Some More News - Deleting Spotify with Max Collins of Eve 6

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

Hi. Max Collins, the lead singer of Eve 6 (@Eve6), talks with Katy and Cody about Spotify's shitty pay system, the exploitation of artists, and how other major artists could force a change. Plus, we get some stories about the Third Eye Blind guy and talk about Donald Trump's stupid fake social media site. Support SOME MORE NEWS: http://www.patreon.com/SomeMoreNews We now have a MERCH STORE! Check it out here: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news Don't sleep on savings. Brooklinen's Presidents' Day Sale is right around the corner. Listening after the sale? You can still get the deals of your dreams at http://www.Brooklinen.com with promo code MORENEWS! Secure your online data TODAY by visiting http://expressvpn.com/somenews. That's http://expressvpn.com/somenews and you can get an extra three months FREE. You can get 15% off your Raycon order at http://BUYRAYCON.com/somenews. That's http://BUYRAYCON.com/somenews to save 15% on Raycons. Athletic Greens is going to give you an immune supporting FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit http://athleticgreens.com/morenews today. Follow us on social media! Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenewsSupport the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello and welcome back to even more news the first and only news podcast my name is katie stole it so is my name is cody johnston furthermore is furthermore and joining us today we are delighted to tell you we have singer songwriter from eve six and manager of their much-loved Twitter account, Max Collins. Hi, Max. Thanks for having me. Oh, we're thrilled to have you. No, it's great to be here. Yeah, love slash reviled, hopefully maybe a little bit more of the former. 51% love. Yeah, there's a ratio.

Yeah, it depends of the former. 51% love. Yeah, there's a ratio. Yeah, it depends on the day. Look, we don't all poll at our highest. That's what... It's just life. That's how it goes. Right, right. Real quick, before we get into the news

and chatting with you, I got to acknowledge that today, February 18th, is Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day. Perhaps the best holiday our dear nation celebrates. Do we celebrate that? I mean, I celebrate this a lot. I always have.

I celebrated it once on my birthday when I was a child. It was great. Yeah, it was a nice little birthday treat. I'm sending you ice cream for your birthday breakfast this year. Are you? Okay.

With pennies in it. Boys, do I... Men, I'm sorry. Gentlemen? Lads, do either of you eat ice cream for breakfast? I don't think I've ever had ice cream for breakfast. I eat a lot of ice cream, though. Sure.

Yeah, it's more of a basic kind of, you know, post-supper routine for this fella. I would say that you aren't addicted to sugar enough in that case. You haven't lived until you had a morning scoop of ice cream. I'll give it a try. I'll do a belated ice cream for breakfast day. There you go. Let us know how it goes.

Katie, what are you doing to people? Why are you forcing the ice cream down people's throats? Okay, look, I'm not going to say do it every day. And I should clarify that I do have ice cream for breakfast frequently, but I don't have a whole bowl. I'll have like a little bit. And maybe it's not the first thing that I eat, but it's like in the morning. Honestly, I've paused a workout to have a bite of ice cream. That's right. That's.

Well, that means you earned it. No, you earned it. Is there a go to morning flavor? Well, OK, this is going to be disappointing for everyone. There is a go to flavor in my life and it's embarrassing because it's vanilla. Oh, my God. That's not embarrassing. That's mine. it's vanilla oh my god that's fine who loves vanilla i do everyone loves vanilla ice cream everything but my favorite gosh i love a fruity ice cream like a strawberry but i love a vanilla it goes with everything you can put fruit in it you can

put chocolate chips in it then you got yourself a chocolate chip also a favorite ice cream i could talk about ice cream for days boys lads gentlemen and we just did we did on the important day just real quick i just want to say i'm not like mcdonald's vanilla ice cream is maybe like my number one but other than that like i'm a chocolate person but um mcdonald's like softer vanilla is i don't know that that's like that's that's cynical but we can move on wait no we can't because you brought up a true thing this is mcdonald's ice cream i postmate myself mcdonald's ice cream frequently late at night one time i kept trying to do it and they kept canceling it. And then finally they called me and they said, our ice cream machine is broken. But I love that McDonald's ice cream.

I crave it. That soft serve. They're always broken. Threw a drive-thru with my kids a few weeks ago to get the McDonald's ice cream. They were really excited and they were out of the ice cream. So we had to drive to a different location. But look, these are the stories you're going to get from the Eve Six guy, so buckle your seatbelts.

Ooh, yeah! Hey there! You know what's coming up soon? President's Day. Boy, we just love President's Day on this show. What's my favorite president, you ask? There's just so many good ones to pick from. There's that white guy, the other white guy.

