year, like clockwork. And it peaked, it wasn't even in number one. It was like number seven. And if you asked everybody in America, do you think play that funky music white boy will stand the test of time and be still be being played 30, 40, 50 years from now. Everyone would say no, absolutely no.

So you can't predict what those long-tail records are going to be. They just get in the- Bruce Springsteen sold his catalog for $500 million and has never had a number one song as an artist. He only had a number one song from a cover, from the Man for Man cover. Bruce Springsteen has never had a number one song and has like nine evergreens.

Yep, nine evergreens. I mean, you know, I can tell you even for my own experience, my band. Our biggest song in concert was probably the least performing single off our third album. And it was a single, but it all sudden got picked up. Which one? I lived. And we do concerts. And everyone's like, I graduated to this. I went, I got married to this. I went to a funeral and they played this. And it's like, I can't go to a Whole Foods without hearing it. So you can't predict what those songs are, but getting back to the publishing and splits conversation, the reason it feels like more of a bloodbath now and you finish a song and magically two or three more names pop up saying, hey, don't forget about me. I want 5%, I want 10%. It's because having hit records has now become a volume game. And I was going through my old sessions from like 2008, 9, 10, up to like 1415. It is shocking how few songs I wrote per year. I wrote. I wrote,

two songs a month? Two songs a month, right? And the ratio of songs I had come out as singles and succeed to the amount of songs I wrote was nuts. Like the batting average that during that time period was so high because I wasn't having to compete with like a billion people to get a single. And and when a label told you, you have the third single on Maroon 5, right? It was a commitment because there was no streaming. You could. You couldn't just change your album track list, like post-album drop. You couldn't just ad hoc switch singles. Once you planned, you said first, second, third, even a fifth single, dude.

I had a fifth single with a group that was like their biggest airplay record on the album, and it was the fifth single. And I got told the week the album was coming out, you have the fifth single. And I was like, sweet. 15 months later, that song came out and smashed. And that would never happen now. It would never happen because, Well, also because that band is not having the same kind of couple of years that they used to have.

Correct. But still wasn't albums out? You're not getting five. No, you're right. You're not getting five singles. So I always say to people now, I go, and they say, oh, it's a single. I go, no, no, no, no. There's two options here.

You either have the first single or you have the next single. That's it. There is no, oh, it's going to be third. It's going to be fourth. That doesn't exist anymore. So everyone now, because it's so hard to get songs to go to radio, anyone, if someone, If somebody walked past my front door and heard me playing the music through the windows of my studio, like, they're like, wait a minute, publishing.

Like, you can just, that's just what it's turned into. And so I've had to write. How many songs do you write now? I do on average, unless I'm doing, like what I, unless I'm finishing production, like, I was with John Legend all last week, rapping up a bunch of stuff. Unless I'm in the rapping stage during a typical week, I will do a song a day, sometimes two um it's like so like tomorrow i'll just i'll be i'll be transparent um so like uh today i'm trying to remember what my session is later today i have i have a session today i just try to remember what it is um

tomorrow uh i have like i'm in with uh maniskin and um jesse murph uh on columbia um and then like you know the next day is also i'm with one republic and then uh maniskin and then so like it It pretty much averages out to a song a day, I'd say, something like that. How do you have time to be a dad and a husband? It's very simple. During my day, like during the waking hours, it has to be completely efficient and maxed out. So even stuff like I don't go to almost any like events. Like I just my carte blanche answer is I'm busy.

I just say I'm wife and kids, wife and kids. Like, I'm not, you know, like this week especially. Like, there's three, three events that a lot of my friends and peers are going to. I'm not going to any of them. I don't do, if I'm going to do a social occasion, like I'm actually having lunch with my wife today, like in like two hours. We're going to go have like mid-afternoon lunch. It's difficult. I'm not going to say it's easy.

It is difficult. There are nights when I go late. I try to be home to have dinner with the wife every single night. I pretty much make it. This week we shot a music video. The last two days we've been shooting a video, so I missed both nights. But that's the rare exception. On most nights, I'm home for dinner with the wife.

The kids eat way earlier. So I miss a lot of dinners with them, but I end up hanging out with them and I see them in the morning. Our school's four minutes away from our house. So there's certain things like, and we switch schools because of that, like this year, like to give us back 10 hours a week as a family. during my day anyone if you've around anyone who works with me or or for me or whatever it's it's frenetic it's like literally goes if i have nine hours i'm filling nine hours like there's very little time that i'm i'm still dressed in my like workout clothes because like i want to get my miles in the day of exercise i got half of it before this zoom i'm going to get the other

half after and then i have a meeting and then i have lunch so i just maxed i I operate. I used to wait tables for years. I loved it. I'd probably still, if the, you know, shit at the fan, I'd still go back to waiting tables. I love talking with different people. But I was the, I was the nut job that would, you know, you weren't supposed to have more than three tables in your section. And I was the nut job that had six. Because like, I would, just because it kept me. Yeah, you've been, you've been Ryan Tetter your whole life. You've been me my whole life. So like, I like, I like the energy, man. I'm like an energizer bunny. Tell me a little bit about like what it means to sell catalog.

What it means to sell catalog? To sell your catalog means you are aggregating, taking every song you've ever written up to a date that you determine, that you decide and say up to this date, every song that I've written, all royalties going forward, I'm going to sell. You can also sell your producing royalties and your artist royalties if you choose to. And what happens is private equity companies, funds, giant music fees. funds that buy catalogs, they're buying cash flow, right? Cash flow is king in almost any economic up or down scenario. And so you've got guys that are betting on a long-term value of music going up and up, which I believe in. And so what they will do is, depending on how old your catalog is, the maturity of it is what they call it, the vintage of it, how old is the catalog, and what

is your average annual income averaged over, let's say, the last three years. They'll look at the last three years and go, here's the 10 year average. If your catalog is 10 years old, here's the five year average, here's the three year average. And of those songs, which of them, they try to identify are lifetime copyrights. Like iconic, this song, you know, all opinions assert that this song is going to be one of those evergreens, right? Which is, that's the more nebulous guessing game. You just get, that's like getting lucky. They assign a multiple. So they'll say, let's, I'm going to use a number.

Let's say you make a million dollars a year, right? You make a great living. You make a million dollars a year off of music, your royalties. Let's say your catalog is 10 years old, right? It's a pretty mature catalog. And it's average a millionaire. They're going to look at that and go, ah, all right, that's consistent. It stayed around a million.

It doesn't really deviate that much. If anything, it's going up because the long tail of streaming. we're going to assign a 15 times multiple to that number, and we are going to advance you the next 15 years of earnings now in exchange for taking it over. They give you 15 million. They take the ownership of the copyrights. You take the 15 million, and you get to pay a much smaller tax rate because the government considers it a long-term gain.

So you pay 20% tax. And that's really the idea, is taking the money off the table, paying lower taxes, having use of that money to reinvest, use it for your life, use it for your house, you know, whatever. And that's kind of it. In multiples range, anywhere from 10x to in extreme cases like Springsteen and Dillon 30X and anywhere in between. But I'd say the average for the last year or two has been somewhere around 15 to 15, 16, 17, something like that. You don't have to answer this. But when you sold your catalog, did you add in your producer points or writers share or any of this stuff.

I threw in the producer points. And I did two kind of two catalog sales. I did like a 25% sale like four or five years ago. And then the one that happened in the last year was the remainder of that. Got it. And I assume like in that would include things like Sucker and but maybe not Lil Nas X, right? So you're making your new catalog is basically what we're talking about. He hit number one today with that song.

It popped for a tough for the radio. Thank you. So, like, I'm, I'm, uh, no, that is like, it's funny. And I, I did a new admin deal because my admin deal was up, uh, with downtown. And so I became a free agent for the first time in a long time. Ended up going with, uh, doing admin with Sony. And I texted Big John and Amanda the other day. I was like, I think I signed with you guys 60 days ago.

I was like, I'm doing my best to earn it back. I sent them the screenshot of the, of the chart, the building chart. Um, yeah, I'm trying to rebuild it. I mean, I'm not, that's not why. I'm writing, but like I'm... No, but it doesn't hurt to incentivize. I know most of the writers you're friends with, like, have, we've all sold some part, if not, you know. And so every, you know, in Nashville, that's what they do. They sell their catalog every three years. Yeah, well, that's,

here's why. So also, it's the thing to consider Nashville, you'll end up getting lower for those that are listening that are country writers. The Nashville multiples typically are lower because of what I talked about 15 minutes ago. Hot AC. Hot AC is a radio format that plays recurrent songs, which means that a song, like perfect example, Maroon 5, girls like you, which I think broke the record, you can land, you can hit number one on that chart and stay there for 20 weeks. And that is a format that has like tens of millions of listeners. It's a big format. The hot AC format is almost as big as the entire country format. So hot AC though, we'll play a song forever, forever.

They'll take songs from five years ago, 10 years ago, and still play them. With country, there's only about one song a year. Usually it's typically the biggest hit of the year every year is about the only song that will be recurrent at all. So once you hit a number one in country, you get number one for a week, two weeks, three weeks, if you're lucky, and it goes down, it vanishes. And they're not replaying that song. And so the money you make over the next 24 months is really the 90% of the money you're going to make off the country song.

My country song was part of my deal. And it was at that point, I think it had been, it was number one in 2014 and by 2017 or 18. Like it was making less than most of my album tracks. Yeah. I started the year. My first song that I think counts towards my new. catalog, so to speak, was, I started 2021 with a country number one with Lady Anabellum. I don't own much of the song, but it, we hit number one the week before Christmas,

and then it lasted the two weeks after Christmas. I think because they froze the chart. Like, but here's another little cheat code to all the writers out there. If you're going to get a radio hit like a top five on any format, aim for peeking right around Christmas time because what happens is our friends at IHeart Radio and, Cumulus and CBS and everything, they freeze the chart, right? So, A, you're going to be competing with a lot of Christmas music. But if you're, like, in the top three or five, they freeze the chart and you basically

buys you two more weeks at that position, wherever you are, locked. It doesn't go up, but it doesn't go down. And it's basically like a Christmas gift of two weeks of like tens of thousands of spins. And it's amazing if you can time it that way. Yeah. All right, we got to go to NFTs. Like, that was really, originally I hit you up because I was like, we want to do an episode about like the future of music and the future of art.

And you are on the cutting edge of NFTs. You've gotten involved in it. Yeah. What is an NFT? An NFT is a non-fundable token. Why would it be valuable? It's just a JPEG. It's just a JPEG.

Yeah, no. So the analogy I use for that. Let's talk about the artwork. First of all, it's important to note. NFT creates, I think NFTs have created more FOMO than I've witnessed in a lifetime just among, like, what should be reasonable, successful adult males. Like, there's a handful of women that are into it, but it's like 90-10 guys to girls right now. It's going to, it's going to invert.

But it's not just artwork. So, you know, and define art, right? So Gary Vee and I've talked about this a lot. You know, you can walk into the Louvre and take a photo of the Mona Lisa, print it with a high-deaf camera, print it hanging on your wall. Do you own the Mona Lisa? No. Like, and I know it, you know it. Everybody else knows it.