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ExpressVPN.com slash some news. ExpressVPN.com slash some news. And start watching the Harvey Keitel classic, U571, today. You can do it. I know you can. This is exciting. We're off to a great start. So, Max, you and Cody connected on Twitter about probably lots of things, but specifically here today about Spotify.

And we've been avoiding talking about this topic, knowing that you would be coming on in a couple of weeks. So we saved it for you. I mean, as we all know, everyone's talking about fucking Spotify because of fucking Joe Rogan, because it's a day of the week and it extends throughout our entire lives. We're going to talk about Joe Rogan for the rest of our lives. Yeah. So this guy, he's a podcast guy. He's fine, whatever.

He's not fine, but whatever. Anyway, this sort of led to people wanting him to be removed from Spotify because he has this hundreds of millions of dollars deal with them to get his podcast on there. And this sort of started a conversation less about get rid of Joe Rogan on Spotify and more just about Spotify being not a good company or platform for artists. And they've never been. And the amount they actually pay artists compared to the $200 million that Joe Rogan gets.

And I think that's sort of a more interesting conversation to have and more important topic. About the platform in general and how it treats artists and how people even make their living as a musician these days. There's lots to unpack. Because even if, like, we'll just get out of the way, even if they remove Joe Rogan from their platform, someone else will pay him $100 million and he'll be on rumble or whatever and spotify will still be paying jack shit to our

artists who work hard yeah i mean the thank you for finding this part of the story interesting more people have than maybe i suspected would but there's still a lot of noise to cut through on it. Yeah, I mean, Spotify, as I think more and more people realize now, pays a pittance out in revenue to artists and also gave Joe Rogan $200 million. And that's sort of where the Joe Rogan part being interesting ends for me. It's like, he's important to this story in as much as he, you know, highlights this like just obscene disparity.

And like, it's a platform that was built on the, on the backs of musicians, artists, and allied workers. built on the backs of musicians, artists, and allied workers. And the thing that's most insidious about it that I've found people's kind of jaws to drop more than any other tidbit is the ownership that labels have in Spotify. So that, you know, for a band like ours who signs to RCA, BMG, Sony, Sony are the overlords.

Sony is one of the owners of Spotify. And they did these deals. The deals still aren't fully disclosed to the public. They were done secretly. They were backdoor deals. They were backdoor deals. And so like my dumb band, and I emphasize that because I realized in some ways I'm the worst spokesperson for this, but, but believe it or not,

Eve six in 2022 gets like 1.3 million streams per month. That's what we, we had like this past month. Like we average around a million per month. All of that money goes to the master owner, the person who owns the recording, the entity that owns the recording, which in our case is Sony, who also is an owner of Spotify. It's really fun how that works. And so that's what I've been really kind of banging on about. It's like Spotify is, you know, more interested in, and the labels, frankly, are like, are interested in Spotify's speculative, you know, value, are interested in Spotify's speculative value,

whatever it is in the imagination on a given day, that's where it's at for them because they're owners. So when the 0.003 cents per stream goes out, goes conveniently to the master owner, they're making money. They're profiting off of us, master owner that's they're they're making money they're profiting off of us but they're also profiting off of spotify's right financialized value or whatever oh boy so i do i do do you find when you talk to people that people at least think that you're getting that whatever it is third of a cent per stream or something are they shocked to hear that you're you know

not even getting any of that residual uh income yeah i think they find that pretty shocking and and like that's not the case for every artist like um that's the case for our band because and for many others i mean but not not all um because you know we made three records on a major label and the way that that works is they pay for stuff up front that you have to pay it all back and that's not just the cost of the recording but that's you know all the dinners they take you out to and tour support marketing marketing and press and every, you know, when we made our first three records that Sony has ownership of, I mean, that was sort of during the last gasp of the big money, you know, sales music industry. And there was a lot of money being thrown around.

Like, you know, did we benefit from that? Of course we did. Like, you know, we, we were a band that people have, have heard of, but the deals in and of themselves are exploitative. I mean, they always have been. those deals are mapped on to a streaming technology that wouldn't exist until 14 years after we signed the record deal and expected to stand like that's fine um and totally cool even though there's this trust of bad corporations and ceos profiting insanely while artists get jack shit. And this, like, well, I'll let you guys I can like, fucking go on forever about this stuff. This is fascinating. This is fascinating. We don't know anything about it. Yeah. Also, you were, if I'm not mistaken, 16 or 17 when you signed that. That's so young. if I'm not mistaken, 16 or 17 when you signed that deal. That's so young.