So the whole idea of just take a screenshot, oh, now I own it. No, you don't. And it's also like wearing a fake Rolex. Like, you know what I mean? Cool. If you're cool doing that, that's fine. I used to rock fake tags in college that I bought in Chinatown. But it's beyond that.

NFTs, as it pertains to art, there's a thing called a smart contract that exists on the blockchain. It's a permanent ledger, digital ledger, that lists the identity or a series of numbers and letters that are basically your address, your digital address, saying, Ross Golan purchased the BoardApe NFT for 0.5 Ethereum, right? Or $1,500, $1,500. $100, board ape NFT, he owns it. Now, if you sell it the next minute to me, permanently minted, or listed on that blockchain, will say, Ross Golan sold the board ape NFT that he bought for 0.5 Ethereum to Ryan Teter for 1.5 Ethereum and so on and so forth for infinity. It's transparent.

It's peer to peer. It's not governed by any. There's no middleman. That's part of why people like it. It's called decentralization. That's why people like it. You don't have like some bank in the middle or some broker in the middle that's just taking fees just because they exist in the middle. It's cutting out the middle man.

And in terms of the value for music, look for artwork, 98% of all NFT projects will fail. Meaning if you buy in them, even if you buy in them early, you are likely to lose some or most of your money. 98% will fail. There is a handful that are like restaurant. It has a worse success rate than restaurants. It's probably the same as music. I mean, all things consider, people release music all the time. More than 99% of music that's released.

If you make it into the global top 200, like, it's funny, you do this business long enough. I get frustrated if my song, if I have a song hovering in the 50s and doesn't get into the 40s. Because, like, in my mind, I'm going, come on, you know, like, if I'm not in that top 50 page like I haven't succeeded. The reality is sometimes I check myself and I go, dude, you wrote a song that cost you nothing to write and your 52nd, it's the 52nd most listened to best song in the world right now. Like, like, come on, come on, come down. Don't be so hard on yourself. Yeah, most songs, most songs are absolutely going to fail. There's 75,000 uploaded a day. How could they all succeed? With NFTs, most projects will fail, but ultimately,

do you like the art? Do you like the community? Right? So a lot of NFT information and the projects. It lives on what's called Discord. D-I-S-C-O-R-D. It's kind of like a clubhouse, but more aimed at tech. And that's really where the NFT community has embraced it. The two platforms that NFT and crypto heads love is Twitter and Discord. I hate, I don't use Twitter. I hate it. I got off it years ago. So I don't really hang out there but um discord is where you can find out about upcoming projects as nfts pertain music and this is where it gets interesting um there's a lot of companies right now that are doing different types of music related nfts some companies are let take young artists uh producer writers they write a song and permanently sell it the existence of it everything to one sole owner who buys

it for a certain amount of ethereum that thing goes to other buyers and they that that i have a friend of mine that loves that stuff. I can't wrap my hat, wrap my head around it because I just can't. Good for you. They see it as collecting art and they're not wrong. That is more music for pure art's sake. But a lot of these young producer writers will sell their songs on these crypto exchanges or these, these platforms, websites, auctions, whatever. And they'll take that money. They'll take that money. They'll use it to buy a nicer microphone, a new guitar, recording equipment. So I actually think, I'm telling you right now, if I was 18, 19, 20, getting into the music industry, 100% I would go on one of those sites and try to sell some music NFTs to fund my studio, right? I mean, I sold the only car that I had to fund my studio.

So I would sell some NFTs. Plus you get, as the NFT continues to sell, you know, you'll get 20% of the resale value. So 10 to 20, sometimes as low as, for instance, board apes, they only get, I think it's two and a half or, it's between two and a half and five percent. So it depends on the, you, here's what's great about it. You establish the rules. It's a smart contract. You can say, you can write into the blockchain, into the code, every time my NFT gets sold again, I get 20% of the profit of that sale. So if you sell for one Ethereum, $3,000, let's say. The next guy buys it for two Ethereum. That's a difference of $3,000, right? And in the contract, it says you get 20%. So you just made $600 additional because of that transaction. And for infinity, by the way. So it goes on, for infinity, which is insane. That's one way to do it. The Blau approach, Royal, which is a company that I invested a little bit into, really excited about what they're doing. And I'm just, I'm excited slash curious about the music application because here's the upside. With Royal, you can, if you are Nause, let's take Nause, for example, the rapper, not Little

Nause, Nause, OG. He's sold 50%, I think it was. I think it was 50%. It might have been 100, but I think it was 50. 50% of all the of the future royalties on the master side, like the master ownership, he sold 50% of two songs as NFTs on Royal. So let's say you break down a song, you take a song and you go, I'm going to sell 50% of this. They write it into the contracts at Royal. They auction it off into, let's say, a thousand NFTs, okay? Varing degrees of, of, like, rarity. So some of these NFTs might, the floor price might be higher because it comes with an autographed NAWS thing. Or, like, the most valuable one might come with a face-time. You get a 10-minute face-time with

Nas to talk about the two songs, right? And so you overpay for that. But for all intents and purposes, let's say you break down the royalty stream of a song into a thousand NFTs, 50% for now and forever. Here's what's interesting about that. The upside is that now your fans, if you're an artist, your fans, nothing is cooler than the idea of me going to a one republic concert in Belgium and a bunch of fans that show up. They own pieces of the songs they're hearing in concert. that is all right so on paper in theory phenomenal idea having closing out the label scenario and having a true one-on-one relationship with your fans where they're the ones that share in the revenue not only do i love you know if you're elton john fan and he's somehow sold the part of the royalties for um tiny dancer imagine sitting there

and hearing hold me close the tiny dancer and then you're like i own a piece of this song and i love elton john so it's a great um it's a great theory. I think long term it's going to work, but it will change in terms of how it monetizes. So that's the upside. The downside from my perspective is, and I'm not just referring to Royal. I'm just referring to in general, this is the part I can't wrap my head around quite. I think I do think music is headed in the NFT space. I do think for newer artists, I think selling NFTs, sharing your royalties, funding your albums that way instead of doing Kickstarter or GoFundMe, you're doing it. NFT launch. I know me and 23-year-old me, who just moved to LA with One Republic, I would have done this. So I know that inherently I like the idea. Where it gets tricky is let's say you sell 50% of the royalties. Here's where it gets tricky. Nobody, 99.99% of your fans don't know shit about monetizing streams. They don't know that we don't get paid that much at all from streams. Maybe one day, 10 to 15 years from now, we will. And we'll do another Zoom with gray hair where we talk about,

man, aren't you glad that we're getting paid so much? But that is not the conversation today. And so my fear with doing this, like if I was Wonder Republic, if we were to do this, my fear is if we sell 50% or 20% of the royalties of a new song that we're releasing and the NFT market, because they're, because they're fans of Warner Public, the NFT, our fans start buying them from each other, The price goes up and up and up. Let's say you have a song that at most will make $100,000 in total streams at most. And I sell 50% of it. Totally the most you're ever going to make is

$50,000. But because our fans don't know the value of streaming, they have now paid $500,000. They have now over-traded each other. I'm benefiting from that because I'm getting 20% every time they swap it, I'm getting 20%. So I've now made, as an artist, 500 grand, or not 500, but let's say I've made, I've made $250,000 on a song that will only make $100,000, and I only sold 50% of the royalties. So now I've got fans. My biggest fear is to ever put my fans in a position where they're upside down on an investment they made in me.

So that's the part I'm trying to wrap my head around. And I haven't, I can't figure it out. That is really interesting because I think we know some of the same people in the music space who are doing NFT stuff and they're really bullish on it because they don't understand it. And a couple of people have sent me some of these songs where the song, the structure is bad, the song's not good, but this random artist who has 15,000 followers on Instagram has sold a song for 15 Ethereum or something like that, which an Ethereum, you know, token right now is probably about $3,100 or $3,000. So it's like, it's a lot of money for somebody to invest in a song that is worthless, except I will say this, if that MP3, or sorry, if that NFT were to give you access to backstage meeting you every time they're, they come to a concert and show a ticket,

then all of a sudden you're like, well, you may not get anything back from that. But as like we're doing, I'm, you know, we're selling the wrong man NFT. It will actually be released. I believe the week this comes out. It's the first, the first animated feature musical NFT. It's a full-length movie and there's perks that come with different levels of it. Plus, we have different artwork depending on which one you get. It's on TerraVirtua.

It's like, it's been a whole like six-month thing to figure out how to do. do it. But it's been fascinating to be like, what does this NFT give you? And, you know, the idea of giving you an experience that in perpetuity you'll have some way to interface if we do this kind of show or we do this kind of thing. And so that's been kind of interesting. Not the 20% of the master, but what do you get along with that 20% of the master? I think there has to be, the thing that all successful NFT projects will have in common slash currently have in common is they offer a value proposition. They offer a utility beyond just that ape.

I have a handful of board apes, right? I was lucky I bought them when they were a lot cheaper. And explain the board ape thing because it's the biggest of them. And also you told me get a clone X. Like you're on your shit when it comes to NFTs. explain what board apes are. How many do you have now? I have a handful. I'm not going to say. I'm not going to say. You shouldn't. Okay. So why... I have enough that they're worth too much.

Why would you spend $300,000 on a cartoon ape? Well, first of all, I didn't spend $300,000. Why did Bieber? Beaver just spent a million dollars, $1.5 million. So we now live, as much as you and I grew up in the analog world, I grew up in the, so did you, in the age of the internet. I've had a computer since I was six, seven. People are like, you know, when they start talking about, like, digital art, like what in the world is just a, anybody can make that.

Like, why would I want to own that, that even though it's limited edition, why would I want to own that piece? We live in an analog world. And I go, do we? Open your phone right now, click on screen time. How much time do you spend today? We don't live in an analog world. We divide our time between a digital and an analog world, pure.

Anyone that thinks that thinks we don't, that unless you're living in Montana in the woods and only reads newspapers, you're living in a digital world. So let's get down to the, let's talk about the flex thing for a while. I don't own a ton of watches. I own a small handful that I really love that have like inherent value to me. And there are pieces of art. This is, and I don't wear them.

I actually wear mostly my Apple watch now, to be honest, because I've become keenly aware. And part of it's just getting older. And if you get older and you do well and you make some money, the need to broadcast to people that you've done well and you've made money goes down or should the older you get. And so I don't need to roll up to Starbucks and flex on everybody with my crazy rose gold Patec Philippe. You know what I mean? Like or whatever, you know, bling down.

Now listen, I'm not throwing shade or hate at people that love to like flex. I mean, on Floyd Mayweather, for example, like everything he wears. every outfit costs $900,000. Like, that is a thing. People choose to commit to that aesthetic. God bless you. That's not me. But what I found is there are way more people that like to do that than don't.