Yeah, that's right. I was 17 and our guitar player, John, was 16. We were juniors in high school. So yeah, we were legally underage when we signed that deal that mapped onto streaming in 2022. Doesn't seem like it should be legal. Well, first off,

yeah, making deals that young, but having it, but now it seems ridiculous to have that same, to not be revisiting that. I don't know when I, when I first like started kind of when I, I did a thread about this,

that like when went viral a couple, a couple of weeks ago and shortly afterwards, I was like, I'm fairly pessimistic about systemic change happening in the music industry, but I'm fairly optimistic that we can give Spotify and their shareholders a really awful month. awful months. Um, I, that much is happening, but I fear that they don't give a shit because they're not thinking that they're, they're projecting out, out way further than that. And, um, I, I, I sort of think that what it would take for them to be caused enough pain to maybe change their practices would be for, you know, a massive artist or a few to pull their stuff from Spotify and kind of, you know, make noise about this particular you know fair uh uh streaming use worker side of the story and i just don't know that they are i feel like artists who are in that place

are maybe too comfortable to care possibly have have been able to negotiate better terms for themselves because of their, you know, uh, power and clout and stuff like that. I don't know that, but, um, I'm sort of suspicious of it because I feel like maybe more would be saying something if that weren't the case. Um, I guess long way of saying I'm like not particularly hopeful, but at least people are hearing, I think, this side of the story pretty clearly for the first time. Some people are taking action and deleting their accounts or canceling their premiums and switching to title which is what we've done we don't have the power to remove

our sony owns records from spotify um because we don't have you you know, shockingly, the cloud of someone like Neil Young who can write an email and jump. But we are taking down the stuff that our current label owns, stuff that's come out in the last year, which obviously doesn't come anywhere near comparing to the streaming numbers, but it's something. And we're taking a cut in our advance for that. It's worth it to us to do it. We changed our banner on Spotify to Delete Spotify. So if you go to listen to E6 on Spotify, you see a big green banner that says Delete Spotify. We got that from the inimitable Belly. Another

band who's been loud about this. So we're sort of doing what we can do and doing stuff like this with you guys. And I'm grateful for you giving me the platform to just tell people

it's easy. It's easy to enough to do to switch to a platform like title, which is, you know, not enough, but significantly more than Spotify. And Spotify is the giant, they're the Goliath to tap the stranglehold on streaming. And if they can, if they can be, you know, cause enough pain to change, like that sends a message. So that's sort of my, you know, I guess, pessimistic, optimistic, you know, convergence there. Thank you. I mean, yeah, you know, it is incredibly informative. I feel like I've spent a lot of time or not a lot of time, but plenty of time I've thought this can't be good for artists. I know this isn't good. We're going to find out some bad things. And then, but we also,

and it's kind of similar to just all the streaming channels that you have. There are so many places where you can store your music. And it's been such a transition for all of us that used to have a physical copies of our CDs or cassette tapes or records or whatever. And now everything's streaming. And so you finally land at a platform and you feel almost like they've got you. Because what are you going to do? Go and rebuild your whole music library? Yeah. Yeah.

Go and do that. Okay. So real quick on that note, this is important. I was going to mention it a second ago and then spaced on it. But you can now move your playlist from spotify to other other platforms with relatives yeah this is huge that's totally doable i'm kind of a luddite and don't know exact but i know people have been i know it's possible and relatively easy to do to move all of your

shit from spotify to title or napster i should say who pays the best which is okay i'm funny yeah it's incredible it's very incredible um good for them yeah um yeah i know like i mean you have an old even an old quote from like when napster was doing the other thing uh and i know like a lot of artists were just like no like download our music for free and listen to it it means you'd like our band yeah exactly and the and people sort of can conflate the two I've been jokingly referring to myself as Lars Notrich because I've been like so annoying about this. But the thing is like when you have a spot, when you have a Spotify premium account, like you're giving your money to

a trust of awful corporations who are exploiting artists and then giving $200 million to Joe Rogan and then investing like Daniel, like the CEO has invested, I think it's $114 million in defense tech, you know, that that's, that's where this money is going. So like, I don't have a problem with people stealing. That's like, I mean, that's orders of magnitude more ethical to me than paying a premium Spotify subscription. So yeah, it's not, this is a different fight with different terms than the, you know, Lars Napster thing or whatever. What do you think it would, like, how many, if like Drake and Ariana ariana grande and bad bunny whatever the top five artists yep on spotify art would it like would they be able in short order to ensure some changes if they all were like we're

pulling our music off spotify unless you i what i don't whatever the if the demand is a penny per stream or if it's just uh renegotiating with the the the whoever owns the publishing rights i don't know exactly what the um yeah specifics would be but like is that what you think would do it well uh the specifics are pretty much exactly that that's that's what uh the union of musicians and allied workers which is the union that we're've been aligned with, is asking for is a penny per stream and for those deals that Spotify made with major record companies to be made public. that if artists like that were like, this is exploitative and maybe we're not super hurt by it because we're already extremely rich. But there are a lot of middle working class musicians who are being exploited. And it is a worker's rights issue. And people bristle at that and I understand it because