So I'm in the minority there in a world where people like to broadcast that they are a part of something exclusive, that they are, that there's something unique about them, that they know something you don't, that they know about an upcoming artist song, art thing that you. that you don't know yet, right? Everybody likes to do those little things. Hey, did you, even on a base level, you're at a dinner party, and you bring up the Netflix show that you've already watched the whole thing and no one else has seen it.

And you're like, I'm on my shit. Like, I know what's good. I know what's good. Check out, you should be watching Ozark right now. What are you doing? So we all do it in subtle little ways, these tiny little flexes that we do, tiny little flexes to, it always says something about you,

that you're with it, right? That you're on, as you said, you're on your shit. So digital art, board ape. That's what this is. So I have, this is one of my favorite watches, right? It's an 1968 old watch. Hardly any, but like no one's cutting off my arm to get this watch because unless you know watches are, you're not even going to notice that I'm wearing this, which is how I like it. I don't, I want to be low key. Now, the thing is, if I was flexing, let's say this is some crystaled out diamond-plated Rolex, right? The only people that are going to see this, the only people that I, I, I can display my taste and watches and that I've been successful are the people I come into contact with during the day at a coffee shop, at school drop off, you know, whatever if you have kids in a writing session, right?

Well, guess what? And in a typical day, you might run into 25 people, right? Go, the average person on their Twitter, on their Instagram and their socials has like, call it 500 to 1,000 people, right? And then if you're talking more in like entertainment, millions. hundreds of thousands of people, followers, tens of tens of thousands, et cetera. Posting a board ape, a crypto punk initially was aimed at the crypto community saying, I'm with it. I'm part of the community. It was a badge saying, I'm part of this community. I believe in cryptocurrency. It's going to be the future of how we transact and payments and everything.

And the NFT is the artistic. It's the banksy way of saying, like, I'm part of this culture and I'm here, right? board apes now have turned into the new diamond-plated Rolex, the new Patech-Felite, right? Because if, if little baby or like if, you know, M&M or who, I'm trying to think of somebody that would like, like a young up-and-coming artist that's like all Floyd Mayweather, right, can only show us, can only show people, so many people, his cars, watches, and whatever. But on Instagram, on Twitter, on TikTok, if he cops a $5 million super rare board ape, that is literally like driving a Lamborghini past all of his followers at the same time.

And as vaping and gross as it sounds, at part of its core, it is a digital flex, right? When we all heard about NFTs initially and the idea that, oh, no, this is going to be people's profile pick. We all heard it. And yet all of us were like initially most people were like, I'll wait a little bit. I think that's pretty crazy that people are spending thousands of dollars. Yeah. Which now if somebody said like, hey, you can buy a board A4.4 Ethereum. You'd be like, if it just came out today, you might be like, I don't know if I want to, but I'll spend a thousand bucks on this. And it slowly spreads and it starts in the entertainment community because we're the loudest and the weirdest. and then it eventually when it hits critical mass is when my mom in Tulsa is like asking me about

board apes or nfts or has is transacting in cryptocurrency and like now you have a company that's like one of the fastest growing companies in crypto called moon pay um who he Ivan the founder moon pay is the guy that's been getting all the recording artists and actors and guinness paltro he's the one that's been getting them board apes well it's it's super savvy because Culturally, board apes have exploded, and largely in part to moon pay. His company monetizes, he is the ramp, the on and off ramp in every NFT transaction. Look at it like a realtor. There's two realtors, two brokers on either side of selling a house.

He's on both sides. He's the broker on both sides. And they just launched a part of their app. They just launched a feature that allows you to, for the first time ever, if you have an email address, you can buy NFTs. You don't need a wallet. You don't need a Metamask. wallet. You don't need crypto. You don't need to know crypto anything. You don't need to, like if you can't spell Bitcoin, it's fine. If you don't know what an Ethereum is, it's fine.

If you have an email address, you can now buy NFTs. And that's kind of the beginning of this thing going to Main Street, which will just explode everything even further. I mean, that's what we've been saying. So it's still pretty difficult to buy it until it's not. And once it's not, then everyone who has one, it's going to look good. Are you in the metaverse? Like, are you going to buy land next to Snoop in the sandbox? I will, yeah, it's funny enough. I was looking at plots like a month and a half ago, two months ago. I will probably get something, but let me be very clear about this.

For me, it's more, I'm constantly curious. I'm insatiably curious about a lot of things. And when something has me curious, I kind of scratch at it. And I kind of have the need to understand it. You have to be careful with NFCs. You asked me earlier, how can you, how can you, you know, balance your life and music and parenting and like all these things together. Well, what you can't do is spend all your time like trolling NFT sites and like hoping that you

get the next drop. So if I'm interested in anything, my assistant handles it and he's on it. I've got friends that do it now like kind of enough that I can just piggyback on them. I'm not trying to. It's fun. At the core of it though, man, it is fun. I got to be honest. It's fun getting in that community and understanding it. I did my. my NFT drop in April. So like that seems like forever ago. Almost a year ago I did an NFT drop and was very happy with it. I met some amazing people who are now good friends as a result of it. And I love the community. I do think crypto is the future of how we transact. I think NFTs will extend into homeownership. I think the contracts for imagine imagine listing

a vacation rental, a super killer Malibu like two bedroom on the beach. And imagine breaking it up into 50 NFTs, right? Yeah, the first week of January is this NFT, the second week of- The first week of January is like the most expensive of the NFTs. But anyway, you get where I'm going. NFTs are going to, it's going to be commonplace. Houses will be bought and sold as pieces of NFTs or NFT contracts. The contracts on the blockchain make more sense than contracts in the real world.