it's like making music is fun or at least can be or at least is some of the time but a lot of work goes into it too and like I don't know I want I want the next like great American songwriter or band guy or rapper or whatever to be able to afford to do what it takes to forge a career by making shit by writing those songs by by being creative rather than, you know, having to get another job working for a corporate company or something or work at Starbucks or something else like that. Like, I would like art for artists to be able to, to make art. I kind of think it's important. So if they did it for, if, you know, and it is, cause it's like, I mean, we all know like music that you, that speaks to you

has the ability to like change you to like pull you back from the edge to put you back together when you're shattered like uh you know uh yeah sounds dramatic but like no it's not i'm just gonna interject and say cody knows this every day if, if I'm not recording, I put music on. It's vital to my focus, to my energy, to my mood. If I'm sad, I need to dance. I need to do it. And 30 seconds of me just dancing to something I fucking love, and I'm in a different stratosphere. And it is mental health. It's everything. It's art. Yeah, absolutely.

And I want people to be able to make it and people can only make it if they can like keep the lights on, you know? Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know if you guys saw Rob Delaney's post, but he did a post on Twitter where he was like, I'm pulling my stuff from Spotify that has nothing to do with Joe Rogan. This has nothing to do with any of that stuff. This has to do with their, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but, you know, exploitation of

artists. If those were the sounds that the artists you just mentioned were making, I do think that that would move the needle certainly more than the fucking each six guy you know what i mean but like just wondering because like um it seems like that was i was gonna ask this earlier um i didn't realize i'm looking delaney's post now um and it seems like the kind of thing that like if if neil young and joni mi Mitchell did what they did, but about this, it seems like that would have had sort of a snowball effect more than why they did it. Well, because this is something you can get behind versus, oh, we need to make a stand on Joe Rogan. Because Joe Rogan is, like you said before, well, Joe Rogan is Joe Rogan. He'll keep Joe Roganing.

Exactly. Like you said, Cody, at the top. If Spotify drops him, he'll get another 200 mil from someone else and he'll keep doing what he does. So I just feel like that is just this uh i don't know i'm not i'm not on board with that side of the story i i don't i criticize joe rogan all the time on twitter and stuff like that and also neil young you know immediately jumping to shilling for Amazon who exploitation even far greater than Spotify does, pays artists

worse. If he wants to fight the good fight, he should be fighting for artists. Yeah. I should say also as much as wanting to bring the contracts that were made between Spotify and labels to light and the sort of extra layer of exploitation that's there.

Like, even for most of the artists who are affiliated with the Union for Musicians and Allied Workers are independent artists. They're not artists who have, they're successful in the independent artists, but they're not artists who are with major labels. So this, this grievance isn't just for people like me who have corporations who own their masters. I mean, 0.003 cents per stream is, is an insane, you know, an absurd, you know, absurd you know payout so like it ain't just that that's just an aspect of it that is is also important and also one of the demands of the union that's been you know completely ignored by spotify as was like asking for a penny per stream specifically during the pandemic when artists lost you know their only viable income source which is live now right because there's nothing people don't buy shit

for the most part uh artists don't get paid from streaming so it's live like you know if you're if you're if you can tour and work that way, you can make some money. That got throttled, obviously, and completely taken off the table. So the fact that Spotify completely ignored those requests for a penny per stream during the fucking pandemic, the fucking pandemic um you know doing what all of these platform capitalists do which is say but we're barely profitable um meanwhile during a time when they are going to be way more profitable because people are not doing anything they're just listening to spotify yes like that's where all the ears yeah exactly exactly big time so they're getting even more there and they're also conveniently finding 200 million dollars to give to a podcaster so

you know yeah it's it's it's wild man this is this is maybe a dumb question because i don't understand the music industry very well but could you since you don't own those masters could you in theory go the route and record like inside out parentheses eve six version and like the taylor swift like re-record everything yeah yeah re-record the burn book album or something the burn i don't know yeah goodies go to the titles titles we we could do that there are a lot of artists who are obviously taylor swift did that the thing with that and why it's not why it it can sort of get in the way of of the story that we're trying to tell here is first of all, that costs money, right? It costs money to record, especially if you're trying to approximate a recording that was done with a

major label budget and stuff like, you know, that's going to take, yeah, it's going to take money to save your fractions of pennies and cut back on the avocado toast. Right. And it also just, I mean, kind of sucks to do like i think i i don't know

i i we did do it for a song that we had on the out cold soundtrack that is like you know kind of one of our like most requested live songs sort of like you know pseudo pseudo hit and we did a re-record and it and it came out pretty good we're gonna put it out um but we did that more because it's not available anywhere and i don't even think the label that i don't even remember what label put that out but i don't think they exist anymore. So, um, yeah, it is something that artists can do and, and then get the, get their whole 0.003 cents per stream. But it's still a whole 0.003 cents per stream.