That's the reality. And we live in a digital world. I think that, you know, Gary V. What I've gotten into it as early as I had, like the big reason is I've known Gary V for years. We're good friends. Our mutual friends, one of my closest friends of all time is his best friends. So like Gary and I have talked about all kinds of different things in early stage investments and things for years. So a big part of it, I attribute to Gary just kind of like texting me furiously with a bunch of people on coffee saying, you guys are sleeping.

You're sleeping. You're missing it. I have a thing that I'm doing I'm not going to announce it yet because it's coming soon but there's something that I'm doing with like one of my board apes that will be in collaboration with someone else. Who also has?

And that that is going to be the first of its kind. When are you announcing that? Hopefully in the next few weeks. I don't want to soon because we're kind of we're sprinting towards it. Yeah, cool. You know, the Metaverse thing's really interesting. With Sandbox and, you know, DeCentral Land,

I know, like, there's this one on Cardano that I was just telling Joe about a boss cat rocket club that has, like, it's crazy how these things are getting built, and it's crazy the access. I mean, you'll be... But do you want to live in it? Because I don't. I don't want to...

No, but I don't you have a dream that... I have a dream that my son is going to grow up in a place. where he's going to be like, phones are not cool? Like, why would you be on a phone? Yeah, so here's my thoughts on the Metaverse. I mean, look, Facebook, meta, whatever, lost $10.1 billion in the last like five months building out the Metaverse. I think that I was talking with a label executive this morning. She's like, sorry, I got to go.

I'm running to the airport. I got to go to New York. I was like, what for it? She's like, I have to go there to be in the studio for, 90 minutes with fill in the blank artist who I won't name in the control room to listen to some stuff it's freezing I don't want to go I don't want to get on a plane and expose myself to COVID I'd rather just like stay home but I have to show up this part of my job and she was kind of like bemoaning that she had to do this she loves the artist but just like like I you know six hours

there five hours that that's where the metaverse for me becomes valuable if nobody wants to slog around I don't want to go to Chicago in January. You know what I mean? If I don't have to for a meeting or where the real win is for me, selfishly in the Metaverse. And this is the only types of applications I see, but I think that's probably how they hook you in. You use it for one thing. Well, now I'm here.

I'm in some digital office building like, oh, what's that? Oh, it's a Nike store. What the hell? Like, I see where it can go. But, dude, it scares me. I got to be honest. Like, I'm, I am pro using it for very focused, like, songwriting session. Imagine being able to go on vacation for a month, like wherever you want in the world, like go to France, go to the islands, go to Cabo, Hawaii.

But in your mind, you're like, you're like, man, I really don't want to miss that one session with so-and-so. Like, I don't, Miley just asked me to write and like I physically can't be there, but I'm free that day. If only I could just transport myself to that session. That's what I want them. I want like, is it what we're doing right now? Yes, yes, but no. So. I get it.

I'm just being, I'm asking like as the, you know, Zoom sessions, though. Like, right? It's two, it's two dimensional. There's an emotional, like, you know, when you say, like, you, when you, when you, when you, when you, when you, when you crush something, right? There's a, there's a, there's an emotional bit crunch on when you do Zoom. Because it's that two dimensional thing. I've had really good success with Zoom.

Like, you know, got like Ariana cuts on my first Zoom session I did ended up being on Ariana's album, like at the beginning of the pandemic. Like, I all praise. Zoom, right? We all should have invested in Zoom day one. But, but I can tell you firsthand, the amount of artists, especially young ones and young writers who do not, do not play with Zoom sessions, it's 90% of them. They want nothing to do with it. But if there was a visceral, like, I can't tell, like, if I'm in the Metaverse and someone over here goes, I got an idea idea for this song, and you turn, and then if all that stuff works, and, and, if, if all that stuff works, and and we physically feel like it's happening, you know, man, like you could be in Bali,

sipping a Mai Tai and, like, and show up in a session in Studio City. That, to me, is amazing. What if we go to Bali and we just have a session in Bali? See, that's better. See what I mean? That's way better. Last two questions. What NFT should we be investing in now?

Um, I hate giving, like, investment advice. I would say, you know, a few weeks ago I told you about Clonex. those went up you know i i i've doubled i advised uh another manager friends of ours the other day j bugs uh on um that morning he was texting me randomly hey what nfts are you into i was going for a jog and i said uh crypto skulls are getting pumped right now they're going to they're probably have a great day he bought like three or four sold him and made a bag of cash in the time that it was me my during my jog like my 45 minute jog he literally was like i just made 10 grand like it's like oh my god and so you can do that you can play the market um 98% fail the ones

that are interesting to me the future of i'm i'm not doing a lot of speculative nfti bime right now i've kind of cooled my jets i got world of women i got board apes i got like mutant apes and clonex and all the other stuff doodles i think doodles are still probably have a ways to go i think that will still keep climbing i think getting a a world of woman uh nft i feel like um even if you bought one at the floor right now, the world of women, it is more likely you will make money than lose money, in my opinion, on the world of women NFTs. I think there's what they have coming this year, what's coming, even as expensive as board apes are, what's coming this year? I know what's coming, you know, because I'm tight with that team. What's coming is massive. And so I think that as crazy,

expensive as it is now, I think it's only going to go up. And I think that the ones you have to focus on, for 2022 my focus is going to be gaming period if I'm going to get an NFT it needs to be one that is the plans are for it to function in a game whether that's Fortnite Roblox like Minecraft like the utility within gaming is the future

of NFTs in my opinion that's the future of NFTs for 2020 and 23 what games some of these companies are making their own games right and then you can play to you like actually earn tokens and money and all this stuff to win. Shock surprise, I don't have time to play video games.

I love video games. But you can still own, you can still own it like alluvium and Ninja Protocol. And like there's so many of these games. A buddy of mine, look, a buddy of mine printed, took his board ape. He manages an artist,

printed, made a bunch of t-shirts. Once you buy a board ape, you own that IP, you can make a cartoon. You could make and sell a cartoon to Netflix. You could make merchandise on all your touring stuff, if you wanted to, which I'm going to do. He made 50 grand in 24 hours selling T-shirts with his board ape on it.

So the utility is up to what you want to do with it, right? It's like anything, the more popular the NFT project becomes, the more valuable your thing becomes, the more you can monetize it. All these things, though, like, again, I know people that do this full time. they buy and trade NFTs. I still like writing songs. I like my core business. I'm keeping my eye on the ball and not trying to be. I got distracted for a minute with that stuff because it's so fun and it's sticky.

It's addictive. But now I literally was like, done. Like I'm cool my jets. Like people still, I'm on the group text with a ton of people about NFTs. And I pop in once a week and read it like if I've got time to kill. I just, you have to be very, you have to be cautious. You have to actually care about it.

and don't play with money you can't afford to lose. Like, just don't. Just don't. Like, it's, you know, it's, there's a little bit of, it's still early days, there's a little bit of Vegas going on. So you have to be careful. And again, focus on ones that if you see that a company, an NFD project, has already struck a deal with Nike, with Adidas, like Clonex did,

with EA sports, with Microsoft, if Disney, if there are deals in place with major corporations where there's like cartoon usage or video game usage coming down the road or tokens, those are the ones to focus on. If it's just, hey, here's another gorilla like with hats, right? Or here's a rip-off. There's so many rip-off projects. Everyone now is launching an NFT. Everyone.

And it's like, well, that's why we were trying to do something, not trying to do something unique. We just are doing something unique in that space to be a first in it. Be the first, which you are, and that's critical. If it works, it works. Well, that's kind of like with me, if I pull off this thing, this music thing, we technically would be the first, you know, like we were the first band, the first artist, American artists to get to get paid for a concert in crypto.

You know, we got paid. We played a show in Vienna, right outside Vienna, the day before Austria closed its borders back in like November. And at the last minute, I was like, I want to be paid in Bitcoin. And they were like, what? How do we do it? So we used Strike, which is the Bitcoin payment app, and we got paid via, I think it was like from Barclays, London, or however they wired it to us, but it got sent through the app.

And it, the money converts to Bitcoin for one one hundredth of a second and converts back to your currency. So you don't need crypto to convert, to send or receive money worldwide. You don't actually need to touch crypto. You can use apps like Strike and just zip, it's way cheaper than Venmo, way cheaper than PayPal. And so I think there's, you know, there's a lot of cool. Is there any environmental issues? Like, people mention that all the time and I'm always like.

Zero. When you're sitting and receiving, if you're using the Lightning Network, there's no environmental issues. Imagine a giant pond, right? Still, still pond. And you take a pebble and you skip it and it touches the surface of that pond and jumps to the other side of the pond. That's effectively the Lightning Network. so you can use it to send and receive money.

Like fans can pay for stuff. Oh, the tipping inside of Twitter. You can tip now on Twitter. That's strike. That's their company. Is that a publicly traded company? No, it's a private company. But yeah, it's a fascinating.

I know Diplo, of course, was the first on that using the tipping. But all the tipping in Twitter now worldwide is using the Lightning Network using strike. So there are ways to engage and use crypto without knowing anything about it, without being savvy. You just have to be paying attention. Do you book your sessions or does your manager book your sessions? Like, how do you, like, how, you have? Yeah, I both. The manager requests sessions occasionally. I'd say 50% of my sessions or more, maybe 60, 65% are me texting with one of my main

co-writers. So like, like, I just jumped on two sessions this week, texting with Rami over it at MXM. I jumped in a session with Ilya and Omar Feddy texting, but then I got request, the Lewis Capaldi sessions were their management talking to my management. And like, you know, I have days with Manaskin coming up that were, you know, management asking me. And so it's kind of a mixed bag.

But it's, it's tricky. It's tricky to. keep all that stuff balanced and there's still those days where you're kicking yourself because you, you know, you end up getting accidentally double booked or something didn't get written right. What about you? Do you do management or do you do them? I do it. And same thing. I mean, there are certain co-writers that I've had really good success with. So I tend to write a lot with the same people. It's like when younger writers are always like, you know, when they ask to get in the room or something or like, all they want to do is get in the room. You're like, you don't want to get in the

room with me. You want to get in the room with one of your friends and make a hit and then everyone goes to you guys. And I have like a few people that I've had like a lot of success with. So it's like, why would I not continue to write with them? Of course. But I mean like, you know, if when we talk about doing a random session or something like that, then it's like, yeah, let's do that. Because more because we'll just end up talking about, you know, the, you know, the original lyrics outside your door or like we'll talk about all kinds of things. And then will write a good chorus or a good song and I know that that'll happen so it's like it's just easy 100%. I really am at a point now where I need to enjoy what I'm doing and I'm not trying to do two

sessions a day and I respect you for doing that kind of hustle and I see the numbers game in it. But I also have like a publishing company and unknown music's doing well and I've got my musicals in New York and the wrong man stuff. You're an oscillator. I mean, the key is, the key is diversifying. I mean, everything that you're doing is creative. I think that the key is there will 100% be a point for me that, and I know it's coming. I don't know when, but I know it's coming in this decade where I pedal down the sessions

tremendously and it converts into overseeing the publishing company as well. I know it's coming. I think what I'm trying to do is like buy time because I know I know that there's only so many, you know, but then like I'll get in a room with like writers that are been doing it longer than I have by a decade like Rami and I'm like, bro sitting here on his second session of the day. Like and I'm just like, holy cow. But this is that, that world, the MXM world works in that way where a lot of them,