And remember that's also like, you know, that's being split up. Like that point. Oh, three is being divvied. So it's impossible to make any money unless you're Taylor Swift. Hey, now it's a Raycon ad. You ever wail on a guitar so hard that you fly across the room?

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Raycon, put them inside of your ears. Put them inside your ears! What are you? Oh, hello. Listen, we all know that I could easily take you down in a fight. Why? I could kill you with just my legs like Sonya from Mortal Kombat. And part of the reason why I can is because I take care of all my nutritional needs.

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no i mean i i was i was what 16 years old when uh i was watching inside out on mtv it was on mtv what year was that what 97 i mean you would know 98 yeah it's 98 yeah yeah i was trying to remember because yeah yeah so i was i was you know watching you're a big part of all of our growing up mtv every day so i'm just like curious um well i know that this like a lot of this like twitter fandom got started with you going on Twitter and asking certain celebrities if they liked the Heart in a Blender song which is very funny which is a very just a funny thing to do

and I was it's a great bit and I was curious who's like the coolest or most interesting person who actually responded to you that they did or didn't like the song yeah I did get some good ones. Trying to think.

Marianne Williamson responded with a yes and exclamation points. Classic. That's amazing. What a thrill. Yeah, I'm trying to think of who else. Someone else asked Vincent D'Onofrio, and he replied, and then he and I got in a little back and forth and then I think he thought that I was making fun of him but I was just trying to

continue the bit I don't know the coolest one for me it actually wasn't a do you like the heart in a blender song it was just at the beginning of the twitter thing like a year ago. And I just I tweeted I was once Agent Cooper.

Now I'm Bob and Kyle McLaughlin. Someone must have alerted him to it because I didn't tag him or anything. But he quote tweeted it and said, it's a journey. So that's that one. That's cool. Yeah, that that was probably the coolest one but there were so many i mean megan mccain unsolicited was like i like the heart in a blender song and i i just ignored it yeah yeah wait like last year or like recently she just like

tweeted that randomly no this this was a year ago. She's since blocked me. Okay, she blocked me like three years ago. So any Meghan McCain story, I'm like, wait, when did that happen? Yeah, yeah. No, this would have been like in the first couple weeks of the Twitter going apeshit. Oh, she hasn't blocked me. So if there's anything either of you ever want to say to Meghan McCain.

Just shoot me a text and I'll let her know. I'll pass it on. Ask her what I asked her when she blocked me. Okay. Which was who's your dad?

Yeah, okay. I'm on it. Ask her who her dad is. Okay, yeah. I also just wanted to ask, because it was announced this week that you're writing a memoir called Heart in a Blender, and I wanted to know if you've started writing yet

and if you've got a bunch of stories stacked up that you're looking forward to sharing. Yeah, yeah. I have, and I'm doing it with a guy named dave wedge and luke o'neill who you guys might know do you guys know luke yeah look um like i'm aware like we don't know each other but yeah i know i've been a fan of luke's for a while like i i discovered his newsletter it's a hell world right i don't know what it is. Yeah. Well, welcome to hell world. And, um, he did a hell world with me and this was in the first couple months of Twitter.

And then he like re, you know, re posted about it a few months back. And that got the attention of, um, the publisher that, that we're with now. And there's definitely going to be some stories in there.

It's sort of like, yeah, it's sort of, it goes into a lot. It goes into, you know, I guess some of the sort of predictable stuff when it, with like, you know, addiction and shit, attendant to marginal fame um and and uh you know ensuing mental illness so there's fun shit like that in there there's also um yeah a lot of a lot of stories a lot of tales from the road and yeah i'm just really happy to be doing it with these two guys in particular because i respect them and i love luke's writing that's exciting i can't wait to read that sounds right up my alley um is there a an artist or like a musician who you've like met who like either surprised you at how like cool they were or didn't surprise you about how like shitty they were?

Good question. I'm trying to think of anyone who surprised me because they were cool. That's sort of the thing. Actually, I guess he is a musician too, but he's more well-known as an engineer. But Steve Albini, who I've just recently, like in the last month or so, become friends with, like it started out with sort of like a good natured Twitter feud. And but then, you know, we started like messaging and we just did an episode of that Talk House podcast together where we just, you know, talk for an hour.

And he is principled to an almost alarming degree in general, but like, especially put in the context of the music industry, like this is a guy who has never taken royalties because he thinks it's unethical. So he turns down royalties on in utero, uh, you know, not to mention all the other, you know,

incredible records he's made that have sold many copies. Um, he still works for a living. Uh, he is just a, an impressive dude. And, um,

I've definitely found myself thinking, man, it would have been cool to have like a mentor like that when I was a kid, but I'm really impressed with him. The Third Eye Blind guy, I think anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that, I mean, he's a douchebag to like a a degree that I've said before is it's almost generous because like there's an entertainment value there I um that I've got a story of a friend but oh okay good I always love a good I always love a good, I always love a good Jenkins story. Um, yeah, I mean, we, we did like, I don't know, a long, we did two back to back tours with them in 98 when we were, you know, it was our first, our first big tour was with them. And, and yeah, he's like, uh, he's like a cartoon. He's like a caricature of a rock star. That makes sense.

But that has hurt his career, hasn't it? Any band or musician that takes himself seriously shouldn't be taken seriously. Yeah. He seems like he would take himself way too seriously this this guy i used to know i grew up in the bay area and um dated lots of boys and bands in my day but this is this guy he was working at a recording studio barrier recording studio and uh he was there his name steven jenkins is that his name yeah oh I know I know I think I know who

you're talking about but go on this is the dude who I'm blanking on his name now but he he owns that like famous little studio yeah yes it's probably that's me I mean it's probably not the guy I'm thinking of but um but anyway he made that my. This person was like an assistant working in there. And he made him his girlfriend. His girlfriend, the girl he was dating, was calling a lot that day or was like texting him trying to get home. He made the assistant go and break up with her. Oh, my God. That's why you said that, because you just made a memory leap to my mind

that probably would in the dustbin forever. I swear to God, like it'll be in the book. Yes! Oh my God! Awesome. Oh, we don't get the exclusive?

Like literally the same thing. This was in the first couple weeks that we were on that board with them. So I was probably 19 or 20. And he was like, he was like, I'm going to try to do an impression of them. He was like,

so do you have a girlfriend? And I was like, yeah, I do. I do have a girlfriend. He was like, you should break up with her, man.

You're on the road now. I swear to God. It was like, Oh my God. Yeah. That's such a, but you're on the road now i swear to god it was like oh my god yeah that's such a band but you're right there is like like you're he's putting on the show of of the rock star yeah he's uh it's just like it just sounds very phony uh through and through to me um that's so funny that he just does that with people apparently he just does that with people and like the funniest thing to me now that i'm like a few years older than he was at that time when he was like doing that kind of blustery shit with me like

i don't know like flexing like that to like a kid i don't know yeah it's so weird just like well also just like i don't know. Yeah. It's so weird. Well, also just like, I don't know, like you're in a band and like you're in a popular band. Enjoy that. Just like be a fun guy in a band.

Like, yeah, that's such a weird thing to turn it into. I mean, this is awkward because he's our guest next week. Oh boy. Well, we'll just play him this conversation and see if he cares to comment before we go on to anything that has nothing to do with music um you're in a band you've been in a

band for uh decades uh i'm curious i'm curious just like what was your favorite band when you were 10 years old uh it was it probably would have been exactly 10. I'm thinking, I guess it wasn't a band technically cause it was a solo record, but like I heard running down a dream by Tom Petty on the radio when I think I was like nine or 10 and like it was just a totally like transcendent experience. I still remember it completely. And that was like the thing that was the, sort of the moment that made me become obsessed with rock and roll. Um, like literally from that point on all my allowance money went to buying tapes.

And, uh, you know, I, I, I just, just i i became obsessed with it it was like this strange magic there was like freedom in it there was i don't know it i i think i just had like i don't know it was just a little super feeler when it came to guitar music and and that sort of you know started me on the road to being a band guy for better or worse yeah and from there it went on you know like i i i had my like obligatory um hair metal phase i'm 43 so like this was like you know late 80s when i got into music and then um then like the grunge stuff then skateboarding camp i was turned on to dead kennedys and then punk rock and then yeah you know all those phases but tom petty's been a through line for me this has been really fun we're gonna get a couple of news stories in here.

Jonathan, if you could lead us through some broken news items that we can react to. I do have some Trump dates for all of you. Oh, boy. Multiple Trump dates today. Yeah, let's have it. So his longtime accounting firm cut ties with him and essentially retracted a decade's worth of financial statements they said like in light of these investigations so what does that even mean is why like how do you retract financial statements they're basically saying like look

don't hold us responsible for the contents of these financial statements we were just going on what the trump organization told us. And obviously, we've got these New York investigations, which are finding out that they were huge liars. They were huge liars. And then just today in one of those investigations, a New York judge ruled that Donald Trump, Ivanka and Donald Jr. are going to have to sit for depositions in the New York Attorney General's civil investigation. It doesn't sound good, but, you know, shrug.