One of them, I was probably in the studio next to you while you were in with Rami and I know the artist with Omer and everything. Like, we, you know, we were having the same conversation next door and I was talking about all these things that, you know, and we can offline about some of the publishing stuff because there's some really cool shit happening. But I was talking about it and I was like, why don't you start your own thing or why don't you invest in these things? He's like, then I'm an investor. He's like, I'm a songwriter. And I'm just a songwriter. And I really respect it because Max is that. Although Max invests and stuff.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And he's at a different place in his career. But, you know, a lot of those guys in that world really focus on writing. They are a songwriter or they are a producer. And I wish I had that in me. Yeah, you know, I do too. Like, I am pretty sure that my. wife would absolutely be stoked if um if all i did was just write songs like like and i the truth

be told is i have to i told you i get curious i scratch an itch and i explore and decide if something is or isn't for me and the last 10 years has been me the reason that i think i i do as many things as i do now is the thing that people forget or i often forget when i'm too hard of myself is i was on the road for over a decade touring. So my whole world from age 21, 20 to 36, my whole world was writing and performing music, nothing else. And finally moving back to L.A., getting off the road, taking a break from a republic, finally saying,

oh, my God, am I own, can I, like, in this lifetime, will I only ever be good at this one thing? There's so many things that I'm interested in. So I think the last handful of years has been exploring those. I've definitely decided on certain things. I want them out. I don't want to do that. I didn't like that.

That's not fun. And I'm the same with you, though, now where it's like, dude, if it's not fun, forget it. You can only fool yourself so long. If it's not fun, we got, if you got into songwriting, you got into it because you wanted a fake job. So don't give yourself a, don't go digging up a real job when you don't have to. You got the fake job. You've already won the lottery.

If you make a living writing songs, you have a little. you have won the lottery, period, period. I don't even mean being rich. If you make a good living and you have a roof over your head and a car you can drive or an Uber that you can afford, you've already won. Dude, the entrepreneur thing is really funny because, you know, everyone thinks entrepreneurs mean that you're rich,

but it doesn't. It means you're your boss. 100%. 100%. Is it very different. You can make $20,000 a year in some places on this, planet and and not have a job. I don't know where that is, but you can make, you can make, you know, enough money not and not have a boss. Yeah, 100% man. That was the only thing I cared

about. I didn't, my goal, I think I mean, I said this the first time we did this podcast, my goal at spoken goal to my parents as a songwriter, actually to my wife, I wanted, I was living in Nashville. And at the time, uh, you could, if you made, if you made 15, to 70 grand you could have a house this is now this is wow this 20 years ago yeah you could have a house you could live um comfortably you could enjoy the weekends you could not be stressed out and so i was like if i can make 50 to 70 grand uh writing songs that means i'm making a living and i've and to me getting any songs coming out was like success period success right and as you as you would achieve certain things though human nature is to move the bar right how much is enough we're all

asking the same question and the bar keeps getting moved and at a certain point you do you like the people that i the people that i'm jealous of on occasion are the people like you said who just goes i'm just a songwriter and you can have all that other stuff like any of the other things that aren't songwriting it's out it's out for me i just do this and that's okay But your personality is like you want the six tables. You could have just been, you could, that's the problem. And, you know, we've been these people since we were young enough to have those jobs. Yeah.

And that's the, that's the issue. It was never in the cards for you to do that. It'll never be in the cards for me to do it. And I still have to deal with that emotionally, that it'll never be, I'll never retire and be like, I want to think I will. Yeah. But if I do, I'm going to just be writing a book or a musical again. or something else. The only way that you could

force me to retire, I know this about myself, I'd have to physically remove myself from the geography of Los Angeles or New York. I'd have to be like monocito. You know what I mean? I'd have to be, you take me up there.

I love it. I love that, all of Northern California. Like put me someplace like that or on an island somewhere and I would have to force myself, you know, geographically to chill out.

And at some point, Like probably that's the healthy thing to do. But for now, you know, I'm still enjoying it, still learning, still trying to, you know, master the craft. And you're still chasing that elusive hit just like everybody else. And only now I'm just having to write five times as many songs to get one third of the results. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, or you write the same amount of songs. You take one, you know, you take, well, I guess that would be like a tiny percentage of the results.

but yeah, you have to just be willing to, yeah, I mean, it's a strange thing because either that or like it, you know, or you can live in the metaverse. Or you can go outside. It's a beautiful day, man. It's a beautiful day, man. Like, you go do the rest. Go do the rest of your, go do the rest of your workout. Yeah. Go jog in the metaverse. Your avatar is going to be ripped. And, yeah, man. Thank you. again for, for, we'll just keep doing these because like, it's so informative for everyone to

just, also it's nice for people to know that like the music industry is actually like a group of nice guys are also just trying to figure it out. Man, we're just trying to figure it out, dude. Like honestly, I'm just trying to like, just trying to figure out and, you know, cross my T's dot my eyes and, you know, get my mortgage paid. Just like everybody else. All right, man. Thank you. All right. Thanks, man. Talk soon. See you. Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer Is. If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist,

or visit our website at and thewriteris.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us. You can also like us on Facebook and Twitter. And The Writer Is is produced by Joe London and published by Big Deal Music. A special thanks to David Silverstein from Mega House Music and Michael White. Until next time, this is Ross Golden.