Funny guy. Are we going to get to, will they be televised? I want to see Don Jr. all, like, gacked up and, like, you know, wild-eyed, giving a dep a deposition yeah i've been waiting for this for so long like even if there are no consequences surely eventually they'll have to do something like that and i just want yeah who doesn't want to see these sweaty freaks like yelling about cancel culture while they're like being tried for crimes like is that what bar just keeps lowering it's like i want to i want them to die i want them to be punished rot in jail i just want to see them squirm on tv please yeah yeah there probably won't be any actual accountability but it'd be it'd be nice

to see the squirming at least we can have a hoot yeah i mean that's what the that's what the trump dates always are is just me saying here's a bunch of illegal shit they did and then we move on forever it really is just like every year he did release one of his like statements um you know that like maggie haberman posts um and this one was like a rambly four page one that um mentions hillary clinton like many times and he's like my company's so rich if anything these financial statements undercount

how rich I am he's a self parody I love it if anything I'm not so silly I mean what a goofball why would you do that the good news and this is our next one,

is that you could soon be able to get on Truth Social and get his updates in tweet form, but the tweets on Truth Social are called truths. It's incredible. If you can look up the screen grabs of this website, it is literally twitter.com, and they change the word twitter to truth it's incredible what they're trying to do red checks instead of blue like

there's no way it's legal like surely this won't last very long like it's just twitter uh all the symbols are the same every single thing is the same except it's the word tomorrow we'll see news of a lawsuit if he went runs and wins he gets the potus twitter back probably probably well his uh and his facebook ban is lifted right before the actual election so why isn't he using that that's where all his people love it and youtube said they'd let him back on youtube once the threat of violence has lifted or at least that's what they said at the beginning of 2021 and useless what do you mean by that yeah my my favorite part of this is that donald trump jr on twitter shared a screenshot of twitter of i'm sorry of truth social being like this thing is

launching here's his first truth and it says get ready Your favorite president will see you soon. Classic. Which is either a threat or I picture it as the tagline of a horror movie on a VHS. It's both. Also, both get and ready are capitalized. Yeah, man. It's extra post that way. Exactly. Got to draw attention to every single word.

Why are the retweet numbers whited out? Did he do that on purpose i don't know i'm is he trying to hide like the low engagement of his desk that's really funny it's true social posts well because it was open it was a fresh post it's only got 49 mics and there's only 500 beta testers on social so far um like people from oan and newsmax and stuff like that are on there and i wonder if they've found the truth there with those 500 people i wouldn't put a passion to white out the retweets anyway out of pride even though it's still beta and there's no one on it yeah you know oh yeah no he's so he's so insecure for himself and for his dad. Like, he's insecure for everyone around him.

Yeah, he can't let that. I also like that he... Five million likes and five million retweets just by default. The screen grab includes the heart that Don Jr. hearted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Filled in. Because, of course, he's the 49th. He was waiting for it. I've got a non-Trump story uh thank you uh it's it's not

that refreshing uh disney you know the disney disney company uh is building a planned community of homes in california's coachella valley called cotino uh it's one of many planned story living communities uh this one will feature a 24-acre grand oasis, shopping, dining, entertainment, a beachfront hotel, and recreational water activities. I hate this shit. That's the desert. That is the desert. Having, like, this manicure

doesn't make any sense. Oh, it makes perfect sense. It's just terrible and demonic. So expensive. I mean, this is what they wanted to do with epcot uh right they like they wanted their own little disney nation story living and so they're gonna do it there is no crime yeah um they're gonna you know what if this is where what disney adults want and they can they can all move and live together in a little community. And they're not elsewhere.

There's a refreshing, a surprising take. That's fine. Yeah, there we go. Let them have it. Let them have their little town. They can all dress up. You get discounts on season passes. I feel like season passes should be built into your HOAs.

Like season passes for Disneyland? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you live in one of these if you live in one of these awful communities go to the parks and it should just be a part of your fees or whatever yeah just putting that out there um i will say at least because i when i first uh glanced at this story i thought it was a uh what we're also definitely heading towards uh how does it have a beachfront hotel well they're building a beach it's fake you can make it in the it's the magic of imagination you can't have a beachfront hotel

in the desert well what what is going to connect the land to the 24 acre grand oasis which is all water that they're putting exactly okay sorry kat Kenny. No, it all, it all, it's all according to plan. They're going to make a notion in the desert. God's going to be so bad. But I did think originally that this was a move towards what we're going to see more of like,

you know, like Amazon towns where like everyone at Amazon who works at Amazon lives in this little community. And you get up and you take the Amazon tram to your Amazon factory and you get off work and you go to your Amazon home. I thought that was this for Disney. I'm waiting for the Internet's favorite author, David Foster Wallace's prophecy to come true.

And for corporations to start buying years you know so it's like 2023 it's just called amazon you're the amazon god five years from now uh years will be nftTs that you can sell like yeah but at least this is just for people who like Disney and not for people who work at Disney I don't know if that's a silver lining but I'm gonna claim that it is but it's the world we live in people who

work at Disney would not be able to afford to live in this that's a good sad point you've just made I'm full of good sad points. Excellent. Katie, do we have time for one more story? One more.

I just, I can't believe the New York Police Department tweeted this thing out yesterday. Before you get any further, you can't believe it? Yeah, whatever you're about to say, I absolutely believe. Without even knowing what they tweeted. I'm joking. Continue. I can't believe it. So they tweeted tweeted it says after

receiving numerous larceny complaints in the bronx officers from the nypd 44th precinct recently arrested 12 individuals following an enforcement initiative targeting shoplifters the arrest made the the arrests made led to the closure of 23 warrants and the recovery of 1800 dollars worth of merchandise and there's two photos in the tweet. One photo is of like three cops looking real proud of themselves. And the other is a photo of all of the confiscated stuff that was stolen, which includes diapers,

soap. It's mostly diapers and laundry detergent. It's almost all diapers and baby wipes. And medicine for kids. And medicine. Cold blood medicine. Yeah. What? Cold leavening.

Not like, like maybe one bottle of NyQuil or DayQuil or whatever, but all of it being like, like. Yeah, it's like DayQuil

and like Mucinex and like, just like medicine and diapers. This is so wild. Good job for cleaning up the streets, NYPD 44th Precinct.

So they recovered $1,800 worth of merchandise that was apparently going to go towards helping babies. How much money do you think they spent on getting this $800 worth of merchandise back? They had helicopters. They spent like $7.5 million circling Walgreens. Yeah, how many fucking cops did they need

to get these diapers back? They deleted this, right? Surely they deleted this. They deleted this after people were like, those are a bunch of diapers. You stacked up diapers and you were proud of taking diapers away from people. I mean, this is like some, oh, it's awful.

It looks like a parody because this is a standard tweet of like, yeah, here's the cop standing by a bag of weed that they found. But they replaced the bag of weed with diapers. So like, it seems like it was made up. But it wasn't. I maintain it was made up.

I think Jonathan made it up. Not to mention like, presumably, you know, parents who couldn't afford to buy diapers for kids now being in the system forever. Right. Yeah, that's such a good point. Was this worth it? Really worth it to dramatically change the course of these people's lives over purchasing something?

And also, $1,800 is a lot of money. This stuff shouldn't cost that much like it does i believe that it does but it's like it's just so expensive yeah also that yeah expensive like we under do we understand why people need to do this why are we talking about like glorifying oh you guys did it when people are desperate this is an indication of desperation also yeah to take proper care of a child yeah well some countries send you diapers well right that's i mean that's the message here is like maybe we should just give everyone diapers and detergent maybe we should do that like eighteen hundred dollars divided by 23 warrants if that's spread

out that's that was I just did that at 78 bucks yeah yeah so it's like they're they're putting people through hell now and like the system as you said for like $78 worth I can't believe this so that's like some people like like somebody had like a bag of stolen diapers. Anyway, that's a fun way to end the episode. Max, it really has been a delight having you here. Go ahead and plug your stuff. Tell everybody that famous Twitter handle that they should follow.

All right. No, thank you guys so much for having me on. I really appreciate it and appreciate people who are willing to Get into this side of the Spotify story Yeah, the Twitter handle is AtEve6 We just announced a tour That starts in May

I think, like a month long US tour with A fantastic band called We Are The Union And comedian Jake Flores We're calling it the Extreme Wealth Tour with a fantastic job and it's called we are the union and, and a comedian, Jake Flores. Um, we're calling it the extreme wealth tour and it's going to be pretty wild.

Um, so tickets for that are on sale and I've been, you know, there are links to it on the, on the Twitter. I've been posting pretty regularly and that's about it. That's all I got to plug. That's,

um, but again, thank you guys so much. Uh, yeah, it's our pleasure. Uh, that's it for us. That's all I got to plug. That's a really solid plug. But again, thank you guys so much for having me. Yeah, it's our pleasure. That's it for us this week, guys. Thank you again, Max. Thanks, everybody, for listening.

We will be back next week. In the meantime, don't forget, we love you very much. Much.